Publication details
Intimate Language of Zen Master Dōgen: Revisions, Reinterpretations, and Reinventions in Dōgen’s Language
| Title in English | Intimate Language of Zen Master Dogen: Revisions, Reinterpretations, and Reinventions in Dogen’s Language |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The figure of Zen master Dogen ?? (1200—1253), founder of the Japanese Soto school of Buddhism, has in the last decades been in the center of interest of both Japanese and Western scholars given especially his innovative and original, yet also intriguing and often paradoxical teaching. While on the one hand, Dogen was a traditional, almost a conservative Buddhist teacher and Zen master in that he attached value to the practice of seated meditation (shikan taza ????) that he is particularly famous for, he was also surprisingly unrestrained and unconventional in his use of language. The topic of Dogen’s use of language is seldom ignored by scholars, yet only rarely explored in greater detail compared to the message of his writings. In this paper, my intention is to illustrate Dogen’s rhetorical innovations and verbal creativity, which enabled him to formulate an original teaching that distinguishes him from his contemporaries and the other personages in Japanese Buddhism. I will propose a set of aspects regarding Dogen’s original use of language, ranging from tendencies that would today be labelled as morphological, semantic and/or rhetorical. Based on examples from Dogen’s masterpiece Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (Shobogenzo ????), I will also illustrate how he innovatively employed Chinese words and expressions in a Japanese language context and how he created new meanings by the various approaches he employed. |
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