A review article on Dogen scholarship in English

·期刊原文
The Zen philosopher: A review article on Dogen scholarship in English

By T. P. Kasulis
Philosophy East and West
Volume 28, no. 3, July 1978
(c) by University Press of Hawaii
p. 353-373

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p. 353

The Early Works

Masunaga, Reiho. The Soto Approach to Zen. Tokyo:
Layman Buddhist Society Press, 1958.

Kennett, Jiyu. Selling Water by the River (originally
published in 1967) . Recently reissued and
available as Zen Is Eternal Life. Emeryville,
California: Dharma Publishing Company, 1976.

Dumoulin, Henrich. Trans. Peachey, A History of Zen
Buddhism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963. Originally
published in German in 1959. Pp. 151-174.

Kapleau, Philip. Three Pillars of Zen. New York:
Harper and Row, 1966. Pp. 295-299.

Recent Translations

A Complete English Translation of Dogen Zenji's
Shobogenzo (The Eye and Treasury of the True
Law), vol I. Trans. Kosen Nishiyama and John
Stevens. Sendai, Japan: Daihokkaikaku Publishing
Company, 1975. Distributed in U.S. by Japan
Publications Trading Company, San Francisco and
Elmsford, New York.

Yokoi, Yuho, with the assistance of Daizen Victoria.
Zen Master Dogen: An Introduction with Selected
Writings. New York: John Weatherhill, 1976.

Waddell, Norman and Abe, Masao. Translations in The
Eastern Buddhist New Series (Kyoto, Japan):
"Bendowa" 4, no. 1(May, 1971).
"`One Bright Pearl:' SBGZ Ikka Myoju" 4, no. 2 (Oct.,
1971).
"SBGZ Zenki:`Total Dynamic Working' and Shoji:`Birth
and Death'" 5, no. 1(May, 1972).
"SBGZ Genjokoan" 5, no. 2 (Oct., 1972).
"Fukanzazengi and SBGZ Zazengi" 6, no. 2 (Oct.,
1973).
"``The King of Samadhis Samadhi' SBGZ Sammai O
Zammai" 7, no. 1. (May, 1974).
"SBGZ Buddha-nature" Part I, 8, no. 2 (Oct., 1975).
"SBGZ Buddha-nature" Part II, 9, no. 1 (May, 1976).
"SBGZ Buddha-nature" Part III, 9, no. 2 (Oct., 1976).

Book-length Commentary

Kim, Hee-jin. Dogen Kigen--Mystical Realist. Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 1975. The Association
for Asian Studies, Monograph No. 29.
------------------------------------
T. Y. Kasulis is Assistant Professor of Philosophy,
at the University of Hawaii.
Philosophy East and West 28, no. 3, July 1978.

p. 354

Before we actually review the development of Dogen
studies in English, it might be helpful to consider
the nature and importance of Dogen's thought as
representative of the philosophical structure of Zen
Buddhism. Throughout this review, the emphasis will
be on Dogen as a philosopher rather than Dogen as an
historical religious figure or Dogen as a practicing
Zen master. This statement might raise eyebrows in
some quarters insofar as many people make the
assumption that being a Zen Buddhist and being a
philosopher are mutually exclusive projects. Since
this assumption is widespread, I will address it
briefly at the outset.

First of all, we face the fundamental issue of
what makes philosophy "philosophical." When people
exclude Zen Buddhist thought from the classification
of "philosophy," they often use such a limited
definition of "philosophy" that their own criteria
would also exclude such classical philosophers as
Socrates, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas as well as
modern figures like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and
aspects of Heidegger and Wittgenstein. One may be
justified in disliking these Western philosophers,
but it is merely an act of a semantic sleight of hand
to discount them as "unphilosophical." To be more
specific, any definition of "philosophy" that insists
upon "answers" or "assertions" as well as a "method"
would exclude Socrates. Anyone who would demand at
least the attempt at suppositionless inquiry might
discount much of the medieval tradition. Anyone who
would emphasize the rational to the exclusion of the
emotive and to the exclusion of living out a
consistent life project might then be forced to look
askance at much of the existential movement. The
demand upon the philosopher that he justify his every
use of controversial philosophical terms was not
heeded either by Spinoza or even by Wittgenstein in
the writing of much of his Tractatus.

We also have to be wary of arguing that there is
some approved sense of "philosophy" that is
completely free of historical and cultural context.
We could disallow much of Aristotle's writings, for
example, as being essentially "scientific" or
"psychological" rather than "philosophical," but this
would be unfair to Aristotle's own sense of the
breadth, applicability, and practicality of
philosophy. After excising the "unphilosophical"
portions of his complete works, we might be justified
in calling the remnant "philosophy in Aristotle," but
it would be an injustice to the spirit of the man to
call it "Aristotle's philosophy." There would be an
uproar among the historians of Western philosophy
were we to decide, for example, that only the
Analytics truly qualified as Aristotle's
"philosophy," but we observe nary a wince when the
same type of butchery is performed on the Eastern
traditions.

Another popular way of excluding Zen Buddhist
thought from the domain of philosophy is to claim
that any philosophy" (in the "Western" sense of the
term) must proceed primarily by rational
argumentation. On the face of it, this is a valid
enough claim. We must be careful, however, not to
take the phrase "rational argumentation" too
narrowly. For example, many of the most

p. 355

fundamental and important claims that either an
empiricist or a phenomenologist might make are often
based on "rational argumentation" only to the extent
that they make "an appeal to experience." This
observation helps us to recognize that, in at least
some Western philosophies, the philosophical project
is as much descriptive as assertory or deductive.

This latter observation has a particularly useful
application when we consider the philosophical
potential of Zen Buddhist thought. After all, once we
wade through the various traditional stories and
actually view the purpose and project of the Zen
tradition, it becomes evident that indeed Zen
Buddhism does make certain claims about the structure
and pattern of human experience. By distinguishing
different modes of consciousness, it claims that some
modes are indeed more complete, more creative and
more self-expressive than others. Zen "argues" its
position by appealing to our own experiences. For
example, suppose I were to ask you: "What is this
thing now in front of you?" Is it a review article on
Dogen? Is it a series of imprintations made by a
printer's type and ink? Is it a resource? Is it an
amusement used to kill a little spare time between
classes? Is it a piece of mail? Is it the referent of
a number in the library's card catalogue? Was it a
paperweight yesterday on your desk? To ask what
things are is a fundamental question in the Western
tradition from Thales to Heidegger. Hence, when
Shu-shan holds up his staff and asks us to tell him
what it is without either affirming or denying it as
"staff," this is not "Zen humor," nor is it an
excursion into "Eastern mysticism." It is (among
other things) the asking of a philosophical question
that has often been raised in Western, as well as
Eastern, contexts.

Our skeptic may push his point further: is the
Zen question really being asked in a philosophical
way? One of our skeptic's unexamined assumptions is
that he believes that Zen Buddhist thought holds to
unexamined assumptions. It is time that the burden of
proof be placed on his shoulders: where are these
"assumptions"? What I see in the Zen tradition
(especially in looking at the tradition itself and
not the Western commentaries on that tradition) is a
dogged refusal to manufacture realities that are not
directly experienced and a critical vigilance against
both the idling of language and the acceptance of
hidden, unjustified presuppositions lurking within
our commonly held conceptualizations. When the master
pops one of our favorite conceptual balloons, we turn
on him, calling him a "mystic," a "proponent of the
ineffable." In reality, however, it is very often the
case of his holding to a higher philosophical
standard than ours as to what constitutes an adequate
account of the facts or a faithful description of the
experience.

If we take this to be the philosophical
standpoint of Zen, then how should its position be
"argued"? It is not enough to show in what respects
ordinary interpretations of experience are
inadequate. If Zen is not to blur into the monolithic
ineffability of the neti, neti in the Upani.sadic
tradition, something positive must be said. Simple
propositional statements alone may not do, however,

p. 356

since they are so dependent on the tacit assumptions
within ordinary discourse that, even if the intent
were proper, the interpretation by the listener would
distort that intent. Creative expression, whether in
the tactile arts or in language, therefore, comes to
play a major role in the Zen tradition. Language then
achieves the role not only of making propositions but
also of invoking or evoking certain kinds of
response, certain kinds of experience.l Here we see
in what sense Zen makes its "appeal to experience."
The major difference between the appeal of the
Western empiricist or phenomenologist and the appeal
of the Zen master is that the former very often
appeals to experiences we have all had, but the
latter appeals only to the experience that his
disciple is having at that very moment. In other
words, while the former may often require of us that
we remember, the master requires only that we "look!"
When seen from this perspective, the Zen "appeal to
experience" has the distinct advantage of directness,
that is, the Zen "appeal" is protected from the sort
of distortion that might be subconsciously carried
out by the conceptual and affective apparatus
involved in the remembering act. To put this in
concrete terms, it is much more difficult to distort
your present experience of the blackness of the
letters on this page than to distort your memory of
the color red that is on the cover of this journal.
While the former is directly experienced, the latter
may have already been "colored" by the fact that I
called the remembered impression "red." Hence, in the
latter case, you already have asked yourself, "What
kind of red was it?" This is the type of mediation
within experience that Zen masters mistrust.

DOGEN AS PHILOSOPHER

Now that we have seen that Zen need not
necessarily be excluded from being a "philosophy," or
at least, having significant philosophical elements,
we can discuss what constitutes the particular
contribution of Dogen. Among Japanese philosophers,
Dogen Kigen(a) (1200-1253) is held in very high
respect. Along with such figures as Kuukai(b)
(774-835) and Nishida Kitaro(c) (1870-1945), he is
considered to be one of the most profound thinkers in
Japan's history. Dogen's status is enhanced by his
historical centrality. Unlike most of the traditional
masters of China, Dogen attempted to give a
systematic approach to the essential nature of Zen
Buddhism. Hence, his teachings are open to
philosophical scrutiny in ways that the sayings of
most of the classical masters are not. Considered to
be the founder of Japan's largest Zen Buddhist
school, the Soto(d) sect, Dogen is also the first
significant figure in Japanese history to write a
major Buddhist treatise in his native language rather
than in classical Chinese. Hence, his major work,
Shobogenzo(e) (henceafter SBGZ) "The Treasury of the
Correct Dharma Eye," marks a key stage in the
Japanization of Buddhism. Furthermore, looking ahead
to twentieth-century developments, SBGZ has become an
important resource for contemporary Japanese
philosophy. Nishida Kitaro, Watsuji Tetsuro(f), and
Tahabe Hajime(g) were all admirers of Dogen,

p. 357

the latter two having gone so far as to write
monographs on the philosophical significance of his
writings. This development is quite natural insofar
as these modern Japanese philosophers faced the task
of melding traditional Japanese thought with Western
philosophical vocabulary; and Dogen, as the first
writer to use the Japanese language in a truly
philosophical way, was looked upon as a forefather of
Japanese "philosophy" (tetsugaku(h)) in its modern
sense.

One of the problems the new student might first
encounter in his study of Dogen is the general issue
of what Dogen is trying to accomplish in writing
SBGZ; none of the English-writing scholars thus far
have been very helpful in this area. Either we find
(a) a general characterization that might apply
equally well to any Zen master from Bodhidharma to
the present; or (b) a psychohistorical
characterization (for example, Dogen as trying to
resolve the personal encounter with transiency raised
by the early death of both of his parents); or (c) a
characterization that is accurate but so complex that
the beginning student cannot distinguish the forest
from the trees.(2)

Now one of the chief points to bear in mind in
discussing Dogen's philosophical point of view is
that, like most of the other great religious figures
of the Kamakura period, Dogen was trained and
ordained in the Tendai tradition, the form of
Buddhism that had become most dominant in Japan at
that time. (For the benefit of Chinese specialists,
it should be noted that even by the late Heian
period, Japanese Tendai had already developed along
lines somewhat different from its Chinese progenitor,
T'ien-tai, the single most important difference being
its assimilation in Japan of many of the esoteric
doctrines and practices of the Shingon school formed
by Kuukai.) Because of the Tendai interpretation of
the "one-vehicle" doctrine of the Lotus Sutra and
because of the hierarchichal systemization of all
doctrines developed in China by Chih-i and his
successors, Japanese Tendai had developed in such a
way that it synthesized all of the previous Buddhist
traditions of Japan into one school of Buddhism,
eclectic in its practices and monolithic in its
theories. In the doctrinal synthesis, incidentally,
prominence was given to the basic ideas of
interpenetration developed by the Kegon (Chinese
Hua-yen) school.

The major result of the dominating influence of
Tendai was twofold. On the one hand, since the Tendai
sect was centered on the outskirts of Kyoto, the
capital city, the political and military power of
this Buddhist group become a force that the secular
forces in Kyoto had to reckon with. On the other
hand, the religious practices of Tendai had become
more and more eclectic while only a very arduous
study by intellectually gifted clerics could render
intelligible the complex and seemingly abstract
doctrines. In short, the conditions were such that
reformation was very likely. Dogen was blessed not
only with the necessary intellectual talent but also,
being of aristocratic background, with the training
in the Chinese classics to enable him to play a role
in this reformation. As a young man, he set out on a
personal quest to unravel the mysteries of the
Buddha-dharma as preached by the Buddha and expounded
by the great

p. 358

scholars of the Tendai tradition. His initial
attempts failed: Dogen could not deal with an
apparent rift between Tendai practice and Tendai
teaching. In the practice halls, he learned that
enlightenment was something to be cultivated or
acquired;in the study halls, he learned the doctrine
of "original enlightenment," that is, he learned that
everyone is already, by his very nature, enlightened.
Despite his earnestness, he could not resolve the
apparent contradiction and his questioning ultimately
led him to China where he studied under Ch'an master
Ju-ching(i).

By the time Dogen returned from China after four
years there, he apparently felt that the problem was
solved (or perhaps more appropriately, dissolved).
Violating the common practice, he claimed that he
brought back with him no new scriptures,
commentaries, esoteric practices, or images. This
seems to symbolize the fact that Dogen felt that his
problem had not been eliminated through the
acquisition of something new; the answer had been
there all along, even while he had first studied in
Japan. In particular, Dogen had come to the
realization that if one merely participated in seated
meditation (zazen), the very distinction between
"acquired" and "original" enlightenment would
disappear. Zazen(j) was already well known and
accepted by the Tendai followers as one legitimate
practice among many alternatives and, in his first
writing, Dogen merely attempted to clarify and refine
the actual procedure for performing this practice.
Since he was writing this document for his clerical
companions (throughout his life Dogen rejected the
idea that he was establishing something new called
"Zen Buddhism"), he wrote it in Chinese and entitled
it "Fukan-zazengi(k) , " (Principles for the
promulgation of zazen). Apparently, though, Dogen's
Tendai companions were not ready to embrace this
zazen as the one exclusive practice of Buddhism; they
demanded doctrinal justification for the superiority
of this practice. Dogen took up this challenge,
lecturing on and discussing the merits of zazen. In
fact, he wrote in Japanese the record of one such
exchange ("Bendowa(1) " or Talk about Undertaking the
Way) and Soto scholars consider this to be the first
chapter of what was to become SBGZ. I personally
consider it to be very important that Dogen himself
did not include this fascicle in his own seventy-five
fascicle edition of SBGZ, that is, I believe a
careful reading of this fascicle reveals it to be the
record of a failure: Dogen simply makes no inroads
into the mind-sets of his audience. Confronted with
their skepticism about the centrality of zazen, Dogen
tried several kinds of arguments as recorded in the
fascicle. For example, he tried to appeal to
scriptural authority (zazen is the only practice
performed by all the great Buddhas in history). He
also tried an appeal to the authority of his own
transmission, but this is countered (in the fourth
question) by a skeptical historian who points out
that Dogen diverges from the Tendai, Kegon, and
Shingon traditions. Almost in desparation we see
Dogen say that the ultimate source of the Buddha-way
is not a historical transmission but rather the very
things experienced in this world: the weeds, flowers,
mountains, and water. As we shall see, this is a

foreshadowing of the new approach that Dogen would
eventually take. In "Bendowa" however, its
significance is not yet recognized.

Against this basic background, the philosophical
project of SBGZ may be summarized in the following
way. Dogen considers himself a traditionalist, that
is, he does not see any opposition between his own
view and that of the major Buddhist sutras and
commentaries. Rejecting the notion of the historical
degeneration of the Buddha-dharma (the theory held by
the "mappo(m)" proponents), Dogen merely claims that
many of the key expressions of Buddhism have been
subject to gross misinterpretation. Hence, the
classical expressions of Buddhism are complete!v
true, not merely "conventionally true" or
"pragmatically helpful but ultimately inadequate."
Dogen sees one of the most important confusions about
interpreting Buddhist teachings to be in terms of the
meaning of "dharmas." Too often, Dogen maintains,
dharmas (things) are taken to be static, hypostasized
entities often having a quasi-metaphysical status.
Actually, though, dharmas are more like experiential
units or things-as-experienced. To assert or
speculate about any reality behind these
things-as-experienced is to take Buddhism out of its
own field of discourse. The implication of Dogen's
standpoint is that many statements that have been
misunderstood as having metaphysical significance are
actually descriptive statements about experience.
Hence, the Kegon (Hua-yen) and Tendai (T'ien-t'ai)
statements about the interpenetration of dharmas, for
example, are not statements about "things" but rather
are statements about "things-as-experienced." In
other words, the expressions of those schools are not
metaphysical at all; rather they are descriptions of
human experience.

But whose experience is being described--the
enlightened person's or the deluded person's? Here is
the crux of Dogen's position. As we noted earlier,
Dogen does not want to maintain that there is any
ultimate difference between cultivation (shu(n)) and
authentication (sho(o) ) or between original and
acquired enlightenment. Hence, Dogen would not want
to say that he is describing "Zen consciousness" or
"enlightened consciousness" to the exclusion of
"ordinary consciousness." Fundamentally, our
experience as experienced is not different from the
Zen master's. Where we differ is that we place a
particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that
experience and then proceed to make an emotional
investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in
and of itself rather than to be an "expression"
(dotoku(p)) of the "occasion" (jisetsu(q)) in which
we think or talk about the given experience. In a
sense, we have a double layered description. First,
there is the prereflective, not yet conceptualized,
experience--what we all share, Zen master and the
rest of us alike. Second, there is the expression or
characterization of any experience within a
particular situation or occasion. If the speaker
brings no personal, egotistic delusions into this
expression, the occasion speaks for itself, the total
situation alone determines what is said or done.
Thus, in the case of the Zen master, what-is-said is
simply what-is. In the case of the deluded person,
however, the "what-is" includes his excess concep-

p. 360

tual baggage with its affective components, the
deluded ideas about the nature of "self," "thing,"
"time," and so on that constitute the person's own
particular distortion of what actually is. Hence,
throughout SBGZ Dogen investigates the nature of
human experience and challenges the reader to observe
personally whether his experience is actually the way
it is normally characterized to be. For example, in
the "Uji(r)"' (Being-time) fascicle, Dogen points out
that most people think of time as "flying away."
Dogen then asks us to investigate our experience.
Does time really fly away? If it did, there would be
a gap between ourselves and time, between things and
time. Yet, we actually experience ourselves as time
and things as time. Hence, the idea that time flies
away must be based on self-delusion: misled by a
metaphor that points to one small aspect of
time-consciousness, we have convinced ourselves that
we experience something that we have not really
experienced at all. This does not imply that there is
one and only one correct characterization of a
particular thing. For example, as Dogen points out in
the "Genjokoan(s)" fascicle, the ocean is a different
thing-as-experienced to a fish swimming in it, to a
deva looking at it from heaven and to a man in a
boat. The occasion or situation is different in each
case, so the "ocean" is legitimately characterized
respectively as a "jeweled palace," a "necklace," and
a "great circle." That is to say, the occasion
determines the perspective that any given expression
will take. In short, the meaning of an expression
always has a contextual dimension, Consequently,
Dogen frequently analyzes the classical Zen koans
from the contextual point of view since the situation
in which something is said is crucial to
understanding what is being said.

Can we talk at all about that which is
independent of situation or perspective? For the
fish, the deva, and the person, is there anything in
common about ocean-as-experienced? Yes, for all of
them, it is simply "the presencing" (genjo(t)). To
ground one's experience in this prereflective
experience is the key to Zen practice and therefore
the essence of enlightenment as well; to experience
this presencing is to focus all of one's energies.
Hence, Dogen says presencing is a "koan(u)." It is a
"koan" in two senses. First, it is a situation that
cannot be fathomed through discursive thinking (so it
is a "koan" in the sense emphasized by the Rinzai
tradition). Second, it is a "ko-an," that is, a
situation in which each thing presences publicly in
its own appropriate way. To speak of this "genjokoan"
in an adverbial sense, one can use an expression like
"as-it-is" or "being such" (the correct translation
for "immo(v)" -- often rendered inappropriately by
the nominalized, metaphysical sounding word
"Suchness"). In yet another way of getting at this
same point, Dogen implies (especially in his
"Buddhanature" fascicle) that an interrogative is
both the question and the answer. If we wish to speak
independently of any perspective, the proper answer
to "What?" is "The what." The proper answer to "How?"
is "How." Independent of situation, occasion, or
context, nothing more can be said. For example, when
I earlier asked the reader to characterize what was
in front of him (a

p. 361

journal article? a page with printer's ink on it? a
paperweight? ) , the only appropriate answer
independent of any context would be
"the-what-is-in-front-of me," or "presencing," or
"its being such as it is." To say anything more would
introduce one particular context that makes that
object meaningful. Of course, such almost
tautological expressions tell us little about the
nature of the world, but independent of any
situational context, there is no world to talk about.
These expressions refer us to the preconceptualized
experience out of which we develop our idea of the
world. Like Dewey, Dogen would deny that the world is
something "antecedently real."(3)

This then is Dogen's basic philosophical project
in SBGZ. He seems to develop this project first in
his fascicle "Genjokoan," and, importantly, in his
own version of SBGZ, Dogen places that fascicle in
the first position. Throughout SBGZ Dogen raises very
basic questions about the nature of experience and
our attempts to characterize and understand it. Many
of the individual fascicles take up one particular
topic such as Buddha-nature, (being-) time, good and
evil, and so on. In almost all cases, Dogen refers to
expressions recorded in the various Buddhist
classics. Each expression has to be understood in its
context, every drop of meaning has to be squeezed out
of the phrases before Dogen continues. Often this
involves highly unorthodox interpretations of Chinese
quotations, but Dogen would maintain that he is only
discovering deeper meanings of terms that were
already implicitly there. The "argument" to which
Dogen most frequently resorts is simply an appeal to
the reader's own experience. Of course, the points
Dogen makes will be most clear to the reader who is
deeply involved in Zen meditative practice, but this
is not because the practice gives the reader
something extra (such as transcendent experience, for
example). Rather the meditative experience in its
purely prereflective form is what is most fundamental
in all experience. It is, in fact, the pure
experience of presencing. Therefore, the Zen
practitioner is acutely aware of just how experience
takes shape prereflectively, of how context becomes
formulated, of how we can let the context express
itself or how we can introduce personal selfdelusions
into our reflections. Thus, through Dogen's analysis
and through our use of the zazen experience as a
touchstone, we can discover the suppositions hidden
within our philosophical understanding of the world,
see how those suppositions arise and thereby evaluate
whether they are valid or the products of delusion.
This is the ultimate justification for Dogen's
emphasis on "just sitting" (shikantaza(w)).

THE FIRST GENERATION OF DOGEN SCHOLARSHIP IN ENGLISH

English translations and commentaries dealing
with Dogen's SBGZ have been rather slow in
developing, especially if we compare them with the
output of materials dealing with Chinese Ch'an
Buddhism or the Japanese Rinzai tradition. The
progenitors of the recent works which will occupy our
main interest deserve some mention and evaluation
here. In order of appearance, the two

p. 362

major ground-breaking efforts were Masunaga's Soto
Approach and Kennett's Selling Water. We will also
consider here the brief treatments in Dumoulin's
History and Kapleau's Three Pillars. An important
point to bear in mind here is that three of these
pioneers in Dogen studies were primarily interested
in Zen practice. Kennett and Kapleau were (and are)
practicing Zen masters, while Masunaga is a devout
Soto scholar, who is seriously interested in the
transmission of Soto Zen to the West. Hence, the
first introduction of Dogen to the West was primarily
a nonphilosophical one and, of the three figures just
mentioned, only Masunaga could be classified as
having any "scholarly" interest at all. Let us begin
with a discussion of his book.

Masunaga explicitly states that Dogen's
intellectual depth is an antidote to claims that Zen
and philosophy are mutually exclusive. On the second
page of his Preface he writes: "His [Dogen's]
philosophic depth should help dispel the
often-encountered Western view that Zen is
mysticism." The book begins with an outline of some
of the historical and doctrinal background of Zen
Buddhism. Much of this material has been superseded
by Dumoulin's more extensive treatment and since
Masunaga's book is out-of-print, there is little
point here in discussing what issues require further
elaboration or clarification.

Here we are most interested in Masunaga's
contributions to our understanding of Dogen. After
the introductory material, Masunaga includes
translations of some of Dogen's writings including
four fascicles belonging to the larger (official Soto
sect) edition of SBGZ, namely, "Uji," "Shoji(x)",
"Genjokoan" and "Bendowa." Also of noteworthy
importance is a chapter concerning Dogen's
understanding of time. In that chapter Masunaga tries
to make his claim for Dogen's philosophical
profundity, therein making some passing comparisons
with Heidegger, Bergson, and Augustine. Although his
exposition lacks depth in some respects, it does
serve at least as a hint to the philosophical riches
to be found in Dogen's SBGZ. Masunaga's explanation
is clear and straightforward and, copious English
misspellings and typographical errors
notwithstanding, it is quite intelligible even to a
reader unfamiliar with the literature. Masunaga's
book was an important first step not only in Dogen
studies, but in Zen studies in general, since it was
a signal to Western readers that Zen Buddhism does
have an intellectual fabric and that all the
prevalent discussion of "nothingness" so popular at
the time was as if people were trying to discuss the
holes in a piece of lace while ignoring the
surrounding threads that give that emptiness a
"place."

As for Masunaga's translations, they are often
somewhat mechanical and they certainly lack grace and
idiomatic rhythm. It seems that Masunaga's intention
is to make a straightforward, but not literal,
translation. That is to say, he simply seeks to
render Dogen's thought directly into English while
omitting the specialized vocabulary of the original.
On these terms, he succeeds well enough, especially
when we take into consideration the fact that he had
virtually no previous translations to which he could
refer. In general, though,

p. 363

we would have to say that his pioneering work has
been superseded by those who followed him. This, I
suspect, would make Masunaga himself quite pleased
since it vindicates his early appraisal of the
potential interest in Dogen among Western readers.

Since Kennett's book has recently been reissued,
it has more than simple historical interest to us
here. In all, Kennett translates ten fascicles of
Dogen's writings plus "Shushogi(y)," a compilation of
quotations from SBGZ compiled in the nineteenth
century as guidelines for the Soto Zen laity.
Although her three-page introduction implies that all
eleven selections are from SBGZ, only four in fact
are. Interestingly, these four are precisely the same
four included by Masunaga so that we can probably
assume that Kennett took advantage of the presence of
the previous translation work. It might be noted as
well that Masunaga had also translated "Shushogi."
The other selections in Kennett are writings that
deal mainly with the rules and regulations of
monastic life or with practical advice about living
the Zen way. Again, as in the case with Masunaga, we
are here interested primarily in the SBGZ selections
since they have the most philosophical value.

As we might expect from a translator whose native
language is English, Kennett's translations read much
more smoothly than do Masunaga's. This readability is
further enhanced by the fact that line-for-line
literalness is not even attempted. As Kennett herself
advises us (p. 86), she is primarily interested in
communicating the spirit, not the letter, of Dogen's
writings. This does not mean that she will take
liberties with the text but only that she will
simultaneously interpret as well as translate. It
also seems to me that Kennett-roshi did not immerse
herself in the extensive Dogen scholarship available
to her in Japanese, but the point, I take it, is that
she will take advantage of her unique insight as a
Zen master. The end result is that sometimes she
does, as I see it, miss the point of a particular
reference that Dogen makes or she will overlook a
philosophically important distinction in deference to
a point that has more relevance to practice. Yet,
sometimes a particularly abstruse passage comes to
life under her insight; I would not say that her
translations are always faithful to the letter of the
text, but they are sometimes very helpful in
reminding us to look at the forest as well as the
trees. After all, the practical side of Dogen is
always there in the text alongside the philosophy.
Without having to be encumbered by scholarly
apparatus, Kennett is free to keep her focus on the
spiritual point of SBGZ, namely, that we must
reencounter the very ground of our own experiencing
process. However inadequate they may be from a
strictly scholarly perspective, Kennett's
translations do suggest some of the vitality and
poignancy of the original. That is a contribution
that we must not undervalue.

In his History, Dumoulin has a chapter devoted to
a study of the place of Dogen in the development of
Zen Buddhism. In accordance with the title of his
book, Dumoulin is primarily interested in historical
issues and about half

p. 364

of the chapter on Dogen deals with biographical
information. In the second part of the chapter,
Dumoulin makes some observations about Dogen's
philosophical perspective, displaying therein a sound
general knowledge of some of Dogen's more important
ideas. My only criticism of Dumoulin's treatment is
in terms of his choice of words such as "Dogen's
metaphysics," "transcendence," and "monism." As I
have tried to indicate at the outset of this review,
I feel the thrust of Dogen's thought is precisely
against such a metaphysical understanding of Zen.
Despite this weakness, Dumoulin's account was
successful in reaffirming the fact that, in the case
of Dogen at least, Zen Buddhism and philosophy are
not necessarily mutually exclusive.

In Kapleau's book, we find a brief mention of
Dogen and a translation of part of the SBGZ fascicle,
"Uji" ("Being-Time"). Though Kapleau himself makes no
additional contribution to the Dogen scholarship
available already at that time, his recognition of
Dogen's intellectual profundity was important
historically in making Dogen's name at least better
known to Westerners interested in Zen. The
translation itself is very clear, but the text and
notes make no attempt at reflecting any of the
philosophical nuance of the original.

RECENT TRANSLATIONS OF SBGZ

First let us consider the Nishiyama/Stevens
translation. That someone is finally attempting to
translate the complete SBGZ is indeed a good sign for
the future of Dogen studies in the West.
Unfortunately, I doubt that this particular
translation will stand for a long time. Part of the
problem with this book is that its editorial
sloppiness will scare off anyone who demands minimal
scholarly standards. For example, two sentences after
the writers advise us that they will use the
diacritical marks (p. xxii), they make their first
mistake: having praj~na for praj~naa. On the same
page, they make their first mistake with a Japanese
romanization, leaving the macron off of kuu(z). The
compilers of this volume also have a proclivity for
getting Dogen scholars' names wrong, even when the
correct readings of the names are given in the back
page of the books cited. Hence, in the
Acknowledgments we find Doshu Okubo for Okubo Doshuu,
Soichi Nakamura for Soichi Nakamura, Benyu Masutani
for Fumio Masutani, and Kenchin Takahashi for
Masanobu Takahashi. Another disturbing editorial
problem is hinted at in this excerpt from the
Translators' Note (p. xxii):

Consequently, while much of this translation
follows the original text quite closely, there is
some paraphrase or interpretation of certain passages
in order to make it intelligible to western readers.

In practice this means that some sentences of
SBGZ are skipped entirely or paragraphs are
"paraphrased" into single sentences without any
indication by means of ellipses, brackets, asterisks,
or footnotes. The translators seem to feel this is
justified since it follows the style of Japanese
gendaiyaku(aa) (transla-

p. 365

tions of classical texts into modern Japanese), but
they forget that the gendaiyaku reader usually has
the original text in front of him so he knows what
the modern rendering is attempting to translate or
paraphrase. Furthermore, the criterion for
determining what might be "unintelligible to western
readers" is left unstated, Certainly, it is not only
the presence of Buddhist terms or references to
historical facts. "Paraphrasing" seems to enter in
whenever there are complex passages requiring a
sensitivity to the subtleties of Dogen's thought. I
suspect the translators were often influenced by
their own bewilderment as well as by their compassion
for the Western reader.

Since it is obviously not a scholarly work, how
well does Nishiyama/Stevens serve the general reader?
The book receives very high marks for readability and
even the least experienced reader of Zen materials
should be able to follow at least some of the main
drift of the various fascicles, The price paid for
this premium on readability is lack of nuance, both
linguistic and philosophical. Footnotes are scanty
and are used mainly for giving the dates of
historical figures. Difficult passages are
interpreted in the most straightforward way possible
and we seldom find the insightful interpretative
renderings that occasionally show up in Kennett's
translation, for example. Hence, the primary value of
Nishiyama/Stevens is its potential completeness: we
simply have no other alternative if we wish a
translation of the entire SBGZ.

Though it is also intended for the general
Western audience, Yokoi's book is of a decidedly
different species, He seems to respect the
intelligence of that audience, and he tries to offer
it the basic tools needed in order to see below the
surface of Dogen's writings. The first chapter is a
very brief treatment of Japanese Buddhism in the
pre-Kamakura period. There are some real problems
with this account (Kuukai is treated much too
cavalierly, for example), but at least there is the
attempt to introduce the readers to the historical
context of Dogen's Buddhist thought. In the next
chapter, there is a short discussion of Dogen's life
and an attempt to state some of the general themes in
Dogen's writings. Yokoi lists eleven dichotomies (for
example, self/others, practice/ enlightenment,
time/being) that Dogen's thought tries to overcome
and, as far as it goes, it might be of some help to
the new reader of Dogen, Naturally, I would have
preferred some clearer characterization of the
underlying philosophical structure of SBGZ, but this
would be to ask Yokoi to venture into an area in which
he has no expertise. Yokoi also supplies the reader
with an eighteen-page glossary (Kennett's book also
has a glossary, I might add), but there is neither a
bibliography nor an index, The glossary is helpful,
including terms, persons, places, and names of texts.
This convenient listing allows Yokoi to keep
footnotes to a minimum while still supplying the aids
to the reader who needs them, Although there are a
few technical problems in some entries, the glossary
strikes me as being generally useful for the intended
audience. A couple of points are important enough to
merit discussion here, however. For "dharma" the
glossary only supplies the meaning of "standard"

p. 366

or "universal norm or law." Yokoi's translation also
follows this limited interpretation of the meaning of
"dharma." As I have noted earlier, however, Dogen
often uses the term to mean either "teaching" or
"thing-as-experienced." This specific
misinterpretation also points to another major
limitation of the glossary, namely, the terms are
defined according to their general Buddhist meaning
and Yokoi does not make mention of Dogen's own
particular interpretation. To take the clearest
example, "Buddha-nature" is defined as "the potential
to realize enlightenment innate in all things," yet
as Yokoi must know, Dogen explicitly denies this
interpretation (in his "Buddha-nature" fascicle) and
claims that all of being is Buddha-nature;
Buddha-nature, for Dogen, is not something that
beings have. Hence, I think the glossary could have
been more useful and less misleading if it had also
included references to Dogen's own view on the
meaning of certain key terms.

How good is Yokoi's translation? Basically, I
feel that it is as readable as Nishiyama/Stevens but
it also reveals more subtlety in the translation of
nuance. As far as I could tell in a cursory check,
Yokoi does not delete or paraphrase the original in
the manner followed by Nishiyama/Stevens. This does
not mean that Yokoi's is a literal translation,
however. Often he attempts to convey the spirit
rather than the letter of the original, but he
usually stays within the bounds of interpretative
license. Yokoi does tend to strip Dogen of much of
the more technical vocabulary, but he does so in a
way that would seem beneficial to the novice reader
of such texts. The more serious or more trained
student of Buddhist thought, however, might miss some
of the critical nuances that are lost in such a
translation. Yokoi is not a Dogen scholar nor even a
Buddhist scholar per se, but he does have some
sensitivity to what Dogen is doing and he
communicates very well the understanding that he does
bring to the text. My deepest regret about Yokoi's
translation is in his selection of texts. The
selections are divided into two parts. The first
group consist of three non-SBGZ texts, all of which
are primarily of practical rather than philosophical
import: Fukanzazengi(k) , Gakudoyojinshuu(bb), and
Shushogi(y) . The second group is the so-called
"Twelve-Fascicle SBGZ." Written shortly before
Dogen's death, some of these fascicles, in fact,
received their final editing by Dogen's disciple,
Ejo. Ejo was also the compiler of SBGZ Zuimonki(cc)
("Occasional Lecture Notes on SBGZ"), a series of
conversations between Dogen and his followers
(translated as A Primer of Soto Zen by Masunaga,
Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1971). Like the
Zuimonki text, these twelve fascicles of SBGZ are
practically oriented, emphasizing the proper
attitudes and behavior one should display in living
the Zen life. These fascicles lack the intellectual
power and philosophical depth of Dogen's most
productive period which started with the writing of
"Genjokoan" in 1233 and gradually tapered off around
1244-1245. I think it is rather misleading to claim,
as Yokoi does on p. 67, that the last chapters of
SBGZ to be written represent the "fruition of Dogen's
thought"; certainly, they are not the fruition of his
philosophical

p. 367

thought. Because of Yokoi's selection of texts, I am
hesitant to recommend his book as a student's first
introduction to Dogen. To have an introduction to
Dogen that does not cover the "Genjokoan" fascicle of
SBGZ, for example, seems to me a little too
idiosyncratic. As a supplement for the general reader
who has already read, say, Kennett or Masunaga, the
book has much to recommend it, however.

If one is seriously interested in studying
Dogen's thought and if one is limited to English
translations of his writings, the work of Waddell/Abe
will be greatly appreciated. Over the past few years,
Norman Waddell and Abe Masao have been publishing
careful translations in the Eastern Buddhist,
utilizing commentarial notes that make it possible
for the reader to study, not merely read, Dogen in
translation. These translations have all the
appropriate signs of scholarship: terms are explained
in notes and the original Japanese or Sanskrit is
given for problematic passages. The text is carefully
followed throughout. I would basically classify the
translation as "conservative" in nature, that is, in
difficult sections, Waddell/Abe usually tend to agree
with the most traditional commentaries and the more
prominent gendaiyaku. Occasionally, they will argue
in a footnote that one of the traditional
interpretations is questionable, but usually they
respect the scholarship that has preceded them. The
English is readable, but like any but the most
brilliant of scholarly translations, a little heavy
going at times. I suspect that most readers can only
read through the translation of the text with any
ease after they have gone over it a few times,
digesting the import of the various notes. The
translators set out to make Dogen available to the
non-Japanese reading public; they do not try to make
Dogen any easier to read in English than he is in the
original.

Although in any given paragraph quibbles might be
made about this or that aspect of the translation, I
basically find the Waddell/Abe translations to be
excellent. I have only three suggestions for
improvement. First, the translators could have taken
more of a stand on the general connections among the
ideas found in the various fascicles. For example,
how do they view the apparant discrepancy between the
somewhat static language of "Ikka Myoju(dd)" and the
dynamic language of "Zenki(ee)"? Abe has, in fact,
done this type of holistic interpretation in one
instance, namely, in regard to the "Buddha-nature"
fascicle of SBGZ. Before publishing their translation
of that fascicle, Abe wrote an article about the
general relationship between ideas found therein and
in other fascicles of SBGZ (see Eastern Buddhist IV:
1, "Dogen on Buddha Nature"). Perhaps more of this
type of commentary could be included in the
introductions to the various translations.

My second suggestion is that the translators be a
little more careful in distinguishing whether an
awkwardness in the English is really necessary to
communicating the meaning of the original. For
example, their translation of "Bendowa" begins:

Buddha-tathaagatas all have a wonderful means,
which is unexcelled and

p. 368

free from human agency, for transmitting the wondrous
Dharma from one to another without alteration and
realizing supreme and complete awakening. That it is
only transmitted without deviation from buddha to
buddha is due to the jijuyuu samaadhi, which is its
touchstone.

The scholarly apparatus here also demands seven
footnotes for this passage. Keeping their basic
technical terminology for the sake of comparison, the
passage might have been translated as follows:

Having directly transmitted to each other the
subtle dharma, all Buddha-tathaagatas authenticate
perfect enlightenment. Here is the wondrous art of
wu-wei. Being passed [directly] from Buddha to
Buddha, this [transmission] is undistorted, i.e.,
jijuyuu samaadhi itself is the touchstone.

Though the two translations differ only slightly
in meaning, there is, I feel, an improvement in
fluidity and perhaps even in clarity. Fortunately,
Waddell/Abe only seldom stumble in this way and I
might add that their more recent translations have
tended to overcome such difficulties. Their most
recent effort, "Buddha-nature," must have been the
most challenging for them since the whole fascicle
bears on certain nuances within the differences
between the original Chinese scriptural passages and
Dogen's renderings of them into Japanese. The
sensitive scholarship of Waddell/Abe shines through
very well here.

My third suggestion is that Waddell and Abe
should be wary of the "overmetaphysicalization'' of
Dogen's language. I will illustrate my point by
making reference to the following list of terms from
their translation of "Genjokoan":

Original Term Waddell/Abe
genjo manifesting
meigo(ff) illusion/enlightenment
genjokoan manifestation of absolute reality

After reading several of the Waddell/Abe
translations, a student of mine once wrote: "the
person then overcomes illusion and experiences
directly the manifestation of absolute reality." I
demetaphysicalized the student's comment on Dogen by
writing above his statement: "the person then
overcomes his delusion and experiences directly the
presencing of things-as-they-are.'' My point is that
Dogen does not find any illusion in the world; the
problem is our own selfdelusion. There is no
"absolute" reality; there is only what is. There is
nothing behind this world that is waiting to be
manifested; there is just the presencing of what-is.
Although Waddell/Abe make it clear in their notes
that Dogen does not hold to any theory of absolute,
as opposed to relative, reality, the language of the
translation can still be misleading. Too often, in my
opinion, Waddell/Abe resort to terms that inevitably
conjure up metaphysical theories in Western readers,
terms like "reality," "transcends," and "absolute."
Very often, if not always, a more concrete term can
be used which would better capture Dogen's meaning.

p. 369

With these suggestions noted, I would like to
restate my admiration for the Waddell/Abe
translations. They have indicated that they intend to
publish their translations in book form someday. That
will be a fortunate day in the further development of
Dogen scholarship in English.

THE FIRST BOOK-LENGTH COMMENTARY ON DOGEN

Summarizing the bulk of Japanese scholarship on
Dogen to a Western audience is not an easy task, but
Kim in his Dogen has carried it out very well; in
many respects, unbelievably well. After the
introductory preliminaries, the book has four major
parts. First, there is a fifty-page biographical
sketch of Dogen (chapter 2). Next, there is a
discussion of Dogen's key doctrines (chapters 3 and
4). The final part of the text per se (chapter 5) is
a discussion of the way those doctrines were
interwoven into the structure of the monastic
discipline that has evolved into Soto Zen. In the
back of the book is a rich set of reference
materials: a chronological outline of Dogen's life, a
list of Dogen's major writings with brief descriptive
notes of their contents, a list of the fascicles of
SBGZ in romanized Japanese and in English
translation, forty pages of footnotes to the text, a
bibliography (especially good for listing the major
Japanese works) and a functional index. In many
respects, the book can serve as a reference work as
well as a commentary to be read from cover to cover.
Regrettably, although Kim refers throughout to a vast
array of Japanese terms, there are no characters
either in the text or in the back of the book. Other
than the ideal situation of having the characters for
each term, it might have been most helpful to have a
glossary in the reference section with a listing of,
for example, the hundred most important terms. This
list would also help the novice reader in Dogen to
see which terms are most important.

One problem in using Kim's point-by-point
approach in explicating Dogen's thought is that one
might produce a book that is a goldmine in detail but
poor in overall interpretation or in posing a clear
thesis. Kim only partially succeeds in avoiding this
problem. He succeeds insofar as we get a very
definite sense of Dogen as a historical figure
committed to transmitting a foreign religious
tradition to his own land. We are presented with a
convincing historical character study that explains
why a person such as Dogen, capable of writing with
stunning philosophical acumen, might also spend so
much time and effort in describing the proper modes
of conduct in monastic life (including what the cook
should do with the water after using it to wash the
rice and what should and should not be done while
waiting one's turn in the latrine). Zen Buddhism is a
way of life, and its full picture includes both
behavioral and intellectual discipline in the
atmosphere of overall harmony. The problem is that in
Kim's book we get a clear portrait of Dogen the Zen
master, the founder of Soto Zen, only at the expense
of getting just an outline (and sometimes a blurry
outline) of Dogen the thinker. My point is not to
belittle what Kim has done but only to clarify the
main focus of his project.

p. 370

Nor do I want to leave the impression that Rim's
approach is nonphilosophical in all respects. He
deals with many of Dogen's key concepts in a very
perceptive way. On many points discussed in chapters
3 and 4, Kim's analysis shows a good sense for what
is of philosophical interest, but my uneasiness with
Kim's work as a presentation of Dogen's philosophy is
operative on two levels.

First, Kim does not really come to grips with
Dogen's overall philosophical project in the sense
outlined earlier in this review. Too often the
emphasis is on particular points rather than the
relationship between the various points. When Kim
does address the issue of an overall thematic
interpretation, he offers cryptic characterizations
such as the one in the title, "mystical realist."
Kim's comments on what this species of thinker might
be are not helpful. The lingering impression is that
Kim means something more like "religious realist" or
"contemplative realist." This one example typifies
Kim's own blurriness about the precise sense in which
Dogen is philosophical.

Second, I occasionally disagree with some of the
details of Kim's treatment of specific ideas in
Dogen, but those disagreements are often points of
controversy within Japanese scholarship itself.
Hence, my criticisms are in no way aimed at the
thoroughness of Kim's research. Rather, I feel that
sometimes Kim has not given an interpretation that is
as philosophically satisfying as another might be,
especially when we keep an eye on that overall
philosophical "project" of SBGZ that we have already
discussed. Two specific points of disagreement
involve Kim's treatment of Dogen's idea of time and
his view of ethics.

In respect to Dogen's view of time, the problem
bears essentially on the relationship among three
terms: "uji"(Kim: "existence-time"; Kasulis:
"being-time) , "nikon(gg) " (Kim: "absolute now";
Kasulis: "right-now" or "just-now") and
"kyoryaku(hh) " (Kim: "continuity" or "dynamism";
Kasulis: "ranging"). Kim discusses "uji" first and
makes the universally agreed upon point that Dogen
insists upon the ultimate inseparability between
beings (Kim: "existence") and times (Kim: "time").
That is, we do not experience "time" but rather
"temporal things." The difficulty arises within the
interpretation of the other two terms. If I
understand Kim's view correctly, it is that Dogen
makes the nikon (Kim's metaphysical sounding
"absolute now") primary and that his root idea of
time, therefore, is static. An overlay of dynamism
(kyoryaku) is placed on this so that we get a picture
of an absolute, present moment discontinuous with
other moments but which is dynamic within its own
(experiential? ) boundaries. My own interpretation
would argue along different lines. "Uji"
("being-time") is the root level characterization of
experience before it has been reflectively analyzed
into parts or perspectively viewed from one's
"situation." Rather than making any primacy claim
between nikon ("right-now") and kyoryaku ("ranging"),
Dogen sees the two as interdependent yet mutually
exclusive, that is, they represent two different ways
of reflecting on the nature of lived time. The first,
the "right-now"

p. 371

chatacterization, is adequate for capturing the
fundamental sense of "being-time" in which what-is is
"now." This supports the traditional Zen emphasis on
the presently experienced "moment": the Zen
practitioner immerses himself in the experience as
given without letting it be colored by expectations
or past conditioning. This is only half the story of
uji, however. From another perspective, time presents
the profile of "ranging" or "flowing." As Kim points
out, this is not simply a temporal movement from past
to present to future; Dogen explicitly states that
future ranges into past, as well as past into present
and present into present. I see this as time's coming
to bear on and within experience, that is, the now is
not isolated (as "right now" implies) but it is the
axis of the confluence of events. While the concept
of "moment" is a further, secondary reflection on
"right-now," the secondary reflections on "ranging"
might include eschatological time in one direction
and historicity in the other. In comparison with
Kim's interpretation, this view has the advantage of
being able to account both for the emphasis on the
"now" in Zen as well as for the acceptance of karmic,
moral continuity (for Dogen's discussion of the
latter, see, for example, his fascicle SBGZ
"Jinshin'inga(ii) , " ("Deep Faith in Cause and
Effect").

One further example of the type of disagreement I
have in the detail of Kim's presentation is his
treatment of the moral dimension of Dogen's writings.
In particular, Kim's treatment of the SBGZ
"Shoakumakusa(jj)" fascicle is incomplete. This is
partly, I think, because Kim treats it in his chapter
on "monastic asceticism'' (chapter 5) rather than in
the more doctrinal and philosophical discussions of
chapters 3 and 4.(4) The key issue, which is not
discussed by Kim, is that Dogen claims the phrase
"shoakumakusa" can be understood in different ways.
When first heard, it tends to assume the force of an
imperative ("do no evil"); later it has the force of
an indicative description ("[The state of mind is
such that] no evil is produced"); finally, it is seen
to be partially redundant and one arrives at a still
more pithy description of true mind, namely,
"nonproduction." The manner in which one
interpretation of the phrase leads to another is too
complex to explicate here, but the remarkable point
of Dogen's analysis is that each interpretation is,
when made, true. Furthermore, there is no claim here
about levels of truth, that is, later interpretations
are not "higher" truths. Dogen maintains that such
traditional phrases as "shoakumakusa" are authentic
"expressions" (dotoku) that structure one's
discipline. Since each interpretation at the time of
its occurrence is the total involvement of the
person--the full realization of what he is at that
time, in that situation -- each interpretation is
fully "true." This is central to Dogen's
philosophical framework: the question is never
answered; the questioning process itself (what
does that mean? what am I ?) is the "answer." Since
enlightenment is the living through of the personal
questioning, Dogen has again shown us that
cultivation (practice) is not separate from
authentication (realization). My criticism against
Kim is simply that he does not show how

p. 372

Dogen's view of good and evil is again at the heart
of the philosophical project to which I keep
referring. It is one thing to discuss the practical
aspect of Dogen's ideas; it is another matter to
reduce, as Kim does in this one instance, a
philosophical theory to a comment on"monastic
asceticism."

The final point about Kim's book that I would
like to make is to commend him for the rich selection
of excerpts from SBGZ sprinkled throughout his book.
In general the translations are accurate and can be
trusted. The only danger here is the same danger
encountered whenever one excerpts passages out of
context, that is, the reader may be misled by a
particular quote precisely because the context is not
given. Kim tries to reduce the possibility of this by
discussing much of SBGZ on a fascicle by fascicle
basis. This helps the contextual problem for the
translated excerpts but, of course, it exacerbates
the problem of Kim's lack of an overall, thematic
interpretation of Dogen's philosophical project.

CONCLUSION

Although there is still a need for a more
philosophical treatment of Dogen, much progress in
Dogen studies has been made in recent years. English
readers now have available to them a couple of
collected selections from SBGZ, including the very
scholarly approach of Waddell/Abe. For the more
serious student of Dogen's Zen, there is also the
excellent introduction to Dogen's thought supplied
through the careful scholarship of Hee-Jin Kim. In
Kim's book, the student can find not only the wisdom
of Dogen himself, but also a hint at the rich
scholarship in Japan that has made Dogen so
influential in modern-day Japanese philosophy.

NOTES

1. In regard to the perlocutionary force of Zen
statements, see Henry Rosemont, Jr., "The Meaning
Is the Use: Koan and Mondo as Linguistic Tools of
the Zen Masters," Philosophy East and West 20, no.
2 (April, 1970).
2. In the materials reviewed, approach (a) is
represented by Kennett and Kapleau, (b) by
Dumoulin and Kim (chapter 2) and (c) by Kim (in
chapters 3 and 4).
3. See John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty (New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1929), pp. 16-17. For further
comparisons between Zen Buddhism and pragmatism,
see Van Meter Ames, "Zen and Pragmatism, "
Philosophy East and West 4, no. 1 (April, 1954)
and "Zen and American Philosophy," Philosophy East
and West 5, no. 4 (January, 1956).
4. A more philosophical appreciation of this fascicle
is found in Douglas A. Fox, "Zen and ethics:
Dogen's synthesis." Philosophy East and West 21,
no. 1 (January, 1971) . Unfortunately, Fox's
discussion and translations also overlook the
importance of Dogen's alternative interpretations
of the phrase "shoakumakusa."