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The Zen Master's Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe
Zen Master's Dance makes some of Zen’s subtlest teaching deeply personal and freshly accessible.
Eihei Dogen—the thirteenth-century Japanese Zen Master of peerless depth and subtlety—heard the music of the universe that sounds as all events and places, people, things, and spaces. He experienced reality as a great dance moving through time, coming to life in the thoughts and acts of all beings. It is a most special dance, the dance that the whole of reality is dancing, with nothing left out. All beings are dancing, and reality is dancing as all beings.
In The Zen Master’s Dance, Jundo Cohen takes us deep into the mind of Master Dogen—and shows us how to join in the great and intimate dance of the universe. Through fresh translations and sparkling teaching, Cohen opens up for us a new way to read one of Buddhism’s most remarkable spiritual geniuses.
Eihei Dogen—the thirteenth-century Japanese Zen Master of peerless depth and subtlety—heard the music of the universe that sounds as all events and places, people, things, and spaces. He experienced reality as a great dance moving through time, coming to life in the thoughts and acts of all beings. It is a most special dance, the dance that the whole of reality is dancing, with nothing left out. All beings are dancing, and reality is dancing as all beings.
In The Zen Master’s Dance, Jundo Cohen takes us deep into the mind of Master Dogen—and shows us how to join in the great and intimate dance of the universe. Through fresh translations and sparkling teaching, Cohen opens up for us a new way to read one of Buddhism’s most remarkable spiritual geniuses.
166 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 20, 2020
44 people are currently reading
58 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 3, 2020
This book is transformative. The writing is beautifully poetic, yet clear and concise. I had to re-read the chapter on "Being-Time" along with another translation of Dogen's chapter of that name, but it was well worth the effort and changed my sense of time and existence. One way Jundo Cohen's book affected me was that it made me better appreciate that each moment, event, being, and thing is sacred and connected to everything else. Also, every moment is pivotal to the rest of time and existence and there is always a choice in how each moment is lived. Also, something that I love about Jundo Cohen's approach is the emphasis on experiencing life fully.
August 5, 2021
A wonderful, clear, beautiful and accessible explanation of Dogen and the practice of Shikantaza. Jundo paints his approach of the great Zen master with transparent, culturally relevant and heartfelt words. This is as good as it gets given the nature and emphasis of "non verbal" transmission of Zen in that it centers around a certain spirit encapsulating the sacredness and grandeur of Zazen, in contrast to the ocean of pragmatism and results seeking focus which surrounds modern spiritual advice. This is all the more impressive given the relatively modern and stripped down heritage of the author. I consider it an indispensable companion to practice.
July 6, 2021
Very much in the voice of Jundo that some will love and may grate on others. Jundo's knowledge and interpretation of Dogen makes him accessible to all and that in itself is worthy of great praise. I also found that Jundo's reassurance that much of Dogens writing is hard to understand especially in translation, and yet that does not diminish its value and beauty.
December 15, 2020
A wonderful and sublime introduction to Master Dogen's teachings. Reading Jundo Cohen's book is like listening to music. A must read for those who are interested in Zen.
September 21, 2025
I’ve heard the name Jundo Cohen in Zen circles for years, and associated him with his teacher, Gudo Nishijima. Some time ago, I read a book that the two of them co-authored, A Heart to Heart Talk with Zen Master Gudo. Nishijima is a unique teacher, and I agree with some things he says, other things not so much. I knew that Cohen had an online presence with Treeleaf Zendo, intended as a place for people to practice who don’t have access to a nearby Zen Center. But I hadn’t read his writing.
He caught my attention with, of all things, a post on Facebook, in which he answered a student’s questions about sex and Zen practice.[1] His response, I thought, was lighthearted, funny, and just about perfect; I didn’t disagree with a thing he said. So many Zen teachers get uptight and moralistic when this subject comes up and begin lecturing from on high with no reference to lives as they’re actually lived. Cohen seemed relaxed and down to earth.
I began nosing around on the internet and found various articles he’s written, including a whole slew on the Tricycle website.[2] Like Nishijima (and Nishijima’s teacher Kodo Sawaki), Cohen is an unabashed proponent of shikantaza, the zen of just sitting. When Dogen came back from China and wrote Bendowa and Fukanzazengi, he stated that zazen was a universal practice, suitable for everyone. His life and the political situation later made him a proponent of monastic practice, but I think he got it right the first time. If laypeople can spend twenty minutes a day chanting the Nembutusu or Myo ho ren ge kyo, they could just as easily sit zazen. It doesn’t require a monastery. It just requires a butt and a place to put it.
Cohen has the same attitude. Though he himself is a priest, the clergy in his lineage don’t make much of all the priest craft, or of the distinction between the priests and others. Sawaki and Uchiyama—teachers of the lineage Nishijima was in—faced the wall for zazen, and their services didn’t include bowing and chanting. They devoted themselves to zazen, where everyone is equal.
As a man who has lived in Japan for many years and works as a Japanese translator, Cohen is not afraid to take on Dogen. He actually makes sense of him. He believes Dogen wrote about Zen the way (hold on to your hats) John Coltrane played the saxophone, that a lot of the time he was doing variations on a theme and not worried about making rational sense. (It’s a good thing, because rational sense he did not make. And pardon me, but I’d rather listen to Coltrane than read Dogen.)
You can see Cohen’s down-to-earth attitude when he speaks of the Buddha’s enlightenment, which most writers make into a mysterious event:
“Long ago, Sakyamuni Buddha tried all kinds of practices and all manner of intense meditations in order to find true peace and wholeness in his heart. He tried deep meditations leading to radically altered states of consciousness. He pursued philosophical and intellectual understanding. He even starved himself, trying to punish his body in order to find freedom. But then one day, after all those many years of effort, the Buddha-to-be sat cross-legged under a tree. He saw the simplicity and completeness of the morning star rising naturally on the distant horizon and gave up all fighting, striving, and resistance. He realized that the star, the world, and himself [sic][3] were just what they were, whole and complete. In that moment, he was freed of the need to fight or to run toward his desires and away from his aversions. He put aside all judgments and accepted the world on its own terms. In doing so, the hard borders and feelings of separation and alienation between him and all his life softened and dropped away. Thus he experienced an abiding wholeness and peace. He remained in this world with all its divisions, complications and troubles, yet also saw through them into wholeness.”
The Dogen fascicles that Cohen translates and comments on in this book are the classic ones, the heart of Dogen’s writing: Fukan Zazengi, Genjo Koan, Zanmai-O-Zanmai, Ikka Myoju (One Bright Pearl), Uji, and Shoji and Zenki. I personally like the first two and the last two, places where Dogen speaks most practically; I inevitably get lost in a piece like Uji, where Dogen presents his view of time and eternity. I’m more interested in the practice than in the discoveries it leads to.
Essentially, Cohen sees the Buddhist path (in the metaphor of the large book, he calls it How to Dance) as twofold:
“The first step is no step, sitting upright and very still. This is zazen, seated Zen, in which we assume a balanced and stable posture, breathe deeply and naturally, and just sit. . . . we let go of tangled thoughts and judgments as best we can. . . . We sit in equanimity, beyond judging good or bad, with a sense that this sitting is the one and only act that needs to be done in this moment.
“Master Dogen’s next lesson is the sacredness of all things and activities. Getting up from the sitting cushion, we return to a life of goals and tasks . . . Master Dogen said we should not separate life and practice, but instead see everything and all moments as sacred practice.”
That, to me, is a simple and effective prescription for how to live one’s life. It isn’t just for medieval Japan, where you poured the water back into he stream after using it and made sure you had enough mud balls before you went to the outhouse. It works just as well right now, when we pour water down the drain and make sure we have toilet paper.
As for Being-Time, that devilishly difficult piece about which whole books have been written (I’ve read one), it comes down to holding two things in the mind at once: seeing each moment as entirely itself, not to be compared with any other (when you are, for instance, and arthritic and sometimes befuddled 76-year-old, don’t compare it to the good old days when you were supposedly happier—you weren’t—but completely accept being 76 and arthritic and befuddled, because that’s the moment you’re in); and realizing, at that same time, that each moment of your life includes every other moment, not only of your own life, but of all human history (people speak of my past lives, but in what way, exactly, is it yours. Your present life isn’t even yours).
Cohen actually takes on Dogen’s more annoying statements, like when he says that not only does time flow from the past to the future, it also flows from the future to the past (when I read that I wanted to say, C’mon, man. Be real). But as Cohen points out, what about a situation where you thought one thing happened, and years later you discover that you had the facts wrong and something completely different happened? The person you thought you were dealing with wasn’t that person at all. Isn’t that the future flowing into the past?
Makes sense to me. Dogen actually makes sense. Can this be?
Jundo Cohen thinks so.
[1] You can see this post here https://www.facebook.com/jundo.cohen by scrolling down to February 15th.
[2] https://tricycle.org/author/jundocohen/
[3] That word should be “he,” but I’ll allow Cohen one grammatical slip. He generally writes well.
www.davidguy.org
He caught my attention with, of all things, a post on Facebook, in which he answered a student’s questions about sex and Zen practice.[1] His response, I thought, was lighthearted, funny, and just about perfect; I didn’t disagree with a thing he said. So many Zen teachers get uptight and moralistic when this subject comes up and begin lecturing from on high with no reference to lives as they’re actually lived. Cohen seemed relaxed and down to earth.
I began nosing around on the internet and found various articles he’s written, including a whole slew on the Tricycle website.[2] Like Nishijima (and Nishijima’s teacher Kodo Sawaki), Cohen is an unabashed proponent of shikantaza, the zen of just sitting. When Dogen came back from China and wrote Bendowa and Fukanzazengi, he stated that zazen was a universal practice, suitable for everyone. His life and the political situation later made him a proponent of monastic practice, but I think he got it right the first time. If laypeople can spend twenty minutes a day chanting the Nembutusu or Myo ho ren ge kyo, they could just as easily sit zazen. It doesn’t require a monastery. It just requires a butt and a place to put it.
Cohen has the same attitude. Though he himself is a priest, the clergy in his lineage don’t make much of all the priest craft, or of the distinction between the priests and others. Sawaki and Uchiyama—teachers of the lineage Nishijima was in—faced the wall for zazen, and their services didn’t include bowing and chanting. They devoted themselves to zazen, where everyone is equal.
As a man who has lived in Japan for many years and works as a Japanese translator, Cohen is not afraid to take on Dogen. He actually makes sense of him. He believes Dogen wrote about Zen the way (hold on to your hats) John Coltrane played the saxophone, that a lot of the time he was doing variations on a theme and not worried about making rational sense. (It’s a good thing, because rational sense he did not make. And pardon me, but I’d rather listen to Coltrane than read Dogen.)
You can see Cohen’s down-to-earth attitude when he speaks of the Buddha’s enlightenment, which most writers make into a mysterious event:
“Long ago, Sakyamuni Buddha tried all kinds of practices and all manner of intense meditations in order to find true peace and wholeness in his heart. He tried deep meditations leading to radically altered states of consciousness. He pursued philosophical and intellectual understanding. He even starved himself, trying to punish his body in order to find freedom. But then one day, after all those many years of effort, the Buddha-to-be sat cross-legged under a tree. He saw the simplicity and completeness of the morning star rising naturally on the distant horizon and gave up all fighting, striving, and resistance. He realized that the star, the world, and himself [sic][3] were just what they were, whole and complete. In that moment, he was freed of the need to fight or to run toward his desires and away from his aversions. He put aside all judgments and accepted the world on its own terms. In doing so, the hard borders and feelings of separation and alienation between him and all his life softened and dropped away. Thus he experienced an abiding wholeness and peace. He remained in this world with all its divisions, complications and troubles, yet also saw through them into wholeness.”
The Dogen fascicles that Cohen translates and comments on in this book are the classic ones, the heart of Dogen’s writing: Fukan Zazengi, Genjo Koan, Zanmai-O-Zanmai, Ikka Myoju (One Bright Pearl), Uji, and Shoji and Zenki. I personally like the first two and the last two, places where Dogen speaks most practically; I inevitably get lost in a piece like Uji, where Dogen presents his view of time and eternity. I’m more interested in the practice than in the discoveries it leads to.
Essentially, Cohen sees the Buddhist path (in the metaphor of the large book, he calls it How to Dance) as twofold:
“The first step is no step, sitting upright and very still. This is zazen, seated Zen, in which we assume a balanced and stable posture, breathe deeply and naturally, and just sit. . . . we let go of tangled thoughts and judgments as best we can. . . . We sit in equanimity, beyond judging good or bad, with a sense that this sitting is the one and only act that needs to be done in this moment.
“Master Dogen’s next lesson is the sacredness of all things and activities. Getting up from the sitting cushion, we return to a life of goals and tasks . . . Master Dogen said we should not separate life and practice, but instead see everything and all moments as sacred practice.”
That, to me, is a simple and effective prescription for how to live one’s life. It isn’t just for medieval Japan, where you poured the water back into he stream after using it and made sure you had enough mud balls before you went to the outhouse. It works just as well right now, when we pour water down the drain and make sure we have toilet paper.
As for Being-Time, that devilishly difficult piece about which whole books have been written (I’ve read one), it comes down to holding two things in the mind at once: seeing each moment as entirely itself, not to be compared with any other (when you are, for instance, and arthritic and sometimes befuddled 76-year-old, don’t compare it to the good old days when you were supposedly happier—you weren’t—but completely accept being 76 and arthritic and befuddled, because that’s the moment you’re in); and realizing, at that same time, that each moment of your life includes every other moment, not only of your own life, but of all human history (people speak of my past lives, but in what way, exactly, is it yours. Your present life isn’t even yours).
Cohen actually takes on Dogen’s more annoying statements, like when he says that not only does time flow from the past to the future, it also flows from the future to the past (when I read that I wanted to say, C’mon, man. Be real). But as Cohen points out, what about a situation where you thought one thing happened, and years later you discover that you had the facts wrong and something completely different happened? The person you thought you were dealing with wasn’t that person at all. Isn’t that the future flowing into the past?
Makes sense to me. Dogen actually makes sense. Can this be?
Jundo Cohen thinks so.
[1] You can see this post here https://www.facebook.com/jundo.cohen by scrolling down to February 15th.
[2] https://tricycle.org/author/jundocohen/
[3] That word should be “he,” but I’ll allow Cohen one grammatical slip. He generally writes well.
www.davidguy.org
August 30, 2021
In this book Jundo responds to the feeling and imagery in Dogen's work and brings forward how it resonates and makes sense alongside his own feeling and practice, in a way perhaps playing alongside Dogen as another band member playing another instrument in the same band. Or I suppose a better analogy given the title and theme of this book is another dancer in the same dance! This book is valuable to be read alongside other analyses and translations of Dogen, offering fresh and complementary insights.
As a member of Treeleaf.org I have already been benefiting from Jundo's teachings, but all the same I really enjoyed having a selection of his ideas here in book form where they are integrated into a narrative, taking me on a journey. Also I really like books. I am lucky enough that in Treeleaf.org we will be studying this in 'book club' form during Ango, allowing us to bounce our reflections on the book with the author himself. I look forward to reading it again.
As a member of Treeleaf.org I have already been benefiting from Jundo's teachings, but all the same I really enjoyed having a selection of his ideas here in book form where they are integrated into a narrative, taking me on a journey. Also I really like books. I am lucky enough that in Treeleaf.org we will be studying this in 'book club' form during Ango, allowing us to bounce our reflections on the book with the author himself. I look forward to reading it again.
October 18, 2021
Just sit with that subtitle for a moment. By the end of the book you understand he really means it!
I have tried to read Dogen before, with minimal success, so I really appreciated having Mr. Cohen to lead me through it. There were still a couple of fascicles that were impenetrable to me, but he was a great help on the rest. And gave me some optimism that eventually I might get those too.
The chapter I keep coming back to is the one on shikantaza. I've been meditating (in a Rinzai Zen lineage) for several years, but I have to say Dogen & Cohen opened up meditation for me in a brand new way. It doesn't contradict the Rinzai teachings, but it absolutely illuminates them.
I also loved the chapter on "the one bright pearl". What a great teaching on non-duality.
I would read anything else Jundo Cohen writes, whether it's about Dogen or not. I loved hearing his voice as well as Dogen-Zenji's.
I have tried to read Dogen before, with minimal success, so I really appreciated having Mr. Cohen to lead me through it. There were still a couple of fascicles that were impenetrable to me, but he was a great help on the rest. And gave me some optimism that eventually I might get those too.
The chapter I keep coming back to is the one on shikantaza. I've been meditating (in a Rinzai Zen lineage) for several years, but I have to say Dogen & Cohen opened up meditation for me in a brand new way. It doesn't contradict the Rinzai teachings, but it absolutely illuminates them.
I also loved the chapter on "the one bright pearl". What a great teaching on non-duality.
I would read anything else Jundo Cohen writes, whether it's about Dogen or not. I loved hearing his voice as well as Dogen-Zenji's.
October 13, 2023
Dogen revealed and explained
Zen Master Dogen was one of the seminal teachers in the Zen tradition. His work is dense and often difficult to understand. Jundo Cohen has done a great job of bringing Dogen’s ideas into modern terms.
Zen Master Dogen was one of the seminal teachers in the Zen tradition. His work is dense and often difficult to understand. Jundo Cohen has done a great job of bringing Dogen’s ideas into modern terms.
February 7, 2021
Cards on the table, Jundo Cohen is my Zen teacher, so I am already drawn to his style of teaching. However, I am not going to praise a book of his that I don’t think is good. Fortunately, this one is.
Students of Sōtō Zen almost always find the teachings of the Japanese founder of our Zen school, Eihei Dōgen to be wonderful, prosaic, mystical, confusing and impenetrable all at once, especially those works of deep philosophy found in the Shōbōgenzō. We find our way in through repeated exposure to his words and help from teachers and books. However, many of the books on Dōgen are not an easy read and require a certain level of understanding to get much out of them.
What Jundo has done here is exactly what he does in his oral teachings – provide an accessible guide to some key aspects of Dōgen’s teachings without losing any of the power or depth that has stood the test of 750 years. Included in The Zen Master’s Dance are some of the key fascicles of Shōbōgenzō such as Genjōkōan (The Realized Universe), Uji (Being Time), Shōji (Life and Death), Ikka-Myōju (One Bright Pearl) and Zenki (All Functions) as well as Fukan Zazengi (Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen) which was the first piece that Dōgen wrote on returning from his pilgrimage and training in China.
Through these, Jundo sets out how Dōgen views life, Zen practice and the very nature of reality in a way that can be understood by anyone with a small degree of familiarity with Zen Buddhism. He has been teaching Zen for fifteen years at his own Treeleaf Zendo and his experience in dealing with difficult subjects shines throughout this text.
There are other very good books on Dōgen currently available, such as Shohaku Okumura’s Realizing Genjōkōan and Steven Heine’s Readings of Dōgen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. However, from this point on, The Zen Master’s Dance will be the first book I recommend to any Zen student who is interested in getting a foothold in the teachings of Eihei Dogen and understanding the world and practice of Sōtō Zen. Hopefully it will be the first of many that Jundo writes.
Students of Sōtō Zen almost always find the teachings of the Japanese founder of our Zen school, Eihei Dōgen to be wonderful, prosaic, mystical, confusing and impenetrable all at once, especially those works of deep philosophy found in the Shōbōgenzō. We find our way in through repeated exposure to his words and help from teachers and books. However, many of the books on Dōgen are not an easy read and require a certain level of understanding to get much out of them.
What Jundo has done here is exactly what he does in his oral teachings – provide an accessible guide to some key aspects of Dōgen’s teachings without losing any of the power or depth that has stood the test of 750 years. Included in The Zen Master’s Dance are some of the key fascicles of Shōbōgenzō such as Genjōkōan (The Realized Universe), Uji (Being Time), Shōji (Life and Death), Ikka-Myōju (One Bright Pearl) and Zenki (All Functions) as well as Fukan Zazengi (Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen) which was the first piece that Dōgen wrote on returning from his pilgrimage and training in China.
Through these, Jundo sets out how Dōgen views life, Zen practice and the very nature of reality in a way that can be understood by anyone with a small degree of familiarity with Zen Buddhism. He has been teaching Zen for fifteen years at his own Treeleaf Zendo and his experience in dealing with difficult subjects shines throughout this text.
There are other very good books on Dōgen currently available, such as Shohaku Okumura’s Realizing Genjōkōan and Steven Heine’s Readings of Dōgen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. However, from this point on, The Zen Master’s Dance will be the first book I recommend to any Zen student who is interested in getting a foothold in the teachings of Eihei Dogen and understanding the world and practice of Sōtō Zen. Hopefully it will be the first of many that Jundo writes.
April 17, 2021
Jundo is trying real hard to pretend here but only comes off sounding like a drug-addled hippy...not a Zen Master. He makes the usual mistake of assuming that the original Buddha is the founder of the Mahayana. This is incorrect. The Mahayana teachings as engaged in China are derived from the Upanishads. He also assumes that asking why Bodhidharma came from the west is the same as asking 'what is Zen all about'. A critical mistake that would never even get its foot in the door at any traditional temple. The Mahayana teaches that pottery is clay...NOT that clay is pottery. A wave belongs to the ocean...NOT the other way around. Jundo has yet to realize that his own teacher Nishijima was a complete fraud.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews