The Daruma-shu, Dogen and Soto Zen

Abstract

The Daruma-shii, Dbgen, and Sdtb Zen Y OSAI (or Eisai) %pi,1141-1215, and Dogen SZ, 1200-1253, are traditionally considered the first Buddhist monks to have introduced Zen to Japan.Ddgen, in particular, has been lavishly praised as the founder of the Soto %@Isect and, more recently, as one of the greatest Japanese thinkers.His role has been reevaluated in postwar scholarship, and numerous studies have examined different aspects of his thought and personality.Such an emphasis on Ddgen's life and thought neglects the ideological purposes behind his accepted image; it obscures, in fact, the history of Japanese Buddhism.Traditions, in Husserl's words, are 'a forgetting of the origin'.It has become clear in recent years that Dogen's role cannot be properly understood without taking into account the existence of the so-called Bodhidharma School, or Daruma-shu gE%.This school, allegedly founded by a little-known figure called Dainichi Nonin k EIBEZ,who flourished toward the end of the twelfth century, had reached a wide audience by the beginning of the Kamakura period, and for that reason became increasingly unpopular among the Buddhist establishment.'It was perceived as a powerful rival by the Kamakura 'new sects', and more particularly by the Zen and Nichiren schools.This led to a repression that eventually brought an end to the Daruma-shu as a formal school, but this did not eradicate its influence on Japanese Bud-THE AUTHOR is assistant professor in the from this tradition, and it does not seem Department of Asian Studies, Cornell necessary to draw an overly clear-cut distinc-University.tion between the new movement and the Following Okubo DbshCi k A # Z & , earlier Ch'an school, just as it is unnecessaryJapanese scholars refer to it as the Japanese to specify Japanese Rinzai or Sbtb when re-Bodhidharma school (Nihon Daruma-shn) to ferring to the teachings of Dbgen and Ybsai.distinguish it from its Chinese counterpart, Implicit in the denomination is the fact the Ta-mo tsung &%j5%, that is, the early that, while the latter's teachings belong to Ch'an school that had been introduced into the Ch'an tradition, Nbnin's teachings are Japan during the Nara period and had been divorced from it by their Japanese ideokept alive within the Tendai tradition.syncracies.However, Nbnin's teaching clearly stemmed and Takahashi fluenced Japanese poetry, judging from the Shiiei.