Hoko's key messages about menju

Dogen saw his teaching and practice as the one true Buddhism rather than as a distinct sect within a larger tradition.  He wasn’t trying to create something to compete with other sects; he didn’t really like dividing up Buddhism into branches and schools.  His feeling was: it’s not that your way is wrong because mine is more effective; it’s that my way is better because it’s more authentic to Buddha’s teachings.  He would have been happy if everyone had joined in under the same big tent of authentic, legitimate Buddhism.

Dogen saw all incarnations or manifestations of Buddha, past, present and future, as Shakyamuni.  We still preserve this teaching today in one of our morning ekos when we dedicate merit to Daion Kyoshu Honshi Shakamuni Butsu Daiosho (The great benefactor, the Founder of the Religion, Original Teacher, Sakyamuni Buddha the Great Monk).  Shakyamuni is the historical Buddha, as opposed to Maitreya, Vairocana or Amida, so he’s not a figure that someone imagined, or an idealized person.

Dogen also sees himself as teaching Buddhism as it existed before division into Theravada and Mahayana, and of course Shakyamuni predates that kind of split.  Thus uninterrupted transmission of the dharma starting from Shakyamuni is critically important.

There’s a very tight relationship between awakening and authenticity or verification.  What’s being authentically transmitted is nothing other than the expression of awakening itself.  When we practice we verify awakening, and because of awakening we practice and live in a certain way.  Awakening is what it is, so it doesn’t undergo historical development across space and time.  True Buddhism just preserves Shakyamuni’s wisdom -- his awakening -- and hands it down through the lineage.

Dogen believed that the dharma he received from his own teacher was the complete true treasury of the dharma eye, the real ancient ways of the Buddhas and ancestors, and that since Rinzai (and other sects) no longer preserved these ancient ways, Dogen’s only link to Buddha’s awakening is his own teacher, Nyojo.  He also put the most store by Shakyamuni, Bodhidharma, Hui-neng and later ancestors in his own lineage.  His emphasis on the supremacy of his own lineage gathered steam in the last dozen or so years of his life and it’s tied to the development of his training temples and his emphasis on deportment.

In the Fukanzazengi, which is an early writing, he says that all five houses of Chan “equally hold the mind seal,” but he changes his mind over time and attacks Rinzai in particular, not because of illegitimacy but because of practitioners’ conduct.  This might be part of his felt need to re-education the monks that came to him from  Darumashu; it might also be because a book of Nyojo’s teachings arrived in Japan, and either Dogen re-encountered his teacher through this book or he thought the compilers of the book had misunderstood Nyojo’s teachings and he was trying to correct them.

Authenticity is what’s important, and authenticity is Buddha’s awakening.  Thus we see “sho” or “true” being used a lot, not only Shobogenzo ("true dharma eye") but also true vehicle, true gate, true awakening.  These aren’t casual terms -- it’s all about the authenticity.  In the famous phrase “to forget the self is to be verified or authenticated by the 10 thousand things,” the awakening that comes with dropping off body and mind is authentically Buddha’s awakening.

In the Bendowa, Dogen says you don’t have to debate the relative merits of various teachings and doctrines; all you have to know is whether the practice is authentic or not.  Again, this is not about effectiveness, it’s about legitimacy.

Dogen says that the way to become a legitimate dharma heir is to study the actions and stories of one’s ancestors.  This is how one receives the true dharma, and then one has a duty oneself to transmit the true dharma to one’s students and future generations.  The only way to do this was to enter the training temple and take up the lifestyle of the ancestors.  That means observing the rules and embodying the dharma in your deportment.  Thus now we see the relationship between Dogen’s belief in authentic transmission and the importance he put on bringing the monastic institution from China.

While he was in China he managed to examine five “secret” lineage charts and in Shobogenzo Shisho he wrote, "In the Buddha Way, whenever the Dharma is inherited there must be a document of succession.  Unless the Dharma is handed down, the heresy of spontaneous enlightenment arises . . . For one to become a buddha, there must be the document of succession that is transmitted from buddha to buddha."  Nonin, the leader of Darumashu, was said to have awakened alone, without a master.  Given Dogen’s belief in authentic transmission, we can see another of the reasons why he attacked this sect.

These days we know that lineage is apocryphal and sutras were often constructed after Shakyamuni’s death, but Dogen didn’t know this and he relied on them and quoted them frequently in his writings, emphasizing authentic transmission.  Today there’s some creative tension for us between the idea that Dogen got the only authentic Buddhism from his Chinese teacher and the idea that Dogen created something new or “invented” Soto Zen.  He thought he was restoring authentic doctrine and practice in a world where Buddhism had been corrupted by elements that were creeping in from other traditions or from people’s imaginations.  However, of course he was practicing as a Japanese in Japan, not as an Indian in India, so it couldn’t possibly have been identical -- it had to be something new.

From Sotoshu 

面授 - Menju
(Face-to-face Transmission)

The term face-to-face transmission refers to master and disciple meeting face-to-face at which time the secrets of the Dharma are transmitted.