The Tiāntāi Synthesis

[Coëmgenu]

In the translation I posted earlier, Ven Dōgen says that the rocks, trees, and nations are sentient beings.

I don't think Japanese has plurals. The rock being "sentient being" can make sense. Especially in the context of it being 'mind'. That gets us back into standard Buddhism. But when the 's' is on sentient being's' it makes it sound like there is more than one sentient being involved when one looks at or perceives a rock.

I think it's likely a translation issue.

[Coëmgenu]

I think I might actually get now how Ven Dōgen's thought is meant to be understood in that quote, and like I suspected, for me it was a language problem, if indeed this is the misreading.

As the grasses, trees, etc, are synonymous with mind, they are synonymous with (the) sentient being.

Or "(your) sentient being" if we are to dip into the terminology of ātmavāda for just a moment for attempted clarifications sake. Now them having Buddha-nature makes sense, at least from an intellectual angle. If the above it right, I can at least follow his train of thought. Which would be an improvement for me.

[Coëmgenu]

To reiterate the above from Ven Zhìyǐ: "In Vasubandhu's theory of consciousness-only, there is only the one consciousness, but it is divided into the discriminating and the undiscriminating forms of consciousness; the discriminating consciousness is what we usually call consciousness, whereas the undiscriminating consciousness is "consciousness appearing to be an object" (sì chén shí / 似塵識).[...]"

The rock is synonymous with the sentient being (perceiving it) because it is consciousness appearing to be an object.

The Tiāntāi school has a different perspective, having a different set of teachers, but it is better to be at least able to follow, perhaps, something of Ven Dōgen's reasoning here. Thank you for opening me up to this line of inquiry, as the way that the translation quoted in the OP was phrased was puzzling me greatly.

[Caodemarte]

In the translation I posted earlier, Ven Dōgen says that the rocks, trees, and nations are sentient beings.

I don't think Japanese has plurals. The rock being "sentient being" can make sense. Especially in the context of it being 'mind'. That gets us back into standard Buddhism. But when the 's' is on sentient being's' it makes it sound like there is more than one sentient being involved when one looks at or perceives a rock.

I think it's likely a translation issue.

I would just point out that plurals don’t matter here. I don’t think the difficultiy you are having is a translation issue. Remember that the Soto hierarchy kept Dogen’s Shobogenzo under wraps for many years because they thought the common folk would misunderstand it and not for language issues.

One rock, two rocks, one sentient being, all sentient beings would all work in this phrase. You can play with different perspectives as Dogen does. The phrase works either way as standard Buddhism. It is only if you believe that consciousness is over here and the rock is there or that all is mixed up in universal soup that you have difficulty. Madyamaka quickly disposes of these arguments. The Zen school can be said to be a Madyamaka/Yogacara sect or a child or subset of Tientai (Dogen was first ordained and trained as a Tientai monk; Tientai and Zen are extremely close historically and “doctrinally.”) It cannot be fairly accused of teaching nonstandard Chinese Buddhism. The teachings may be right or wrong, but they are hardly heretical.

Thank you for your kind words for my faltering attempts to explore this topic. If you are interested you might want to check out Shohaku Okumura, the respected Soto priest and Dogen scholar. In his books such as “Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen's Shobogenzo” he explicates how Dogen’s words express the 4 Noble Trurths, basic Buddhism, Madyamaka/Yogacara etc. He would obviously be a much better guide than me!