Dōgen on Meditation and Thinking: A Reflection on His View of Zen (review)

Hee-Jin Kim, now professor emeritus of the University of Oregon, has been engaged in the philosophical study of Dōgen for over 40 years. His widely acclaimed book, Dōgen Kigen, Mystical Realist, set the standard for East Asian Buddhist studies when it emerged in 1975. This new text purports to “complement and surpass its predecessor” (p. x). This is the culmination of a life’s work, an overall project intended to introduce Dōgen to English-language readers and to demonstrate that Dōgen offers a unique and compelling philosophical vision applicable to contemporary global concerns. Judging from the volume and intensity of Dōgen studies over the last three decades in both academic and religious contexts, one could only conclude that this intention has been fulfilled, and the current volume is a fitting capstone to this achievement.

Although the terms of the interpretation have changed in accordance with the evolution of English-language philosophical discourse, the direction of Kim’s reading of Dōgen has not altered significantly in the 32 years between the publication of the two books. In the earlier work, Dōgen was a “mystical realist,” a phrase meant to distinguish his line of Zen practice from “a mystical extremism characterized by irrationality, eccentricity, and obscurantism” (Dōgen Kigen, p. 9). The current work continues that same interpretive theme but surpasses the earlier work by focusing on Dōgen’s understanding of the reflective powers of language and the worldliness of meditative thinking. Thus, the author concludes that for Dōgen, “intellectual endeavor and critical rigor are intrinsic to enlightenment and, hence, are part and parcel of practice” (p. 38).

That central theme indicates what kind of study this is: an analytical and philosophical reflection on themes in Dōgen that have contemporary resonance. The book is not a historical study, as the 1975 book was in part, and the fact that sentences about Dōgen are rendered in present tense shows that orientation clearly. It is less about who Dōgen was than about who Dōgen might be for us today. Moreover, although well aware of contemporary interpretations of Zen in English, this book appears not to be informed by contemporary Japanese scholarship on Dōgen to the extent the earlier work was. The focus is on textual exegesis and philosophical interpretation of key words and phrases in the Shōbōgenzō. In that way, this work is more an internal analysis of texts than it is an engagement with current thinking in Dōgen and Zen studies. There is insight to be found in the analysis, however, and the pleasure the author takes in the complexity and obscurity of Dōgen’s language is brilliantly infectious.

The book is divided into six chapters totaling 120 pages. Each chapter takes up one theme in Dōgen and pushes the overall argument one step further. The first chapter considers the theme of the nonduality of “delusion” and “enlightenment,” a theme debated throughout the history of the Zen tradition. Kim’s reading of Dōgen on this issue brings the two poles of the human spiritual quest as close together as possible without conflating them. “Enlightenment,” he claims, “is as time bound and time free as delusion” (p. 7). As he works through the various tensions between these two terms, however, one cannot help but get a sense of overinterpretation such that the terms begin to appear as real things, somehow objectified to the point that the language of the text has taken on a substance and life of its own. If “delusion” bears this level of resemblance to “enlightenment,” the most obvious outcome would be to stop calling it “delusion,” thus heeding at least some of our expectations accompanying that word. In both Zen and contemporary thought, the realization of “nondualism” in the form of thorough-going...