Dōgen

Dōgen Zenji was the thirteenth-century Japanese Buddhist monk who introduced Sōtō Zen to Japan. His Shōbōgenzō is a profound and innovative philosophical work exploring the nature of time, self, and enlightenment, arguing that meditation itself is the expression of awakening.

Dōgen's concept of uji — being-time — holds that existence and time are inseparable: all beings are time, and time is the presence of all beings. His insistence that zazen (seated meditation) is not a means to enlightenment but enlightenment itself represents a radical non-instrumentalist view of practice.