How Chan Became Zen

The pilgrim sites of Zen are mostly in Japan. Eihei-ji 永平寺 in Fukui prefecture, the temple Dōgen built when he came home in 1244. Engaku-ji 円覚寺 in Kamakura, where Suzuki sat. Ryōan-ji’s 龍安寺 stone garden in Kyoto. For the modern pilgrim, the map is already drawn: they walk the manicured gravel, sit in the designated hall, and bow at the gate.Ryōan-ji Temple Dry Landscape GardenThey will not, except by accident, ever visit the place Eihei-ji was modeled on. The place where Dōgen actually trained, Mount Tiantong 天童山, in coastal Zhejiang receives almost no foreign Buddhist pilgrims. Nor does the cave where Bodhidharma is said to have faced the wall (at Mount Song 嵩山), or the monastery where Mazu 马祖道一 spoke of ‘the ordinary mind,’ or the hall where Yuanwu Keqin 圜悟克勤 compiled the Blue Cliff Record 碧岩录 in 1125.A monk at Mount Tiantong, ZhejiangThe geography of the Western imagination has rearranged the geography of the tradition.Subscribe for weekly insights into the tangled culture across…