I first encountered Master Dogen (founder of the Soto school of Zen in the Eihei-ji Temple) and his Shobogenzo when I was twelve years old. After I had read a small paperback selection of his writings I had picked up from my father’s bookshelf by chance, I decided that I wanted to devote the rest of my life to his writings. I still remember that moment very well. Of course, I did not understand any of the complex Buddhological material, but I was intuitively entranced by its extraordinary literary value and its high-minded spiritual content. Perhaps because of the blood I inherited from my father, who wished to become a writer but could not, my childhood dream was to write and publish books. Shōbōgenzō is generally viewed as an extremely difficult text meant to be read by Zen Buddhists and utterly incompatible with modern-day people. And the scholars and researchers tend to analyze and interpret the book in terms of the tradition and influence of Chinese Zen (Chan). But I believe these approaches to be too shortsighted, and are missing the point.
In the first place, Shōbōgenzō completely stands out from the master’s other work because he wrote it in Japanese. He wrote most of his works in Chinese, but he wrote Shōbōgenzō in Japanese. Why? Because it transcends the borders of the religious sect of Zen, describes how Japanese culture imported, assimilated, and absorbed Chinese culture to establish its own unique culture, and indicates the process of it as the very form of the law. It was not written as a theory meant to be explained or presented.
As everyone knows, without transmission, culture, religion, and our very lives would not be able to subsist, change, or develop. Transmission is vital to every religion. And Dogen Zen condenses the sayings and teachings of Meigo Ichinyo and Honsho Myoshu by insisting that, in the same way that training and enlightenment are one in the same, the law and the process of transmitting and enforcing the law are the same thing and form one whole. This closely corresponds to the constant flow and transformation of all the world’s phenomena, in other words, to the interdependence and relationships that connect all things that exist in this world. The master suggests and rouses the essence of these teachings in the resonance of the realm of Shobogenzo with the poetry of the beauties of nature.
When I was working on my translation, I imposed on myself two ironclad rules: to preserve the substance of the original text which connotes a realm governed by animated and dynamic semantics, and to avoid liberal translation at all costs. As paradoxical as it seems, the true difficulty of translating Shobogenzo was translating it without translating it. The difficulty of translating the subtle techniques of kakekotoba, engo, honkadori, and so on can be compared to the difficulty of translating waka in which the relationship between one word and another can produce an infinite amount of possible meanings. One cannot forget that Master Dogen was a poet.
Japanese culture uses form, shape, and substance to express what is within. In fact, Japanese has a word called buntai, which signifies the style of a text. And there is also the saying that style is the man. Perhaps this is how the practical teachings of Zen, which place great importance on form, have permeated and integrated so deeply into Japanese culture and have produced unparalleled aesthetics, art, and spirituality into the world. And this also explains how incredibly unique of a Japanese thinker and religious figure Dogen was, and how no one else wrote with such deep knowledge of the characteristics and essence of Japanese culture and Japanese language.
Zen and Japanese culture are deeply interlinked because they both perceive form as a foundation. And I also see an unexpected link between the heart of Japanese culture and the spirit of French civilization. And that link is form. The beauty of the French language, which is the manifestation of the spirit of France, is crystalized as a form of literature. Despite the totally different climates and traditions, Japan and France seem to have established a culture and civilization which places importance on form and in which the heart and the spirit become one with form. And all this must be related to the fact that France shines as the country of mode fashion, that Japonisme has become one of France’s traditions, and that manga has established itself as a genre that represents Japanese culture among the youth of France.
After spending so much time with Shobogenzo, Franco-Japanese cultural exchange is, to me, something with deep and precious resonance. That I am able to work hard and advance through these lively exchanges day by day makes my life a happy one.