Dōgen

Abstract

Zen master Dōgen (1200–1253) teaches that enlightenment is not a static state but, rather, an ongoing practice that involves both meditative and moral discipline. He places great emphasis on moral precepts and ritualistic regulations, yet he ultimately understands these not as external decrees, but as natural expressions of our true nature. Meditative and moral disciplines are, for him, not merely means for achieving enlightenment; they are themselves manifestations of the “oneness of practice and enlightenment.” As a Mahayana Buddhist, Dōgen advocates cutting off egoistic craving and replacing it with the bodhisattva vow to liberate all beings from suffering. He shares affinities with contextualism and virtue ethics, as well as with consequentialism, insofar as he thinks that precepts and monastic regulations should be used as guidelines for awakening and cultivating our innate ability to act wisely and compassionately in concrete situations, in order to alleviate suffering, rather than as rigid rules to be slavishly followed or fixed forms to which we should be attached. While the precepts initially appear as ethical prescriptions, Dōgen maintains that, through practice, one realizes that they are descriptions of enlightened action.