Smuggled Hinduism—From Dōgen’s Viewpoint

The central question of this paper is what kind of view Dōgen had about Mazu. At first glance, this may seem completely irrelevant to the theme of this issue. In fact, however, Dōgen’s view points to a subtle relationship between Buddhism and Hinduism in an interesting way. Dōgen seems to regard Mazu as an ambiguous figure, standing on the borderline between Buddhism and Hinduism. However, Dōgen’s intention was to save Mazu and keep him on the side of Buddhism. So how can Mazu be saved? To answer this question is to trace the fundamental boundary between Buddhism and Hinduism according to the outstanding Zen master. In this study we adopt the usual method of textual analysis. Our discussion proceeds in the following order. (The steps do not correspond exactly to the section breaks.) (1) First, the argument of a person called Senni is presented from Dōgen’s Bendōwa, where Dōgen severely criticizes him as a non-Buddhist heresy. At this step we will confirm that Senni is a Sāṅkhya theorist (hence, a Hinduist). (2) We take up a parallel to the above passage from Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, Chapter “Sokushinzebutsu”. It becomes clear that the true target of Dōgen’s criticism was Mazu, the great Chinese Chan master. (3) The above operation shows that Dōgen was trying to position Mazu as someone on the borderline between Hinduism and Buddhism. (4) We try to reconstruct from the text what in Senni angered Dōgen, or, in other words, from what he wanted to save Mazu. As a result, the borderline as seen by Dōgen will be visible to us. The main findings of this paper are as follows: (1) The mark that distinguishes Buddhism from Hinduism, according to Dōgen, is the presence of the never-ending Bodhi-mind. This is in fact what TSUNODA Tairyū suggested in his 1985 article. Dōgen implemented this idea as an endless loop of Bodhi-mind, which makes the goal unreachable. (2) The implicit object of Dōgen’s criticism is not the Japanese Tendai or the Darumashū, but Mazu, as HE Yansheng indicated in his 2000 book. The so-called Critical Buddhism movement began on the basis of a misunderstanding. The large amount of secondary literature that has resulted is also indirectly based on this error.