Master Dogen's Shinji Shobogenzo

by Gudo Nishijima, Michael Luetchford (Editor), Jeremy Pearson (Editor)

301 koan stories collected by Master Dogen during his years in China. Master Dogen used many of these stories as the basis for his formal lectures in his major work, the Shobogenzo; they record conversations between Buddhist masters and their students. Shinji Shobogenzo includes many well known koan stories, with many interesting and less familiar ones, together with the comments of a contemporary Buddhist master renowned for his clear and no-nonsense approach.

Genres: Zen, Buddhism

386 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2003

About the author

西嶋愚道和夫

Reviews

[Lazuli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few other books have felt so deeply human to me

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am digging this a lot, especially the commentaries. I never really grokked the way koans are supposed to give one some mystical insight leading to satori or kensho or whatever one wants to call it. Nishijima shows how they actually can be understood, there's not really anything mystical going on. At least not the way he looks at them.

[Vladislav Ivanishin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nishijima Roshi did an excellent job here. Without his commentary this collection of koans would be rather useless to a western reader (I suspect to any reader at all these days as few people are versed in ancient Chinese Buddhism and those who are probably don't need the commentary).

[Leonhard Schüren · Rating 3 out of 5]

The commentary is useless. Great koan and stories nevertheless.