Can the "Senika heresy" be useful? The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism
By Bernard Faure p60 (I've not read this book) links it to linji ("the true man without affairs")

Wiki says


  In his later years Dōgen often severely criticized the Senika heresy
  (sennigedo), which is the erroneous view that the mind abides while
  the form perishes. According to this view, there is a bright spiritual
  intelligence contained in our body that is the source of
  self-understanding. When the body dies, the spiritual intelligence
  alone does not perish but abides immutably. This view, Dōgen argues,
  when "hearing of the doctrine of this very mind (itself is buddha),
  takes it to mean that the discriminating knowledge of sentient beings
  is itself the buddha"

Dōgen (c. 1230-50) as cited in Masao Abe, Steven Heine (1992) A Study of Dōgen: His Philosophy and Religion. p. 158
The Senika heresy here mentioned is a Buddhist believe in eternalism of the self.



I'm interested, then, in whether it's only really a heresy in Soto Buddhism, and other traditions might find it useful. 

I think it may be a useful fiction, which is why I ask.
What Dōgen calls sennigedo is a view found in several schools of Buddhism, for example in the teachings of Tendai contemporary with Dōgen in Japan. But this is not what Matsuo Basho was expressing in "Mind itself is Buddha", the poem Dōgen used to argue the criticism you expressed in your quote. He quotes this poem in the story of Damei Fachang (Daibai Hojo) in both his Shobogenzo and Eiheikoroku. What he actually argues is:


  “The mind that has been authentically transmitted is ‘one mind is all
  dharmas; all dharmas are one mind.’….. We clearly understand that the
  mind refers to the mountains, rivers, and the great earth; the sun,
  the moon and the stars. …. Therefore, ‘mind itself is buddha’ refers
  to all the buddhas who carry out arousing bodhi-mind, practice,
  awakening, and nirvana. Those who have not yet been carrying out
  arousing bodhi-mind, practice, awakening and nirvana are not ‘mind
  itself is buddha.'”


Stated differently, Dōgen argues that until you realize (in both senses of the English word simultaneously, not just intellectually) that "Mind is Buddha", you risk to conceptualize Buddha-nature as eternal &amp; transcendent of causation and death. He is therefore not criticizing Basho, but the concept underlying the interpretation that all factors of experience (hō in Japanese, Dharmas in Sanskrit) are somehow not subject to causation (which implies they are timeless).

The best elaboration on this argument I know is in Heine's Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dogen Chapter "The Question of Time"