Dōgen’s teaching of practice-realization, *shushō ittō*, runs as a unifying thread through the Shōbōgenzō, overturning any simple division between means and end. Practice is not a ladder climbed toward some later enlightenment; it is the very form that enlightenment takes. In texts such as “Bendōwa,” “Zazengi,” and related fascicles, seated meditation is described as “the practice-realization of complete enlightenment,” the direct expression of Buddha-nature rather than a technique for attaining it. The posture, breath, and attitude of zazen are already the functioning of awakened mind, so that the moment of sitting is the moment of realization, with nothing held in reserve.

This non-dual understanding is given a philosophical depth in fascicles like “Genjōkōan” and “Uji.” “Genjōkōan” presents the study of the Way, the study and forgetting of the self, and the confirmation by all dharmas not as a linear sequence but as one dynamic event in which practice and realization interpenetrate. “Uji” develops this further by showing how each moment of practice is “being-time” fully manifest: past and future are not rungs on a temporal ladder leading to enlightenment, but dimensions of the very now in which practice-realization unfolds. In this light, realization is not a static state but the temporal functioning of the Way, appearing as each concrete moment of practice.

The same vision extends beyond formal meditation into ethics, ritual, and the most ordinary activities. Fascicles on precepts and conduct present “not doing wrong, doing good, and benefiting beings” as the very body of realization, not a moral preparation for something later. Texts on “studying the Way with body and mind” and on daily activities such as eating, working, and caring for the body show that there is no special sacred realm apart from the mundane; walking, washing the face, or cooking a meal, when undertaken with total exertion and without a gaining idea, are themselves the enactment of Buddha-nature. In this way, the Shōbōgenzō portrays the words of the teachings, the silence of zazen, and the gestures of everyday life as different yet inseparable modes of one continuous practice-realization, which never arrives at a final plateau but is endlessly renewed in each present act.