The term Shōbōgenzō has three main usages in Buddhism

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...

: (1) 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

Mahayana

Mahāyāna is one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice...

 Buddhism, (2) it is the title of a koan collection with commentaries by Dahui Zonggao

Dahui Zonggao

Dahui Zonggao was a 12th century Chinese Chan master best known as a keen advocate of the use of koans to achieve enlightenment...

, and (3) it is used in the title of two works by Dogen Kigen

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...

.

Shōbōgenzō of Mahayana and Zen

In Mahayana

Mahayana

Mahāyāna is one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice...

 Buddhism

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...

 the term Shōbōgenzō refers generally to the Buddha Dharma, and in 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...

 Buddhism, it refers specifically to the realization of Buddha's awakening that is not contained in the written words of the sutras

Sutra

Sūtra is an aphorism or a collection of such aphorisms in the form of a manual. Literally it means a thread or line that holds things together and is derived from the verbal root siv-, meaning to sew , as does the medical term...

 (Pali

Páli

- External links :* *...

: suttas).

In general Buddhist usage, the term "treasury of the Dharma" refers to the written words of the Buddha's teaching collected in the Sutras as the middle of the Three Treasures

Three Treasures

The Three Treasures or Three Jewels are theoretical cornerstones in traditional Chinese medicine and practices such as Neidan, Qigong, and T'ai chi. They are also known as Jing Qi Shen . Despeux summarizes....

 of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha

Sangha

Sangha is a word in Pali or Sanskrit that can be translated roughly as "association" or "assembly," "company" or "community" with common goal, vision or purpose...

. In Zen, the real treasure of the Dharma is not to be found in books but in one's own Buddha Nature and the ability to see this Correct View (first of the Noble Eightfold Path

Noble Eightfold Path

The Noble Eightfold Path , is one of the principal teachings of the Buddha, who described it as the way leading to the cessation of suffering and the achievement of self-awakening. It is used to develop insight into the true nature of phenomena and to eradicate greed, hatred, and delusion...

) of the treasure of Dharma is called the "Treasure of the Correct Dharma Eye".

In the legends of the Zen tradition, the Shōbōgenzō has been handed down from teacher to student going all the way back to the Buddha when he transmitted the Shobogenzo to his disciple Mahākāśyapa

Mahakasyapa

Mahākāśyapa or Kāśyapa was a brahman of Magadha, who became one of the principal disciples of Śākyamuni Buddha and who convened and directed the first council. Mahākāśyapa is one of the most revered of the Buddha's early disciples, foremost in ascetic practices...

 thus beginning the Zen lineage that Bodhidharma

Bodhidharma

Bodhidharma was a Buddhist monk who lived during the 5th/6th century AD. He is traditionally credited as the transmitter of Ch'an to China, and regarded as the first Chinese patriarch...

 brought to China.

The legend of the transmission of the Shōbōgenzō to Mahākāśyapa is found in several Zen texts and is one of the most referred to legends in all the writings of Zen. Among the famous koan collections, it appears as Case 6 in the Wumenguan (The Gateless Checkpoint) and Case 2 in the Denkoroku

Denkoroku

, written by Keizan Jokin Zenji in 1300, is a kōan collection of 53 enlightenment stories based on the traditional legendary accounts of the Zen transmission between successive masters and disciples in the Sōtō Zen Buddhist lineage from Shakyamuni Buddha to Japanese Zen Master Ejō, a first...

 (Transmission of Light). In the legend as told in the Wumenguan, the Buddha holds up a flower and no one in the assembly responds except for Arya Kashyapa

Mahakasyapa

Mahākāśyapa or Kāśyapa was a brahman of Magadha, who became one of the principal disciples of Śākyamuni Buddha and who convened and directed the first council. Mahākāśyapa is one of the most revered of the Buddha's early disciples, foremost in ascetic practices...

 who gives a broad smile and laughs a little. Seeing Mahākāśyapa's smile the Buddha said,

I possess the Treasury of the Correct Dharma Eye , the wonderful heart-mind of Nirvana, the formless true form, the subtle Dharma gate, not established by written words, transmitted separately outside the teaching. I hand it over and entrust these encouraging words to Kashyapa.

Dahui's Shōbōgenzō

Dahui Zonggao

Dahui Zonggao

Dahui Zonggao was a 12th century Chinese Chan master best known as a keen advocate of the use of koans to achieve enlightenment...

, the famous popularizer of koans in the Sung

Sung

Sung may refer to several things:*The Song Dynasty, a dynasty of Ancient China.*An alternate transliteration of the Korean family name Song.*An alternate transliteration of the Korean family name Seong.*The Korean family name Sung....

 period of China, wrote a koan collection titled 正法眼藏 Zhengfa Yanzang (Treasury of the Correct Dharma Eye, W-G.: Cheng-fa yen-tsang, J.: Shōbōgenzō)

Dahui's Shōbōgenzō is composed of three scrolls prefaced by three short introductory pieces.

Upon arriving in China, Dogen Kigen first studied under Wuji Lepai, a disciple of Dahui, which is where he probably came into contact with Dahui's Shōbōgenzō.

Dogen's Two Shōbōgenzōs

In Japan and the West, the term Shōbōgenzō is most commonly known as referring to the titles of two works composed by Japanese Zen master Dōgen Kigen

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...

 in the mid-13th century.

The first written and completed in 1235, the 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...

, also known as the Mana Shōbōgenzō or Shōbōgenzō Sanbyakusoku is a collection of 301 koans (public cases) and is written in Chinese

Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...

, the language of the original texts from which the koans were taken.

In his Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation, Carl Bielefeldt acknowledges that Dogen likely took the title from Dahui for his first Shōbōgenzō koan collection and kept it for his following Shōbōgenzō commentary collection:

Indeed the fact that Dōgen styled his effort "Shōbō genzō" suggests that he had as his model a similar compilation of the same title by the most famous of Sung masters, Ta-Hui Tsung-kao

Dahui Zonggao

Dahui Zonggao was a 12th century Chinese Chan master best known as a keen advocate of the use of koans to achieve enlightenment...

. Unlike the latter, Dōgen was content here simply to record the stories without interjecting his own remarks. A few years later, however, he embarked on a major project to develop extended commentaries on many of these and other passages from the Ch'an literature. The fruit of this project was his masterpiece--the remarkable collection of essays known as the kana, or "vernacular", Shōbō genzō. (p. 46.)

The later Kana Shōbōgenzō consists of an overlapping assortment of essays and commentaries written 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...

; different versions of the Kana Shōbōgenzō contain different sets of texts. (See: Heine, Dogen and the Koan Tradition)

When referring to Dogen's works, the term Shōbōgenzō by itself more commonly refers to the Kana Shōbōgenzō.

Kana Shōbōgenzō

The different component texts—referred to as fascicles—of the Kana Shōbōgenzō were written between 1231 and 1253—the year of Dōgen's death (Dōgen, 2002, p. xi). Unlike earlier Zen writings originating in 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...

, including Dōgen's own Shinji Shōbōgenzō and Eihei Koroku, which were written in Chinese, the Kana Shōbōgenzō was written in Japanese.

Modern editions of Shōbōgenzō contain 95 fascicles, though earlier collections in the Sōtō

Soto

Sōtō Zen , or is, with Rinzai and Ōbaku, one of the three most populous sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism.The Sōtō sect was first established as the Caodong sect during the Tang Dynasty in China by Dongshan Liangjie in the 9th century, which Dōgen Zenji then brought to Japan in the 13th century...

 Zen tradition varied in number (75, 60, and 28). Dogen began a process of revision late in his life that resulted in 12 of these, but it is thought that he intended to cover them all. There is debate over whether these revisions represented a shift in his views. The essays in Shōbōgenzō were delivered as sermon

Sermon

A sermon is an oration by a prophet or member of the clergy. Sermons address a Biblical, theological, religious, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law or behavior within both past and present contexts...

s in a less formal style than the Chinese-language sermons of the Eihei Koroku. Some of the fascicles were recorded by Dōgen, while others were likely recorded by his disciples

Sravaka

Shravaka or Śrāvaka or Sāvaka means "hearer" or, more generally, "disciple".This term is used by both Buddhists and Jains. In Jainism, a shravaka is any lay Jain...

.

The Dōgen Zenji Zenshu contains all 95 Japanese fascicles, untranslated. There are now four complete 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...

 translations of the Kana Shobogenzo. A translation by Gudo Nishijima

Gudo Wafu Nishijima

Gudo Wafu Nishijima is a Japanese 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...

 and Chodo Cross is available under two titles, Master Dogen's Shobogenzo and Shōbōgenzō: The True Dharma-Eye Treasury. The latter is freely distributed digitally by Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai (BDK) with many other Mahāyāna

Mahayana

Mahāyāna is one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice...

 texts. Kosen Nishiyama and John Stevens have a translation titled Shobogenzo (The Eye and Treasury of the True Law). Shasta Abbey

Shasta Abbey

Shasta Abbey is a Zen Buddhist Monastery, established in 1970 by Houn Jiyu-Kennett in Mount Shasta, California, in the United States. It is a training monastery, and is open to visitors who want to learn about Buddhism....

 has a free digital translation of the Shobogenzo and offers other Soto Zen works. Kazuaki Tanahashi's new translation Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen's Shobo Genzo will be released in mid-2011. Additionally, the Stanford-based Soto Zen Text Project, a project to translate Dogen and other Sōtō

Soto

Sōtō Zen , or is, with Rinzai and Ōbaku, one of the three most populous sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism.The Sōtō sect was first established as the Caodong sect during the Tang Dynasty in China by Dongshan Liangjie in the 9th century, which Dōgen Zenji then brought to Japan in the 13th century...

texts, has completed several fascicles, freely distributed in digital format.

External links

• Chapters of the Shobogenzo translated by the Soto Zen Text Project
• Understanding the Shobogenzo by Gudo Nishijima
• Genjo Koan, Uji, Bendowa, and Soshi Seirai I, annotated English translations of Shobogenzo fascicles
• Full english PDF(free distribution) - 8MB
• Nishijima & Cross' four volume translation freely distributed by Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai (BDK) volume 1 volume 2 volume 3 volume 4