Dogen and Soto Zen - Tapa dura

This book offers many original insights into both Dogen (1200-1253) and the influence of the Soto school that his teachings later inspired... This volume of collected essays by respected academics is another valuable contribution from editor Steven Heine. (Taigen Dan Leighton, Monumenta Nipponica)

This excellent volume sheds new and corrective light on Dogen and the Soto Zen tradition. Exploring a rich array of topics- Dogen's views of meditation, women, poetry, and death; his standing as a philosopher; distinctive Soto approaches to texts, precepts, liturgical practices, robes, and monastic architecture-the contributors bridge the divide between textual analyses of Dogen's thought and scholarship on institutional facets of Soto Zen. A must read for anyone with a serious interest in Zen. (Christopher Ives, author of Imperial-Way Zen)

Highly recommended. (G. Wrisley, CHOICE)

This volume continues the work of a recent collection published in 2012 by Oxford University Press, Dogen: Textual and Historical Studies. It features some of the same outstanding authors as well as some new experts who explore diverse aspects of the life and teachings of Zen master Dogen (1200-1253), the founder of the Soto Zen sect (or Sotoshu) in early Kamakura-era Japan. The contributors examine the ritual and institutional history of the Soto school, including the role of the Eiheji monastery established by Dogen as well as various kinds of rites and precepts performed there and at other temples.

Dogen and Soto Zen builds upon and further refines a continuing wave of enthusiastic popular interest and scholarly developments in Western appropriations of Zen. In the last few decades, research in English and European languages on Dogen and Soto Zen has grown, aided by an increasing awareness on both sides of the Pacific of the important influence of the religious movement and its founder. The school has flourished throughout the medieval and early modern periods of Japanese history, and it is still spreading and reshaping itself in the current age of globalization.