This won’t mean much to most of you, but About.com won’t let me post YouTube videos on the Buddhism site. Apparently someone has made a film of the life of Dogen Zenji (1200-1253). I’m guessing because this is all in Japanese. Here’s the trailer, for all you Dogen fans.
The Mahablog
Politics. Society. Group Therapy.
I wonder if this film will make it to the US (with subtitles)? Just watching the trailer and sensing the story beats, it looks like a great story.
In the Japanese Soto Zen tradition, no teacher but the historical Buddha himself is more venerated than Dogen. He founded the first permanent lineage of Japanese Zen and left behind a large body of writing that is, IMO, one of the masterworks of the world’s religious literature. If Dogen had been a European he’d be on the same academic pedestal as Shakespeare and Gallileo.