Examination of Zen Master Dōgen’s Language and Thought
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | The Japanese Zen master Dogen ???? (1200—1253) is respected not only as a founder of one of the most influential Zen schools in Japan, but also as a writer, poet, and philosopher. In my paper, I propose a dual way of approaching Dogen’s texts through the eyes of two groups of readers, medieval contemporaries of Dogen and modern linguists, by means of combining Buddhist and philological approaches to his literal legacy and its translation in the form of philological hermeneutics. As the master’s contemporaries, it is possible to study his idiosyncratic writings from the perspective of the Buddhist notion of the two truths (S. satyadvaya, J. nitei ??); and as present-day scientists we can explore Dogen bearing in mind the specifics of language and its way of communicating doctrinal ideas. Used in combination as hermeneutics that is based on philological and intertextual analysis, as is my intention to illustrate, the two approaches can be seen as complementing each other. |
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