Very nice to see you. I'm supposed to talk about our book on Dogen, or by Dogen, which is in production now. Zen Master Dogen is a 13th century Japanese monk who went to China and brought Zen teaching from China to Japan. And this tradition of Zen practice has been carried on up to here, through many generations.

[01:02]

to Suzuki Woshi and through his disciples and disciples who are teaching here and practicing here. So it's my great pleasure to be here and thank San Francisco Zen Center for carrying this tradition, great tradition of Zen meditation, Zen teaching, and also supporting this translation project since 1977. Dogen is regarded as one of the greatest thinkers throughout Japanese history. Of course, he was the founder of Soto School Zen tradition.

[02:07]

He was a wonderful mystic poet. And perhaps one of the greatest illustrators of meditation throughout all traditions, all spiritual traditions in the world. He was the most comprehensive writer on a technique of meditation, state of meditation, communal kind of practice of meditation, and then life centered around meditation. I didn't know Dogen was so important and could be inspiring to many people in the Western world.

[03:11]

When I was 27 years old, when I was a little kid, I just fell in love with Dogen's writings. So I started studying, and then I met the master. Soichi Nakamura Roshi, and then I started translating Togen Shobo Genzo, his life work, into modern Japanese with Nakamura Roshi. I started 49 years ago, 1960. Japanese version was completed in late 1960s. Meanwhile, I visited Sokoji in San Francisco, met Suzuki Roshi, and we got somehow connected through Dogen calligraphy and so forth.

[04:21]

Suzuki Roshi was so open to me when I was 29 years old, 1964. I told him that I was translating Shobogenzo into modern Japanese. He asked me to give a talk at Sokoji. I thought he didn't know so much about Dogen but later I learned that the greatest scholar of Dogen some decades ago Ian Kishizawa Roshi he was a top Dogen scholar in Japan he moved to one of the sub temples of Suzuki Roshi to train Suzuki Roshi on Dogen studies

[05:25]

So anyway, so without knowing that, I gave a talk on Dogen. And I think his openness to everybody, including myself, sort of led to our collaborations, San Francisco Zen Center and myself I went back to Japan and then wanted to really translate Dogen with people who are seriously practicing Zen. Instead of translating that in my study in Japan, I wanted really to have it more alive.

[06:28]

I wanted to learn much from the experience and practice of friends who were practicing San Francisco Zen Center at Tassahara and Greenhouse. So I was fortunate enough to be invited to work for San Francisco Zen Center and so Shobo Genzo has 96 fascicles. Fascicles means a chapter-length text which is bound separately, distributed as an independent text, so 96 of them. So each fascicle I chose a partner.

[07:28]

And then we sat many times and then translated that. Sometimes some people say, look, Kaz, I want to know more about this. So would you translate this with me? So we did that. So my collaborators mostly don't really read. the Japanese text, the Chinese text. Dogen wrote in two languages. And some of them do. So my responsibility was to try to translate it into rough English and then explain kind of the background. And then work together with native speakers. to sort of find the best expressions for that.

[08:30]

So I had the pleasure of working with Linda Katz, and Ed Brown, and Blanche Hartman, and Rev Anderson, Norman Fisher, and kind of wonderful teachers, and also kind of good writers, poets. So, Our intention was to make Dogen's text available and useful and also inspiring for practitioners of Dharma. So that was our goal. So we kind of had many years of going over, going back and refining the text. So many people worked on the same text in different ways. If you have any questions or thoughts or objections, please kind of raise your hands.

[09:35]

So, and then, we expanded sort of the kind of range of collaborators to the Dharma descendants or heirs of Katagiri Roshi like Natalie Goldberg and Maizumi Roshi like John Daido Rory or John Halifax or Egyoku Nakano and so forth. So this book will be dedicated to Suzuki Roshi and then Katagiri and Meizumi Roshi.

[10:35]

I was very fortunate working with Peter Levitt as my associate editor. He was a wonderful writer and poet. So he was one who really edited the entire text, so kind of rewriting some parts. And these texts were sent back to the original co-translators and then came back. My thinking is we should kind of refine the text as much as possible so we don't have to struggle with the interest of the publisher. So it was a three-year project. This copyright belongs to San Francisco Zen Center. So Zen Center and Shambhala had contract.

[11:42]

And so within three years, we were supposed to complete the text. which was the end of last year. So we did complete the text. We submitted it. And then the senior editor of Shambhala said, if all the authors are presenting text in such a good shape, we can have vacations more often. So we had extensive style sheets. okay, which words we should capitalize, hyphenate, you know, lowercase, italics, you know, punctuations, and all these very detailed style sheets. So I said to Shambhala, okay, the copy editors can challenge, they're welcome to challenge the style sheet, but once they accept the style sheet, they should follow that.

[12:49]

That's our guideline. So that's also made our life much easier, because it's such an extensive book, altogether 1,300, perhaps 1,400 pages. It will be published in two volumes, in close bound. I was writing the glossary. And I like to combine glossary and index so that the reader doesn't have to sort of go to other places, go back and forth. So we have about 4,000 entries. About half of them are what I called reference entries. For example, Dogen's teacher, Wu Jing, if you look at Wu Jing, it says, sea, and so forth.

[14:00]

So that's kind of. So there are many entries, but some are sort of sea. Sea, go to somewhere else. And then if you go there, it says sea. And then it's sort of around the circle of. Circle of the way. The title of the book is, I think we decided to call it, just by translation, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. Subtitle is Zen Master Dogen's Shobo Genzo. And Shobo Genzo is spelled in two words. Because I think in Japanese, it's more natural to say shobo, true dharma. That's one word. And genzo, treasury of the I. I think the I means not only the insight, understanding, but also experience.

[15:03]

The I is experience. So I found myself writing this extensive glossary. kind of writing a small Buddhist dictionary. So I'd like to share some of what I wrote. Of course, it's a daunting task. If you find it in glossary or dictionary, people think that's true. Karma. How do you define karma? Sanskrit. Go. Go is a... We have Chinese character and then... Well, this is also Japanese. The same. And then Japanese sound is go.

[16:05]

Action. So that's one definition. Another definition is... visible or invisible effect of action. So that's our karma. And sometimes Dogen uses terms in his own way. So it's kind of interesting to explain the general meaning and then how he would used, so like kato, well, twining vine. Could you explain what you mean by invisible effect? Oh, well, no, like when we say bad karma, you know, that means sometimes we don't know what kind of bad things we did, but somehow we feel the connection, right?

[17:10]

Sometimes the kind of effect is visible, the cause and effect is visible, but sometimes kind of invisible, I guess. You know what I mean? Do you agree? You don't have to agree. Yeah, thank you. So in Japanese, twining vines is called kato. Literally, a plant similar to fuisteria called kuzu. That's katsu. And then to is fuisteria and fuisteria. So two plants kind of that has vines. One, words and concepts which are a hindrance to understanding. So, two. Entanglement.

[18:13]

Three, in Dogen's usage, transmission and heritage of Dharma through dynamic interaction and oneness of teacher and disciple. So Dogen completely kind of turned around the meaning, so you can see. Four, being immersed. Painting. One. Normal meaning. Expression intended to resemble reality. That's what painting is, right? Two. Experience of a non-duality. It's a kind of Zen kind of way. You know, painting over ice cake. Something like that. Three. In Dogen's usage, a painting or a picture represents the expression of enlightenment.

[19:19]

Zen. Of course, this is familiar to you. It's kind of embarrassing to define Zen in front of Zen masters. One, well, originally Sanskritiana, in Chinese transliteration, East Chinese translation is Chanda, in Japanese Zenna, abbreviated as Chan or Zen, translated as Joryo, so every time I would put Chinese Japanese characters. translated as Joryo, literally, quiet thinking. One, meditation, contemplation.

[20:27]

Two, Zen Buddhist practice. Three, Zen school of Buddhism. Four, in Dogen's usage, the Buddha way. It's different from John Stewart's, this is your moment of Zen. I guess it means something else. So it's wonderful to define great Zen masters in such a short way. I asked Susan Moon to add some kind of stories or some flavor to Chinese Zen masters because she's a good writer and she could do that with maybe adding one or two sentences. And then I asked Tiger and Layton to kind of check the accuracy of description in the light of kind of contemporary Western scholarship.

[21:38]

I'm a kind of Dorian specialist, so I don't really study other kind of Chinese Zen kind of scholars' arguments and so forth. So, this is a daijan huinen. So, Japanese, daikan eno. 638 to 713 China. Also called laborer huinen. Japanese, eno anja, worker ru, ro anja. Sixth ancestor, okuso, Chaoku-shi, Sokka, old Buddha Chaoku-shi. Born in a poor family of Shinbui-shun, Guangdong, sold firewood for a living. At age 24, he joined fifth ancestor Hongren's community.

[22:42]

After cleaning rice for eight months, he secretly received Dharma transmission from Hongren and ran from angry senior monks to the south. hid in a hunter's house for four years, and then became a monk, taught at the Baolin Monastery, Chaoxi, Shao region, Guangdong. While Hongwen's senior student, Shen Shi, emphasized gradual enlightenment in northern China, Huinen emphasized immediate enlightenment. As a teacher, he produced a group of excellent students who transmitted his teaching called the Southern School of Zen. Some of his stories and dharma discourses are included in the Six Ancestors Platform Sutra. All the text is considered spurious, both by Dogen and modern scholars, especially the story about the poetry contest winning, supposedly won.

[23:55]

to gain dharma transmission. His posthumous name is Zen master Dajin. And then generation six. So we have a kind of chart of Chinese Zen masters, and we have kind of generations. So it's very easy to find people, we say, which generation. in a term that Dovin uses, which in Japanese is kan no doko. And I was wondering if you have that in your glossary. And if you can say something about his use of that term, which is translated into English in different ways. One is resonance or spiritual resonance or communion or relationship or some kind.

[25:03]

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I included it, but I don't remember. You know, it's sort of, khan means feeling. So, responding to feeling. So, I think, like, someone, maybe student, kind of feels aspiration of enlightenment, and then the the teacher or the Buddha would sort of interact. Do is the way or speech expression and ko is crossing. So it's sort of interaction responding to some feeling or attraction

[26:07]

aspiration. So usually I try to explain the literal meaning first, so you can really see. And then translation. So often saying Chinese or Japanese terms are translated in different ways. So in translation I don't feel so much But in both series, I feel kind of naked, showing all the original characters, the original meaning, and say, okay, so we are translating it this way and this way and this way. And then maybe some of the terms, you may not know why we translate it in this way. We can't really explain each time. You know, this particular character can mean this and this and this.

[27:11]

We can't really explain it. So we can only kind of talk about the final results with translated terms. And people may think, you know, we're just kind of out of mind or something. Anyway, that's our life. I will, of course, you know, Shakyamuni Buddha is really important in Buddhism. And it's hard to kind of explain who he is in several paragraphs. But it's our life. And, you know, There may be someone who has never read a book on Buddhism.

[28:15]

This may be this person's first and last book on Buddhism. So we have to sort of present fairly a kind of sufficient information in a few paragraphs. So that's the kind of life of a grocery writer. And then I put all the Buddhas in the same section. So Buddha, Shakyamuni, Buddha, Vairachana, Buddha. And then kings, ministers and lords. So that way, if people forget about the king's name, they can just go to the king and look around so they can find the king. circa 566 to circa 486 BCE, before Common Era.

[29:26]

According to Western scholarship, many contemporary Japanese scholars supported dates circa 448 to circa 368 BCE, based on the northern textual tradition. Dogen's understanding of the Buddha's dates is 908 to 828 BCE. And then I explain why can we think that way. Dogen talked about 1,200 years ago and so forth. The founding teacher of Buddhism who taught... in the plain along the Ganges, central to eastern part of northern India. Dogen rehearsed to him in a number of ways. Sanskrit, Shakyamuni.

[30:30]

I skipped Japanese song. Literally, practitioner of silence from Shakyaklan. Family name, Gautama. Royal title, Prince Siddhartha. Also in Buddhism, Shakyamuni Tathagata, Venerable Shakyat. Particularly in Zen, Great Master Shakyat, Old Man Shakyat, Old Gautama. These honorary titles include the Buddha, Tathagata, and the World Honored One. Born in Kapilavastu, presently in central southern Nepal, a son of King Suddhodana and Queen Maya, married to Princess Yashodara and had a son named Rafa.

[31:37]

Left the castle to seek the way, visited Brahman teachers, sat alone and attained the way in in the western part of the kingdom of Magadha. As a Buddha, he gave his first teaching, Turning of the Dharma Wheel, at Deer Park in Varanasi, the central city of Brahmanism, located in the northwest of Buddhagaya. For almost five decades, he taught monks and nuns as well as laypeople of all kinds. His summer retreats took place at Jeta Glow in the kingdom of Kosala. Vulture peak in Magadha is often described in scriptures as the place where he gave Dharma discourses. He entered Parinirvana in Kushinangara in the northwest of Magadha at age 80.

[32:43]

After the Buddha's death, his teachings were recalled and collected by his disciples and Dharma descendants. Centuries later, these were recorded as scriptures. Buddhist scriptures developed in response to the needs of practitioners at each era. However, until modern scholarship started to develop in the 19th century, it was... common for Buddhists, including Dogen, to believe that all Buddhist sutras were direct discourses of the Buddha himself. So many people thought Buddha was such a giant figure. In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, the Buddha's enlightenment simultaneously with the awakenings of all sentient beings is emphasized.

[33:46]

His enlightenment is seen as a result of his search as a variety of beings called bodhisattvas in his former lifetimes. It is also seen as an inheritance of the universal enlightenment transmitted by his earlier Buddhas. Shakyamuni is regarded as the last of the seven original Buddhas, six of whom are mythological. Inspired by his teaching, different types of deified Buddhas and their iconographic images, along with other deities, evolved in the Buddhist pantheon. According to the Zen tradition, he transmitted Dharma to Mahakashapa, the first ancestor. I guess I have five minutes for your questions.

[34:50]

Yes? I was wondering about where you said Dogen about all the Sutta came from the Buddha. It seems to me I read something by Dogen that seemed to quite harshly rebuke the idea that this Sirangama Sutta came from the Buddha himself. Yeah. He was kind of challenging the authenticity of A few sutras. Perfect Enlightenment Sutra is another, too. But besides that, everyone was in a way a kind of fundamentalist, meaning to see scriptures as the kind of absolute reflection of the Buddha's teaching. Yeah. Did you mention I won't call you? so that the Buddha awakens that everyone else and everything else simultaneously awakens to. Is that what you said? Yeah, it's a Mahayana view. Yes. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

[35:55]

I think, you know, like Dogen often quotes kind of on the, you know, on the 8th day of the 12th month, kind of Buddha said, I am enlightened with all beings, grass, trees, and mountains, and rivers, and so forth. So, kind of, yeah, I'm enlightened with all beings. In a way, I think it's kind of my view of Dogen's enlightenment. I mean, Shakyamuni's enlightenment. Yeah. Yes. I don't mean translation, but it seems like his writing was very poetic. And different translations I've read, it seems like some translators emphasize precision.

[36:58]

And instead of doing some of the poetry of lost, another translator maybe emphasized the poetry and maybe the precision is lost. And I'm just wondering, as a translator of Dogen, how do you balance those two? I think precision is a kind of tricky word. I think every translator wants to be precise. But in what way? So like some scholars want to really kind of keep the syntax of Dogen and so forth, you know, and then terms sort of corresponding to each. My experience of translation, good translation, is we need to deconstruct the syntax. We need to find the best way to convey the meaning, not necessarily word to word, but in the spirit.

[38:12]

And also, I think it's important to convey the energy and spirit. For example, some of you wear Reverend Anderson's calligraphy shirt, right? It literally means deep face in cause and effect. So we can say, some translators say, okay, deep face in cause and effect. That's a good translation. It's accurate. It's precise. Or sometimes we use deep trust because faith seems to be more kind of Christian. I think all good words have been taken by Christians. So we have to kind of make a good use of leftover terms. And Catherine I translated it as identifying with cause and effect.

[39:17]

So it's kind of, you can say, oh, there's no word identifying in the original. You could say that. But if we see that in context, Dogen's context and then the context of the text, this particular essay, I feel this is kind of really kind of convey the meaning in a way precisely. It's more like we live cause and effect. We are the cause and effect. So identifying, you know, is, I think it's a good term. One more question. Yes. Who? Yeah. This is a short passage.

[40:20]

And then there appears that language, Samayi, in which the poetical expression of one Samayi is understood by those who can place themselves in the same Samayi. We are greatly helped by this language, Samayi, in Beijing's secrets. But in spite of this, we wish to say that it is our intense desire to give a clear, intellectually acceptable demonstration of what has been regarded as a word transcending secret. We think that this can be done, at least to a certain extent, if we make the fullest use of the achievements of modern culture. It will require the cooperation of many scientists and thinkers, and above all, the appearance of Zen genius. Genius may be a rare, natural gift, but if you can find yourself through a single topic, working with a broad mental perspective, and persist in it, you will find yourself in genius. I'm wondering... Who wrote it? Seconded? A book called Zen Training. Can you comment on Zen genius? I think we can be all Zen genius, yes.

[41:30]

I don't know. I think it's... The whole thinking is somehow... so intellectual, it seems to me, that commentary. So, I'm sort of silenced. I like to really just deal with Zen Master Dogen. If I try to understand As a scholar's argument, I get lost very easily. I'm sorry. OK, one more question. I was just wondering when your book is coming out. Oh, it's coming out. Well, it's scheduled August next year.

[42:36]

Yeah. A year from now. Yeah, next year. Yeah, in two volumes. Thank you so much.

[42:46]

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