Seeking the Locus of the Power to Believe in the Buddha

Within the landscape of Japanese Zen, three lineages prevail: the Soto, the Rinzai, and the Obaku. My personal fascination, however, remains anchored in the progenitor of the Soto school. In this essay, we shall explore the revolutionary concept of displacement as articulated by the founder of the Soto sect—the largest force within the world of Zen.

Today, the Soto school remains a formidable institution, claiming some 3.5 to 4 million adherents out of Japan’s approximately 80 million Buddhist practitioners. While they represent roughly 4 to 5 percent of all Buddhists, within the specific framework of Zen, the Soto school accounts for a staggering 66 percent of the faithful. If one views Zen merely through the modern lens of “mindfulness,” the revolutionary character of this lineage remains obscured. Yet, by uncovering its essence, we begin to see how truly radical Zen was intended to be. To grasp this, we must look, above all else, at the founder himself.

The architect of the Soto school, a revolutionary monk who navigated the turbulence of the 13th century, was Dogen (1200–1253). To trace his life is to witness a religious seeker who, more deeply than any of his contemporaries, wrestled with the concept of the [浄土] “Pure Land/Jodo“—the dominant Buddhist aspiration of the age. He lived to manifest that vision in the real. Though he would eventually found the great temple of Eihei-ji in what is now Fukui Prefecture, his journey began with a profound doubt regarding the Pure Land. This doubt propelled him on a grand odyssey to Song Dynasty China in search of truth. When we focus on how he ultimately perceived the Pure Land, we find that his conclusion always involved the intervention of “non-separation.”

Born into the Kuge—the high court aristocracy of Kyoto—Dogen entered the world at a precipice. His life, spanning 1200 to 1253, coincided with the violent transition from the long-standing era of the nobility to the nascent age of the samurai. The aristocratic government had succumbed to terminal corruption and internal collapse, its authority vanishing. Consequently, the warriors, once merely the “watchdogs” of the elite, rose to seize the reins of power. Though Dogen belonged to the privileged class, it was an era where such privilege offered little sanctuary.

Indeed, eight years before his birth, the first military government, the Kamakura Shogunate, was established by Minamoto Yoritomo (1147–1199). Thus, Dogen was born into an age of upheaval, where the surging warrior class engaged in a fierce struggle against the waning hegemony of the nobles. The aristocracy of Kyoto fell into ruin with terrifying speed. Because the fate of the nobility was tethered to the fate of the city itself, Kyoto descended into a terrestrial hell, besieged by public disorder and relentless disasters. Amidst this vortex, Dogen’s parents, exhausted by incessant strife, passed away early, leaving him an orphan.

This childhood encounter with loss instilled in him the fundamental Buddhist truth of [無常] (Mujo)—impermanence. Consequently, he forsook the path of the courtier and chose instead the life of a monk, seeking to master the Buddhist Way. In any era of transition, famine, plague, and war inevitably follow the shift in power. As a result of this societal instability, a dark obsession with the “Latter Day of the Law”—the belief that the world was ending—spread across all classes, cloaking society in literal and spiritual darkness.