Chinese Chan poured its life-blood right into the pages of the Shōbōgenzō, giving Dōgen both form and fire. A decade spent under Tiantong Rujing in China left a mark: the quiet glow of “silent illumination” and the sharp clarity of direct pointing. Back in Japan, Dōgen turned those Chan currents into something uniquely his own.

Instead of chasing sudden enlightenment as an abstract peak, Dōgen wove waking-up and sitting-practice together—practice-realization became a single, ongoing dance. Shikantaza (“just sitting”) wasn’t a posture; it was the heartbeat of Chan itself, teaching that each breath is the whole dharma. That emphasis on lived, moment-to-moment awakening? Right out of Caodong tradition.

But there’s more than just technique. Chan’s poetic style—its vivid metaphors and paradoxes—sparked Dōgen’s flair for vivid, winding essays. Passages like “mountain is mountain, water is water” echo the simple, direct language of Chinese masters like Huangbo and Linji, yet get twisted into kaleidoscopic wonders. Beyond words and letters, every phrase in the Shōbōgenzō points back to practice, insisting that enlightened wisdom blooms best in the soil of daily life.

A hint of Tiantai and Huayan thought also trickles in—Dōgen saw all phenomena as expressions of Buddha-nature, a kind of cosmic interweaving. That notion of “being-time” (uji) owes a debt to those interdependent cosmoses, yet it pulses with Dōgen’s fresh urgency: time itself wakens us.

Even in 2025, when world headlines seem more fractured than ever, the Chan-shaped heart of the Shōbōgenzō whispers a simple remedy: wake up, again and again, right here, right now.