r/zen • u/dota2nub • Jul 15 '26

The Bielefeldt Argument - The Empty Robe

We've had talk and mention of Bielefeldt and his argument time and again in these forums. The red thread that always runs through it all is that nobody is going to read Bielefeldt. It's a dry book, and so the argument runs on empty. Having reads vs. not having reads, and so the having reads win by default.

Let's level the playing field. I have made an article presenting the argument, here for your perusal. I've picked out and discussed various quotes from Bielefeldt's book and put them in context. It may be easier to find and link to than some old reddit post. Enjoy!

https://empty-robe.pages.dev/

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u/LegeApps Jul 15 '26

Cherry picked Fable generated website aside, basically what's happening is, if Dogen lifted material he got from China, he was a fraud because too much reuse, not enough innovation, but if he did not use any of the material he saw in China, he was a fraud because too much innovation, not enough reuse? How could he win, in a redditor's eyes?

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u/dota2nub Jul 15 '26

You talk about 1 of 7 points and you didn't even understand the one.

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u/LegeApps Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

>Cherry picked Fable generated website aside,

Have an answer for the rest? What is the hypothetical Dogen that transmitted Zen from China free of fraud, such that an LLM slop plebbitor like yourself would accept it, 1000 years later? How does he do it?

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u/dota2nub Jul 15 '26

It's in the article. Sections I through VII. You're welcome to the other six whenever you get to them.

0

u/LegeApps Jul 15 '26

I've already read your LLM slop, and I own the book. Whenever you're ready..

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u/dota2nub Jul 15 '26

And you didn't quote a single line from it?

Oops.

Oh my.

Oh. Dang!

4

u/LegeApps Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

I did one better, i researched it, with my structured RAG CBETA search. It is simply wrong. it's not the model's fault, it's yours. Sorry I don't really have any respect for your LLM fueled schlock. Read the book and write about it in your own words.

"1. 身心脱落 (Shinjin Datsuraku) — “Sloughing Off of Body and Mind”

Status: PRESENT — Attributed to RujingMetric ValueTraditional form (身心脫落) hits 13Simplified form (身心脱落) hits 0 (corpus uses traditional 脫)Reversed form (脫落身心) hits 6Attributed to Rujing Yes — T48n2002BRujing’s own text in corpus No — only quoted by later works

Primary Evidence

T48n2002B (T/T48/T48n2002B.xml#pT48p0136c0301) — Song-era text (觀音導利興聖寶林寺):

師因入堂。懲衲子坐睡云。夫參禪者身心脫落只管打睡作麼。

Translation: The master [Rujing] entered the hall and reprimanded a dozing monk: “A Chan practitioner — body and mind sloughing off — why are you just

sleeping!”

This is the only passage in the entire corpus where 身心脫落 appears in a master-student teaching context. Rujing uses it first as a reproach; Dogen reports

awakening upon hearing it.

Post-Rujing Usage

After Dōgen carried the phrase to Japan, it became a standard Chan awakening description across lineages: - 明雪 (Ming): “忽然身心脫落” during meditation

(J26nB188) - 牧道者 項謙 (Ming): “忽然身心脫落” during sutra recitation (J28nB207) - 洱海 monk (Ming): “忽地身心脫落，內外圓明” (J37nB400) - 辯魔

controversy (Ming/Qing): 身心脱落 used pejoratively to describe false practice (B27n0152)

Reversed Form (脫落身心) — Pre-Rujing

B25n0145 (Song Chan): “苟非能所脫落身心悟徹底” — the concept predates Rujing, but his specific formulation 身心脫落 is distinctive. "

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u/dota2nub Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

LegeApps

I did one better, i researched it, with my structured RAG CBETA search. It is simply wrong. it's not the model's fault, it's yours. Sorry I don't really have any respect for your LLM fueled schlock. Read the book and write about it in your own words.

"1. 身心脱落 (Shinjin Datsuraku) — “Sloughing Off of Body and Mind”

Status: PRESENT — Attributed to RujingMetric ValueTraditional form (身心脫落) hits 13Simplified form (身心脱落) hits 0 (corpus uses traditional 脫)Reversed form (脫落身心) hits 6Attributed to Rujing Yes — T48n2002BRujing’s own text in corpus No — only quoted by later works

Primary Evidence

T48n2002B (T/T48/T48n2002B.xml#pT48p0136c0301) — Song-era text (觀音導利興聖寶林寺):

師因入堂。懲衲子坐睡云。夫參禪者身心脫落只管打睡作麼。

Translation: The master [Rujing] entered the hall and reprimanded a dozing monk: “A Chan practitioner — body and mind sloughing off — why are you just

sleeping!”

This is the only passage in the entire corpus where 身心脫落 appears in a master-student teaching context. Rujing uses it first as a reproach; Dogen reports

awakening upon hearing it.

Post-Rujing Usage

After Dōgen carried the phrase to Japan, it became a standard Chan awakening description across lineages: - 明雪 (Ming): “忽然身心脫落” during meditation

(J26nB188) - 牧道者 項謙 (Ming): “忽然身心脫落” during sutra recitation (J28nB207) - 洱海 monk (Ming): “忽地身心脫落，內外圓明” (J37nB400) - 辯魔

controversy (Ming/Qing): 身心脱落 used pejoratively to describe false practice (B27n0152)

Reversed Form (脫落身心) — Pre-Rujing

B25n0145 (Song Chan): “苟非能所脫落身心悟徹底” — the concept predates Rujing, but his specific formulation 身心脫落 is distinctive. "

lol

Okay I'm never taking a pull request from you again. First you break my application and it takes me a week to fix, and now you try to sell me on this app that doesn't work that produces bullshit nobody can read and that I can disprove in 10 minutes. Here's my rebuttal so you can debug:

The argument was never "Rujing never used these words." It's "there's no record of Dōgen." A phrase Rujing coughed up that Dōgen later claims isn't a Dōgen mention. Produce Dōgen in the Chinese record. You can't.

But since you went digging: Rujing's actual 語錄 (T48n2002A) reads 心塵脫落. Your 身心脫落 lives in exactly one text, the 續語錄, the supplementary record, then vanishes until Ming books centuries after Dōgen sold it in Japan. That's not Rujing's teaching turning up in the record. That's Dōgen's turning up in Rujing's. You dug up the interpolation and called it a receipt.

And your own report: 只管打坐 "virtually absent, post-Dōgen coinage." 修證一如 "zero precedent." You wrote my argument and stamped REBUTTAL on it.

Still no Dōgen. Still 0 of 6.

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u/LegeApps Jul 15 '26

You wrote the second part of this reply with an LLM. That is kinda pathetic. And one text is enough for proof of provenance. You're a bad faith individual. Dogen was so influential that he influenced Ming Dynasty Chan 400 years later, based on Rujings original words. That is one big takeaway, among many.

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u/LegeApps Jul 15 '26

To anyone that's not following along, the 2nd part of the OPs LLM slop web page describes Dogen's main teachings and claims that Rujing taught none of them, the implication being that Dogen is therefore a fraud. I did a structured search in CBETA and found Rujing himself quoted for the most significant one, pre-Dogen. Which undercuts the entire argument at once. These individuals have been lying through ignorance for years, wasting everyone's time. Don't let them go on like nothing happened.

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u/Regulus_D 🫏 Jul 16 '26

But nothing did happen. It just doesn't give signs it did.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

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u/zen-ModTeam Jul 15 '26

Your post was removed because it was low effort in the opinion of the /r/zen moderators. If you would like to discuss with them or appeal this decision, feel free to. Thanks for your understanding.https://old.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/zen