Readings of Dōgen's "Treasury of the True Dharma Eye"

Columbia Readings of Buddhist Literature

by Steven Heine

The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye ( Shōbōgenzō ) is the masterwork of Dōgen (1200–1253), founder of the Sōtō Zen Buddhist sect in Kamakura-era Japan. It is one of the most important Zen Buddhist collections, composed during a period of remarkable religious diversity and experimentation. The text is complex and compelling, famed for its eloquent yet perplexing manner of expressing the core precepts of Zen teachings and practice.

This book is a comprehensive introduction to this essential Zen text, offering a textual, historical, literary, and philosophical examination of Dōgen’s treatise. Steven Heine explores the religious and cultural context in which the Treasury was composed and provides a detailed study of the various versions of the medieval text that have been compiled over the centuries. He includes nuanced readings of Dōgen’s use of inventive rhetorical flourishes and the range of East Asian Buddhist textual and cultural influences that shaped the work. Heine explicates the philosophical implications of Dōgen’s views on contemplative experience and attaining and sustaining enlightenment, showing the depth of his distinctive understanding of spiritual awakening. Readings of Dōgen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye will give students and other readers a full understanding of this fundamental work of world religious literature.

Genres: Zen, Buddhism, Philosophy

312 pages, Paperback

Published May 12, 2020

Reviews

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steven Heine’s Readings of the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (Columbia University Press, 2020) is a new and essential book any Dōgen reader will want to have at hand. Heine is the director of Florida International University’s Asian Studies program and editor of the Japan Studies Review. He has published five previous books on Dōgen, and is an eminent Zen and Dōgen scholar. His new book is divided into two sections. The first section discusses matters relating to the Shōbōgenzō as text: how and why Dōgen came to write it, the differing versions containing varying numbers of fascicles, how the various versions of the Shōbōgenzō have been treated throughout the history of Japanese Zen, how they are interpreted by modern Japanese and Western thinkers, why the Shōbōgenzō has become increasingly popular in the modern era, and the relative quality of the various English translations. He also extensively discusses the rhetorical method behind Dōgen’s maddening locutions and how they are designed to open us up to the value of coordinating multiple perspectives and apprehend the open-ended nature of enlightenment. I found Heine’s discussion of Dōgen’s unique perspective on kōans to be especially Illuminating.

The second section deals with Dogen’s religious thought and his views on such matters as practice-enlightenment, being-time, thinking non-thinking, the inseparability of delusion and enlightenment, language’s role in revealing aspects of enlightenment, the role of zazen vis-à-vis rituals and other monastic activities, and the increasing importance of karma and repentance in his later writings. Heine’s clarifications are immensely helpful, although they don’t always fully succeed in expressing what is, in some ways, beyond expression. For example, as much as I have read and re-read Dōgen’s Being-Time (Uji) and multiple commentaries on it, and comparisons of it with Heidegger’s views on temporality, etc., I still find I only partially understand how Dōgen understands time, and that Heine’s explanations didn’t really help make things that much clearer for me. This is not really Heine’s fault. He tries as hard as any human possibly can to clarify and explain. And even just getting some of what Dōgen is pointing to is well worth the effort, and is mind-expanding in the very best sense of the word.

This is the single best book I have ever read about the Shōbōgenzō, summarizing a vast amount of Japanese and Western scholarship and decades of immersion in Dōgen’s text and teachings. It is a classic that will be read for many years and will be unlikely to be surpassed in our lifetime. I highly recommend it to all Zen practitioners, whether they are new to Dōgen or “Genzō-ka” (long-term Shōbōgenzō aficionados).

[Loretta]

Good lord, I kept this on my reading shelf for over 3 years. Umm. I started it during a zoom zen retreat in the pandemic days. The retreat was lovely. Dogen is fascinating and hard. Zen is not my comfort zone when it comes to approachable dharma reading. I basically decided last week to finish the long stale books halfway done on my Kobo. I finished it.

I will try Dogen again someday, but this particular text was very academic and just not for me.