Why, then, is the form of zazen necessary? To answer this question, let us consider the example of Eihei Dogen, the founder of the Soto sect. It took Dogen Zenji an enormous amount of hardship and effort at Mount Tiantong in China under Master Rujing before he attained liberation. In his book Shobogenzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye), Dogen Zenji endeavored to explain the essence of the Buddha-dharma as exhaustively and in as much detail as possible. Basically, however, he taught with a lot of repetition how to become familiar with oneself.
I will explain the book title word by word. Sho (true) means something that eternally doesn’t change. Ho (law of the dharma) is everything that appears before our eyes, that reaches our ears, and that is touched by our hands. Gen (eye) means literally the eye and simultaneously connotes the function of all six of our sense organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind). An eyeball doesn’t judge anything as beautiful or ugly, it just reflects. Our ears, noses, and tongues are the same. All things arise as causes through the function of our ears, eyes, noses, tongues, and bodies, and the tool that makes judgments such as “I like it” or “I don’t like it” is called “mind” or “consciousness.” Zo(treasury) means that all our functions—suffering as suffering, fear as fear, distress as distress—are already liberated. All these taken together, Shobogenzo, means that we ourselves are the eye that sees everything truly as it is. The fastest way to affirm that we ourselves are the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye is to face a wall, cross our legs, and do zazen.
