Born in Kyoto into a high-ranking court noble family. His father is said to have been the Palace Minister Koga Michichika and his mother a daughter of the regent Fujiwara no Motofusa, though there are other theories about his father. He is said to have been extremely bright from childhood, reading Chinese classics and poetry at an early age.
While still a child he lost his mother, after his father. It is said that at her funeral, watching the incense smoke rise and vanish, he deeply felt the impermanence of the world and awakened the wish to seek the Buddhist path. This experience is said to have led him to become a monk.
He climbed Mount Hiei and was ordained as a monk of the Tendai school. He studied the sutras eagerly but is said to have been troubled by a great question: if people are originally endowed with the Buddha-nature, why is practice necessary? Asking his teachers on Mount Hiei, he could not get an answer that satisfied him.
Seeking an answer to his question, he came down from the mountain and studied at Kennin-ji in Kyoto under Myōzen, a disciple of Eisai. Kennin-ji was the temple founded by Eisai, who brought Zen to Japan, and here Dōgen encountered Zen practice. He and Myōzen were bound by a deep bond of teacher and disciple, and the two would later cross to China (Song) together.
He crossed to Song China with Myōzen. Aboard the ship in port he met an elderly monk who served as a temple cook (tenzo), and was astonished to be told that cooking, too, is important practice, as Dōgen himself later recorded. This became the starting point of his idea that daily life itself is practice.
After visiting temples in many places, he met Rujing of Mount Tiantong and became his disciple. Under Rujing he devoted himself single-mindedly to seated meditation, and one day attained the enlightenment of "dropping off body and mind," freedom from every attachment of body and mind, and Rujing recognized him as heir to his teaching. That year his teacher Myōzen died in China.
Having received the teaching, he returned to Japan and placed Myōzen's remains at Kennin-ji. He wrote the Fukan Zazengi, which recommends seated meditation to all people, teaching that simply sitting (shikantaza) is itself the Buddha's way. He believed that anyone, regardless of rank or learning, could walk the Buddha's path through zazen.
He founded Kōshō-ji at Fukakusa in Kyoto, gathering many disciples and creating a true place of Zen practice. From this period he began writing the Shōbōgenzō, which expounded the Buddha's teaching deeply in Japanese. His disciple Ejō, who would carry on his teaching, also joined him here.
As pressure from Mount Hiei grew, he accepted an invitation from Hatano Yoshishige, a warrior of Echizen (Fukui), and moved there with his disciples. He chose to leave the capital and devote himself to practice deep in the mountains, at a distance from power.
He renamed Daibutsu-ji, which he had founded in the mountains of Echizen, Eihei-ji. At Eihei-ji he laid down in detail every part of daily life, not only zazen but also meals, cleaning and washing, as practice, and wrote works such as the Tenzo Kyōkun, instructions for the temple cook. Eihei-ji is still a head temple of the Sōtō school today.
At the invitation of the regent Hōjō Tokiyori he went to Kamakura and taught him. It is said he was asked to stay and build a temple in Kamakura, but Dōgen did not wish to be near those in power and returned to Eihei-ji after about half a year, holding fast to practice in the mountains.
As his illness worsened, he entrusted Eihei-ji to his disciple Ejō and went to Kyoto for treatment, but soon died there. His teaching was carried on by Ejō and others and later spread across the country as the Sōtō school. The Shōbōgenzō is still read today as a representative work of Japanese thought.
HōnenMinamoto no YoritomoHōjō MasakoMinamoto no YoshitsuneShinranHōjō YasutokiNichirenHōjō Tokimune
People of the Kamakura period ・ People by period
Based on facts found in textbooks and biographies. Uncertain points are marked as such.