Dogen argued that it's not that we have the Buddha nature potentially which meditation is a means to actualizing, but that meditation is being the Buddha nature. The Buddha nature is something we are, not something we have. The difference in degrees of enlightenment comes from the ability to carry over what is brought about in meditation to everyday life. The main realization is that reality is at its basis nothingness, emptiness. The errors come not just from thinking anything is in itself something, but from thinking it is what it is not in a particular context.
Every context gives one determinate meaning.
Through sitting meditation we come to realize the emptiness of all things-that is we come to recognize them as they are outside of context at the same time becoming aware of our own context making practices. Through increased meditative sensitivity to the fluidity of meaning, we enact enlightenment. His form of Zen Buddhism became one of the most popular forms practiced in Japan. Dogen directly influenced Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his views have been constructively contrasted with Jean-Paul Sartre's and Martin Heidegger's. He held that immorality is impiety to that which is divine within us.