The Divine Versions, 59th Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Helios): Here are some questions worth considering: does the soul outlive the body? Is there rebirth after death? Are there eternal realms we inhabit after this mortal existence?  

Possibly considering these very questions, Zen Master Dogen once asked himself, rhetorically, “It has been said that we should not regret life and death, for a quick way to get free of the cycle of life and death is to know that our mental essence is eternal. In other words, the physical body, having been born, necessarily moves toward death, but the mental essence never dies at all. The mental essence is unmoved by birth, and decay exists only in our body. Therefore, the body is just a temporary form; it is born and it dies, never remaining constant. But the mind is eternal; it is unchangeable in the past, present, and future. To know this is to become free of life-and-death. 

"Those who understand this principle stop the cycle of life-and-death forever and, when the body passes, they enter the spirit world and gain wondrous virtues. However, our bodies have been shaped by our deluded behavior in past ages, so we are not the same as the saints. Those who do not know this principle will remain trapped forever in the cycle of life-and-death. Therefore we should just hasten to understand the principle that the mental essence is eternal. Is this not what the Buddhas and the patriarchs all taught?”

Dogen did not agree at all with that position. He answered his own question saying, "That view is absolutely not what the Buddha taught. According to that non-Buddhist view, there is a spiritual intelligence existing within our body. That intelligence can discriminate between pleasant and unpleasant and between right and wrong, it can know pain and irritation and suffering and pleasure. When the body dies, however, the spirit casts off the skin and is reborn on the other side so even though it seems to die here, it lives on there. Therefore we call it immortal and eternal. 

"If we assume this is what the Buddha taught, however, we are even more foolish than a person who mistakes a tile or a pebble for a golden treasure. If we think the Buddha taught that the mind is eternal but forms perish and believe that we can escape life and death when we are in fact promoting the original cause of life and death, are we not being stupid? That would be most pitiful. We shouldn't even listen to these wrong non-Buddhist ideas. 

"Remember, the Buddha taught that the body and mind are one reality; body and mind are not divided. How could we then say that the body is mortal but the mind is eternal? Does that not violate reason? Furthermore, we should realize that living-and-dying is itself nirvana; Buddhists have never discussed nirvana outside of life-and-death. Even if we wrongly imagine the Buddha taught that the mind becomes eternal by getting free of the body, that imagined idea itself intermittently appears and disappears in the mind and is not eternal at all. Isn’t that understanding unreliable then? 

"The Buddha consistently taught that body and mind are one reality. How could it then be that while the body appears and disappears, the mind independently leaves the body and does not appear or disappear? If there is a time when body and mind are one reality, and another time when they are not one reality, then it might naturally follow that the Buddha’s teaching is wrong. Further, if we think that life-and-death are something to overcome or get rid of, we are likewise contradicting the Buddha's teaching. 

"The Buddhist schools of thought that say the mind includes all forms consider 'all forms' to be the entire universe without dividing essence and form, and without appearance or disappearance. There is no state, even nirvana, that is different from the essence of mind. All the myriad phenomena and various things are just the one mind without exclusion or exception. All Buddhist schools assert that the myriad things and phenomena are the even and balanced undivided mind, other than which there is nothing. That being so, how could we divide this one reality into body and mind, or into life-and-death and nirvana? 

"We disciples of the Buddha should not listen to such nonsense from the lips of the madmen who speak these non-Buddhist views."

[This discussion is adapted from Dogen's Shōbōgenzō Bendōwa.]