Gudo Wafu Nishijima
Encyclopedia
Gudo Wafu Nishijima (born November 29, 1919 in Yokohama
) is a Japan
ese Zen
Buddhist
priest and teacher.
As a young man in the early 1940s, Nishijima became a student of the noted Zen teacher Kodo Sawaki
. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, Nishijima received a law degree from Tokyo University and began a career in finance
. It was not until 1973, when he was in his mid-50s, that Nishijima was ordained as a Buddhist priest. His preceptor for this occasion was Rempo Niwa, a former head of the Soto Zen sect. Four years later, Niwa gave him shiho
, formally accepting him as one of his successors. Nishijima continued his professional career until 1979.
During a following, separation with the Sotoshu-sect?
During the 1960s, Nishijima began giving regular public lectures on Buddhism and Zen meditation
. Since the 1980s, he has lectured in English
and has had a number of foreign students, including American author Brad Warner
and teacher Jundo Cohen
. In 2007 Nishijima and a group of his students organized as the Dogen Sangha International.
Nishijima is the author of several books in Japanese
and English. He has also been a notable translator of Buddhist texts
: working with Chodo Cross, Nishijima compiled one of the three complete English versions of Dogen
's 95-fascicle Kana Shobogenzo
, based on his 13-volume modern Japanese translation and commentary, and often considered as the most exact and faithful in existence by whom?; he also translated Dogen's Shinji Shōbōgenzō
. He has recently published an English translation of Nagarjuna
's Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā).
, as well as explaining the structure of Dogen
's writing. According to Nishijima, Dōgen carefully constructed the Shōbōgenzō according to a fourfold structure, in which he described each issue from four different perspectives. The first perspective is "idealist
", "abstract
", "spiritual
", and "subjective
"; Nishijima says this is the correct interpretation of the First Noble Truth, (in mainstream Buddhism the first Noble truth is dukkha
). The second perspective is "concrete", "materialistic
", "scientific
", and "objective
" (in mainstream Buddhism the second Noble truth is samudaya). The third perspective is described as an integration of the first two, producing a "realistic
" synthesis; (mainstream, nirodha). The fourth perspective is reality
itself, which Nishijima argues cannot be contained in philosophy or stated in words, but which Dogen attempts to suggest through poetry
and symbol
ism. In mainstream Buddhism, the fourth Truth is the Eightfold Path.
More controversially he has stated that "Buddhism is just Humanism"http://gudoblog-e.blogspot.com/2007/04/buddhism-and-humanism.html and he explains Dogen
's teaching on Zazen
in terms of balancing the Autonomic Nervous System
.http://www.dogensangha.org/downloads/Pdf/ANS&Buddhism.PDF
Yokohama
is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...
) is a Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese Zen
Zen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
Buddhist
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
priest and teacher.
As a young man in the early 1940s, Nishijima became a student of the noted Zen teacher Kodo Sawaki
Kodo Sawaki
is considered by some to be the most important Japanese Zen master of the 20th century. His parents died early, and he grew up being adopted by a gambler and an ex-prostitute. When he was 16, he ran away from home to become a monk at Eihei-ji, one of the two main temples of Sōtō Zen. At first...
. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, Nishijima received a law degree from Tokyo University and began a career in finance
Finance
"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...
. It was not until 1973, when he was in his mid-50s, that Nishijima was ordained as a Buddhist priest. His preceptor for this occasion was Rempo Niwa, a former head of the Soto Zen sect. Four years later, Niwa gave him shiho
Dharma transmission
Dharma transmission refers to "the manner in which the teaching, or Dharma, is passed from a Zen master to their disciple and heir...
, formally accepting him as one of his successors. Nishijima continued his professional career until 1979.
During a following, separation with the Sotoshu-sect?
During the 1960s, Nishijima began giving regular public lectures on Buddhism and Zen meditation
Zazen
In Zen Buddhism, zazen is a meditative discipline practitioners perform to calm the body and the mind, and be able to concentrate enough to experience insight into the nature of existence and thereby gain enlightenment .- Significance :Zazen is considered the heart of Zen Buddhist practice...
. Since the 1980s, he has lectured in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and has had a number of foreign students, including American author Brad Warner
Brad Warner
Brad Warner is a Sōtō Zen priest, author, blogger, documentarian and punk rock bass guitarist.-Biography:Brad Warner was born in Hamilton, Ohio in 1964. His family traveled a lot for his father's job and he lived in different countries around the world but grew up mainly near Akron, Ohio and...
and teacher Jundo Cohen
Jundo Cohen
Jundo Cohen is a Sōtō Zen Priest, founder and teacher of the Treeleaf Zendo, a Soto Zen Sangha located in Tsukuba, Japan. He was ordained in 2002 and subsequently received Dharma Transmission from Master Gudo Wafu Nishijima, and is a member of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association and American Zen...
. In 2007 Nishijima and a group of his students organized as the Dogen Sangha International.
Nishijima is the author of several books in Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
and English. He has also been a notable translator of Buddhist texts
Buddhist texts
Buddhist texts can be categorized in a number of ways. The Western terms "scripture" and "canonical" are applied to Buddhism in inconsistent ways by Western scholars: for example, one authority refers to "scriptures and other canonical texts", while another says that scriptures can be categorized...
: working with Chodo Cross, Nishijima compiled one of the three complete English versions of Dogen
Dogen
Dōgen Zenji was a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher born in Kyōto, and the founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan after travelling to China and training under the Chinese Caodong lineage there...
's 95-fascicle Kana Shobogenzo
Shobogenzo
The term Shōbōgenzō has three main usages in Buddhism: It can refer to the essence of the Buddha's realization and teaching, that is, to the Buddha Dharma itself, as viewed from the perspective of Mahayana Buddhism, it is the title of a koan collection with commentaries by Dahui Zonggao, and it...
, based on his 13-volume modern Japanese translation and commentary, and often considered as the most exact and faithful in existence by whom?; he also translated Dogen's Shinji Shōbōgenzō
Shinji Shobogenzo
The Shinji Shōbōgenzō or True Dharma Eye 300 Cases , or Treasury of the True Dharma Eye , compiled by Eihei Dōgen in 1223-1227, was first published in Japanese in 1766. The literary sources of the Shinji Shōbōgenzō are believed to have been the Keitoku Dentōroku and the Shūmon Tōyōshū...
. He has recently published an English translation of Nagarjuna
Nagarjuna
Nāgārjuna was an important Buddhist teacher and philosopher. Along with his disciple Āryadeva, he is credited with founding the Mādhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism...
's Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā).
Three philosophies and one reality
While studying the Shōbōgenzō, Nishijima developed a theory called "three philosophies and one reality", which presents his distinctive interpretation of the Four Noble TruthsFour Noble Truths
The Four Noble Truths are an important principle in Buddhism, classically taught by the Buddha in the Dharmacakra Pravartana Sūtra....
, as well as explaining the structure of Dogen
Dogen
Dōgen Zenji was a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher born in Kyōto, and the founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan after travelling to China and training under the Chinese Caodong lineage there...
's writing. According to Nishijima, Dōgen carefully constructed the Shōbōgenzō according to a fourfold structure, in which he described each issue from four different perspectives. The first perspective is "idealist
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
", "abstract
Abstraction
Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal concepts, first principles, or other methods....
", "spiritual
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
", and "subjective
Subject (philosophy)
In philosophy, a subject is a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness or a relationship with another entity . A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed...
"; Nishijima says this is the correct interpretation of the First Noble Truth, (in mainstream Buddhism the first Noble truth is dukkha
Dukkha
Dukkha is a Pali term roughly corresponding to a number of terms in English including suffering, pain, discontent, unsatisfactoriness, unhappiness, sorrow, affliction, social alienation, anxiety,...
). The second perspective is "concrete", "materialistic
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
", "scientific
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
", and "objective
Object (philosophy)
An object in philosophy is a technical term often used in contrast to the term subject. Consciousness is a state of cognition that includes the subject, which can never be doubted as only it can be the one who doubts, and some object or objects that may or may not have real existence without...
" (in mainstream Buddhism the second Noble truth is samudaya). The third perspective is described as an integration of the first two, producing a "realistic
Philosophical realism
Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality, or some aspect of it, is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc....
" synthesis; (mainstream, nirodha). The fourth perspective is reality
Reality
In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...
itself, which Nishijima argues cannot be contained in philosophy or stated in words, but which Dogen attempts to suggest through poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
and symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
ism. In mainstream Buddhism, the fourth Truth is the Eightfold Path.
More controversially he has stated that "Buddhism is just Humanism"http://gudoblog-e.blogspot.com/2007/04/buddhism-and-humanism.html and he explains Dogen
Dogen
Dōgen Zenji was a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher born in Kyōto, and the founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan after travelling to China and training under the Chinese Caodong lineage there...
's teaching on Zazen
Zazen
In Zen Buddhism, zazen is a meditative discipline practitioners perform to calm the body and the mind, and be able to concentrate enough to experience insight into the nature of existence and thereby gain enlightenment .- Significance :Zazen is considered the heart of Zen Buddhist practice...
in terms of balancing the Autonomic Nervous System
Autonomic nervous system
The autonomic nervous system is the part of the peripheral nervous system that acts as a control system functioning largely below the level of consciousness, and controls visceral functions. The ANS affects heart rate, digestion, respiration rate, salivation, perspiration, diameter of the pupils,...
.http://www.dogensangha.org/downloads/Pdf/ANS&Buddhism.PDF
English-language books
- How to Practice Zazen (1976), with Joe Langdon
- To Meet the Real Dragon: Seeking the Truth in a World of Chaos (1992), with Jeffrey Bailey
- A Heart to Heart Chat on Buddhism with Old Master Gudo (2004), with Jundo Cohen
- Master Dogen's Shobogenzo (2006), a complete translation published in 4 Vols., with Chodo Cross
- Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika (2011), with Brad Warner
Further reading
- Review of Nishijima's translation of the Shinji Shobogenzo
- Comments by Nishijima on the koan "JoshuZhaozhouZhàozhōu Cōngshěn , was a Chán Buddhist master especially known for his "paradoxical statements and strange deeds".Zhaozhou became ordained as a monk at an early age. At the age of 18, he met Nánquán Pǔyuàn , a successor of Mǎzǔ Dàoyī , and eventually received the Dharma from him...
's dog", along with an excerpt from Dogen's Kana Shobogenzo - Japanese list of Nishijima's books
- Gudo Nishijima's blog
- Gudo Nishijima's YouTube channel