To Transmit Dogen Zenji's Dharma
Tetsuo Otani

Dogen Zenji studied and received the Buddha Dharma under the tutelage of Nyojo Zenji during his time in Sung China before transmitting it to Japan. Ever since, many people have been able to receive the Dharma which has continued to this day.
The Dharma which was properly transmitted from Nyojo Zenji to Dogen Zenji has been able to continue till the present through a ceremony called dharma transmission (shiho) upon which Dogen placed great importance. The Dharma has been able to continue till this day, not only because of the doctrines passed down, but because of the very concrete practice of placing one's name after one's teacher on a "transmission document" (shisho). Although the primary task of transmitting the Buddhist teachings continues to exists for us, the ceremony marking this transmission has significance too.
In this paper, I will first discuss dharma transmission in Degen's Zenji's thought. Second, I will examine the so-called "sect-revival" movement (shuto fukko) of the early modern period which had the issues of dharma transmission at its core. And finally, I will conclude with a reflection on the significance of receiving and transmitting the Dharma today.

Tetsuo Otani was born in Tokyo in 1939. He graduated from the Department of Far Eastern Philosophy in the Faculty of Literature at Waseda University. He received his masters degree from Waseda University graduate school in the Research Institute for Humanities, majoring in Far Easten Philosophy. Otani graduated from the Doctorate program at Komazawa University Graduate School, Research Institute for Humanities Studies, majoring in Buddhist Studies. He practiced at Daihonzan Eiheiji in 1965. He has been resident priest of Chotaiji in Tokyo since 1966. He has been teaching at Komazawa University since 1977 and is now a professor in the Department of Buddhist Studies. He is presently serving as the Vice President of Komazawa University. His specialty is in Zen Studies and Soto Zen Studies.

Living with Dogen:
Thoughts on the Relevance of His Thought
Carl Bielefeldt

In this talk, I reflect on some characteristics of Dogen's religious thought and the challenges it presents to a modern version of Dogen Zen. I begin with Dogenﾕs famous teaching that the Buddhist life is not merely human practice directed toward buddhahood but what he sometimes calls the "practice of buddhahood" - the expression of our nature as buddhas. I argue that, while many modern versions of Dogen Zen focus on the psychological aspects of this practice, Dogen himself preferred to emphasize its historical character and to view it as the reenactment of the historical practice of the Buddha Sakyamuni handed down in the lineage of the Zem partriarchs. As a result, his model of Buddhist practice tends to emphasize public performance rather than private experience, and his account of the practice tends to assume a monastic life centered on the ritual of seated meditation. If the particular features of such an account pose obvious problems for a modern, lay-oriented religion, I suggest that Dogenﾕs vision of religious endeavor as participation in an historical community may offer a welcome antidote to the isolation and social dislocation of the individual characteristic of much modern life.

Carl Bielefeldt began Zen practice under Suzuki Shunryu Roshi at Sokoji and went on to study with Uchiyama Kosho Roshi at Antaiji in Kyoto. He has been a Soto Zen Buddhist for 30 years. Bielefeldt received his M.A. in Asian Studies and Ph.d. in Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been teaching at Stanford University since 1980 where he is the co-director of the Center for Buddhist Studies. Bielefeldt has held several research positions in Japan and has published many texts on Buddhism.

Dogen Zenji's Zazen
Zenkei Blanche Hartman

In Dogen's earliest writings after his return from China, he emphasis the primacy of zazen as the true Dharma gate. In Bendowa he said "to spread this dharma and free living beings became my vow". This is an explicate expression of his devotion to zazen since the word devote literally means to vow. From this we can see his boundless faith in and dedication to upright sitting. "...all Buddha Tathagathas together have been simply transmitting wondrous dharma and actualizing anuttarasamyaksambodhi for which there is an unsurpassable, unfrabricated, wondrous method. This wondrous dharma, which has been transmitted from Buddha to Buddha without mediation, has as it criterion jijuyuzanmai. For disporting freely in this samadhi practicing zazen in upright posture is the true gate." Using a wide variety of sources Zenkei Hartman intends to explore Dogen's faith in zazen and devotion to its prorogation as the essential expression of practice.

Zenkei Blanche Hartman began sitting in 1969 at the Berkeley Zen Center with Rev. Sojun Mel Weitsman and in San Francisco with Suzuki Shunryu Roshi. She was ordained as a priest in 1977 by Rev. Zentatsu Baker and received dharma transmission with Rev. Sojun Mel Weitsman in 1988. She trained at Zenshinji Tassajara and Soryuji Green Gulch Farm. She became Abbess of San Francisco Zen Center in February of 1996. She is married to Shuun Lou Hartman; they have four children and five grandchildren.

Dogen Zenji's Standards for Community Practice (Eihei-shingi)

Shohaku Okumura
In Shobogenzo-Zuimonki (6-9), Dogen Zenji talked about a Chinese legend that fish become dragons by crossing the Dragon Gate. In the same way, he said, if people enter a monastic community, they become buddhas-ancestors without fail. He said, "You eat meals and wear clothes as usual; thus you stave off hunger and keep off the cold just the same as other people do. Still, if shave your head, put on a kesa, and eat gruel for breakfast and rice for lunch, you will immediately become a monk of patched-robe. Do not seek afar to become a buddha-ancestor. Becoming one who either passes through the Dragon-Gate or not depends only on entering a sorin (monastery), just the same as fish."
The standards of the community life in Zen Buddhism called Shingi (pure standards, or standards for pure assembly) was established in China in the 9th century by Zen Master Hyakujo. Dogen Zenji also wrote the Eihei-shingi to maintain Hyakujo's spirit. Shingi (Standards for Community Practice) is a very important aspect of Dogen Zenji's teachings and practice. Within the rapid current of the thorough social and cultural change we are experiencing, how can we find relevance in Dogen Zenji's standards for community practice for our time?

Shohaku Okumura was born in Osaka, Japan in 1948. He was ordained as a Soto Zen priest under Uchiyama Kosho Roshi in 1970 and trained at Antaiji, Kyoto, Japan. He practiced at Pioneer Valley Zendo in Massachusetts from 1975 to 1981. He taught at Kyoto Soto Zen Center from 1984 to 1992 and Minnesota Zen Meditation Center from 1993 to 1997. Currently he is the Director of the Soto Zen Education Center and Head Teacher of Sanshin Zen Community. He has been working on translations of Soto Zen texts: "Shobogenzo Zuimonki", "Dogen Zen", "Zen Teachings of Homeless Kodo", "Shikantaza-an introduction to zazen", "Wholehearted Way", and "Opening the Hand of Thought".

Dogen's 300 Koans and the Kana Shobogenzo
John Daido Loori

Zen Master Dogen's definitive work, the Kana Shobogenzo, has been available in English and other western languages for a number of years. Western scholars and philosophers, as well as Buddhist practitioners have been fascinated by Dogen's profound insights into the Buddhadharma, his unique metaphysics, and creative use of language. The Kana Shobogenzo has gained Dogen a reputation as one of Japan's greatest thinkers and religious figures.
A lesser known, but equally important work by Dogen is his Mana Shobogenzo, originally written in Chinese. Mana Shobogenzo is a collection of three hundred koans culled from Sung Dynasty texts, koans used by Dogen as "seeds" in composing the Kana Shobogenzo, and in the compilation of his recorded sayings, the Eihei Koroku. Since Dogen was a proponent of zazen only, an outspoken critic of koan study, his authorship of the Mana Shobogenzo was in doubt for many centuries. Recent scholarship, however, has put these doubts to rest.
This paper examines the relationship between the two Shobogenzos, with a particular emphasis on Dogen's unique way of handling koans, especially as compared to the traditional treatment they received in classic Sung discourses. Contrary to conventional conclusions about Dogen's methods of instruction, he not only used koans freely in his teachings but did so in a radically different way from his predecessors in China. By interweaving the "Five Ranks of Master Tozan," creating dialectical tensions, and using multilayered poetic language, Dogen brought a fresh and insightful perspective to traditional koans.
This paper presents several of the cases that appear in the three hundred koan collection and are also used by Dogen in the Kana Shobogenzo. Their treatment by Dogen is compared with the discourses on the same cases as they appear in The Book of Equanimity and The Blue Cliff Record. Although these varied ways of expounding the truth of the koans may on the surface appear to be radically different, they are intrinsically identical and consistent with the transmitted truth of the Buddhadharma as handed down from the time of the historical Buddha.
In conclusion, the paper also discusses the value of using Dogen's alternative way of seeing into koans as an adjunct to traditional koan study and training.

Daido John Loori is abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery (Doshinji) in Mt. Tremper, New York. He began his Zen practice in 1968 and trained in the subtle teachings of Dogen's Zen and the koan introspection of Rinzai Zen. He received Shiho from Maezumi Hakuryu Roshi and Inka from Rev. Genpo Merzel Roshi. He is the author of 12 books on Zen and is currently translating, with Tanahashi Kazuaki, Dogen's 300 Koan Shobogenzo and adding commentary and verse.

History of the Soto Zen School
Griffith Foulk

The earliest histories of Soto Zen, which date from the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), are collections of hagiographies of eminent patriarchs belonging to Dogen's line of dharma transmission. It was only in the twentieth century that scholars began to treat the Soto school as an institution, founded by Dogen, that evolved over time in response to changing social, economic, and political circumstances. A theme that recurs in a number of modern histories is the idea that the Zen initially established in Japan by Dogen was a pure form that the Soto school failed to preserve in subsequent generations.
I embraces the methods of the modern scholarship, but avoids making normative claims about any set of beliefs or practices that might be presumed to represent the original, pure, or essential nature of Soto Zen. My definition of the Soto school is one that starts from a simple delineation of its membership, past and present, and leaves the question of its characteristic institutions, practices, and doctrines entirely open to historical investigation. Focusing on the place that the Japanese Soto school has held historically within the broader East Asian Buddhist tradition, I addresses the question of the relationship between Zen and Buddhism. I argues that we are too quick to proclaim the independence and uniqueness of the former and all too ignorant of the ways in which it has been embedded in the latter in East Asian cultures. We imagine that Zen is somehow a complete doctrinal, ethical, and spiritual system, and do not avail ourselves of the broader Buddhist resources - scriptural, ritual, and institutional - that Zen monks in China and Japan have often taken for granted.

Griffith Foulk teaches Asian religions at Sarah Lawrence College. He holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan, where he also taught from 1985-1995. He has trained in both Soto and Rinzai monasteries in Japan and received shukke tokudo (priest ordination) in the Soto School in 1983. He is a member of the board of the Kuroda Institute for the Study of Buddhism and Human Values and was elected to the steering committee of the Buddhism Section of the American Academy of Religion from 1987-94. He has received Fulbright, Eiheiji, and Japan Foundation fellowships, and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and National Endowment for the Humanities. His research and publications focus on philosophical, literary, social, and historical aspects of the Ch'an Myths and Realities in Medieval Chinese Buddhism and Histories of Zen.

The Soto Zen School in Modern Japan
Yasuaki Nara
The Soto Zen school in modern Japan includes approximately 15,000 temples, which makes it the largest traditional Buddhist organization in Japan. By modern Japan, I mean the post-Meiji (1868-1912) period which brought about a host of new issues for the Soto Zen school. This paper will examine several interrelated issues that has emerged within the context of the modern period.
1] The status of abbots. This issue includes the question of abbots holding other jobs, abbot's academic training, and marriage. The survey found in the 1995 Sotoshu Shumucho publication "Sotoshu shusei sogo chosa hokokusho" will serve as a database for this section of the paper.
2] The two most pressing issues faced by the Japanese Soto Zen school: Human rights and the environment. In terms of human rights, the problem of temple priests having discriminated against the "buraku" (marginalized villager) population, especially through the issuance of discriminatory "kaimyo" (posthumous Buddhist name), has been a major concern. There has been doctrinal reflection on this matter through a reexamination of the Buddhist doctrines of karma and original enlightenment as theoretical sources from discrimination.
In terms of the environment, there have a number of concrete projects to protect the environment (the "Green Plan") that has been supported by general lay members. Although in the past, Japanese Buddhists have focused on the doctrine of "all things have Buddha-nature," this worldview has been insufficient to tackle the environmental problem. To make progress, while including traditional Buddhist formulations, the Soto Zen school has been actively trying to develop a new environmental ethics and methods to protect the environment.
3] The creation of the Sotoshu Center for Buddhist Studies in Tokyo. Up until the recent past, the Soto Zen school had three institutes that addressed issues such as outlined above: the Institute for Soto Studies, the Sotoshu Propagation Research Institute, and the Research Center for Modern Soto Studies. But since April 1, 1999, the new Sotoshu Center for Buddhist Studies has been created. Not simply a lumping together of the three institutes, the new center--which includes the above three institutes in a somewhat autonomous system--has intentionally tried to develop clearer lines of communication among the three institutes and encourage an interdisciplinary approach to these questions. To realize this goal more concretely, collaborative research themes have been instituted (the first being the theme of "funerals").
The issue of funerals in contemporary Japan is not a problem faced solely by the Soto Zen school, but is a pressing issue for all the Buddhist schools. This is, in part, due to the decline of the traditional social function of funerals in village life, but also because alternative models to think about after-death rituals (such as the scattering of cremated ash or non-religious funerals) and the rethinking of the significance of posthumous Buddhist names (with all the ranking implied) have been increasingly prevalent. Despite the fact that funerals are held at temple throughout Japan and that the income derived from this ritual constitutes the Soto Zen school's financial base, there has been comparatively little doctrinal reflection on the theme of funerals. This is particularly true of subthemes within the topic of funerals such as precept-giving at the funeral, the giving of tonsure to the deceased (by giving priestly precepts to the deceased), and the practice of calling the deceased person an "enlightened spirit" after the funeral. There is therefore a great need for further clarification and discussion of this theme.
4] Finally, the issue of the place of Soto Zen centers outside of Japan and their relationship to the Japanese Soto Zen school is an ongoing one.

Yasuaki Nara studied in the Department of Indian Philosophy and Sanskrit Literature, Faculty of Letters at Tokyo University, receiving a B.A. degree in 1953 and M.A. in 1956. From 1956 to 1958, Nara studied in the Department of Comparative Philosophy at Calcutta University in India. He received a Doctor of Literature from Tokyo University in 1973. Nara has been lecturing at Komazawa University in History of Buddhist Culture since 1961. From 1983 to 1986, he was Vice President of Komazawa University and served as President from 1994 to 1998. He has been a visiting Professor at Vishva Bharati University in India from 1982 to 1983. Some of his publications (in Japanese) are "History of Buddhism : India and South-east Asia", "Ramakrishna", "Dialogue with Sakyamuni Buddha", "Buddha's Way and Man-Spiritual Approach".

ZEN IN AMERICA

Sojun Mel Weitsman

With the arrival of such Soto Zen teachers as Shunryu Suzuki in San Francisco
and Taizen Maezumi in Los Angeles, Japan's "Square Zen", the disciplined practice of Zen monks supported by centuries of development in Asia, met "Beat Zen", the American counterculture's popularized philosophy of Zen. Throughout the 1960s Americans from a wide spectrum of society came to learn from
these teachers who offered them Dogen's Zen, the formal practice of zazen, or shikantaza, just sitting; these teachers conveyed Master Dogen's Zen through their own practice.

A dynamic expansion of Zen centers took place during the '70s and '80s. The
rapid growth led to some difficulties due to leadership errors, which were ultimately resolved satisfactorily. The heart of Dogen's Zen is practiced at residential and nonresidential centers, including extended meditation retreats (sesshins), lectures, and study. At the same time, American Zen students have put more emphasis than did our Japanese forebearers on: Offering the Dharma to women and men equally; opening up a lay practice comparable in intensity and strictness to the practice of ordained people in Asia; supporting social action in such areas as the environment, racial equality, peace, and other issues of civil justice; and devoting attention to matters of family practice. Notwithstanding these worthwhile innovations, the unique and most valuable gift of Dogen's Zen to America has been and remains the practice of zazen.

Sojun Mel Weitsman began practice at the old Sokoji Temple in San Francisco in 1964 with Suzuki Shunryu Roshi. He received priest ordination from Suzuki Roshi in 1969 at Berkeley Zendo, which he founded in 1967 with Suzuki Roshi's blessing. He was shuso at Tassajara in 1970 with Tatsugami Roshi and Director of Tassajara in 1972-1973. In 1984, he received dharma transmission from Suzuki Roshi's son Rev. Suzuki Hoitsu. In 1985, he was installed as Abbot of Berkeley Zen Center. In 1988 he was installed as Co-abbot of San Francisco Zen Center; his tenure ended in January 1997; he is currently a Senior Dharma Teacher.

Vowing Peace in an Age of War
Hozan Alan Senauke

Meditating on peace, I hear Dogen. In Bodaisatta Shisho-Ho (Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance ) Dogen writes, "You should benefit friend and enemy equally. You should benefit self and others alike." In the same fascicle he explains, "The mind of a sentient being is difficult to change. " Dogen's radical and language cuts to the heart of peace, even in his own age of bitter civil strife and political manipulation. His thirteenth century world is different from our own, but the conflicts and twisted karma of suffering beings is much the same.

In this talk I offer three approaches to Buddhist peacemaking: Giving, Fearlessness, and Renunciation. The essential practice of peace is giving, dana paramitta. Giving one's attention, friendship, and material aid. Giving and spiritual teachings, community, and organization. The practice of peace is fearless. Fear itself provides an opening into the
unknown. If we make peace in awareness of our own fear, there is room for everyone's fear to fall away and turn to respect. Renunciation or relinquishment is also inseparable from giving. Dogen writes, "If you study giving closely, you see that to accept a body and to give up the body are both giving." But renunciation is a difficult principle for Zen
people. The path of Zen as it exists in the today's materialist world gives mere lip service to the meaning of renunciation.

Bearing witness is the Bodhisattva's act of complete acceptance and non-duality. It also leads us to active resistance and social transformation. We vow to bear witness where violence unfolds. We vow to recognize the human capacity for violence within our own minds, bowing to conditions of greed, hatred, and delusion. We vow never again to raise a weapon in anger or complicity with the state or any so-called authority, but to intervene actively and nonviolently for peace, even where this may put our own lives at risk.

In this spirit Engaged Buddhists and people of all the faith traditions want to create a nonviolent army of peace. In the midst of local, regional, religious, and national conflicts and wars, this peace army could replace armed soldiers, land mines, tanks, and jet fighters. A peace army might sit down on the battlefield, right in the lines of fire in order to save others, enduring the same danger as combatants and civilians. It is necessary to take risks in Zen practice. It is just as necessary to take risks in peacemaking.

It is stretching a point to characterize Dogen or Shakyamuni Buddha as engaged Buddhists. But buddha ancestors teach us that the dharma is exactly our own experience. Wake up to what is wholesome in the world. Remake Buddhism for this time, this place, this circumstance. Bodhisattvas walk among us. In any single breath each of us can become an enlightening being. In the next breath we might fall into old habits of thoughtlessness and violence. Zazen reveals that this choice is always with us. Our most deluded and hurtful actions contain seeds that can flower as either wondrous peace or terrible harm.

Hozan Alan Senauke has been Director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship since 1991. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, where he works closely with lay and ordained Buddhist activists from Asia, Europe, and the United States. Alan is a Soto Zen priest in the family of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, having received dharma transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman Roshi in September of 1998. He lives with his wife, Laurie, and their two young children at the Berkeley Zen Center in California. In another realm, Alan is well known as a student and performer of American traditional music for more than thirty five years.

Mountains Hidden in Mountains
Gary Snyder

In my presentation I want to speak of how Dogenﾕs extraordinary multi-faceted Dharma insight might come to contribute to the contemporary world-wide dialogue regarding the human impact on the rest of the natural world.
From earliest times almost all East Asian thought and religion has held nature, and non-human beings, in high regard. Buddhism in particular calls us to be mindful and respectful in our relation to nature and teaches that we are not separate from it.
Nonetheless, the Buddhist landscapes have suffered serious environmental damage in recent centuries -though there have been some bright spots in their histories. Today the whole world grapples with massive environmental and social problems. The teachings and lessons of Buddhism seem more relevant than ever before.
Dogen Zenji, as an expositor of the deep Dharma, does not put forth a simplistic view of our relation to phenomena. His teachings provide no simple -nature piety-, no naive dichotomy between the flawed works of humans and some pure world of nature.
Dogen has recently been described by some modern thinkers as -deconstructiveﾓ - interpreting his thinking according to their own models. I will suggest that Dogenﾕs knotty (but not necessarily complicated) teaching is a needed extension and correction both to nihilistic deconstructionism, and to naive - if well intentioned - hopeful ecological philosophies. I mean to illustrate some of these points with poems.

Gary Snyder has published seventeen books of poetry and prose including his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Turtle Island" in 1975 and "No Nature" which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992. Currently, as professor of English at the University of California at Davis, he has been instrumental in starting the "Nature and Culture" program. In the late 1950's, Snyder along with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were prominent in the Beat Generation movement. In the 1960's, he studied in a Zen monastery in Japan which powerfully influenced his thought. Snyder is a founding member of the Ring of Bone Zendo in the Sierra Nevadas and was awarded the Buddhism Transmission Award for 1998 by the Japan-based Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai Foundation. He is the first American literary figure to receive the award, being honored for distinctive contributions in linking Zen thought and respect for the natural world across a lifelong body of poetry and prose. His latest book is called "Mountains and Rivers Without End".