In the “Twining Vines” (Katto) fascicle of his Shobo Genzo, Dogen retells the story of how Bodhidharma (image), on his deathbed, queried his four disciples as to their understanding. The first three gave verbal answers, to which Bodhidharma replied that they had attained his skin, flesh, and bones, respectively. Eka (Huike), in contrast, simply prostrated himself three times (awkwardly, one imagines, since he was missing an arm) and returned to his place. Commenting “You have got my marrow”, Bodhidharma then annointed him his successor.

Dogen’s point here is that Eka was not being “rewarded” for giving the “right” or “best” answer.

According to the Nishijima/Cross translation, where the name of the chapter is infelicitously rendered as “The Complicated”:

Now, learn in practice, the First Patriarch’s words “You have got my skin, flesh, bones and marrow” are the Patriarch’s words. The four disciples each possess what they have got and what they have heard. Both what they have heard and what they have got are skin, flesh, bones, and marrow which spring out of body and mind, and skin, flesh, bones, and marrow which drop away body and mind. We cannot see and hear the ancestral Master only by means of knowledge and understanding, which are but one move in a go game—not one-hundred-percent realization of subject-and-object, that-and-this.

Leaving aside the stiltedness of the translation, was Dogen really referring to the game of go here? (See another post regarding Dogen and go.) It seems unlikely. The Japanese in question is itchaku-shi (一著å­?). According to John Fairbairn, an expert in archaic Chinese and Japanese, it could “mean one piece, one seed, one son, etc.—or just a pawn = something nugatory”. In other words, a single element, or perhaps “scrap”, which is what I will use below.

The go image is admittedly attractive—comparing our cerebral understanding to one move out of the hundreds that constitute a go game, presumably representing the vast range of types of perception and realization. Unfortunately, it seems that Nishijima/Cross simply invented this.

I would translate this section as follows:

Make no mistake, Bodhidharma meant just what he said: “You have attained my skin/flesh/bones/marrow”. Indeed, everything the four disciples queried by Bodhidharma had either experienced or learned was precisely the skin, flesh, bones and marrow from which body and mind spring forth and drop away. They could not have entered the presence of the venerable master with mere scraps of opinions and logic, for then the question of doing vs. being could not have been adequately illuminated.

Continuing (my translation):

Some may think that some of the four disciples were closer to the truth in their understandings and that Bodhidharma, implying there were degrees of profundity in skin/flesh/bones/marrow or that skin and flesh is more distant from the truth than bones and marrow, recognized Eka’s attainment of the marrow because his understanding was superior. Sadly, however, such people, having yet to learn the ancestors’ way of study, miss Bodhidharma’s true message.

Hee-Jin Kim’s Eihei Dogen, Mystical Realist is a scholarly work by a respected Dogen scholar, placing Dogen’s thought in the context, primarily, of Buddhist philosophy and its history.

I enjoyed the early parts of the book, describing Dogen’s life. Here’s an interesting account of his enlightenment experience:

In 1225, a decisive moment of enlightenment in Dogen’s life came at long last during an early morning zazen session at geango (i.e., the three-month intensive meditational retreat). In the course of mediation, a monk next to Dogen inadvertently had fallen asleep. Upon noticing the monk, Ju-ching thundered at him: “In zazen it is imperative to cast off the body and mind. How could you indulge in slepping?” This remark shook Dogen’s whole being to its very core, and then an inexpressible, ecstatic joy engulfed his heart. In Ju-ching’s private quarters that same monring, Dogen offered incense and worshiped Buddha. This unusual action of Dogen prompted Ju-ching to ask: “What is the incense-burning for?” The disciple exuberantly answered: “My body and mind are cast off!” “The body and mind are cast off” (shinjin-datsuraku), jointed the teacher, “cast off are the body and mind” (datsuraku-shinjin). Thus, Ju-ching acknowledged the authenticity of Dogen’s enlightenment.

I was also interested in Dogen’s visit to my old home town of Kamakura (Wikipedia Wikitravel) during late 1247 and early 1248, where he preached before Hojo Tokiyori (Wikipedia). According to Kim, “there are different speculations as to what Dogen recommended to or discussed with Tokiyori during his stay in Kamakura.” I’d also like know where he stayed: could it have been at Enkakuji, the huge, dignified Rinzai temple in North Kamakura?

I have to admit to most of the rest of this book flying over the top of my head. It’s copiously annotated and clearly authoritative. It’s just that I’m not that interested in Buddhist philosophy—for instance, how Dogen’s concept of Buddha-nature differed from that of some Indian guy from the second century. Here’s a flavor:

Thus, temporal passage in the intra-epochal whole of a realized now, as Dogen saw it, was perhaps best descrbed in terms of the Hua-yen philosophy of simultaneity.

Kim uses his own translations of Shobo Genzo which are, unsurprisingly given his lifetime of Dogen study, superior to virtually all existing published translations. Examples:

As you maintain such efforts throughout the months and years, you further cast off those months and years of efforts (from Dotoku).

Many sages do not realize that “cutting” consists in cutting entwined voines with entwined vines. Nor do they understand entwining entwined vines with entwined vines…a vine seed grows into branches, leaves, flowrs, and fruits that are intertwined in harmony with one another (from Katto).

I can recommend this book, but primarily to those with scholarly aspirations.

Bad breath around the zen center can be a real problem. As Dogen put it in the “Sen-men (washing the face)” fascicle of Shobogenzo:

Monks and lay people throughout the country have terribly bad breath. When people speak from two or three feet away, the stench from their mouth is difficult to bear.

Yes, I know the feeling. Dogen’s solution was the willow twig, a kind of brushing and flossing device combined, traceable back to India. You take a twig about the size of your little finger, chew one end into fine fibers, then use that end to clean your teeth. Specifically, you rub the twig over the front and back of your teeth; wash and rinse; repeat; next polish and wash the base of the teeth, above the gums; then carefully scrape clean the gaps between the teeth; wash again; finally, scrape your tongue three times..

There’s a verse, of course, for before you start:

Holding the tooth cleaner in my hand / May I vow with sentient beings / To attain the right Dharma / and purity spontaneously.

And then one for when you’re done:

Using the tooth cleaner each morning / May I vow with sentient beings / To attain teeth strong enough / to gnaw away all passions.

Dogen was apparently entering a semi-obsessive/compulsive period of his life when he wrote this fascicle. Not only did he counsel disposing of the twig in a particular way after use, but after throwing it away, you were supposed to snap your fingers three times.

In any case, as usual Dogen was far ahead of his time. 750 years later in the west, we’re seeing an strong focus on oral hygiene and a number of new products. My favorite product is the Reach Access Daily Flosser (pictured). My dentist informs me that it may not be quite as effective as using old-fashioned floss you hold between your fingers, but it’s a lot easier to use. (I’ve seen a motorized product as well, but that seems like overkill.)

[Essay on willow twigs by Christine Homitsu White]

Dogen mentions the game of Go exactly once in his writings, in the “Spring and Autumn” fascicle of SBGZ. That’s of deep interest to both go players and Zen students. What did the old geezer have to say?

Maybe that Go is an analogy for englightenment? Sounds promising, and that’s the interpretation of Bill Cobb in his essay Empty Board:

There is good evidence that ancient Chinese and Japanese Zen masters associated playing Go with the experience of enlightenment. The writings of the thirteenth century Japanese Zen master Dogen contain a clear example.

Let’s take a look at this. “Spring and Autumn” is nominally about heat and cold. It starts with a dialog between Tozan (Dongshan) and a disciple, where the disciple asks the master, “When cold or heat comes, how can we avoid it?”, and the master answers, “Why don’t you go where there is no cold or heat?”

Dogen then paraphrases a commentary by Wanshi, a Chinese Zen master from the twelfth century, on the case (my translation):

Discussing this is like two players playing Go, where you’ve got to answer my move if you don’t want to get taken for a ride. You won’t grasp what Tozan is saying until you’ve internalized this.

Wanshi has changed the subject. He is no longer talking about heat and cold—he’s talking about the nature of dialog. He’s saying that dialog, like a game of go, is an interaction between two active players. We must, he tells us, understand the nature of dialog in order to understand this particular dialog between Tozan and the disciple, and by extension the relationship between teacher and disciple. If Wanshi were giving this talk today, he’d probably be using tennis instead of go as an example.

Dogen now comments on the commentary:

Sticking with the go analogy for now, the real question is what’s happening with the two players. The minute you talk about two players playing go, you’ve become a bystander, which is no good because bystanders can’t play go. Playing go means one player and his opponent facing each other, it must be said.

Dogen didn’t like Go, which had a reputation as a gambling game and a waste of time. Far from comparing Go to enlightenment, he didn’t even really like Wanshi’s use of Go in the analogy.

Incredibly, instead of “bystander” Tanahashi has “a handicap of eight stones”, a mistake also found in the Nishijima/Cross rendition, involving the word “hachimoku”, which in this context clearly has the “bystander” meaning (“okame hachimoku”). And instead of “playing go means one player and his opponent facing each other”, Tanahashi gets ultra-creative with “you play Go by yourself; the opponents become one”, which also has no relationship with the original.

What’s really happening here is that in typical Dogenesque fashion, our friendly master is changing the subject once again—this time to the question of involvement, and the way that our language with expressions such as “two players playing go” itself facilitates separation by helping to hide the fact that I myself am one of those two players!

Continuing with my translation:

In addition, though, you should explore Wanshi’s “you’ve got to answer my move” with an engaged mind. Wrap your body around it to study it. “You’ve got to answer my move” is saying that you can never be me. Nor must you skip over his “if you don’t want to get taken for a ride” part.

For “you can never be me”, Tanahashi has “’you’ are not yet ‘you’,” whatever that was supposed to mean.

Cobb now gives an exuberant summary based on the incorrect Tanahashi translation:

Here we have a striking example of the use of Go by ancient Zen masters to explain enlightenment. Dogen speaks of the experience of enlightenment as “dropping off body and mind”, which means losing one’s sense of being a separate being, ultimately distinct from the world and from others. He and Hongzhi are suggesting that playing Go involves this experience of non-separateness.

He goes on:

If you’re curious about what nirvana is like, the next time you start a game take the advice of ancient Zen masters and just play, not trying to do anything else. Let the game “swallow you up.”

But you already get the idea.

The bottom line: Dogen had nothing special to tell us about go or go players. But we can certainly enjoy Dogen’s insights on the relationship between language and subjectivity. And we can remind ourselves of how important it is to get translations right, especially when they are going to be used by other scholars as a basis for further commentary.

(Thanks to John Fairbairn for his help.)