Carve these words on your skin, flesh, bones, and marrow; on your body, mind, and environs; on emptiness and on form. They are already carved on trees and rocks, on fields and villages.
— Dogen, Sansuikyo (trans. Kazuaki Tanahashi, et al.)
*****
Dipping for the first time into Dogen’s Shobogenzo can be a little like a reader’s first encounters with James Joyce. Although there are some works that seem fairly accessible, like Dubliners or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, others are either a delightful if difficult surprise (Ulysses) or an impenetrable mystery (Finnegans Wake).
Recently someone asked after zazen about how to read Dogen and several suggestions emerged. From “read very slowly, just a phrase at a time” to “let it wash over you like a tsunami.”
Is there any wrong way to read Dogen? Not really. But here are some suggestions that I have found helpful in navigating his often opaque and profoundly moving prose.
1. Start with Fukenzazengi.
Following these brief instructions for practicing zazen (and then practicing zazen) is the best preparation for reading Dogen.
2. Remember the context.
Remember that Dogen is mostly talking to monks in a monastic setting. So not everything applies to you here and now. He can be very prescriptive about very personal activities, like going to the toilet. But you don’t have to take that for gospel, just as you would not want to take all Gospel for gospel. Approach his medieval exhortations with a granary of salt.
3. Read closely, then step away.
There is nothing wrong with close reading, careful reading, scholarly reading that brings all the resources of criticism and philology and philosophy to bear. Kodo Sawaki said that all the commentaries on the sutras are but a footnote to zazen. But footnotes can be helpful. Still, there are limitations imposed on even the most talented linguists by Dogen’s syntax, semantics, and grammar, which are inaccessible to us who are not fluent in thirteenth-century Japanese, as well as to those who are.
4. Triangulate your translations.
Since most of us will not be reading Shobogenzo in the original Japanese, we should not get too attached to words and phrases, even when they sound lovely and touch us deeply. I always try to read anything by Dogen in at least three translations: the most accessible, by Kazuaki Tanahashi and others; the most literal, by Gudo Nishijima and Chodo Cross; and the most explanatory, by Kosen Nishiyama. Since Dogen’s meaning is just beyond the grasp of words (in any language), we should not be too insistent on interpretations or words (in any language).
5. Read with your gut.
My teacher used to say, “Think with the body, act with the brain.” Like hishiryo consciousness, which arises during zazen, called at times “thinking not-thinking,” our experience of Dogen’s texts should not incorporate only the thinking brain (reason, logic, scholarship and such) but also the not-thinking gut (or hara, where spontaneous wisdom resides). This process we might call “reading not-reading.”
6. Consider his fascicles as tapas or mezes, not a feast.
Since we are reading with our gut, we need to remember that one can easily overdose on Dogen. His food for thought is rich and can cause indigestion if taken in large quantities. It does no good to binge and purge on Being-Time. I once had a student who wanted to cover two or three fascicles in a sitting; he soon became a Catholic instead.
7. Back and forth.
Dogen’s syntax is not our syntax. Just as form becomes emptiness and emptiness becomes form, so Dogen’s subjects become predicates and predicates become subjects. So while we can hear “to study the self is to forget the self,” we must also perceive the unheard echo, “to forget the self is to study the self.” Sequence and narrative are our citadels of meaning, but Dogen tears these down because in the dharma there is no north or south (except, evidently, when placing a lavatory: see his toilet training for monks in Senjo). Neither is there forward or backward.
8. Just don’t know.
“I want to understand Dogen” is the eager and admirable intention of the beginner. However, when we give up the search for this chimera of complete understanding, we begin to see how Dogen can help us to understand our own practice, which is a much more helpful result. Dharma gates are innumerable; I vow to penetrate them all. So don’t be afraid to not know when reading Dogen. Like the gateless gates of koans, the wall we face is a mirror as well as a window as well as just a wall. But as Seung Sahn would say, “Just be sure that you don’t know ‘don’t know’!”
9. Allow yourself to be moved emotionally.
Sometimes we bear down so hard on a text with our analytical brains that we forget to be moved by the music and mystery of words (even more magical sometimes in translation). In his Mountains and Waters Sutra (Sansuikyo), Dogen transcends poetry and prose, as well as incantations and allusions, and speaks directly to the psyche. I have been struck dumb by this fascicle without understanding a word of it, yet resonating with its force like a struck drum weeping.
10. End with Fukenzazengi.
In the end, the only validation of our understanding of Dogen (or our knowing not-knowing what he might have been saying) is our experience of zazen. Take your reading to your zafu, not your zafu to your reading. And enjoy.
— Richard Collins
https://learnjapaneseaz.com/