Kosho Uchiyama Roshi - Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dagens Bendowa, with Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi

Foreword

B endwa (Talk on wholehearted practice of the way) is one of the primary writings about practice/enlightenment by the great Japanese Zen Master Eihei Dgen (1200-1253). After training as a monk in the dominant Japanese Tendai school and studying with the early Japanese Rinzai Zen teachers, Dgen was dissatisfied with the Japanese Buddhist teachings of his time, and in 1223 went to study in China. After meeting his teacher and receiving dharma transmission, Dgen returned to Japan in 1227. He eventually spread his teachings about Zen meditation and practice, and established a monastery to maintain this tradition. Dgen is now honored as the founder of the St branch of Japanese Zen, which remains strong in Japan and in recent decades has spread in many places in the West.

Above and beyond any particular school of Buddhism or religious affiliation, Dgen's profound and poetic writings are now generally respected as a pinnacle of Japanese philosophy and of world spiritual literature. Among Zen masters, Dgen was a uniquely prolific writer. Especially renowned is his long masterwork, the collection of essays Shbgenz (True dharma eye treasury), some versions of which include Bendwa.

Bendwa was written in 1231, soon after Dgen's return from China to Japan. In this essay Dgen expresses his teaching of the essential meaning of zazen (seated meditation) and its actual practice, elaborating on his brief initial writing, Fukanzazengi (The way of zazen recommended to everyone). Much of Dgen's teaching encourages wholehearted engagement in our lives, based on awakening to our intimate interconnectedness with the totality of our world and its creatures. Our intention in presenting this translation and commentary on Bendwa is to make it available for the use and benefit of practitioners and sincere students interested in this profound, spiritual way of life recommended by Dgen Zenji.

We have added notes to the end of the translation of the text to elucidate technical terms and Dgen's references to the Buddhist and East Asian cultural traditions. Shhaku Okumura Sensei's introduction provides valuable background on the place of Bendwa in Dgen's writings, as well as on some of the important developments in the Japanese St Zen tradition after Dgen, of which very little has been available up to now in English. The introduction also discusses the essential meaning and etymology of "practice of the way" and of Dgen's fundamental teaching of jijuy zanmai, the samadhi of self-fulfillment, which is elucidated in Bendwa.

This book also features the lively and direct commentary of Ksh Uchiyama Roshi, Okumura Sensei's teacher, who is one of the most highly respected modern Japanese St Zen masters. Some fine English translations from Dgen's writings have appeared, and a few insightful scholarly treatments of Dgen's teachings have been published in English; still, it is unusual to find a practical commentary like Uchiyama Roshi's, which expresses the down-to-earth implications of this subtle teaching for our everyday actualization. Uchiyama Roshi was successor to the great, dynamic Japanese master, Kd Sawaki Roshi, who revitalized the practice of zazen in modern Japan before his death in 1965. From 1965 until his retirement in 1975, Uchiyama Roshi was abbot of Antaiji monastery, then in Kyoto, which was a primary place for Westerners to practice Zen in Japan during those years. He now lives with his wife in a small temple outside Kyoto and continues to practice the Japanese art of origami, of which he is also a master. Uchiyama Roshi has written many Zen texts and commentaries, some of which have been translated into English in Refining Your Life and Opening the Hand of Thought. We hope Western practitioners will savor this commentary on Bendwa, selected from Uchiyama Roshi's talks to Zen students at Ssenji Temple in Kyoto in 1978 and 1979.