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THE ESSENTIAL DOGEN Writings of the Great Zen Master ABOUT THE BOOK Eihei Dogen (1200–1253), founder of the Soto School of Zen Buddhism, is one of the greatest religious, philosophical, and literary geniuses of Japan. His writings have been studied by Zen students for centuries, particularly his masterwork, Shobo Genzo or Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. This is the first book to offer the great master’s incisive wisdom in short selections taken from the whole range of his voluminous works. The pithy and powerful readings, arranged according to theme, provide a perfect introduction to Dogen—and inspire spiritual practice in people of all traditions. KAZUAKI TANAHASHI, a Japanese-trained calligrapher, is the pioneer of the genre of ‘one stroke painting’ as well as the creator of multicolor enso (Zen circles). His brushwork has been shown in solo exhibitions in galleries, museums, and universities all over the world. Tanahashi has edited several books of Dogen’s writings and is also the author of Brush Mind. Sign up to learn more about our books and receive special offers from Shambhala Publications. Or visit us online to sign up at shambhala.com/eshambhala. THE ESSENTIAL DOGEN Writings of the Great Zen Master Edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt SHAMBHALA Boston & London 2013 Shambhala Publications, Inc. Horticultural Hall 300 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 www.shambhala.com © 2013 by the San Francisco Zen Center Cover art: Portrait of Dogen from Hokyo-ji temple, Fukui Prefecture Quotations from Moon in a Dewdrop, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi, published by North Point Press—ten poems plus four passages as indicated in the sources and translation credits—reprinted with permission by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Excerpt of fifteen lines from “SONG” from COLLECTED POEMS 1947–1980 by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright © 1954 by Allen Ginsberg. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Excerpt of fifteen lines from “Song” by Allen Ginsberg, taken from COLLECTED POEMS 1947–1980. Copyright © 1954, Allen Ginsberg, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Dogen, 1200–1253. [Works. Selections. English] The essential Dogen: writings of the great zen master / edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt.—First edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. eISBN 978-0-8348-2847-6 ISBN 978-1-61180-041-8 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Zen Buddhism. I. Tanahashi, Kazuaki, 1933– II. Levitt, Peter. III. Title. BQ9449.D653E55 2013 294.3′927—DC23 2012037078 For Shirley and Linda love and deep gratitude Contents Preface and Acknowledgments · Kazuaki Tanahashi A Walk with Dogen into Our Time · Peter Levitt Editors’ Notes to the Reader PRACTICAL INSTRUCTION Aspiration and Search Zazen Samadhi Bowing Each Activity Is Sacred Robe HISTORY Vulture Peak Bodhidharma Scriptures Schools of Zen Authenticity GATES OF DHARMA The Awakened Way Enlightenment Circle of the Way Buddha Nature Wisdom Beyond Wisdom Compassion Trust Women Precepts PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW Time Space Fundamental Point Duality and Nonduality Body and Mind All-Inclusive Mind Life and Death Karma Freedom Nature Miracles STUDENTS AND TEACHERS Affinity and Merging Lay Practice Dharma Transmission Continuous Practice EXPRESSION Intimate Language Paradox and Poetic Expression Verse Commentaries Poems on Various Themes On His Portrait Notes Sources and Translation Credits Chronology of Dogen’s Life Selected Bibliography E-mail Sign-Up Preface and Acknowledgments Eihei Dogen (1200–1253) is one of the greatest elucidators of meditation in the ancient world. His writings today inspire many of those who contemplate in different spiritual traditions and are interested in expanding and deepening their meditative experience. Dogen was an extraordinary thinker, visionary, poet, writer, scholar, teacher, introducer of Zen, leader of a spiritual community, and reformer of Buddhism in Japan. He is emerging as one of the most widely read and studied Buddhists in the Western world; more than sixty books in English with his name on their covers are available now. Yet his writings are often technical, paradoxical, enigmatic, and repetitive. This volume is intended to make his writings easily accessible to readers, including those who are not familiar with Zen or Buddhism in general. Peter Levitt and I have selected passages from Dogen’s enormous body of work throughout his career and classified them according to theme. We hope that this approach will help those who are interested in his thinking and teachings on various topics. We have also included a selection of Dogen’s poems that, at a glance, might appear eccentric or absurd but may be more easily understood when placed in the context of his other writings. Dogen was ordained as a monk at age fourteen (in the East Asian way of counting; see Editors’ Notes to the Reader), started studying Zen at age eighteen, and went to China to complete his study between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-eight. He established his first training center, Kosho Monastery, when he was thirty-four and started building a full-scale monastery in a remote province of Echizen at age forty-four, which was established in the following year. He died at age fifty-four. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (Shobo Genzo) is Dogen’s lifework. It is one of the first Buddhist teachings written in Japanese, in a mixture of ideographs and phonetics. Until then, Buddhists in his country had written their teachings in Chinese, which were then read in a Japanized Chinese manner. Dogen kept to the tradition of using Chinese when he quoted scriptures and earlier Zen stories. Most of our excerpts are from the book of the same title published recently by Shambhala Publications. Dogen wrote two types of poems—waka and Chinese-style poems. Waka is an old style of Japanese poetry consisting of thirty- one syllables: five, seven, five, seven, and seven. Poems translated here in five lines are waka. The Chinese-style poems are found in another massive collection of Dogen’s formal talks, monastic guidelines, and other types of talks and writings compiled by his senior students. Dogen’s Extensive Record: Translation of the Eihei Koroku by Taigen Dan Leighton and Shohaku Okumura is an excellent presentation of this collection of Dogen’s writings. We cross-reference the Chinese-style poems included in our book to the Leighton-Okumura book for comparison and to give the reader a sense of where these poems were placed in the original collection. The Essential Dogen is the fifth of the San Francisco Zen Center’s Dogen book projects—following Moon in a Dewdrop, Enlightenment Unfolds, Beyond Thinking, and Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. I deeply appreciate my thirty-six years of collaboration and friendship with all the staff and abbots of the Zen Center. My special gratitude goes to Michael Wenger, in charge of publication, for his continuous support and good ideas. I would like to thank all of my cotranslators of Dogen texts whose names are shown in the section “Sources and Translation Credits” for their great contribution. Dogen is fortunate to have Peter Levitt, an accomplished Zen teacher, and outstanding poet, to help refine his expressions in the English language. Peter and I have been friends since 1987 and have worked together on a number of writing projects, including the last Dogen book, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo. My annual visits to him in British Columbia, Canada, as well as his visits to Linda and me in Berkeley, California, are always full of tremendous pleasure. I thank Shirley Graham, his wife, a wonderful poet, for her kindness and support. My gratitude goes to Taigen Dan Leighton for his assistance on our selected bibliography. I also thank Lisa Senauke and Asaki Watanabe for their assistance on the “Sources and Translation Credits” section. As always, it has been a great pleasure working with the Shambhala Publications staff. Peter and I thank Jonathan Green, Hazel Bercholz, and Ben Gleason. We appreciate DeAnna Satre for her copyediting. Our special appreciation goes to Dave O’Neal, our principal editor, who has guided us through the publication process. —KAZUAKI TANAHASHI A Walk with Dogen into Our Time In 1954 poet Allen Ginsberg wrote a poem called “Song” that acknowledges the weight of our human circumstance and suffering in a particular and somewhat unusual way. I believe it may also provide a gateway to the following writings by Zen Master Eihei Dogen, who addressed the nature of reality as he came to understand the world of people and things through his lifetime practice of Zen. As the poem begins, Ginsberg says: Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction the weight, the weight we carry is love. Suffering under such a weight is often accompanied by longing, as the poet well knew, and so his poem expresses the longing to return to that human possibility known by many names, including wholeness, oneness, unity, and Self, though Ginsberg simply called it love. Quite young when the poem was written, the poet was inspired by an intuitive certainty that the twin burdens of solitude and dissatisfaction would be relieved if the realization of wholeness or love might find full expression in the world. Of course, Ginsberg also understood that his longing for completion was not his alone but part of the common spiritual yearning experienced by people in every place and time, and so he acknowledges this in the final lines through the repetition of a single affirmative word, followed by other rhythmic phrasing that functions like the beating of a heart: yes, yes, that’s what I wanted, I always wanted, I always wanted, to return to the body where I was born The body of wholeness.
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