In order to catch up with the West, namely the Kyôto-school tried for some time to promote Dôgen and especially his Shôbogenzô as the utmost representation of Japanese culture - and as one of the rare examples of a "true philosophy" according to Western dominant, biased standards (which held that there was no real philosophy anywhere outside Europe). Well, I read parts of the SBGZ and some other scriptures, and noticed that Dôgen uses a rather "restricted code", compared with the totality of "codes" effective on the islands of Japanese since early history. And it is by far not as encyclopedic-philosophical as other Far Eastern treatises and compilations, like the big Ruist, Buddhist, Daoist, and Shintoist "Treasure"-compilations. So, my hypothesis is that the bringing of Dôgen´s work out of some inner circles and back into the public had less to do with the legitimation of the Sôto-school than the attempt to show "to the world" that the old Far Eastern religio-philosophical schools were as capable, intellectually and spiritually, as the Western ones (that is, the latter, for the most parts, saw - and some still see - themselves as the pinnacle of world-culture). Interesting as Dôgen´s work is in several respects, i.m.o., it cannot/should not simply be taken as a kind of holistic pars-pro-toto neither of Far Eastern cultures (and namely philosophy), nor of the World of Buddhism. This kindly to notice for all people who are primarily interested in socio-cultural studies and tend to follow the lore of (trans)cultural "essentialism", mentioned above: Dôgen´s world is one sub-sense-world of many. Only together, in complex interrelatedness, do they form the Far Eastern "cosmos".
A nice synopsis there Brad. It amazes me to think how perilous that journey to China must have been back then. And the fact that he managed to find a teacher there in that vast country.
I visited Tendozan back in 1995. It's near Ningbo and is called tiantongsi in Mandarin. Aside from a display about Japanese-Chinese friendship, I didn't see much about Dogen. Of course, the Chinese don't have much love for the Japanese. Anyway, my guide and the locals seemed more interested in a crazy-wisdom monk who'd lived there than in Dogen. There were monks around and the monastery had yellow buildings. I spent a few hours looking around, offered a stick of incense, and signed the guest book.
@@Tomas33392 so you, who have read it, expect brad who has very little free cash to spend to front up the cost then read it and no doubt get back to the vlog with his analysis of it ? why not write a review with quotes to give the gist ? oh that's not this vlog's style which is only airy fancy
interesting bit of trivia lots of people don't know about with that way of calculating age: it actually starts at 9 months at birth, not quite one year. That's also why there's a celebration at 100 days after birth (which is approximately one year after conception). At least I've heard that explanation before and it seems to make sense.
Zen (2009) available on DVD and UA-cam. Who is Dogen? The sound of one mut barking ;-) Amongst White Clouds (2005) is excellent, available from the same. In 2020 documentary "Hermits Chinese monks ... Red Pine returns to the Chungnan Mtns!
I've heard the story with that question several times "Why should we have to work so hard to attain the true nature we already have?" (including in To Meet the Real Dragon) I feel like I've heard it enough times that I should know the answer according to the story. I keep finding that I don't though... Am I right in thinking that he never finds an answer to that question, and instead... gets enlightened or something? There's the thing Esai said about reality, and then with Tendo Nyojo his doubts were cleared away. Is this just an example of one of those question that everyone has that misses the point? (Otherwise, what is the answer? :) )
@@HardcoreZen Oh you rascally zen master... :) I guess that's a good enough answer anyway, I'll pretend to myself that's what I thought the answer would be. :)
Make him new? Na, that's like saying sandals that are worn out and exaggerated is a new pair, only because you just got them.. Jesus is a used piece of toilet paper..
Wait, you were in Denton? HA! Funny I didn't run into you. I go to recycled a lot. Used to go to the square a lot more too but the music scene has gone downhill in the last few years.
This video reminds me of a favorite Bob Dylan song 'Jokerman'. There's a lyric in there that goes... You're going to Sodom and Gomorrah But what do you care Aint nobody there Would want to marry your sister Why would you care who Dogen is...unless you are following his teaching?
@@HardcoreZen I'll check again later. 480p was the maximum available, and it showed compression artifacts. Dunno if UA-cam perhaps was still transcoding the upload...
@@gedfi I did make the resolution lower this time because when I did it the way I normally do it the video file came out really big. So it probably is 480p. I usually do 720p. (I think...)
@@HardcoreZen ah, OK, then it's intentional. I thought there was something wrong. Sorry about being sensitive to compression artifacts. Used to do a fair bit of video encoding back in the days when encoders were bad. I probably have "bad encoding" stuck in my head permanently after that. So, nothing to see here, on to the regularly scheduled program. And yes, HD video eats storage for breakfast.
eihei dogen is a cult figure and soto zen is a cult stemming from the way it treats him ie infallible. once you start to say he is wrong about certain things then the cult breaks up because there are schisms based on disagreement as to what he was wrong about what he really is, is he is one of a number of interesting mystical writers and because of differences in historical culture, not very accessible to modern readers, a problem compounded by inadequate/misguided translation the deliberate blindness of his present day cult followers is shown by their compete ignorance of one of the most famous works of world literature (the Tsurezuregusa) written by a monk 80 years after dogen's death who lived in dogen's home town, kyoto its a fascinating work and also gives insight into the manic japanese religious culture soto is in large part, just crazy and stupid and necessarily so, because only psychosis could be so wilfully ignorant about the large panoply of mystics, philosophers and literary writers available to us this is why the commenters here and brad only go backwards, the only areas they put work into are the non-essential/contrary and never venture into the essential, i used to wonder about this, but don't now, its tempting to think involvement in the "non-essential" is harmless, but the fact is its at the expense of the essential, so what one sees here in the comments section with its incompetent and childish aggression when contradicted is to be expected if you are going to reply to this, do something "essential" and read it carefully and then if you write something, ask yourself, does what i write address of the post or is it just the usual intellectually lazy personal attack ? what is the point of being involved in zen if your interpersonal and cognitive skills just get worse ?
@@dr.jeffreyzacko-smith324 i have spoken to you before about your memory problems, i have explained several times, also you seem to repeat what you say constantly in this comments section my view is you have a form of early dementia, not much can be done can it ?
This is an unnecessary post. Like most faith traditions, they all have someone or something they attach to and put on a pedestal. Look at the Lutherans, etc. Say you disagree with Martin Luther on certain things - and, bam! you’re gone. I know! Dogen was a fallible man, but he’s got a pretty solid body of work. Disagree with him or his entire corpus; it’s your choice. However, to deprecate people when you had the choice not to was not what one would call a wise choice. I sincerely hope that you find peace in your day. Please, smile and be with the ones you love.
ITS THE GHOUL!!!!!!?!?; HAY HAY HAY. I loved watching the ghoul show when I was a child. I guess that's why I turned into such an upstanding citizen. All hail BB.
Someone’s new book is #1 on Amazon under “Zen Spirituality” … 👍🏽
Thank you. More references to check out! Now, I have to finish getting ready
Thank you so much for this explanation. It really helped me view him more clearly.
In order to catch up with the West, namely the Kyôto-school tried for some time to promote Dôgen and especially his Shôbogenzô as the utmost representation of Japanese culture - and as one of the rare examples of a "true philosophy" according to Western dominant, biased standards (which held that there was no real philosophy anywhere outside Europe). Well, I read parts of the SBGZ and some other scriptures, and noticed that Dôgen uses a rather "restricted code", compared with the totality of "codes" effective on the islands of Japanese since early history. And it is by far not as encyclopedic-philosophical as other Far Eastern treatises and compilations, like the big Ruist, Buddhist, Daoist, and Shintoist "Treasure"-compilations.
So, my hypothesis is that the bringing of Dôgen´s work out of some inner circles and back into the public had less to do with the legitimation of the Sôto-school than the attempt to show "to the world" that the old Far Eastern religio-philosophical schools were as capable, intellectually and spiritually, as the Western ones (that is, the latter, for the most parts, saw - and some still see - themselves as the pinnacle of world-culture).
Interesting as Dôgen´s work is in several respects, i.m.o., it cannot/should not simply be taken as a kind of holistic pars-pro-toto neither of Far Eastern cultures (and namely philosophy), nor of the World of Buddhism.
This kindly to notice for all people who are primarily interested in socio-cultural studies and tend to follow the lore of (trans)cultural "essentialism", mentioned above: Dôgen´s world is one sub-sense-world of many. Only together, in complex interrelatedness, do they form the Far Eastern "cosmos".
You missed the best answer - "He's just this guy, you know"*
*From the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.
A nice synopsis there Brad. It amazes me to think how perilous that journey to China must have been back then. And the fact that he managed to find a teacher there in that vast country.
Thank you. It was helpful!
I visited Tendozan back in 1995. It's near Ningbo and is called tiantongsi in Mandarin. Aside from a display about Japanese-Chinese friendship, I didn't see much about Dogen. Of course, the Chinese don't have much love for the Japanese. Anyway, my guide and the locals seemed more interested in a crazy-wisdom monk who'd lived there than in Dogen. There were monks around and the monastery had yellow buildings. I spent a few hours looking around, offered a stick of incense, and signed the guest book.
Thanks for the video Brad! I highly recommend Steven Heine's new biography of Dogen, "Dogen: Japan's Original Zen Teacher".
buy one and send it to him, i am sure he would appreciate it
@@osip7315 Here you are again 😜😜😜
@@nettinetti8465 मारक
@@osip7315 Not doing so well financially at the moment, also I live in Europe.
@@Tomas33392 so you, who have read it, expect brad who has very little free cash to spend to front up the cost then read it and no doubt get back to the vlog with his analysis of it ?
why not write a review with quotes to give the gist ?
oh that's not this vlog's style which is only airy fancy
Even Dogen’s life is tough and complicated.
My word, the cover of Dogen's Formative Years was so shiny I thought I saw my reflection in it. Crazy :D
Shohaku Okimura in his book "Realizing Genjokoan", Appendix 3 uses Hee-jin Kim's biography of Dogen from "Eihei Dogen Mystical Realist".
Awesome video!
interesting bit of trivia lots of people don't know about with that way of calculating age: it actually starts at 9 months at birth, not quite one year. That's also why there's a celebration at 100 days after birth (which is approximately one year after conception). At least I've heard that explanation before and it seems to make sense.
Zen (2009) available on DVD and UA-cam. Who is Dogen? The sound of one mut barking ;-) Amongst White Clouds (2005) is excellent, available from the same. In 2020 documentary "Hermits Chinese monks ... Red Pine returns to the Chungnan Mtns!
What do you mean, "who *was* Dogen?"?! He always _was_ a great guy, and he still *is* so!
youtube.com/@Dogen
The Ghoul?? Oh my gosh! How's that for some insane nostalgia! XD
Someone remembers!
@@HardcoreZen Always! 🤘
it wasn't "family wealth" that allowed dogen to go to china but funding from a daimyo
How about a review of "Dogen's formative years in china".
The book is really expensive as "Dogen's "expensive" record"...
I've heard the story with that question several times "Why should we have to work so hard to attain the true nature we already have?" (including in To Meet the Real Dragon) I feel like I've heard it enough times that I should know the answer according to the story. I keep finding that I don't though... Am I right in thinking that he never finds an answer to that question, and instead... gets enlightened or something? There's the thing Esai said about reality, and then with Tendo Nyojo his doubts were cleared away.
Is this just an example of one of those question that everyone has that misses the point? (Otherwise, what is the answer? :) )
In Shobogenzo he answers that question over and over and over and over...
@@HardcoreZen Oh you rascally zen master... :) I guess that's a good enough answer anyway, I'll pretend to myself that's what I thought the answer would be. :)
how stupid can you get, this stuff is nonsense
@@HardcoreZen the translator answers and they are usually idiots
@@osip7315 Hey Andrew, not sure what you're talking about... what stuff was nonsense? Who was the translator and/or the idiots you mentioned?
Dogen was a human being. I think it is a mistake to make him the new Jesus.
jesus was a human being to?
Make him new?
Na, that's like saying sandals that are worn out and exaggerated is a new pair, only because you just got them..
Jesus is a used piece of toilet paper..
Jesus is the sun.
Wait, you were in Denton? HA! Funny I didn't run into you. I go to recycled a lot. Used to go to the square a lot more too but the music scene has gone downhill in the last few years.
This video reminds me of a favorite Bob Dylan song 'Jokerman'. There's a lyric in there that goes...
You're going to Sodom and Gomorrah
But what do you care
Aint nobody there
Would want to marry your sister
Why would you care who Dogen is...unless you are following his teaching?
Really low resolution on this upload - to the point that it's actually a bit distracting.
Really? It looks absolutely fine to me!
@@HardcoreZen Looks fine to me too. It's probably just his quality settings no offense to them.
@@HardcoreZen I'll check again later. 480p was the maximum available, and it showed compression artifacts. Dunno if UA-cam perhaps was still transcoding the upload...
@@gedfi I did make the resolution lower this time because when I did it the way I normally do it the video file came out really big. So it probably is 480p. I usually do 720p. (I think...)
@@HardcoreZen ah, OK, then it's intentional. I thought there was something wrong. Sorry about being sensitive to compression artifacts. Used to do a fair bit of video encoding back in the days when encoders were bad. I probably have "bad encoding" stuck in my head permanently after that. So, nothing to see here, on to the regularly scheduled program.
And yes, HD video eats storage for breakfast.
eihei dogen is a cult figure and soto zen is a cult stemming from the way it treats him ie infallible. once you start to say he is wrong about certain things then the cult breaks up because there are schisms based on disagreement as to what he was wrong about
what he really is, is he is one of a number of interesting mystical writers and because of differences in historical culture, not very accessible to modern readers, a problem compounded by inadequate/misguided translation
the deliberate blindness of his present day cult followers is shown by their compete ignorance of one of the most famous works of world literature (the Tsurezuregusa) written by a monk 80 years after dogen's death who lived in dogen's home town, kyoto
its a fascinating work and also gives insight into the manic japanese religious culture
soto is in large part, just crazy and stupid and necessarily so, because only psychosis could be so wilfully ignorant about the large panoply of mystics, philosophers and literary writers available to us
this is why the commenters here and brad only go backwards, the only areas they put work into are the non-essential/contrary and never venture into the essential, i used to wonder about this, but don't now, its tempting to think involvement in the "non-essential" is harmless, but the fact is its at the expense of the essential, so what one sees here in the comments section with its incompetent and childish aggression when contradicted is to be expected
if you are going to reply to this, do something "essential" and read it carefully and then if you write something, ask yourself, does what i write address of the post or is it just the usual intellectually lazy personal attack ?
what is the point of being involved in zen if your interpersonal and cognitive skills just get worse ?
My question is simple and repeated - if you have such distaste for this stuff - why are you here besides to troll?
@@dr.jeffreyzacko-smith324 i have spoken to you before about your memory problems, i have explained several times, also you seem to repeat what you say constantly in this comments section
my view is you have a form of early dementia, not much can be done can it ?
You need to spend more time on the cushion. Dissolving your disdain of goodness would add to your peace.
@@caseyfay9620 never mediated in your life have you, the hypocrisy ? i have done two hours a day for years
why be a low reading age cultist ?
This is an unnecessary post. Like most faith traditions, they all have someone or something they attach to and put on a pedestal. Look at the Lutherans, etc. Say you disagree with Martin Luther on certain things - and, bam! you’re gone. I know! Dogen was a fallible man, but he’s got a pretty solid body of work. Disagree with him or his entire corpus; it’s your choice. However, to deprecate people when you had the choice not to was not what one would call a wise choice.
I sincerely hope that you find peace in your day. Please, smile and be with the ones you love.
ITS THE GHOUL!!!!!!?!?; HAY HAY HAY. I loved watching the ghoul show when I was a child. I guess that's why I turned into such an upstanding citizen. All hail BB.