thezensite: Dogen studies

Dogen Zen and its Relevance for our Time
a symposium held in 1999 at Stanford University "in celebration of 800th anniversary of the founder of Soto Zen in Japan". The following papers are available:

Carl Bielefeldt: Living with Dogen: Thoughts on the Relevance of his Thought
Griffith Foulk: History of the Soto Zen School
Zenkei Blanche Hartman: Dogen Zenji's Zazen
John Daido Loori: Dogen's 300 Koans and the Kana Shobogenzo
Yasuaki Nara: The Soto Zen School in Japan
Shohaku Okumura: Dogen Zenji's Standards for the Community Practice
Otani Tetsuo: To Transmit Dogen Zenji's Dharma
Hozan Alan Senauke: Dreaming Peace in an Age of War
Sojun Mel Weitsman: Soto Zen in America

Dogen Symposium: 16 June 2001 Papers presented under the symposium theme, Dogen Zenji's Mind Here and Now The link will take you to the English pages.

Carl Bielefeldt: Translating Dogen: Thoughts on the Soto Zen Text Project : a paper given at the Many Faces of Dogen conference, 2004, on the difficulties of translating Dogen's writings. Very interesting.

William M Bodiford: Remembering Dogen: Eiheiji and Dogen Hagiography This is an excellent essay on the history of Eiheiji and its centuries-long fight to become the head temple of the Sōtō Sect and memorialize its founder, Dogen. A fascinating history. from The Journal of Japanese Studies 32.1 (2006) pp1-21

Bernard Faure: The Daruma-shū, Dōgen, and Sōtō Zen Faure examines the influence of the Bodhidharma (Daruma) School on Dogen's teachings and the Shobogenzo. As he says, "The traditional history of...Zen in Japan is not exempt from distortions." Excellent article! from Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 42, No. 1. (Spring, 1987), pp. 25-55.I suggest you also read Heine's Did Dogen Go to China? for more on Dogen hagiography.

Steven Heine: The Dõgen Canon: Dõgen's Pre-Shõbõgenzõ Writings and the Question of Change in His Later Works from The Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 1997. Heine argues a Three Periods Theory of Dogen's writing suggesting that the main change, which occurred with the opening of Eihei-ji in 1245, was a matter of altering the style of instruction rather than the content or ideology.

Critical Buddhism and Dogen's Shobogenzo: the debate over the 75-fascicle and 12-fascicle texts I think the title says it all.

Koans in the Dogen Tradition : How and Why Dogen Does what He Does with Koans: Heine analyses how Dogen used koans in his teaching and "that Dogen does not have a single, simple or uniform method of koan interpretation, but he varies rhetorical and narrative strategies to bring out particular ideas concerning specific items of doctrine and ritual." from Philosophy East and West, Vol 54, No. 2, January 2004

Did Dogen Go to China?: Heine examines the evidence of Dogen's famous trip to China and the meeting with his teacher, Ju-ching. He concludes, Yes, Dogen did go to China but the real story is somewhat different than the hagiography tells. Excellent article from: Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 30/1–2: 27–59 Heine's book on this, Did Dogen Go to China? What He Wrote and When He Wrote It is available from Oxford University Press
I suggest you also read Faure's article, The Daruma-shū, Dōgen, and Sōtō Zen, to find more influences on the Dogen hagiography.

Norimoto Iino: Dogen's Zen View of Interdependence Dogen had an all-encompassing, many-sided view of interdependence (parasparāpeksā). This is a lovely article, eloquent and a joy to read. Highly recommended

T. P. Kasulis: The Zen Philsopher: a review article on Dogen scholarship in English : Kasulis begins by arguing that Zen can be interpreted through philosophical enquiry and goes on to review some major works of translation of Dogen. This article was originally published in 1978 in Philosophy East and West, Volume 28, no. 3, July so the reviews are limited (showing how much has changed since then in Dogen studies) but it's still worth reading. Recommended.

Taigen Dan Leighton: The Lotus Sutra as a Source for Dogen's Discourse Style Leighton discusses Dogen's appropriation of the Lotus Sutra at a rhetorical device in the Shobogenzo and other writings of Dogen.

David R Loy Language against its own mystifications: Deconstruction in Nagarjuna and Dogen Loy compares these two great thinkers because "Nagarjuna and Dogen ... point to many of the same Buddhist insights because they deconstruct the same type of dualities, most of which may be understood as versions of our commonsense but delusive distinction between substance and attribute, subject and predicate." He then goes on to look at the differences between the two. from Philosophy East and West 1999. Vol. 49, Iss. 3

Douglas K. Mikkelson: Who Is Arguing About the Cat? Moral Action and Englightenment According to Dogen. A very interesting essay on Dogen's response to Nan-ch'uan cutting the cat, Pai-chang's Fox and the moral consequences of action. Did Nan-ch'uan commit evil by cutting the cat?

Terry C Muck: Zen Master Dogen Meets a Thirteenth-century Postmodernist A lovely little essay exploring the koan Tokuzan Meets a Rice-Cake Seller. As Muck says, Dogen "offers the seeds of fruitful ideas for a way forward: beyond rationalism, without rancor, toward a true ecumenism of the human spirit." Recommended. from Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 1998, Vol. 35, Iss. 1

Gudo Nishijima: The whole collection of Nishijima's essays can be found here. Understanding the Shobogenzo: quite a long essay. Includes his explanation of his SOAR structure (subjective, objective, action and real). Also includes his translation of the Genjo Koan essay.
Japanese Buddhism and the Meiji Restoration: includes Nishijima's introduction to Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika, which Nishijima claims is "identical to the theories of Dogen".
Three Philosophies and One Reality: essays based on a series of talks given by Nishijima on Dogen.

David Putney: Some Problems of Interpretation: early and late writings of Dogen. “The purpose of this essay will be to concentrate primarily on two key hermeneutical problems: (1) the problem of the textual relationship between Dogen's late versus his early writings, and (2) the problem of Dogen's method of expression in his early and mid-period writings…. The results of this inquiry may furnish a groundwork for addressing the philosophical questions regarding Dogen's early, middle, and late views on Original Enlightenment, "Buddha Nature," and Causality.” from Philosophy East and West Volume 46, Number 4

Rein Raud: ‘Place’ And ‘Being-Time’: Spatiotemporal Concepts In The Thought Of Nishida Kitarō And Dōgen Kigen "Perhaps the best known among ... spatiotemporal East Asian concepts are the notions of ‘place’ (basho) of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945) and the ‘being-time’ (uji) of Dōgen Kigen (1200–1253). This article is an effort at a comparative analysis of these notions, focusing especially on Nishida’s philosophy as a synthesis of Western and Asian philosophical discourses." An interesting essay comparing Nishida and Dōgen's approach to a fundamental philosophical/religious problem. from Philosophy East and West - Volume 54, Number 1, January 2004, pp. 29-51

Kevin Schilbrack: Metaphysics in Dogen "The first section of this essay introduces a definition of metaphysics that, although drawn from the Western philosophical tradition, is, I hope, generic enough to be useful for the study of philosophy outside the West, and then argues for the legitimacy of metaphysics as an interpretative tool for the understanding of Zen Buddhist thought. The second section spells out what I take to be the basic features of Dogen's metaphysics, and the third deals with a rival non-metaphysical interpretation of Dogen's philosophy. from: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 50, No. 1 (January 2000)

Dale S Wright: Doctrine and the Concept of Truth in Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō Wright looks at what Dōgen saw as the "truth" in practice and belief. "The aim of this study of the Shōbōgenzō will be to clarify its implicit concept of truth, and to show how such clarification can shed light on the meaning of the text as a whole." This is an excellent essay and well worth reading for a better understanding of Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō.