Mushi dokugo, sometimes called jigo jisho, is a Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 term used in Zen Buddhism which expresses the phenomenon known as "awakening alone, without a master." It is "usually considered suspect since the risk of self-delusion or 'fake-Zen' is always high." According to William M. Bodiford, "To guarantee that his experience of the truth of Buddhism is genuine, the Zen disciple relies upon his teacher to authenticate and formally acknowledge his enlightenment." During the Edo period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

 in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, there were a great many priests who proclaimed to be "self-enlightened." These included "such notables as the Myoshinji masters Daigu, Ungo, Isshi and the Sōtō

Soto

Sōtō Zen , or is, with Rinzai and Ōbaku, one of the three most populous sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism.The Sōtō sect was first established as the Caodong sect during the Tang Dynasty in China by Dongshan Liangjie in the 9th century, which Dōgen Zenji then brought to Japan in the 13th century...

 priest Suzuki Shōsan

Suzuki Shōsan

was a Japanese samurai who served under the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. Shōsan was born in modern-day Aichi Prefecture of Japan. He participated in the Battle of Sekigahara and the Battle of Osaka before renouncing life as a warrior and becoming a Zen Buddhist monk in 1621.Shōsan traveled throughout...

." Dōgen

Dogen

Dōgen Zenji was a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher born in Kyōto, and the founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan after travelling to China and training under the Chinese Caodong lineage there...

, the founder of the Sōtō school of Japan, acknowledged in his lifetime that such a phenomenon exists. In fact, he believed it is "the ultimate Zen principle that every practitioner had to actualize, even while studying under competent teachers and reading the sutras for a number of years." However, "Dōgen provided this well known dictum with a specific methodological/hermeneutic key that allowed one to unlock the mystery of existence—that is, to open the self and the universe. That key amounted, in essence, to critical, reflective thinking as an integral part of meditation. Without this key, it was impossible to attain one's own salvific independence." This "key" is found in the fascicles of the Shobogenzo

Shobogenzo

The term Shōbōgenzō has three main usages in Buddhism: It can refer to the essence of the Buddha's realization and teaching, that is, to the Buddha Dharma itself, as viewed from the perspective of Mahayana Buddhism, it is the title of a koan collection with commentaries by Dahui Zonggao, and it...

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