| | Your many questions, from the historical to the terminological to the developmental and more, are quite complex, rich, not straighforward, and could the the focus of large discussions, and perhaps they should be.
Picking just a few:
1) Soto Zen does not have a straightforward relationship to vipassana, though both are wisdom traditions. I am prepared to argue their similarities and their differences, though if one reads Dogen, one can find what appear to be contradictions, some for vipassana, some that seem along other angles and tangents, some that seem to nearly contradict it. Examples follow. From Rules for Zazen: " is not a conscious endeavour", and then "engage in zazen as though saving your head from a fire." One seems all passive, and a paragraph later it seems all active. From Guidelines for Studying the Way,"The thought of enlightenment, as was mentioned, is the mind which sees into impermanence," and, "So when a notion of self arises, sit quietly and contemplate it. Is there a real basis inside or outside your body now? ... From beginning to end a drop of blood or lymph is empty. So none of these are the self. What about mind, thought, awareness, knowledge? Or the breath going in and out... what is it after all? None of these are the self either." That all is straightforward vipassana, if you ask me.
That said, Zazen does also emphasize that within practice is enlightenment, which adds an immediate component that some people can miss when they practice what seem like more goal-oriented traditions like vipassana, though this is their own misunderstanding of vipassana. Bare investigation, which can arise from very passive practice, like sitting by a clear pool, or very active practice, like noticing all sensations arise and vanish on their own, is key, and balancing effort and surrender takes time and development. Dogen teaches through paradox and contradiction to support balance. |