Goal of Soto Zen
I have been reading introductory comments on the Dhammapada, edited and commented on by Eknath Easwaran, a noted translator and author born in India. The book is The Dhammapada, ed. Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press, California, 2007.
Mr. Easwaran has some comments about Buddhism that puzzle me. He says that in leaving his princely life, Siddhartha Gautama was seeking “a way to go beyond age and death.” (p. 34) Mr. Easwaran also says that the awakened Buddha “had found the way to that realm of being which decay and death can never touch: nirvana.” (39)
In my limited understanding, the achievement of “nirvana” means that a person is not born again into life and therefore does not die. This belief presupposes reincarnation, continual birth and death, which a Buddhist can experience countless times unless “nirvana” is achieved.
My puzzlement arises from my almost exclusive Buddhist background in Soto Zen. Soto Zen, in my view, is not concerned with escaping life by avoiding rebirth. To me, this is a foreign notion. It is also a notion that seems to be rejected by Dogen. In the essay, “On the Endeavor of the Way,” Dogen says, “. . . To think that birth and death has to be rejected is the mistake of ignoring buddha-dharma.” (The reference here is Kazuaki Tanahashi, ed., Moon in a Dewdrop, New York, 1985, p. 154.)
Soto Zen, to me, is concerned with achieving contentment in this life mainly through the practice of zazen. This practice gradually erodes the influence of ego in a person’s life, which allows for a free and contented existence. This existence in no way removes a person from aging and dying. The Buddha himself aged and died. Without the claustrophobic intrusion of ego, however, it is not likely that aging and dying will be a suffering experience. That is enough for me.