Project History

In about 2015, the Rev. Hokan Saito suggested to the Rev. Dr. Rosan Osamu Yoshida, abbot of the Missouri Zen Center in Webster Groves, Mo., that he make an English translation of Eko Hashimoto Roshi's commentary on Dogen's Fukanzazengi. Over the course of some ten years, with editing assistance by one of his students, Erin Davis, he took up this interesting and challenging project.

Dogen Zenji worked on the text of the Fukanzazengi over the course of many years, tweaking and refining it throughout his lifetime. He wrote this poem in Chinese, but the official (standard) Sotoshu version that is chanted in Japanese monasteries today has been modified for reading according to the Japanese sentence structure. Hashimoto Roshi describes the history and format of the text, and then goes through it line by line, and even word by word. As he does, he provides a number of alternative readings of the standard version, drawing on his long study of Dogen's other texts. He elucidates the many Zen stories referenced by the text, deepening our understanding of it.