It is possible to read the Fukanzazengi purely for its instructions, a how-to guide for sitting meditation with no particular attention paid to what the original manuscript looks like. Scholar Charlotte Eubanks, writing in the Smithsonian's Ars Orientalis, argues that doing so misses something the Tenpuku-bon itself is built to convey. Her extended analysis of Dogen's brushwork treats the calligraphy as a carefully orchestrated performance in its own right, the physical rhythm of writing enacting the very posture and attention the text describes. On this reading, the manuscript is not simply a container for instructions about zazen. It is itself an instance of the disciplined, present awareness zazen is meant to cultivate, visible in the movement of ink across the page.
That argument matters for how the object is understood today, nearly eight centuries after Dogen set it down. A National Treasure designation typically marks an object as historically or artistically significant, a judgment made from outside the tradition that produced it. Eubanks' reading suggests something more specific is true here: the manuscript rewards being looked at the way a Soto practitioner is trained to look at anything, with sustained, unhurried attention, and that the object and the practice it describes are, in a real sense, doing the same thing.