As a religion concerned with universal liberation, Zen grew out of
a Buddhist worldview very different from the currently prevalent
scientific materialism. Indeed, says Taigen Dan Leighton, Zen
cannot be fully understood outside of a worldview that sees reality
itself as a vital, dynamic agent of awareness and healing. In this
book, Leighton explicates that worldview through the writings of
the Zen master Eihei Dogen (1200-1253), considered the founder of
the Japanese Soto Zen tradition, which currently enjoys increasing
popularity in the West.
The Lotus Sutra, arguably the most important Buddhist scripture in
East Asia, contains a famous story about bodhisattvas (enlightening
beings) who emerge from under the earth to preserve and expound the
Lotus teaching in the distant future. The story reveals that the
Buddha only appears to pass away, but actually has been practicing,
and will continue to do so, over an inconceivably long life
span.
Leighton traces commentaries on the Lotus Sutra from a range of
key East Asian Buddhist thinkers, including Daosheng, Zhiyi,
Zhanran, Saigyo, Myoe, Nichiren, Hakuin, and Ryokan. But his main
focus is Eihei Dogen, the 13th century Japanese Soto Zen founder
who imported Zen from China, and whose profuse, provocative, and
poetic writings are important to the modern expansion of Buddhism
to the West.
Dogen's use of this sutra expresses the critical role of Mahayana
vision and imagination as the context of Zen teaching, and his
interpretations of this story furthermore reveal his dynamic
worldview of the earth, space, and time themselves as vital agents
of spiritual awakening.
Leighton argues that Dogen uses the images and metaphors in
thisstory to express his own religious worldview, in which earth,
space, and time are lively agents in the bodhisattva project.
Broader awareness of Dogen's worldview and its implications, says
Leighton, can illuminate the possibilities for contemporary
approaches to primary Mahayana concepts and practices.
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