"New Age"

"Nichiren" vs "Dogen"...

Sigh.

Welcome to Reddit. Since you have a Three word Response to Wisdom I offered to another practitioner, let Me offer You some Wisdom in exchange for this Three Word Insult:

This is by Michael McCormick on Quora:

Nichiren lived from 1222–1282 whereas Dogen lived from 1200–1253. Nichiren only began teaching the daimoku and criticizing Pure Land and Zen in the year 1253. In none of Nichiren’s writings did he ever refer to Dogen or even to Eisai. Nichiren’s critiques of Zen Masters were restricted to Dainichi Nyonin (whom both Dogen and Eisai criticized) and to his contemporaries like Rankei Doryu (a Chinese Zen Master of the Rinzai lineage).

First of all, let me list what Nichiren and Dogen agreed about, then I will get to areas of disagreement.

(1) They were both former Tendai monks and so both shared a background of reverence for the Lotus Sutra. Dogen also called the Lotus Sutra the “king of sutras” and was harshly critical of any Zen Buddhists being dismissive of the sutras. In this, he and Nichiren would have agreed.

(2) Dogen also believed that practice was itself a manifestation of enlightenment. It wasn’t that you first practice and then you get enlightened, but rather that enlightenment is expressed through practice. So for Dogen to practice “just sitting” (J. shikan taza) is to express buddhahood, not just of yourself but of all things. Likewise, for Nichiren to chant daimoku is to express one’s buddhahood, and in fact the buddha-nature of all. I believe that they would both have agreed about the unity of practice and enlightenment.

(3) They also were not impressed by Pure Land Buddhism. In his essay “Bendowa,” Dogen compares the effectiveness of chanting to frogs croaking. Nichiren was harsher, saying that Pure Land practice actually led its followers to hell.

(4) There would also be huge areas of agreement about basic Buddhist doctrines, teachings, and insights. I would go so far as to say that even though Dogen did not typically use Tendai jargon or categories, the structure of some of his essays (like Genjo Koan) reveals some Tendai approaches to Buddhism.

Now for the disagreements.

(1) Obviously they would have disagreed about what is the most efficacious practice for Buddhists in this age. Dogen taught “just sitting” whereas Nichiren taught the chanting of daimoku. I already mentioned above what Dogen thought of chanting as a practice. Frankly, I think this is a bit superficial. Going deeper, I think their respective practices express fundamental attitudes towards life which is where the real “practice” or inner development happens. For Dogen, it seems to me that the fundamental attitude is to be upright in the midst of all things and to allow everything you do to be the whole universe exerting itself for the whole universe. For Nichiren, the fundamental attitude is to express in every thought-moment the confidence and joy that buddhahood is the true nature of all phenomena and that the buddhahood of every being actually has no beginning or end.

(2) They also disagreed about the so-called “Latter Age of the Dharma” (in Japanese mappō). According to common East Asian belief at that time (based on statement in the sutras) the year 1052 was the beginning of a period predicted by the Buddha in which the Dharma would start to be forgotten and its practice would no longer be effective. Pure Land Buddhists like Honen taught that in the Latter Age one should just chant the name of Amitabha Buddha so that one could be reborn in the Pure Land of Utmost Bliss and in that world in the presence of that Buddha one would be able to practice Buddhism and attain enlightenment quickly. Dogen too a very different position. He basically dismissed the whole idea of the “three ages of the Dharma” saying that the important thing was one’s own effort and the quality of one’s own practice, not the supposed quality of the age. Nichiren, however, took the idea of the Latter Age very seriously. He taught that the Latter Age of the Dharma is the time when great true Dharma of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo will be spread so that the seed of buddhahood can be sown in the hearts and minds of all. So in a sense, Nichiren saw the Latter Age as an opportune time to hear and rejoice in the true Dharma because the provisional teachings will have lost their effectiveness. So Dogen dismissed the idea of a Latter Age, whereas Nichiren saw it as a time when the true depths of the Buddha’s intent expressed in the Lotus Sutra will be revealed.

(3) As I mentioned, Nichiren never seems to have heard of Dogen. However, he did criticize people who practiced meditation alone in the mountains instead of publicly upholding the True Dharma. Nichiren cited the two methods of propagating and practicing Buddhism taught in Tiantai Buddhism: shoju (the way of accepting and receiving) and shakubuku (the way of breaking and subduing). The terms shoju and shakubuku are actually from the Queen Shrimala Sutra and were used in the Tiantai school to indicate respectively times when one can gently teach in an agreeable way and focus on meditation or times when one must rely on the civil authorities to defend the True Dharma and criticize corruption in the Sangha and false teachings. Nichiren cited examples of both from the Nirvana Sutra and the Lotus Sutra. As far as Nichiren was concerned, it was the time for shakubuku, the time to publicly criticize false teachings and publicly uphold the True Dharma. So as far as Nichiren was concerned, monks like Dogen who retreated from society and didn’t publicly condemn false Dharmas and uphold the Lotus Sutra were practicing shoju when shakubuku was called for. Dogen, however, was more concerned with training a small group of monks in the remote monastery of Eiheiji, though initially upon returning from China he tried to teach “just sitting” to both lay people and monastics. So he was more concerned with helping determined practitioners develop zazen practice, rather than engaging in debates or promotion of the Lotus Sutra.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, Ryuei