Dōgen’s turn: stop searching inside

Instead of hunting for a buddha hidden within, try Dōgen’s reading — that the whole of changing existence is buddha-nature.

Por qué funciona

The Nirvana Sūtra line usually read “all sentient beings without exception have buddha-nature” is reread by Dōgen, in the Busshō (“Buddha-Nature”) fascicle of his Shōbōgenzō, as “all existence (shitsuu) is buddha-nature,” and the fascicle includes the Sixth Ancestor’s saying that impermanence is buddha-nature. Ishii Kiyozumi’s study concludes that for Dōgen buddha-nature is not contained inside beings but is the attribute of the whole world as Buddha, whose individual emergence in any phenomenon is what can be called a sentient being. In practice this removes the inner search: attention stops digging for a hidden essence and rests on what is actually changing here.

Cómo hacerlo

1. In sitting or in an ordinary task, notice the urge to find something deeper inside — a true self, a calm core.
2. Let attention move instead to what is plainly changing: breath, sounds, light, the body’s small shifts.
3. Rather than treating these as distractions from buddha-nature, look at them as its expression — not as a belief to adopt, only as an angle to look from.
4. When something unwelcome changes — a mood sours, a plan falls through — notice whether it, too, can be included.
5. Keep it brief and repeat it often; for a full sitting method in Dōgen’s line, see the page on shikantaza.

Evidencia

Ishii’s article (in Japanese, with an English abstract) quotes the Busshō fascicle’s rereading of the Nirvana Sūtra line and lists the Sixth Ancestor episode on impermanence among the fascicle’s sections; its conclusion is the basis of the mechanism. Joan Stambaugh titled her study of Dōgen’s understanding of time Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature, and Masao Abe’s chapter on Dōgen and buddha-nature is a further English treatment. Support for the practice is practitioner-based. (anecdotal)

Ishii notes this definition may be unique in Buddhist thought: it is Dōgen’s reading, not the consensus of the tradition, and readings of the fascicle differ.

Fuentes

• Ishii, K. (2006). Dogen’s Concept of the Word ‘Buddha Nature’ in the Bussho Fascicle of the Shobogenzo. Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies (Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū), 54(2), 784–790. (In Japanese, with English abstract.)
• Stambaugh, J. (1990). Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dōgen’s Understanding of Temporality. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
• Abe, M. (1992). Dogen on Buddha-nature. In S. Heine (Ed.), A Study of Dōgen: His Philosophy and Religion (pp. 35–76). Albany: SUNY Press.

Error común

Folding Dōgen’s reading back into the picture of a buddha hidden inside you — the move Ishii describes runs the other way: buddha-nature is not contained in beings; beings and all phenomena are its emergence.