Dogen Zenji
1200-1253 · East Asian Buddhism · Prominent
Dogen was a Japanese Zen master who founded the Sōtō school and wrote the Shōbōgenzō. He taught that sitting in meditation is itself enlightenment, complete in the sitting, with nothing further to arrive at and no later state that the practice works as a means toward. In the Shōbōgenzō being and time cannot be pulled apart. Each thing that exists is its own time, and no time runs on separate from the things that fill it.
Signature
The position Dogen is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Identity
- mildly leans Changing
- Time
- Phenomenological Time
Positions on the 10 axes the sources answer
- Mind
- mildly leans Beyond Brain (63 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (75 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Identity
- mildly leans Changing (69 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- mildly leans Vertical (37 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- mildly leans Unity (37 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- mildly leans Transcendence (63 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- mildly leans Objective (63 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
10 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Dogen refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Other
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Harmony
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Karmic Balance / Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Indistinct from Present
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Perception
- Non-Dual Awareness
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Non-Self / Karmic Causation
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Indistinct from Present
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Phenomenological Time
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Paradox
- Koan
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Sacred Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Reincarnation / Karmic Cycle
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- No-Self
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- All Beings
What is your primary bond and loyalty?