D?GEN

D?gen (1200–1253), an early Japanese Zen figure, is regarded as the founder of the Japanese S?t? school of Chan Buddhism (Japanese, Zen). Born to an aristocratic family, D?gen entered the Buddhist order as a child. After studying Tiantai Buddhism (Japanese, Tendai), he became a follower of My?zen (1184–1225), who was a disciple of Eisai (1141–1215), a prominent Japanese exponent of Zen. In 1223 D?gen accompanied My?zen to China, where he stayed at the Jingde Monastery on Mount Tiantong. There, he received dharma transmission from the abbot, Tiandong Rujing (1163–1228), in the Caodong (Japanese, S?t?) lineage. Returning to Japan in 1227, D?gen established K?sh?ji, a monastery near the capital of Heiankyo (modern Kyoto), making it one of the first Japanese institutions to introduce the Song-dynasty style of Chan monastic practice. D?gen soon attracted a following, including monks of the so-called Daruma school, who would become the leaders of the early S?t? community. In 1242 D?gen left the capital area for Echizen (modern Fukui prefecture), where he founded Eiheiji (originally named Daibutsuji), the monastery that subsequently became the headquarters of one faction of the S?t? school. Except for a brief trip to the new military capital at Kamakura in 1247, he spent his remaining years at Eiheiji, returning to Heian-ky? only in the last days of his final illness.

D?gen was a prolific author who composed essays on Zen practice such as the Fukan zazengi (Universal Promotion of the Principles of Seated Meditation) and Gakud? y?jinshu (Admonitions on the Study of the Way); treatises on Zen monastic rules, later collected under the title Eihei shingi (Eihei Rules of Purity); a record of his study with Rujing entitled H?ky?ki (Record of the H?ky? Era); and Japanese verse collected as Sansh? d?ei (Songs of the Way from Mount Sansh?). D?gen's teachings were collected in a ten-volume work entitled Eihei k?roku (The Extended Record of Eihei).

Among his writings, D?gen is best known for Sh?b?genz? (Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma), a collection of vernacular essays composed over many years. Modern editions contain approximately ninety-five texts, but the work has come down in several redactions, and the original form of the collection remains uncertain. Though there is some variation in genre, the majority of the essays develop their themes through comments on passages from the literature recording the teachings of the Chinese Chan masters, from which the collection takes its name. Though seemingly little studied for several centuries after their composition, the texts of the Sh?b?genz? became a primary source for the development of S?t? Zen doctrine during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the Sh?b?genz? has been the object of many commentaries from that time up to the present. In the twentieth century, the work became highly regarded as a classic of Japanese Buddhist thought and was much studied by scholars of philosophy, religion, intellectual history, language, and literature. The texts of the Sh?b?genz? have been translated several times into modern Japanese, as well as into English and other Western languages.

See also:Chan School; Japan; Tiantai School

Bibliography

Bielefeldt, Carl. D?gen's Manuals of Zen Meditation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Bodiford, William. S?t? Zen in Medieval Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993.

Carl Bielefeldt