Fu Ri Shin wrote:Huseng wrote:Dogen did write a lot. The Shōbōgenzō, his most prominent work, is not a small piece of writing.
I'm aware of Shobogenzo's extensive size. It's an accomplishment for sure. After that, you've lost me. This logic of "he wrote so much, he must have not meditated that much" is vacuous.
Connect the dots. He was literati, not a yogi.
Huseng wrote:Chan and Zen have a vast canon of literature.
To be sure. Not clear on what your point is here.
It is quite clear what I mean. Chan and Zen have vast canons of literature because historically they were oriented towards literary activities, not meditation.
Huseng wrote:Soto Zen in Japan represents the majority of Zen Buddhism.
Today perhaps, but from its inception?
There was no Soto Zen in Dogen's day. In any case, as Dogen exemplifies it was literati running the show, not hermit yogis.
A nice fact to throw out, but I don't understand the relevance. My list addressed points that made sense in and of themselves, but are doing a horrible job of showing me any evidence for your conclusion.
This was a reply to this:
--that one can spend a lot of time learning Chinese if (and only if) one wishes to investigate Chan/Zen literature in its original text
If you want to understand Chan or Zen as it actually was, you need to read the literature, of which little has been accurately translated into modern languages including modern Japanese and English.
You may still benefit from Chan practices, but the literature being what Chan really has been over the last thousand years, without properly understanding it you are merely examining a corner of a much greater mandala.
Once we can quantify meditation and compare it with literature, this will make sense to me. I don't see that happening.
My point is that Zen and Chan are oriented towards literary studies much more than meditation.
Overall, I can vaguely see what you're getting at. Still, are we really to assume that just because a tradition has an extensive literary background that it is less oriented toward practice than the others? I find that to be an odd way of approaching variation within a group.
I never said it was less oriented towards meditation than others. I think it was and is just as much oriented towards meditation as any other Buddhist tradition generally has been, which means not very much. I'm saying Chan and Zen shouldn't be seen as the tradition of meditators. It is a tradition, generally speaking, of literary activities.