The Heart of Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō

TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION

ix TRANSLATORS’ INTRODUCTION This book offers annotated translations of eight key fascicles from Shôbôgenzô, the major work of Dôgen Kigen, 1200–1253, founder of Japanese Sôtô Zen. Among the fascicles translated are four—Bendôwa, Genjôkôan, Busshô, and Uji—that the Sôtô school has regarded as representing the heart of the entire collection. We have also included a translation of Fukanzazengi, a brief but important text on the principles of zazen (seated Zen meditation). Aside from a few autobiographical references found in Dôgen’s own writings, the particulars of his life are known largely through the early biographical records compiled many years after his death by priests in his Sôtô lineage.1 According to these traditional accounts, Dôgen was of noble birth, his father an important figure at the imperial court, and his mother a daughter of the powerful Fujiwara clan. He began his monastic study at age thirteen at Yokawa, the center of Tendai esotericism on Mount Hiei near Kyoto. He later spent time at the nearby Onjô-ji (Miidera), a rival Tendai monastery situated in the foothills of Mount Hiei. He then moved to the Kennin-ji, a Tendai temple in Kyoto where in preceding decades the Tendai priest Myôan Eisai (1141–1215) had been introducing the teachings and practice methods of Chinese Zen, which he had acquired from teachers of the then dominant Lin-chi (in Japanese, Rinzai) lineage during two trips to China. 1. Although probably fairly reliable in their broader outlines, there is a natural tendency toward hagiography in these records. Only recently have scholars begun to reexamine the traditional accounts of Dôgen’s life, and details heretofore accepted as fact are now being called into question. Eventually this reassessment should result in a clearer overall picture of his career, especially in such areas as his early monastic life and the circumstances surrounding the teaching he engaged in immediately after his return from China. As our main concern in the present book is to present the religious thought of Shôbôgenzô, we have made no attempt to address these or other current trends in Dôgen studies. The most recent works in Japanese that deal comprehensively with Dôgen’s life are by Nakaseko Shôdô, Dôgen Zenji den kenkyû (Tokyo, 1979) and Dôgen Zenji den kenkyû, zoku (Tokyo, 1997). x THE HEART OF DÔGEN’S SHÔBÔGENZÔ Dôgen entered Kennin-ji around 1217, and for seven years he studied under Eisai’s student Myôzen (1184–1225). In 1223, he accompanied Myôzen to China, where he visited Lin-chi masters at leading monasteries, including the Ching-te ssu on Mount T’ien-t’ung. In June 1225, at the Ching-te ssu, Dôgen encountered Ts’ao-tung (Japanese, Sôtô) teacher Ju-ching (1163–1228). He studied under Ju-ching for a little over two years, during which time he achieved enlightenment and received Ju-ching’s Dharma transmission. Dôgen returned to Japan in 1227, at age twenty-eight, and he took up residence once again at the Kennin-ji in Kyoto. He was now a certified teacher in the Ts’ao-tung Zen lineage, the teachings of which were still unknown in Japan. The remaining twenty-five years of his life, the first fifteen of which were spent in the Kyoto area, the remaining ten in the remote mountains of Echizen province (modern Fukui prefecture), were devoted to teaching and writing, setting down in Shôbôgenzô and various other works the essentials of his teaching and the rules and standards for monastic life that he wished to establish in Japan. The first of these works, Fukanzazengi, a brief composition in Chinese, sets forth the basic principles of zazen as the authentic method of Buddhist practice. It was composed the year he returned from China, while he was residing at Kennin-ji. He left Kennin-ji in 1230 for the An’yô-in, a small temple in Fukakusa, 6 or 7 kilometers south of Kyoto. A year later, in 1231, he wrote Bendôwa, a treatise in Japanese in which he once again promotes, this time at considerable length, the superior merits of zazen over all other forms of Buddhist practice, explaining in detail the various reasons for its primacy. Written when Dôgen was thirty-one, this early work already contains most of the essential themes he would later develop in...