Dogen, who carried Soto Zen from China to Japan, founds Eihei-ji in the mountains of Echizen; his Shobogenzo sets out practice itself as awakening, and the monastery he founded remains the head temple of Japanese Soto Zen.
The Event
- Date
- 1244 (exact)
- Era
- Medieval; Standard periodization of Buddhist history
- Location
- Eihei-ji; today Fukui, Japan
- Traditions
- Buddhism
- Streams
- Zen
- Key figures
- Dogen
- Key texts
- Shobogenzo
Primary Sources
- Dogen, Shobogenzo
Secondary Sources
- Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History (Macmillan, 1994)
- Buswell and Lopez, The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton, 2014)
Provenance: HIST-0424; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-27.
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