A non-Buddhist translator comments on Zen Master Dogen's "Rules of Sitting-Zen for All"... and thus gropes ineffectually towards non-preaching of the backward step of turning light and shining.
posted by Mike Cross at 12:12 PM
From 1982 to 1997 I worked on the translation of Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, and understood the primary importance in the Buddha's teaching of full lotus sitting. Until 1994 my attitude to this sitting practice could be summed up in the words: "Don't think. Just do it!" Then in 1994 I returned from Japan to England to train to be a teacher of the FM Alexander Technique, and experiences with Alexander work woke me up to the opposite standpoint of "Don't just do. Think it!" Far from smoothing my path, however, Alexander insights (or reactions to them) caused a lot of trouble between me and my aging teacher in Japan. Then in 2008, seeking clearer water further upstream, I found a new lease of life in the extant Sanskrit works of the 12th ancestor in Dogen's lineage -- the great Indian teacher Ashvaghosha.
2 Comments:
I look forward to reading this blog, Mike.
Hi Michael,
I have really appreciated your comments on the Dogen Sangha Blog.
You are the first person from Dogen Sangha to show an openness to what I have been struggling to say about the relevance of Alexander's discoveries. I really appreciate it.
If you are familiar with Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, as I guess you might be, you should know that for Master Dogen "Buddhist scholar" is one of the lowest forms of insult. "Zen fraudster," "Zen bastard," -- anything, please, other than "Buddhist scholar." I never had a ceremony to become a priest in the Soto Sect, but I have shaved my head for 19 years, and I consider myself a monk. I asked Nishijima Roshi about it, and he affirmed that if I have the mind to be a monk, I am a monk, regardless of the lack of ceremony.
I also am fond of the music/poetry of Hank Williams Snr.... Hear that lonesome whipporwill, He sounds too blue to fly. The midnight train is whining low.... Reminds me of very lonely days in Japan, when I working on Shobogenzo, before I met my wife. I gave up a lot for that translation. If people knew what really happened, they might forgive me a little bitterness.
Onward and upward.
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