IT IS MY GREAT pleasure to present the lifework of Zen Master Eihei Dogen (1200–1253), an extraordinary meditator, thinker, visionary, teacher, poet, writer, scholar, leader of a spiritual community, and reformer of Buddhism in Japan. We translate the original Japanese title, Shobo Genzo, as “Treasury of the True Dharma Eye.” The “eye” here indicates the understanding as well as the experience of reality through meditative endeavor.
Dogen offers a practical, profound, and comprehensive teaching on meditation, presented in a series of sections known as fascicles. The word “fascicle,” literally a bundle of pages, refers to a section of a written work that is an installment of a larger work. (In the present edition, we refer to the fascicles sometimes as “essays” and sometimes as “texts.” Also, for convenience, we refer to the work consistently by its English translation in the introductory comments and notes.)
We present the most comprehensive collection of the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye texts. Our basic original text is Kozen’s ninety-five-fascicle edition, published in the seventeenth century. In addition, we have included “One Hundred Eight Gates of Realizing Dharma,” from Giun’s twelve-fascicle version, a thirteenth-century copy not known by Kozen. The inclusion of this fascicle brings our version to ninety-six fascicles.
Dogen’s poetic and perplexing essays reveal startling visions and thoughts, often paradoxical and impenetrable. You might call Dogen a thirteenth-century postexistentialist. He sees the world of impermanence, and yet his voice is always active and high-spirited. He challenges us with an urgent question: how do we live each moment fully and meaningfully? He makes us feel not confined and tiny, but free and enormous.
Since Dogen is one of the greatest writers in Zen Buddhism throughout time and space, this book serves as an overall guide to the history, literature, philosophy, and practice of Zen. As he is also one of the most extensive elucidators of Buddhist scriptures, this book summarizes how he, as an East Asian Buddhist of ancient times, viewed and explained the dharma to his students. Dogen is primarily regarded as the founder of Japan’s Soto Zen School where he established forms and procedures for Zen meditation. Today his way of practice is spreading throughout the Western world. You may be surprised how much of the movement in the meditation hall as taught by Dogen in the thirteenth century is practiced in a Zen center in your own city almost seven hundred years later.
I have been extremely fortunate to collaborate in translation with a number of outstanding Zen teachers and writers. I worked with one or two partners in translating each short essay. We examined original sentences word by word and came up with the best possible corresponding expressions in English. As associate editor of this work, Peter Levitt has gone over the entire text several times and made valuable suggestions. The strength and consistency of our translations owe much to him. Our intention is to offer a translation that is as accurate as possible, but also one that is inspiring and useful for practitioners of dharma in the Western world.
Because Dogen’s writing is known for its difficulty, we provide various kinds of assistance to help readers “decode” the text:
Treasury of the True Dharma Eye is the fourth Dogen book project sponsored by the San Francisco Zen Center, following Moon in a Dewdrop, Enlightenment Unfolds, and Beyond Thinking. I worked for San Francisco Zen Center from 1977 to 1984 as a scholar in residence. Since then the Zen Center has been supporting the Dogen translation projects. Before that, from 1960 to 1968 I worked with Shoichi Nakamura Roshi, my Zen teacher and cotranslator, to produce the first complete modern Japanese translation of Dogen’s Shobo Genzo. In 1965 Robert Aitken Roshi and I made the first translation of the text “Actualizing the Fundamental Point” included in this book. It has been a half-century journey of conversation with my venerated and beloved master Dogen. I have enjoyed every moment of studying his writing and translating it.
I would like to thank Shunryu Suzuki Roshi for inviting me to speak about Dogen to his students at Soko Temple in 1964, before he founded San Francisco Zen Center. This became a seed for my longterm association with the Zen Center. My gratitude goes to Richard Baker Roshi and the successive abbots of the Zen Center and its officers for supporting the translation project while they were in charge. I am particularly grateful to Michael Wenger Roshi, who has overseen the project as director of publications at the Zen Center and wrote the afterword of this book.
All my cotranslators have been delightful to work with and have taught me tremendously. Mel Weitsman Roshi has been my most frequent translating partner and the one I have worked with longest. Joan Halifax Roshi has invited me to give dharma talks during a number of sesshins and also to lead Dogen seminars.
We benefit a great deal from traditional Soto scholars, including Menzan Zuiho and Bokusan Nishiari. Works by Dr. Doshu Okubo and Dr. Fumio Mastani have always been helpful.
My appreciation goes to Dr. Carl Bielefeldt, Dr. Linda Hess, Dr. William Johnston, Shohaku Okumura Roshi, Christian H. B. Haskett, and Dr. Friederike Boissevain for their expert advice. Thanks to Zen Master Daegak Genthner, Shirley Graham, Roberta Werdinger, Luminous Owl Henkel, Jogen Salzberg, Junna Murakawa, Silvie Senauke, Mahiru Watanabe, Nathan Wenger, Wolfgang Wilnert, Ann Colburn, Karuna Tanahashi, and Ko Tanahashi for their help in a variety of ways. Our translation project owes much to a grant from the Dragon Mountain Temple.
Norman Fischer Roshi was also the translation editor for Moon in a Dewdrop and the author of the introduction to Beyond Thinking. Susan Moon, who was translation editor of Enlightenment Unfolds, also has helped enliven descriptions of some of the Chinese masters in the glossary. Dan Welch was translation editor for Beyond Thinking. Dr. Taigen Dan Leighton, our scholarly editor, checked the glossary and updated our bibliography. Andrew Ferguson provided information on Chinese masters through his book China’s Zen Heritage and was kind enough to check all the Chinese transliteration as well as the sites on the maps.
It is always wonderful to work with the staff of Shambhala Publications. I am extremely grateful to Peter Turner, Dave O’Neal, Hazel Bercholz, and Ben Gleason for taking on this large project. I thank Kendra Crossen for her excellent copyediting.
KAZUAKI TANAHASHI
Berkeley, California