Introduction

A common interpretation of the Zen master Dōgen (1200–1253) is that he advocated a minimalist form of Buddhism centered exclusively on shikantaza, or “just sitting.” This reading often relies on a famous passage in the Bendōwa that appears to dismiss traditional Buddhist rituals. However, contemporary scholarship—especially the work of T. Griffith Foulk, Carl Bielefeldt, and William Bodiford—has challenged this anti-ritual interpretation. When Dōgen’s broader corpus is considered, especially the Eihei Shingi and Tenzo Kyōkun, it becomes clear that Dōgen did not merely tolerate ritual as a secondary feature of monastic life. He positively taught ritual, prescribed it in detail, and treated it as an essential component of Buddhist training. Rather than functioning as optional devotional exercises, chanting, bowing, offerings, liturgy, communal etiquette, and monastic forms constitute embodied expressions of what Dōgen understood as the unity of practice and realization (shushō ittō). Properly understood, zazen and ritual are not competing approaches but inseparable dimensions of a single Buddhist path.

The “Just Sitting” Directives

The primary evidence for the minimalist interpretation is found in Dōgen’s early writings, most notably the Bendōwa (1231). In this text, Dōgen writes: “You need not burn incense, make prostrations, recite the Buddha’s name, practice repentance, or read sutras. Just wholeheartedly sit, and thus drop off body and mind” (Dōgen, 2010, p. 11). Similarly, in the meditation manual Fukanzazengi (1227), he emphasizes the self-sufficiency of zazen: “The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the dharma gate of joyful ease, the practice-realization of complete enlightenment” (Dōgen, 2002, p. 30). Read in isolation, such passages can appear to reject ritual and devotional forms in favor of seated meditation alone. Yet that conclusion becomes difficult to maintain when these statements are read alongside Dōgen’s later monastic regulations and ritual instructions.

Ritual as Essential Practice in the Eihei Shingi

Dōgen’s own institutional activity as the founder of Eihei-ji contradicts any literal anti-ritual reading of the Bendōwa passage. In the Eihei Shingi, his comprehensive monastic code, Dōgen gives detailed instructions governing ceremonies, offerings, prostrations, chanting, monastic etiquette, and communal observances. As T. Griffith Foulk (2004) observes, “The specific rituals that seem to be disavowed in the Bendōwa passage are all prescribed for Zen monks, often in great detail, in Dōgen’s other writings. In Kuyo shobutsu, Dōgen recommends the practice of offering incense and making worshipful prostrations before Buddha images… In Chiji shingi he stipulates that the [monks] should burn incense and make prostrations (shoko raihai) and recite the buddhas’ names” (p. 239). Foulk’s observation demonstrates that the Bendōwa passage cannot reasonably be interpreted as Dōgen’s rejection of ritual. Such an interpretation is contradicted by Dōgen’s own later writings, in which he repeatedly mandates incense offerings, prostrations, chanting, formal ceremonies, and communal liturgy. The apparent contradiction is resolved once the Bendōwa is read as rejecting ritual performed as a substitute for awakening rather than ritual understood as the embodied enactment of awakening. In this light, the ritual world of Eihei-ji was not marginal to Dōgen’s teaching but one of its clearest historical realizations.

Practice Beyond the Cushion: The Tenzo Kyōkun

Dōgen’s view of ritual becomes even clearer in Tenzo Kyōkun (Instructions for the Cook, 1237), where he expands the meaning of practice beyond formal meditation to include every movement of daily life. He writes, “Handle even a single leaf of green in such a way that it manifests the body of the Buddha” (Dōgen, 1996, p. 37). He further warns against dividing activities into “spiritual” and “mundane”: “Do not think that because this is ordinary work it is not the Buddha Dharma. … You should transform the self in the midst of working with the ladle” (Dōgen, 1996, p. 38). These instructions show that for Dōgen, awakened practice is not confined to the meditation hall. Cooking, serving, cleaning, and attending to communal responsibilities are all concrete forms of Buddhist realization. By the same logic, prostration, chanting, and ceremonial observance are not secondary additions to zazen. They are equally modes through which the practitioner enacts the Buddha Way with the body.

Embodied Practice in The Essential Dogen

This embodied understanding of practice is also illuminated in Tanahashi and Levitt’s presentation of Dōgen. They write that bowing is an act through which one expresses respect for the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, and the practice place itself, thereby sanctifying the space of training (Tanahashi & Levitt, 2013, p. 16). They further emphasize that bowing is not merely symbolic but a full expression of practice in bodily form: “To bow all the way to the floor and to bow standing are awesome presence in motion and stillness” (Tanahashi & Levitt, 2013, p. 17). Read in this way, bowing is not separate from zazen but another mode in which Dōgen’s understanding of practice-realization becomes visible. The body in prostration and the body in seated meditation both enact the same awakened discipline, differing in form but not in underlying significance. Tanahashi and Levitt also broaden Dōgen’s understanding of practice beyond the meditation hall, emphasizing that “mindfulness and a respectful heart in each moment are applied equally in meditation and other daily activities including work, interaction with others, and cleansing one’s body” (Tanahashi & Levitt, 2013, p. 19). They explain that this way of living allows practitioners to “clearly see, understand, and value what is right before us as none other than the wholeness of life itself” (p. 19). In this framing, even ordinary objects and actions participate in awakening: “even our eating bowls are the body and mind of buddha ancestors” (p. 19). Rather than treating ritual and daily labor as secondary to zazen, this interpretation presents them as part of the same continuous field of practice-realization.

The Continuing Sōtō Understanding of Ritual and Everyday Practice

Modern Sōtō teachers have continued to interpret Dōgen’s teaching as an integration of zazen, ritual, and everyday activity rather than as an exclusive emphasis on seated meditation alone. Their writings reinforce the understanding that ritual functions not as an alternative to awakening but as one of its indispensable embodied expressions. Dainin Katagiri Roshi consistently taught that Zen practice must be lived through the body rather than understood merely as an intellectual doctrine. In Returning to Silence, he explains that authentic Zen practice is realized in the activities of everyday life, where ordinary actions become expressions of Buddha-nature (Katagiri, 1988). Within this framework, bowing, chanting, ceremonial practice, work, and daily responsibilities are not viewed as religious ornamentation but as opportunities to embody the Buddha Way. This interpretation closely parallels Dōgen’s insistence that cooking, cleaning, eating, and communal responsibilities are themselves forms of practice-realization. Kosho Uchiyama Roshi offers a complementary perspective. As one of the most influential twentieth-century Sōtō teachers, Uchiyama strongly emphasized zazen as the indispensable heart of Zen practice. Following his teacher Kōdō Sawaki, he described zazen as “good for nothing,” meaning that it is practiced without striving for personal gain or attaining special experiences (Uchiyama et al., 2004). Yet Uchiyama did not reject ritual or everyday forms of practice. Rather, he understood careful attention to ordinary activities as inseparable from zazen itself. His teaching demonstrates that even among teachers who strongly emphasize “just sitting,” the realization of Zen naturally extends into daily conduct, relationships, work, and mindful care for one’s environment.

What Scholars Say

Scholars increasingly argue that the tension between “just sitting” and ritual is resolved once Dōgen’s doctrine of practice-realization is taken seriously. Carl Bielefeldt (2004) argues that Dōgen’s famous statements about “just sitting” should not be interpreted as abolishing traditional Buddhist practices; rather, zazen itself is the supreme ritual and the rest of monastic life extends the sacred space of the meditation hall (p. 205). This reading helps clarify why Dōgen could elevate zazen without dismissing other practices. Zazen is central, but it does not stand apart from monastic forms. Instead, ritual, etiquette, chanting, bowing, and work all become extensions of the same awakened discipline. Shohaku Okumura (2012) similarly explains that communal forms protect the practitioner from turning Zen into a private, ego-centered project: “If we only practice zazen and ignore the forms of the sangha, we easily fall into the trap of ‘my practice’ or ‘my enlightenment.’ Ritual and communal forms are the ways we drop the small self and move in harmony with others” (p. 84). Taken together, these scholars support the conclusion that Dōgen did not merely allow ritual to coexist with zazen. He taught ritual as essential because awakening, for him, must take concrete form in the body, in the monastery, and in the rhythms of communal life.

Conclusion

The evidence presented here suggests that ritual is not peripheral to Dōgen’s Buddhism but constitutive of it. Zazen remains the heart of practice, yet Dōgen consistently taught that awakening must be embodied through ritual, communal discipline, work, etiquette, and liturgy. The Eihei Shingi is therefore not an appendix to Dōgen’s teaching but one of its fullest expressions. To separate “just sitting” from the ritual life Dōgen established at Eihei-ji is to divide practices that Dōgen himself understood as inseparable manifestations of practice-realization. The strongest reading of the evidence is therefore not merely that Dōgen did not reject ritual, but that he actively taught it, institutionalized it, and regarded it as an essential part of Buddhist training.

References

Bielefeldt, C. (2004). Just sitting? Dōgen’s take on zazen, sutra reading, and other conventional Buddhist practices. In S. Heine & D. S. Wright (Eds.), The Zen canon: Understanding the classic texts (pp. 197–219). Oxford University Press.

Dōgen. (1996). Dōgen’s pure standards for the Zen community: A translation of Eihei Shingi (T. D. Leighton & S. Okumura, Trans.). State University of New York Press.

Dōgen. (2002). Fukanzazengi. In K. Tanahashi (Ed.), Moon in a dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dōgen. North Point Press.

Dōgen. (2010). Treasury of the true dharma eye: Zen essays by Dōgen (K. Tanahashi, Ed. & Trans.). Shambhala Publications.

Foulk, T. G. (2004). Dōgen. In R. E. Buswell Jr. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Buddhism (Vol. 1, pp. 238–240). Macmillan Reference USA.

Katagiri, D. (1988). Returning to silence: Zen practice in daily life. Shambhala Publications.

Okumura, S. (2012). Living by vow: A practical introduction to eight essential Zen chants and texts. Wisdom Publications.

Tanahashi, K. (Ed.). (1985). Moon in a dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dōgen. North Point Press.

Tanahashi, K., & Levitt, P. (Eds. & Trans.). (2013). The essential Dogen: Writings of the great Zen master. Shambhala Publications.

Uchiyama, K., Wright, T., Warner, J., & Okumura, S. (2004). Opening the hand of thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist practice (Rev. ed.). Wisdom Publications.