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Ochre cover with corklike texture

Title

Sh¨­b¨­ genz¨­ ny¨±mon (An introduction to the Sh¨­b¨­ genz¨­)

Author

Size

240 pages, paperback edition

Language

Japanese

Released

December 25, 2014

ISBN

978-4-04-408911-5

Published by

Kadokawa Sophia Bunko (Kadokawa)

Book Info

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Japanese Page

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In this book, I have attempted to elucidate the thought of the Sh¨­b¨­ genz¨­, the main work of D¨­gen, who has been described as the greatest philosopher in the history of Japanese thought, and I have endeavoured to do so by analyzing it with close reference to D¨­gen’s own words. The text of the Sh¨­b¨­ genz¨­ is known for its difficulty, but as I mention in this book, this difficulty is a necessary requirement for jolting the cognitive premises that the reader unconsciously possesses and presenting a new worldview. There runs through this book a desire to grapple squarely with this difficulty without arbitrarily diluting it on the basis of our own conventional wisdom and to draw just a little closer to D¨­gen’s world by following his reasoning strictly in line with the Sh¨­b¨­ genz¨­.
 
In the introductory chapter, I present my own basic understanding of D¨­gen’s thought through a reading of the “Genj¨­ k¨­an” chapter. This chapter, which D¨­gen himself placed at the start of the 75-chapter version of the Sh¨­b¨­ genz¨­, represents the introduction to this work, and D¨­gen wrote it for a lay disciple named Y¨­ K¨­sh¨±. As well as having the clear-cut aim of drawing the novice into the world of D¨­gen’s Buddhist path, it also constitutes a succinct summary by D¨­gen of the entire Sh¨­b¨­ genz¨­. “To learn the Buddha’s path is to learn oneself. To learn oneself is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to be experienced by the myriad dharmas. To be experienced by the myriad dharmas is to let one’s own body and mind, and the body and mind of others, fall away.” Through a careful reading of these well-known words of D¨­gen, I highlight the “locus” of the unity of self and others (and the world) as a first step to approaching D¨­gen’s world.
 
In the following five chapters, I throw into relief D¨­gen’s worldview and ontology, focusing on his view of language, his epistemology, his theory of time, and his theory of enlightenment and practice.
 
Lastly, in a supplementary chapter I examine the “Bussh¨­” chapter, which could without exaggeration be said to be the most substantial chapter in both quality and quantity in the entire Sh¨­b¨­ genz¨­. At the start of this chapter, which deals with Buddha-nature (²ú³Ü²õ²õ³ó¨­), an important and problematic concept in the thought of Mah¨¡­y¨¡na Buddhism, D¨­gen takes up a passage from the ²Ñ²¹³ó¨¡±è²¹°ù¾±²Ô¾±°ù±¹¨¡?²¹-²õ¨±³Ù°ù²¹ that is usually understood to mean “all beings totally have Buddha-nature.” But D¨­gen presents some unusual ways of reading this sentence in its original Chinese, namely, “total existence is Buddha-nature,” “the perfect totality of total existence is beings,” and “the total existence of Buddha-nature.” In other words, “everything is beings (or beings are everything) and is total existence (i.e., existence as the unity of all and one and of self and other).” By this means, D¨­gen seeks to transform the reductionist ontology that we take for granted into a relationist understanding of existence, that is, one underpinned by nonsubstantiality, emptiness, and dependent co-arising. It could be said that reading the Sh¨­b¨­ genz¨­ is an act of loosening the fixed understanding of existence that shackles our perceptions and opening us up to the reality of the world.
 

(Written by Mitsuko Yorizumi, Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2018)

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