Recent scholarship has focused on the question of whether, and to what extent, Dogen underwent a significant change in thought and attitudes in his Later years. Two main theories have emerged which agree that there was a decisive change although they disagree about its timing and meaning. One view, which I refer to as the Decline Theory, argues that Dogen entered into a prolonged period of deterioration after he moved from Kyoto to Echizen in 1243 and became increasingly strident in his attacks on rival lineages. The second view, which I refer to as the Renewal Theory, maintains that Dogen had a spiritual rebirth after returning from a trip to Kamakura in 1248 and emphasized the priority of karmic causality. Both theories, however, tend to ignore or misrepresent the early writings and their relation to the late period. I will propose an alternative Three Periods Theory suggesting that the main change, which occurred with the opening of Daibutsu-ji/Eihei-ji in 1245, was a matter of altering the style of instruction rather than the content of ideology. At that point, Dogen shifted from the informal lectures (jishu) of the Shdbdgenzd，which he stopped delivering, to the formal sermons (jodo) in the Eihei koroku, a crucial later text which the other theories overlook. I will also point out that the diversity in literary production as well as the complexity and ambiguity of historical events makes it problematic for the Decline and Renewal theories to construct a view that Dogen had a single, decisive break with his previous writings.
