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ZEN MESTEREK ZEN MASTERS 
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Carl
Bielefeldt
 
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Curriculum Vitae 
<a
href="http://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/people/carl-w-bielefeldt/curriculum-vita
e/"
target="_blank">http://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/people/carl-w-bielefeldt/curri
culum-vitae/</a>
<blockquote>
Publications 
Treasury of
the True Dharma Eye: An Annotated Translation of the 75-Fascicle Redaction of the
Shbgenz by Dgen . In preparation. 
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Finding Dgen in
Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End . In Richard Payne, ed.,
Festschrift for Lewis Lancaster (working title). Forthcoming. 
Shbgenz
uji : Being Time. Dharma Eye ( Hgen ) 30
(Autumn, 2012). In press. 
kannon : Avalokitevara. Dharma Eye ( Hgen 
) 29 (Spring, 2012). 
Disarming the
Superpowers: The abhij in Eisai and Dgen. In S. Heine, ed., Dgen:
Textual and Historical Studies , pp. 192-206. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2012. Reprint of Dgen zenji kenky ronsh (2002) article.

shin fukatoku : The Mind Cannot Be Got. Dharma Eye (
Hgen ) 28 (Autumn, 2011). 
muj sepp : The Insentient Preach the Dharma. Dharma Eye
( Hgen ) 27 (Spring, 2011). 
Le Shbgenz
alors et maintenant (The Shbgenz Then and Now). Revue Zen
93 (2010). 
bussh : Buddha Nature (Part 2). Dharma Eye ( Hgen
) 26 (Autumn, 2010). 
bussh : Buddha Nature (Part 1). Dharma Eye ( Hgen
) 25 (Spring, 2010). 
Expedient
Devices, the One Vehicle, and the Lifespan of the Buddha. In J. Stone and S.
Teiser, ed. Readings of the Lotus Sutra . NY: Columbia University Press,
2009. 
On Translation.
Buddhadharma (Fall, 2009). 
henzan : Extensive Study. Dharma Eye ( Hgen 
) 24 (Autumn, 2009). 
jipp : The Ten Directions. Dharma Eye ( Hgen 
) 24 (Spring, 2009). 
rygin : Song of the Dragon. Dharma Eye ( Hgen
) 22 (November, 2008). 
soshi seirai i : The Intention of the Ancestral Master's
Coming from the West. Dharma Eye ( Hgen ) 22 (November,
2008). 
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hotsu bodai shin : Giving Rise to the Mind of Bodhi.
Dharma Eye ( Hgen ) 21 (March 2008). 
hakujushi : The Cypress Tree. Dharma Eye ( Hgen
) 20 (Autumn, 2007). 
butsud : The Way of the Buddha. Dharma Eye ( Hgen
) 19 (March, 2007), pp. 17-27. 
katt : Twining Vines. Dharma Eye ( Hgen )
17 (Spring 2006). 
zanmai zanmai : King of Samdhis Samdhi. Dharma Eye
( Hgen ) 18 (Autumn, 2006). 
Review of Bowring,
The Religious Traditions of Japan 500-1600 ; and Swanson and Chilson, ed.,
Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions . SSJR Bulletin Supplement 2006.

Practice. In D.
Lopez, ed., Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism , pp. 229-244 .
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 
sesshin sessh : Talking of the Mind, Talking of the Nature.
Dharma Eye ( Hgen ) 16 (Autumn, 2005). 
kaiin zanmai : The Ocean Seal Samadhi. Dharma
Eye ( Hgen ) 14 (Summer, 2004). 
Entries on
Buddhism in Japan and Dgen. Encyclopedia of Buddhism. NY: Macmillan,
2003. 
kobutsu shin : The Old Buddha Mind. Dharma Eye (
Hgen ) 13 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 15-18. 
tashin ts : Penetration of Other Minds. Dharma Eye (
Hgen ) 12 (Spring, 2003) pp. 21-27. 
Disarming the
Superpowers: The abhij in Eisai and Dgen. In Dgen zenji kenky
ronsh [Dgen Studies], ed. by Daihonzan Eiheiji Daionki Kyoku
, pp. 1018-1046. Fukui-ken: Eiheiji, 2002. 
sansui ky : The Mountains and Waters Sutra. Dharma Eye
( Hgen ) 9 (2001), pp. 10-17. 
Circumabulating
the Mountains and Waters. Dharma Eye ( Hgen ) 9 (2001), pp.
5-7. 
Sanka suru bukky
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CarlBielefeldt.txt
ni mukete [Toward a Participatory Buddhism]. In Nara and
Azuma , ed., Dgen no nijisseiki [Dgen's Twenty-first Century], pp.
211-232. Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki, 2001. English version published as Toward a
Participatory Buddhism, Mountain Record 21:1 (Fall 2002), pp. 28-39.

Descriptive &
Prescriptive Approaches to the Three Disciplines: A Response to Prof. Ishigami. In
Proceedings of the Conference on Zen and Nenbutsu , Los Angeles: Bukky
Daigaku, 2000. 
Living With
Dgen: Thoughts on the Relevance of His Thought. Proceedings of the Symposium
Dogen Zen and Its Relevance for Our Time , pp. 123-133. Tokyo: Stsh
Shmuch, 2000. 
Zongze:
Principles of Seated Meditation ( Zuochanyi ). In W.T. de Bary and I.
Bloom, eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition , 2nd. ed., vol. 1, pp. 522-524.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. (Originally appeared as appendix to my
Dgen's Manuals of Zen Meditation .) 
Dgen's
Lancet of Seated Meditation . In G. Tanabe, ed., Religions of Japan
in Practice , pp. 220-234. Princeton Readings in Religions .
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. (Earlier version appeared in
Mountain Record 8:2 [summer-fall 1989], pp. 40-50.) 
Shb genz
zazen gi : Principles of Seated Meditation. Zen
Quarterly 11:2-3 (1999), pp. 5-8. 
Kokan Shiren and
the Sectarian Uses of History. In J. Mass, ed., The Origins of Japan's
Medieval World: Courtiers, Clerics, Warriors, and Peasants in the Fourteenth
Century , pp. 295-317. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. 
Soto Zen at the
Beginning of the Twentieth Century. Wind Bell 32:2 (1998), pp. 17-24.

The Mountain
Spirit: Reflections on Reading the Shb genz . In Proceedings of
the International Conference on Korean Sn Buddhism . Seoul: Bibaek Institute,
1998. (Reprinted as The Mountain Spirit: Dgen, Gary Snyder, and Critical
Buddhism, Zen Quarterly 11:1 [1999], pp. 18-24.) 
Commentary on A.
Andrews, Hnen's Journey from the jysh to the Senchakush
.' In Hnen jdoky no sgteki kenky [A
Comprehensive Review of the Pure Land Buddhism of Hnen], pp. 89-92. Kyoto: Bukky
Daigaku, 1998. 
Reading Others'
Minds. In D. Lopez, ed., Buddhism in Practice , pp. 69-79. Princeton
Readings in Religions . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. (Earlier
version appeared in The Ten Directions 13:1 [spring-summer 1992], pp.
26-34.) 
Pgina 4
CarlBielefeldt.txt
A Discussion of
Seated Zen, in D. Lopez, ed., Buddhism in Practice , pp. 197-206.
Princeton Readings in Religions . Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1995. (Earlier version appeared as Enni's Treatise on Seated Zen .
The Ten Directions 9:1 [spring-summer 1988], pp. 7-11.) 
Filling the Zen
Sh: Notes on the Jissh yd ki . Cahiers d'Extrme Asie 7
(1993-94), pp. 221-248. (Reprinted in B. Faure, ed., Chan Buddhism in Ritual
Context , 2003.) 
Review of Gregory,
Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism. Cahiers d'Extrme Asie 7
(1993-94), pp. 446-449. 
Shb genz
eiyaku o kangaeru: kaishaku to hhron ni tsuite
[On meaning and method in translation of the Shb genz ]. St
shh 686 (11/92), pp. 72-75; 687 (12/92), pp. 82-87. (English
translation appeared in Zen Quarterly .) 
Dgen Studies in
America: Thoughts on the State of the Field. Zen kenkyjo nenp 
[Annual of the Zen Research Institute, Komazawa University] 3 (1992),
endmatter pp. 1-17. (Reprinted in Zen Quarterly 4:3 [Autumn 1992], pp.
7-12; and The Ten Directions [fall-winter 1992], pp. 20-24.) 
No-Mind and
Sudden Awakening: Thoughts on the Soteriology of a Kamakura Zen Text. In R.
Buswell and R. Gimello, ed., Paths to Liberation: The Mrga and Its
Transformations in Buddhist Thought , pp. 475-505. Studies in East Asian
Buddhism 7. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992. 
Ten Thousand Ways
to Make a Buddha: Universal and Particular in Dgen's Zen. In The Future of
the Earth and Zen Buddhism , pp. 17-23. Tokyo: Stsh Shmuch, 1991.
(Reprinted in Zen Quarterly 4:2 [Summer 1992], pp. 5-7.) 
Review of Buswell,
The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea. History of Religions
31:2 (11/91), p. 210. 
Review of Dobbins,
Jdo Shinsh: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan. Journal of Japanese Studies
17:2 (Summer 1991), pp. 381-386. 
Review of Kamens,
The Three Jewels. Journal of Religion 71:1 (1/91), pp. 128-129.The Story
of Hui-Neng. Wind Bell 25:2 (fall 1991), pp. 28-34. 
The One Vehicle
and the Three Jewels: On Japanese Sectarianism and Some Ecumenical Alternatives.
Buddhist-Christian Studies 10 (1990), pp. 5-16. 
Review of Tanabe
and Tanabe, ed., The Lotus Sutra in Japanese Culture. Journal of Asian Studies
, 49:1 (2/90), pp. 173-175. (Revised version appeared in Wind Bell 24
[fall 1990], pp. 21-23.) 
Putting the Cart
Pgina 5
CarlBielefeldt.txt
Before the Horse: Reflections on Enni's Treatise on Seated Zen . The
Ten Directions 10:1 (spring-summer 1989), pp. 7-21. 
Dgen's
Manuals of Zen Meditation . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

The Four Levels
of prat tya-samutpda According to the Fa-hua hsan-i .
Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 11:1 (1988),
pp. 7-29. 
Ch'ang-lu
Tsung-tse's Tso-ch'an i and the Secret' of Zen Meditation. In P.
Gregory, ed., Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism , pp. 129-161.
Studies in East Asian Buddhism 4. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986.

Recarving the
Dragon: History and Dogma in the Study of Dgen. In W. LaFleur, ed., Dgen
Studies , pp. 21-53. Studies in East Asian Buddhism 2. Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1985. 
Annotated
translation of Yanagida Seizan, The Li-tai fa-pao chi and the Ch'an
Doctrine of Sudden Awakening. In W. Lai and L. Lancaster, ed., Early Ch'an in
China and Tibet , pp. 13-49. Berkeley Buddhist Studies Series 5. Berkeley:
Asian Humanities Press, 1983. 
Review of
Collcutt, Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval
Japan. Journal of Asian Studies 41:4 (8/82), pp. 841-843. 
Review of Kodera,
Dgen's Formative Years in China. Journal of Asian Studies 40:2 (2/81),
pp. 387-89. 
Abstracts of
Japanese articles on Buddhist studies. Revue Bibliographique de Sinologie
12-13 (1980), entries 936, 941. 
Dgen's Shb
genz sansuiky . In M. Tobias and H. Drasdo, ed., The Mountain Spirit
, pp. 37-49. New York: Overlook Press, 1979. (Reprinted in Mountain Record
[winter 1986, spring 1987].) 
Translation of
Kajiyama Yichi, Mahyna Buddhism and the Philosophy of Praj. In A.K. Narain,
ed., Studies in Pali and Buddhism , pp. 197-206. Delhi: B.R. Publishing,
1979. 
Nishimura and Stevens, Shbgenz , vol. 1; Yokoi, Zen Master Dgen
; Kennett, Zen Is Eternal Life ; Kim, Kigen Dgen: Mystical
Realist . Shambala Review 5:1-2 (Winter 1976), pp. 53-55. 
Shibayama, Zen Comments on the Mumonkan . Shambala Review 4:6
(5-6/76), pp. 10-11. 
T'an ching
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(Platform Sutra). Philosophy East and West 25:2 (4/75), pp. 197-212.
(With L. Lancaster) 
Review of Luk,
Transmission of the Mind. Codex Shambala 4:2 (1975), pp. 12-13.

Translation of
Yokoi Kakud, Fundamental Understanding of St Zen Buddhism. Komazawa
daigaku bukky gakubu kenky kiy [Bulletin of the
Faculty of Buddhist Studies, Komazawa University] 31 (3/73), pp. 1-6. (With F.
Bielefeldt) 
 
</blockquote>
<a
href="https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/Bielefeldt.doc"
target="_blank">Ch'ang-lu Tsung-tse's Tso-ch'an I and the "Secret" of Zen
Meditation</a> (DOC) <a
href="https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/Bielefeldt.doc" target="_blank"> 
</a>by Carl Bielefeldt 
In: Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism 
Edited by Peter N. Gregory 
Includes content by: Peter N. Gregory, Alan Sponberg, Daniel B. Stevenson,
Bernard Faure, Carl Bielefeldt 
Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism 4., University of Hawaii
Press, Honolulu, 1986, 129-161. 
 PDF: <a href="../dogen/BielefeldtDogen.pdf"
target="_blank">Dgen's manuals of Zen meditation</a> 
University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles,
London, 1988
 
DGEN STUDIES IN AMERICA: THOUGHTS ON THE STATE
OF THE FIELD 
by Carl Bielefeldt, Stanford University 
From Zen kenky jo nenp 3 (1992), endmatter pp. 1-17. 
<a href="http://www.china2551.org/Article/EnglishBudhis/Research/200803/5213.html"
target="_blank">http://www.china2551.org/Article/EnglishBudhis/Research/200803/5213
.html</a>
 I have been asked
to take as my subject here the state of the field of Dgen studies in America.
This I shall try to do.[1] However, in taking up this subject, I should warn you in
advance on two points. First, although I have myself done some study of Dgen, my
own academic interests stand somewhat outside most American work in this field, and
I am not particularly expert in, or even in many cases familiar with, this work. I
Pgina 7
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shall not, therefore, try to give you here either a comprehensive bibliography of
the literature or a detailed appraisal of individual examples; rather, I shall
restrict my remarks to a brief historical survey of English-language publications
and a more general overview of the ways that Dgen has been and is being treated in
America.[2] Second, although we may of course in a loose sense speak of a field
of American Dgen studies, from what I know of the work on Dgen, my own feeling is
that it may be misleading both historically and analytically to speak as if
what we have in America represents anything so imposing as a field of Dgen
studies at least if we mean by this much more than a collection of books and
articles on certain aspects of Dgen. I shall try in what follows to explain why I
say this.
There is no doubt
that American interest in Dgen has increased remarkably in recent years. A
frequenter of the book shops of Jinbch, I note that the Dgen boom in Japanese
publication that began some years ago has not yet run its course. American book
stores may not have anything quite like the daunting Dgen sections we find in
Tokyo, but I venture to say that there are now more books in print in America on
Dgen than on any other single figure in the history of Zen or even, I suspect, in
the history of East Asian Buddhism as a whole.[3] As a result of these books, Dgen
(at least the name Dgen) is now familiar not only to specialists in Zen or East
Asian Buddhism but to many scholars in other fields and even to many among the
general public with interest in Asian culture.
Nevertheless, if
Dgen has grown quickly to become Americas favorite Zen master, he has done so
with surprisingly little help from American scholarship. Most of the Dgen titles
are trade books, intended for a popular audience; most of them are translations,
few of which reflect significant research in primary sources. Many of them are not
by scholars and not by Americans. If we look beyond the covers of these books for
examples of original American scholarship on Dgen, the list is much less
impressive. In fact, the academic study of this Zen master remains in its infancy
remains, that is, not only young but small, weak and immature. Thus, historically
speaking, it may simply be premature to imagine an academic field of Dgen
studies in America. It may even be premature to predict that the considerable
American interest in Dgen is leading toward such a field. My own sense, at least
for the immediate future, is that it is not.
I shall come back to
the future at the end. Meanwhile, I want to emphasize that it is not only the age
and size but also (and more importantly) the shape of American work that makes me
reluctant to speak of something as broad as Dgen studies in America. Insofar as
there has been American scholarly work on Dgen, it has been for the most part
concerned with only one kind of Dgen.
When we look at
Japanese scholarship in this century, we can find at least three major kinds of
Dgen: first and most conspicuously, of course, there is Dgen the Zen master,
the patriarch of the St Zen school and teacher of shikan taza; second, Dgen the
philosopher, the metaphysician of being-time (uji) and the Buddha nature; and
finally, Dgen the Japanese, the Kamakura-period Buddhist author and religious
leader. Each of these Dgens has his own origins: the Zen master Dgen was largely
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inherited by modern scholarship from the sectarian studies (shgaku) of the Edo
period; the philosopher Dgen was born from the pre-war Japanese encounter with
Western thought; the Japanese Dgen has been created largely by post-war
historiography. Similarly, each of these images of Dgen appears against and
becomes defined by the background of his own setting: the Zen master belongs to the
religious history of Zen tradition; the philosopher seems to move in the abstract
atmosphere of timeless, universal truths; the Japanese is bound to the specific
circumstances of medieval society and culture.
Of course, this kind
of simple tripartite typology is too crude to do real justice to the varied,
complex, and shifting styles of Dgen studies in Japan (and I welcome your
corrections to it). The categories are by no means clearly bounded but overlap to
such a degree that perhaps most scholarship cannot be fairly embraced by any single
one alone. The line, for example, between the Zen master as thinker and the
philosopher as Buddhist is obviously not easy to draw. Indeed the study of what I
am calling Dgen the Zen master is a field of such proportions that it reaches
from what in another context we would call constructive theology to highly
revisionist (and sometimes quite positivistic) historiography. In the end, perhaps
what such extremes have in common is only that they treat Dgen in terms of the
history and thought of Zen tradition.
In any case, I
trouble you with this crude typology here only as a heuristic device to help me
emphasize the particular character of American academic interest in Dgen. If you
can grant me for the moment at least something like my three ideal types of Dgen
in Japanese scholarship, I want to suggest that it is only my second type, the
philosopher (or perhaps the philosophical theologian), that has so far shown signs
of flourishing in the American environment. Of the Zen master, and especially of
Dgen the Japanese, we have yet to see very much. First, let me give you a brief
historical sketch of English-language publications on Dgen; then I shall step back
to reflect a bit on the academic sociology, as it were, within which my various
Dgens are (and are not) being studied in America.
 
* * *
* *
If the various
Dgens of Japanese scholarship were born at very different times Edo, pre-war and
post-war the Dgens in America (insofar as we can find a plurality) are very
young. When I first began to read about and practice Zen as a philosophy student in
San Francisco in the 1960s, Dgen existed in America almost only as a Zen master
and this perhaps less on paper than in the imaginations of a few zazen students at
the San Francisco Zen Center and other such St-related Zen communities. Our books
on Zen Buddhism at the time were mostly by, or influenced by, D. T. Suzuki; and, as
you know, the Rinzai professor Suzuki did not much appreciate the St patriarch
Dgen.
I confess that,
except for occasional flashbacks, my picture of the 1960s has long faded, but I
recall from this decade only three significant English sources on Dgen.[4] The
first was The St Approach to Zen, an obscure little collection of essay and
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translation by the late professor of this university Masunaga Reih.[5] Early in
the decade, A History of Zen Buddhism, by the Sophia University professor Heinrich
Dumoulin was translated into English from the German.[6] This book, which contained
a lengthy chapter on Dgens life and thought, was for many years the most extended
and substantial treatment of Zen history in English and served to introduce Dgen
to a wide American audience; it has been superseded only by Prof. Dumoulins own
recent revised and enlarged two-volume version, Zen Buddhism: A History.[7] In
1967, Jiyu Kennet, the English St nun trained at Sjiji, published a collection
of St Zen materials, including some of Dgens writings.[8] These three early
treatments of Dgen, though very different, had at least three things in common:
first, none was written by an American; second, all (albeit in different senses and
degrees) were products of and sympathetic toward St tradition; and therefore,
finally, all took as their object some version of what I am calling Dgen the Zen
master.[9]
Thus, in the early
1970s, when I started graduate Buddhist studies at Berkeley, the American Dgen
was still only a Zen master, and Zen masters were still only on the margins of
academic Buddhist studies, which tended to look down from its scholarly heights on
the popular American literature on Zen and the unlettered enthusiasms of American
Zen students. By the early 1980s, however, when I finished my dissertation, Zen
studies was becoming recognized as a legitimate, even vital new area of academic
Buddhist studies, and Dgen was beginning to develop an established academic
identity. Interestingly enough, this new identity has developed for the most part
outside of Buddhist studies.
The 1970s saw a
large leap in the English resources on Dgen, with a good number of his writings
being re-translated or newly rendered. In 1971, for example, Prof. Masunagas
translation of the Shbgenz zuimon ki appeared from the University of Hawaii
Press, a publisher that has been particularly active in Dgen studies and Zen
studies in general.[10] Yokoi Yh translated the Eihei shingi,[11] as well as the
Fukan zazen gi, Gakud yjin sh, and the twelve-fascicle (jni kan bon)
Shbgenz.[12] The first volume of Nishiyama Ksens complete translation of the
Shbgenz appeared in 1975.[13] Particularly welcome during this period, though
never to my knowledge brought together in a single volume, were the careful,
annotated translations of the Shbgenz and other texts, published throughout the
decade in the journal The Eastern Buddhist, by Norman Waddell, often in
collaboration with Abe Masao.[14] In addition to these works of translation, the
1970s also saw the publication of Hee-jin Kims important Kigen Dgen: Mystical
Realist. This book, produced in 1975, was the first (and even today, over fifteen
years later, remains the only) general academic study in English of Dgens life
and thought; it has continued to serve over the years as Americas best single
introduction to Dgen.[15] .
Prof. Kims work
combines a close familiarity with St shgaku with the authors own interpretation
of Dgens thought as religious philosophy. This interest in philosophy has been
central to the work of Abe Masao, a man who has done much to spread an appreciation
of Dgen in America. Prof. Abes scholarship differs markedly, of course, from that
of D. T. Suzuki, but it is probably fair to say that he more than anyone else has
Pgina 10
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inherited Suzukis mantle in America both in the sense that he has taken on Prof.
Suzukis mission as interpreter of Zen to the West, and in the sense that his
interpretation, like Suzukis, is closely linked to the Kyoto school of Japanese
philosophy. Unlike Suzuki, Abe has made Dgen central to his interpretation of
Zen.[16] Especially during the decade of the 1980s, through his publications in
English, his many lectures and seminars throughout America, his ongoing dialogue
with Christian theologians, he has carried Dgens thought beyond the Zen centers
and the academic Zen studies programs to a broad audience of American
intellectuals.[17]
In any case, it has
largely been Prof. Abes image of Dgen the religious philosopher that has
dominated American interest over the 1980s. The decade has seen a steady stream of
new translations of the Shbgenz, and occasionally of other texts, by Thomas
Cleary,[18] Francis Cook,[19] Hee-jin Kim,[20] Kazuaki Tanahashi,[21] Thomas
Wright,[22] Yokoi Yh,[23]and others. More significantly, this period has also
witnessed, for the first time, the production of original scholarly studies of
Dgen by a number of young American scholars trained in Western and often Japanese
philosophy, who seek to interpret Dgens thought through the techniques of
phenomenology, analytic and comparative philosophy, and so on. Examples of these
new interpretations can be found in books such as Tom Kasuliss extremely popular
Zen Action-Zen Person,[24] Steven Heines Existential and Ontological Dimensions of
Time in Heidegger and Dgen,[25] David Shaners The Body-Mind Experience in
Japanese Buddhism: A Phenomenological Perspective of Kkai and Dgen[26] or Joan
Stambaughs recent Impermanence and Buddha Nature: Dgens Understanding of
Temporality.[27] Clearly, in such books we are in the presence of a Dgen who has
transcended St Zen, not to mention Kamakura Japan, to take his place among the
World Philosophers.
 
* *
Culturally speaking,
that it should be the transcendental philosopher who has been most successfully
exported to the West should not surprise us: he was, after all, from the beginning
created with the foreign market in mind a model first developed in pre-war Japan
from imported Western ideas as a part of the project to modernize and
internationalize the countrys intellectual history, in order to establish the
place of the insular culture among the nations of the world. Predictably, the
nations of the world now find their own ideas reflected in the model, and many
Americans now find themselves more attracted to it than to the old Zen master. What
seems more surprising is the relative neglect of a figure as famous as Dgen by
American students of Zen history, who are supposed, after all, to be attracted to
old Zen masters. 
Within the specific
culture of the American academy, it may well be that Dgens very fame, both in
America and Japan, is partly to blame for his neglect: he is, as it were, too big
to offer an immediately promising subject of study at once too familiar to the
American public to be academically fashionable and too imposing in the Japanese
secondary literature to be easily manageable. Hence, the student of Zen studies
Pgina 11
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(who in America after all still has almost the entire field from which to lay
professional claim to a specialty) is likely tempted to look around for more
exotic, less overworked areas where there is greater room for original scholarship.
Nothing is so appreciated in the American academy as original
scholarship.
It may also be not
only the fact but the particular type of Dgens fame that is to blame: his dual
status as philosophical giant and as sacred ancestor of St tradition has probably
made him less, rather than more, attractive to Zen studies as it is typically done
in America. Academic Zen studies arose in America during the 1970s largely within
the environment of a scientific Buddhology centered in Indology and dedicated to
rigorous historical and philological inquiry into ancient Buddhist texts. As a
living East Asian religion that celebrated its freedom from the texts and norms of
ancient Indian Buddhism, and as a religion that was tainted by its association with
popular, anti-intellectual American fads of the 1960s, Zen was an alien (not to
say heretical) subject that needed to be domesticated. 
Zen students,
seeking academic styles that would distance them from Zens alien ways and make
them respectable Buddhologists, have tended to be shy of the big ideas of Zen
philosophy and embarrassed by the popular pieties of Zen religiosity.[28] Dgen, as
object of both philosophical speculation and religious cult, has been in this sense
doubly problematic for academic Zen studies. No doubt a number of the scholars of
my generation who have begun to establish the field of American Zen studies
originally came to these studies, as I did, with interest in Dgen. I have, for
some reason, been slower than most to outgrow this interest, but most of my
generation has succeeded in finding more appropriate subjects. Apart from my own
little study of the Fukan zazen gi,[29] James Koderas work on the Hky ki may be
the only American book to deal with Dgen in the context of Zen
history.[30]
The early direction
of academic Zen studies in America was particularly influenced by two books
published in 1967: Yanagida Seizans Shoki zensh shisho no kenky,[31] which
became a kind of bible of the field during its inception in the 1970s; and
Philip Yampolskys The Platform Stra of the Sixth Patriarch,[32] which, as the
first scholarly study of a Zen text by an American academic became a standard
against which the field could measure itself. Both these books, of course, dealt
with the origins of Zen in the Tang dynasty, and both sought to reevaluate Zen
tradition through the techniques of modern textual and historical scholarship.
Subsequent American Zen studies has tended to favor this same subject and these
same techniques.
Although we are now
beginning to get some excellent original American studies of Tang-dynasty Zen, the
field remains weaker for later periods and for Japan (not to mention Korea and Viet
Nam). Profs. Yanagida and Yampolsky have themselves moved on from their earlier
studies to consider topics in Japanese Zen, and recent American Zen studies shows
some signs of following suite; but the fact remains that most areas of Japanese Zen
have yet to be explored. This is unfortunately true not only within Zen studies but
also in other fields of Japanese studies from which we might have hoped for
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scholarship on Dgen as medieval Japanese figure. In fact, this last of my three
Dgens is the least known in America. 
While the study of
Japanese Zen (and, apart from some notable exceptions, of Japanese Buddhism more
broadly) has lagged behind work on China, American scholarship has made significant
advances in Japanese history, literature, and religion. Yet this scholarship has
not, for the most part, been attracted by the technicalities of Buddhist thought
and has, therefore, largely stayed clear of the great thinkers of Kamakura
Buddhism the Dgens, Shinrans and Nichirens preferring to leave such towering
figures to the specialists in Buddhist studies. Since American Buddhist studies has
not yet been ready to accept the challenge, we still have nothing approaching an
adequate history of Kamakura Buddhism within which to place Dgen and, therefore,
little sense of him as a participant in and creator of medieval Japanese religious
culture.
In short, then, it
seems that the conditions of the American academic community have so far not been
very conducive to the development of the study of Dgen as an historical figure,
either within Zen tradition or the Japanese past. If we can take as representative
of American scholarship the collection of papers, entitled Dgen Studies, published
in 1985 as a result of the first Kuroda Institute conference on Dgen, it is still
almost entirely Dgens ideas that preoccupy us.[33] Yet conditions are rapidly
changing, and I would like to close with a few thoughts on the future of Dgen
studies in America.
 
* *
Among the most
general changes that may effect this field is the increasing incorporation of Asian
humanities into American university education. One sign of this change is the
recent graduation of Buddhist studies from the relative isolation of Asian language
programs into religious studies departments. If this move may be tending to
increase the distance of Buddhologists from their colleagues in Asian philology and
classical languages, it is also bringing them into much closer contact with the
interests and methods of new colleagues and thereby breaking down the old barriers,
almost as daunting in America as in Japan, between the disciplines of Buddhist
studies and religious studies. How might such contact affect the future careers of
my three Dgens?
At first glance,
religious studies would seem the ideal environment for further development of
scholarship on Dgen as religious philosopher, providing an intellectual setting in
which he can be viewed alongside, and in conversation with, the great thinkers of
the worlds religions. Some American academic institutions may in fact provide such
a setting. But it must also be realized that the discipline of religious studies in
America has itself been undergoing considerable change in recent years, moving from
earlier emphases on theology, intellectual and church histories, history and
phenomenology of religions, and so on, toward increasing concerns for recent
developments in hermeneutics and critical theory, culture studies and social
history. In this new environment, the old ways of doing the humanities, with their
Pgina 13
CarlBielefeldt.txt
focus on the cultural products of the social elite, are being called into question;
and in religious studies departments deeply influenced by this environment, the
study of the great religious traditions and of the great religious thinkers of
the past is giving way to new interests in popular religious mentalities that are
best discovered in the ordinary beliefs and everyday practices of the
community.
There is an obvious
sense in which such developments do not bode well for Dgen studies, which has been
after all, both in Japan and America, a prime example of the old ways of the
humanities. Certainly the new religious studies environment will not be conducive
to the study of Dgen as philosopher; for the time being, it may be difficult for
such study to find a comfortable home in at least the more up-to-date institutions.
But the study of Dgen as Zen master, at least as this study has traditionally been
approached, is also not likely to flourish: if American Zen students were
unattracted to such study in the earlier Buddhist studies environment (where they
were at least expected to read the great books of the tradition), it is difficult
to see what in the new environment will encourage them to the years of textual work
involved in fitting Dgen into Zen tradition. We should probably not expect soon to
see many American specialists in such subjects as the Chinese sources of Dgens
doctrine or the textual history of the Shbgenz. On the other hand, since
Japanese scholarship is so good at such subjects, perhaps we do not need many of
these American specialists.
If there is a bright
spot in this rather gloomy forecast, I suspect it may lie in the study of the last
of my three Dgens, the medieval Japanese. To be sure, in a narrow sense and over
the short term, a redirection of our attention from the great figures of the past
to their historical contexts will make the great figure of Dgen as Kamakura
cultural hero less immediately attractive as an object of study; similarly, a
preference for social history and culture studies over the history of ideas will
not encourage an appreciation for such obvious subjects as the place of Dgens
doctrine in the history of Japanese Buddhist thought. Topics like Dgen and
Shinran or Dgen and hongaku thought are not likely to be central to the
concerns of the next generation of American scholarship. In a broader sense,
however, and over the longer run, the new directions of religious studies should
help to liberate Dgen from such topics and make him more attractive to a wider
range of American scholarship.
As Zen students are
led from the sanctuary of traditional Buddhist studies into the fray of Asian
religious and cultural life, the flood of historical realities they will encounter
should work to erode the old Buddhological prejudices against Zen as alien and
Japan as marginal. As American Zen studies becomes more sensitive to the varied
cultural contexts of Zen, the specific historical instantiations of the religion
will take center stage, and the particular features of Zen in Japan may begin to
get the attention they have so far not enjoyed. Given what I have suggested here
are his several handicaps as an object of such attention, I doubt that this process
will start with Dgen; but eventually American scholarship should rediscover his
value, less now perhaps as universal philosopher or enlightened Zen patriarch than
as an important expression of and therefore a major resource for understanding
Pgina 14
CarlBielefeldt.txt
the religious life of medieval Japan. 
At the moment, I can
think of no young scholar at a major American university who plans to specialize in
Dgen. I can think, however, of several at my own university and elsewhere who
have particular interest in the later history of St Zen, both medieval and
modern.[34] Research in this history (especially of Edo and Meiji) could do much to
help Americans understand the historical origins and ideological characteristics of
our current images of Dgen and thus indirectly spark renewed curiosity about the
person and the books that may (or may not) stand behind these images. Perhaps from
among these scholars, perhaps from among their students, will come a new generation
of Dgen studies in America.
 
* *
But enough of such
daydreaming about the future; let me close here with one brief final point less
speculative and more urgent. Whatever direction American Dgen studies is to take,
if it is to flourish it will need considerably better access to Dgens own
writings than it now has in English. I need hardly point out to this audience the
difficulties presented the reader by much of Dgens corpus, with its unusual
style, surprising linguistic play, obscure allusion to the literature of Chinese
Zen, and so on. Of course, for most serious Dgen scholarship, there can be no real
substitute for work in the original texts, but the texts are sufficiently difficult
that even the specialist can benefit greatly from scholarly translation.
With all due respect
to their authors, and appreciating the considerable variety (and often high
quality) of our current translations, I think it fair to say that few have been
done with the scholarly reader in mind. Hence, they have tended to make Dgen, as
it were, too easy covering over what is obscure in the original with a good
guess, resolving what is ambiguous or multivalent with a single reading, often
smoothing the exotic imagery and striking metaphor into a bland abstraction,
sometimes masking (or even omitting) what seems irrelevant to the message or might
be distasteful to the audience. Such translation surely has its purposes and its
value, and no doubt it has made Dgen more accessible to many readers; but it is
too far from the original to serve as an adequate resource for many (I would say
most) scholarly purposes. Thus perhaps the prime desideratum for American Dgen
studies today is a set of authoritative English versions of at least his major
writings (including the Eihei kroku, which has so far received far too little
attention) versions that are sensitive not only to the texts themselves but to
the wealth of commentary and scholarship that has been done on them, versions that
provide full annotation to the textual features, historical background and literary
sources of the originals.
If I have been close
to right here in my characterization of the American field, then we cannot expect
it soon to produce a scholar capable of (or inclined to undertake) such a difficult
and technical project. In any case, it should not be left to a single scholar or to
the American field: it should be the long-term job of a team of Japanese and
American scholars, representing differing expertise and disparate points of view.
Pgina 15
CarlBielefeldt.txt
Similar teams have been at work in Kyoto, producing excellent translations of
Shinran. Komazawa University is by any measure the Mecca of Dgen studies, and I
appeal to friends of American Dgen studies among you to consider such a project
here. To a large extent, of course, you would have to consider it a gift a form,
if you will, of intellectual foreign aid; but I suspect that the process of
studying the texts together and arriving at a mutually acceptable reading might
even have its occasional benefits for Dgen studies here at home.
 
<blockquote>
[1]This paper is a
revised, annotated version of a talk to the Zen Kenkyjo, Komazawa University, 7
October, 1991. The work was done under grants from the Fulbright Program and the
Social Science Research Council.
[2]With only
occasional exceptions, I omit reference in my survey to the treatment of Dgen in
journal articles or works on broader subjects and limit myself to representative
books that deal specifically with him.
[3]Indeed, within
Buddhism as a whole, his only serious recent competitor for the American Buddhist
dollar (apart from Gautama) may be Tsong-kha-pa.
[4]My memory in
general is not good, and writing this as I am in Tokyo, away from my books, I must
beg indulgence for the failures in memory that have caused me to overlook work
deserving mention in the following account. I should like to thank David Riggs and
Richard Jaffe for reminding me of (and introducing me to) several
titles.
[5]Toky Layman
Buddhist Society Press, 1958. This book never had much circulation in America and,
I believe, has been out of print for many years. Prof. Masunaga also published a
number of other translations in Japan that rarely made their way to
America.
[6]Boston: Beacon
Press, 1963; the German version appeared in 1959.
[7]The Dgen
material appears in vol. 2, Japan (New York: MacMillan, 1989). See also Prof.
Dumoulins Zen Enlightenment: Origins and Meaning (Tokyo and New York: Weatherhill,
1979).
[8]Selling Water
by the River; reissued as Zen is Eternal Life (Emeryville, California: Dharma
Publishing, 1976).
[9]I include
Father Dumoulins work as a product of St tradition in the sense that it
reflects the Komazawa shgaku of its time. In addition to these three titles, we
might mention in passing here Phillip Kapleaus Three Pillars of Zen (New York:
Harper and Row, 1966), which, though it contained only a little on Dgen himself,
did through its considerable popularity at the time serve to introduce St
religion (of the sort taught by Yasutani Hakuun) to many Americans.
[10]A Primer of
Pgina 16
CarlBielefeldt.txt
St Zen: A Translation of Dgens Shbgenz Zuimonki (Honolulu).
[11]Regulations
for Monastic Life by Eihei Dgen: Eihei-Genzenji-Shingi (Toky Sankib Busshorin,
1973).
[12]Zen Master
Dgen: An Introduction with Selected Writings, with Daizen Victoria (Weatherhill,
1976).
[13]Shbgenz:
The Eye and Treasury of the True Law, with John Stevens (Sendai: Daihokkaikaku).
The work was completed in four volumes, the last of which appeared in 1983; it has
been reissued by Nakayama Shob in a one-volume version (Tokyo, 1988).
[14]The Eastern
Buddhist, new series (hereafter cited as EB) 4: 1, 2 (1971); 5: 1, 2 (1972); 6: 2
(10/73); 7: 1 (5/74); 8: 2 (10/75); 9: 1, 2 (1976); 10: 2 (10/77); 11: 1 (5/78);
12: 1 (5/79).
[15]Published as
an Association for Asian Studies Monograph (no. 29; Tucson, Arizona: University of
Arizona Press); a revised edition was brought out by the same press in
1987.
[16]Prof. Abes
interpretations of Dgen have just been collected in A Study of Dgen: His
Philosophy and Religion (Albany, N. Y.: SUNY Press, 1992).
[17]Prof. Abe has
played a leading role in the recent development of Buddhist-Christian dialogue,
including the on-going buddho-theo-logical consultation informally known as the
Cobb-Abe Group. Thus, in certain circles in America, Dgen may have become not
only a famous figure in the history of Zen but also one of the chief
representatives of Buddhist thought a spokesman, as it were, for the Buddhist
world view to whom Americans may turn for the final word on what Buddhists think
about things.
[18]Record of
Things Heard (Boulder, Colorad Praj Press, 1980) (translation of the Zuimon ki);
Shb genz: Zen Essays by Dgen (Hawaii, 1986).
[19]How to Raise
an Ox: Zen Practice as Taught in Zen Master Dgens Shb genz (3d ed.; Los
Angeles: Center Publications, 1990); Sounds of the Valley Streams: Enlightenment in
Dgens Zen (SUNY Press, 1988) (both rendering selections from the
Shbgenz).
[20]Flowers of
Emptiness: Selections from Dgens Shbgenz (Lewiston, N. Y. and Queenston,
Ontari E. Mellen Press, 1985).
[21]Moon in a
Dewdrop, with others (San Francisc North Point, 1986) (containing selections from
the Shbgenz and other texts).
[22]Refining Your
Life (Weatherhill, 1983) (translation of the Tenzo kykun, with commentary by
Uchiyama Ksh Rshi).
[23]The Shbgenz
Pgina 17
CarlBielefeldt.txt
(Toky Sankib Busshorin, 1986; originally published in separate fascicles,
1985-86); The Eihei-kroku (Sankib, 1987). Recently, the Kyoto Soto-Zen Center has
been particularly active in publishing on Dgen in English; see, e. g., Okumura
Shohaku, Shobogenzo-zuimonki: Sayings of Eihei Dogen Zenji (Kyoto, 1987); Okumura,
Dogen Zen (1988).
[24]Hawaii, 1985.
Prof. Kasulis once offered his own perspective on the English materials on Dgen;
see The Zen Philosopher: A Review Article on Dgen Scholarship in English,
Philosophy East and West 28:3 (7/78).
[25]SUNY Press,
1985. See also Prof. Heines A Blade of Grass: Japanese Poetry and Aesthetics in
Dgen Zen (P. Lang, 1989). He has published a review of several translations of and
articles on Dgen in Truth and Method in Dgen Scholarship: A Review of Recent
Works, EB 20: 2 (Autumn 1987).
[26]SUNY Press,
1985.
[27]Hawaii, 1990.
Though as far as I know it has not yet issued in a book, mention should also be
made here of the excellent philosophical work of John Maraldo; see, e. g., his
piece in Dgen Studies (for which, see below, note 33) or The Hermeneutics of
Practice in Dgen and Francis of Assisi: An Exercise in Buddhist-Christian
Dialogue, EB 14: 2 (Autumn 1981).
[28]As one
prominent Zen philosopher has said of my own work, we want to see only the
horizontal, not the vertical, dimension of Zen.
[29]Dgens
Manuals of Zen Meditation (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988).
[30]Dgens
Formative Years in China: An Historical Study and Annotated Translation of the
Hky-ki (Praj Press, 1980). For a rare Buddhological treatment, see William
Grosnick, The Zen Master Dgens Understanding of the Buddha Nature in Light of
the Historical Development of the Buddha Nature Concept in India, China and Japan
(dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1986).
[31]Kyot
Hzkan.
[32]New York:
Columbia University Press.
[33]Edited by
William LaFleur and published in the Institutes Studies in East Asian Buddhism
series by the University of Hawaii Press. The book includes papers by Profs. Abe,
Kim, Cook, Kasulis, Maraldo, and myself, with an introductory essay by LaFleur and
a concluding essay by Robert Bellah. A second Kuroda Dgen conference included
unpublished papers by the Zen Kenkyjos own Suzuki Kakuzen, as well as Tamaki
Kshir, Tamura Yoshiro, and others.
[34]Probably the
first published product of this interest will be William Bodifords excellent St
Zen in Medieval Japan, a book manuscript based on research done here at Komazawa
Pgina 18
CarlBielefeldt.txt
under Prof. Ishikawa Rikizan and scheduled to appear in the Kuroda Institutes
Studies in East Asian Buddhism series. 
</blockquote>

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