Flowers Blooming on a Withered Tree: Giun's Verse Comments on Dōgen's by Steven Heine (review)

Flowers Blooming on a Withered Tree, the most recent addition to Steven Heine's outstanding body of publications on doctrinal, historical, and textual studies of the meditative school, introduces a genre of Zen writings that has previously been largely neglected in the West. It presents annotated translations, interpretative explanations, and additional illuminating chapters relating to Verse Comments on the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye written by monk Giun 義雲 (1253–1333 CE), the fifth abbot of Eiheiji temple, which was established a generation prior by Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253 CE), founder of the Japanese Sōtō school 曹洞宗 in the remote province of Echizen, present-day Fukui prefecture. Giun, who was born in the year of Dōgen's passing and served as the abbot of his temple from 1314 CE until his own death in 1333, provided in Verse Comments a poetic commentary on the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, or Shōbōgenzō 正法眼蔵, Dōgen's magnum opus. Giun's Verse Comments, written in 1329 CE and published a century later in 1421, was one of two commentaries on Dōgen's masterwork that was composed during the medieval Kamakura era. The other commentary on the Treasury from this period, Transcribed Comments on the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (Shōbōgenzō kikigakishō 正法眼蔵聞書抄), more commonly known as Goshō 御鈔 in Japanese, is a prose text composed by monks Senne 詮慧 and Kyōgō 経豪 between 1283 CE (or alternatively as early as 1263) and 1308.

For reasons that Heine closely explains in the monograph, Giun selected the 60-volume edition of the Treasury--unlike the 75-fascicle edition used for the prose comments of Senne and Kyōgō in the Goshō--and wrote the Verse Comments in Chinese-style kanbun poetry, each poem celebrating one of Dōgen's original essays. In addition, Giun included a summarizing, if at times baffling, four-character capping phrase (著語 jakugo) to epitomize his verses. To further enrich the translations, Heine has chosen to supplement Giun's poetic depictions of the Treasury fascicles with additional capping phrases by Katsudō Honkō 活動本興, an Edo-period Sōtō school commentator, thus introducing Zen poetry from across centuries. All of Giun's poems as well as Honkō's capping phrases are presented not only in English rendering, but also in original kanbun script, which adds an intriguing linguistic layer to the entire volume. The translations are supplemented with interpretative comments by Heine serving to illuminate some of the creative Zen imagery and expressions, references to which are abundant both in Giun's and in Honkō's lines.

As Giun's lines attest and as is shown in the volume, Verse Comments represent one example in a long tradition of Sōtō Zen poetry. For those acquainted with the Sōtō founder's life and work, it will come as no surprise that Dōgen would have established and supported a legacy of poetic expression within the school, yet from Heine's meticulous research we learn that the tradition of poetry composition was greatly encouraged by Dōgen's teacher Rujing 如淨 as well as by earlier Caodong masters. Besides relating Giun's poetry to the theory of Five Ranks of the Caodong founders Dongshan 洞山(807–869 CE) and Caoshan 曹山 (840–901 CE), Heine further introduces the literary pursuits of the Wanshi (Hongzhi in Chinese)-ha school, which was studied and emulated in Japan during the first half of the thirteenth century. The school's aim was to express an understanding of dharma by means of poetry, a practice derived from the Chinese master Hongzhi Zhengjue 宏智正覺 (1091–1157 CE, Wanshi Shōgaku in Japanese), who with over fifteen hundred poems to his name is considered one of the finest and most prolific Chan poets. Since Giun himself never travelled to mainland China, he strived...