Zen: The Authentic Gate

A more extreme position holds that since Dōgen Zenji has already come to great enlightenment and acts in kindness to reveal the Way, we simply need to believe in his realization and carry it out in our lives; any further effort toward realization would be an act of blasphemy toward the buddhas and Zen ancestors. Similarly, some Christians say that

Looking at it in this way, we could say that “character” is the extent to which the sixteen Buddhist precepts have revealed themselves in an individual.

However, an academic approach amounts to nothing more than examining the framework of Zen and speculating about it. It is not living Zen.

There is absolutely no need to renounce your religion or to become a Buddhist in order to practice Zen. It is the inherent right of every human being to experience his or her true nature.

This error succeeded in confusing matters, such that shūkyō, which formerly referred strictly to the Zen path of realization, now came to refer to the whole panoply of faiths covered by the English word “religion.”

But it is very difficult to actually persist, embodying the content of enlightenment so that it becomes part of our daily lives.

inexhaustible. That which obscures the brilliance of our essential nature is called “illusion” in Buddhism, “sin” in Christianity, and “defilement” in Shintō. The distinction between self and other is the fundamental source of all three.

Today, if we are to live in peace with a minimum of suffering, we must establish a spiritual foundation — in both our social and domestic lives — that is not controlled by the external world.

As long as the mind is moving, it is unable to accurately reflect the various aspects of the external world, just as a warped mirror cannot reflect objects as they really are. Accordingly, we cannot expect clear judgment from an agitated mind.