SO TO ZEN - Shasta Abbey

e. The Religion of Great Masters Dōgen and Keizan 133because he felt that it had been given without sufficient reason.Likewise, he sent back to the Imperial Court purple robeswhich were offered him by the Imperial Family.D‡gen consistently viewed Buddhism not from thenarrow view of any school, but from Buddhism as a whole,steadfastly refusing to recognize such terms as Zen School orS‡t‡ School. He rejected the Heian-Kamakura period idea ofmapp‡ thought, i.e., that 1500 years after the death of theBuddha the world entered upon a thoroughly degenerate phasein which few, if any, people could attain to an understandingof the True Law. But many priests of the Heian and Kamakuraperiods accommodated their teachings to mapp‡ thought,believing that few could actually find real understanding.D‡gen argued that man must strive even harder in his religiouslife just because it is the mapp‡ period, and encouraged hisfollowers to do so, because he knew it was possible to find theTruth.D‡gen did not simply copy the idea of the meditationschools in China which used the meditation practice merely asa means to attain a religious experience. Bodhidharma, havingduly received the attestation of enlightenment from his master,preached that man must come to a realization that he is possessedof the Buddha Nature from the outset. Following this toits natural conclusion, it becomes evident that since we possessthe Buddha Nature, we are consequently in a state ofenlightenment or may be considered Buddha in our own right.