Foreword
Bendōwa (Talk on wholehearted practice of the way) is one of the primary writings about practice/enlightenment by the great Japanese Zen Master Eihei Dōgen (1200-1253). After training as a monk in the dominant Japanese Tendai school and studying with the early Japanese Rinzai Zen teachers, Dōgen was dissatisfied with the Japanese Buddhist teachings of his time, and in 1223 went to study in China. After meeting his teacher and receiving dharma transmission, Dōgen returned to Japan in 1227. He eventually spread his teachings about Zen meditation and practice, and established a monastery to maintain this tradition. Dōgen is now honored as the founder of the Sōtō branch of Japanese Zen, which remains strong in Japan and in recent decades has spread in many places in the West.
Above and beyond any particular school of Buddhism or religious affiliation, Dōgen's profound and poetic writings are now generally respected as a pinnacle of Japanese philosophy and of world spiritual literature. Among Zen masters, Dōgen was a uniquely prolific writer. Especially renowned is his long masterwork, the collection of essays Shōbōgenzō (True dharma eye treasury), some versions of which include Bendōwa.
Bendōwa was written in 1231, soon after Dōgen's return from China to Japan. In this essay Dōgen expresses his teaching of the essential meaning of zazen (seated meditation) and its actual practice, elaborating on his brief initial writing, Fukanzazengi (The way of zazen recommended to everyone). Much of Dōgen's teaching encourages wholehearted engagement in our lives, based on awakening to our intimate interconnectedness with the totality of our world and its creatures. Our intention in presenting this translation and commentary on Bendōwa is to make it available for the use and benefit of practitioners and sincere students interested in this profound, spiritual way of life recommended by Dōgen Zenji.
We have added notes to the end of the translation of the text to elucidate technical terms and Dōgen's references to the Buddhist and East Asian cultural traditions. Shōhaku Okumura Sensei's introduction provides valuable background on the place of Bendōwa in Dōgen's writings, as well as on some of the important developments in the Japanese Sōtō Zen tradition after Dōgen, of which very little has been available up to now in English. The introduction also discusses the essential meaning and etymology of "practice of the way" and of Dōgen's fundamental teaching of jijuyū zanmai, the samadhi of self-fulfillment, which is elucidated in Bendōwa.
This book also features the lively and direct commentary of Kōshō Uchiyama Roshi, Okumura Sensei's teacher, who is one of the most highly respected modern Japanese Sōtō Zen masters. Some fine English translations from Dōgen's writings have appeared, and a few insightful scholarly treatments of Dōgen's teachings have been published in English; still, it is unusual to find a practical commentary like Uchiyama Roshi's, which expresses the down-to-earth implications of this subtle teaching for our everyday actualization. Uchiyama Roshi was successor to the great, dynamic Japanese master, Kōdō Sawaki Roshi, who revitalized the practice of zazen in modern Japan before his death in 1965. From 1965 until his retirement in 1975, Uchiyama Roshi was abbot of Antaiji monastery, then in Kyoto, which was a primary place for Westerners to practice Zen in Japan during those years. He now lives with his wife in a small temple outside Kyoto and continues to practice the Japanese art of origami, of which he is also a master. Uchiyama Roshi has written many Zen texts and commentaries, some of which have been translated into English in Refining Your Life and Opening the Hand of Thought. We hope Western practitioners will savor this commentary on Bendōwa, selected from Uchiyama Roshi's talks to Zen students at Sōsenji Temple in Kyoto in 1978 and 1979.
In his introduction, Okumura Sensei describes his own long and devoted relationship to the Bendōwa text, which he first began translating over ten years ago. I was privileged to be able to collaborate in the final transformation of this text into English from 1990 to 1992, when it was used as a biweekly study class at the Kyoto Sōtō Zen Center at Shōrinji temple. The practitioners who visited Shōrinji to study and practice with Okumura Sensei during this time joined us in our challenging and detailed discussions of Dōgen's meaning and the difficulty of expressing it fully in English. These close investigations of the implications of English terms and their ramifications for Western practitioners were both stimulating and enriching.
Among those who contributed to the translation process through these discussions were Rev. Teijo Munnich, George Varvares, Laura Houser, Stephanie Simmons, Ann Overton, and Geula Rubin. Their help, based on sincere practice experience, greatly benefited this translation. Rev. Emyo Dielman also kindly assisted with the preliminary editing of our translation of Uchiyama Roshi's commentary.
I am personally very grateful to have had the opportunity to study Dōgen's teachings with Okumura Sensei. His sincerity and dedication, and his simple, everyday embodiment of wholehearted practice of the way, have been deeply inspiring.
An earlier version of some of Rev. Okumura's introduction appeared in Zen Quarterly, published by Sōtō Shū Shumuchō.
Taigen Leighton
Shōrinji