When Zen Becomes Philosophy: The Case of Dōgen’s Uji

Dōgen is among the few authors from historic Japan who have received substantial attention in modern philosophical discourse. His thought on time figures prominently in this regard. Association between Uji 有時, the title of his short instruction on the subject, and Heidegger’s Being and Time has facilitated this integration into modern philosophical discourse. It is customary in this discourse to treat Dōgen’s writings as philosophical texts. Against this tendency, I apply the concept of ‘frames of equivalence’ from translation studies and demonstrate how the philosophical mode of reading leads to substantial shifts in all three dimensions of the semiotic process. In the pragmatic dimension, the religious impetus of Dōgen’s texts is toned down to an appeal in favor of certain epistemological and ontological commitments. In the syntactic dimension, the formal organization of his texts is ignored, obfuscating the overall structure and intent of his argument. Given the context-dependency of meaning, this leads to significant shifts in the semantic dimension as well. I argue that paying attention to frames of equivalence in reading Dōgen serves to identify creative investments and inadvertent projections. This prepares the ground for historically more accurate interpretations and prevents the misappropriation of ‘enlightened’ authority for philosophical hypothesizing.