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Carl Bielefeldt
 
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Curriculum Vitae 
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<blockquote>
Publications 
Treasury of
the True Dharma Eye: An Annotated Translation of the 75-Fascicle Redaction of
the Shbgenz by Dgen . In preparation. 
Finding Dgen
in Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End . In Richard Payne,
ed., Festschrift for Lewis Lancaster (working title). Forthcoming.

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Shbgenz
uji : Being Time. Dharma Eye ( Hgen ) 30
(Autumn, 2012). In press. 
kannon : Avalokitevara. Dharma Eye ( Hgen 
) 29 (Spring, 2012). 
Disarming the
Superpowers: The abhij in Eisai and Dgen. In S. Heine, ed.,
Dgen: Textual and Historical Studies , pp. 192-206. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012. Reprint of Dgen zenji kenky ronsh 
(2002) article. 
shin fukatoku : The Mind Cannot Be Got. Dharma Eye
( Hgen ) 28 (Autumn, 2011). 
muj sepp : The Insentient Preach the Dharma. Dharma
Eye ( Hgen ) 27 (Spring, 2011). 
Le Shbgenz
alors et maintenant (The Shbgenz Then and Now). Revue Zen
93 (2010). 
bussh : Buddha Nature (Part 2). Dharma Eye (
Hgen ) 26 (Autumn, 2010). 
bussh : Buddha Nature (Part 1). Dharma Eye (
Hgen ) 25 (Spring, 2010). 
Expedient
Devices, the One Vehicle, and the Lifespan of the Buddha. In J. Stone and S.
Teiser, ed. Readings of the Lotus Sutra . NY: Columbia University
Press, 2009. 
On
Translation. Buddhadharma (Fall, 2009). 
henzan : Extensive Study. Dharma Eye ( Hgen 
) 24 (Autumn, 2009). 
jipp : The Ten Directions. Dharma Eye ( Hgen
) 24 (Spring, 2009). 
rygin : Song of the Dragon. Dharma Eye ( Hgen
) 22 (November, 2008). 
soshi seirai i : The Intention of the Ancestral Master's
Coming from the West. Dharma Eye ( Hgen ) 22 (November,
2008). 
hotsu bodai shin : Giving Rise to the Mind of Bodhi.
Dharma Eye ( Hgen ) 21 (March 2008). 
hakujushi : The Cypress Tree. Dharma Eye ( Hgen
) 20 (Autumn, 2007). 
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butsud : The Way of the Buddha. Dharma Eye (
Hgen ) 19 (March, 2007), pp. 17-27. 
katt : Twining Vines. Dharma Eye ( Hgen 
) 17 (Spring 2006). 
zanmai zanmai : King of Samdhis Samdhi. Dharma
Eye ( Hgen ) 18 (Autumn, 2006). 
Review of
Bowring, The Religious Traditions of Japan 500-1600 ; and Swanson and
Chilson, ed., Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions . SSJR Bulletin
Supplement 2006. 
Practice. In
D. Lopez, ed., Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism , pp. 229-244
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 
sesshin sessh : Talking of the Mind, Talking of the
Nature. Dharma Eye ( Hgen ) 16 (Autumn, 2005).

kaiin zanmai : The Ocean Seal Samadhi.
Dharma Eye ( Hgen ) 14 (Summer, 2004). 
Entries on
Buddhism in Japan and Dgen. Encyclopedia of Buddhism. NY:
Macmillan, 2003. 
kobutsu shin : The Old Buddha Mind. Dharma Eye (
Hgen ) 13 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 15-18. 
tashin ts : Penetration of Other Minds. Dharma Eye
( Hgen ) 12 (Spring, 2003) pp. 21-27. 
Disarming the
Superpowers: The abhij in Eisai and Dgen. In Dgen zenji kenky
ronsh [Dgen Studies], ed. by Daihonzan Eiheiji Daionki
Kyoku , pp. 1018-1046. Fukui-ken: Eiheiji, 2002. 
sansui ky : The Mountains and Waters Sutra. Dharma Eye
( Hgen ) 9 (2001), pp. 10-17. 
Circumabulating the Mountains and Waters. Dharma Eye (
Hgen ) 9 (2001), pp. 5-7. 
Sanka suru
bukky ni mukete [Toward a Participatory Buddhism]. In Nara
and Azuma , ed., Dgen no nijisseiki [Dgen's Twenty-first
Century], pp. 211-232. Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki, 2001. English version published as
Toward a Participatory Buddhism, Mountain Record 21:1 (Fall 2002),
pp. 28-39. 
Descriptive
& Prescriptive Approaches to the Three Disciplines: A Response to Prof.
Ishigami. In Proceedings of the Conference on Zen and Nenbutsu , Los
Angeles: Bukky Daigaku, 2000. 
Living With
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Dgen: Thoughts on the Relevance of His Thought. Proceedings of the
Symposium Dogen Zen and Its Relevance for Our Time , pp. 123-133. Tokyo:
Stsh Shmuch, 2000. 
Zongze:
Principles of Seated Meditation ( Zuochanyi ). In W.T. de Bary and I.
Bloom, eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition , 2nd. ed., vol. 1, pp.
522-524. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. (Originally appeared as
appendix to my Dgen's Manuals of Zen Meditation .) 
Dgen's
Lancet of Seated Meditation . In G. Tanabe, ed., Religions of
Japan in Practice , pp. 220-234. Princeton Readings in Religions
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. (Earlier version appeared in
Mountain Record 8:2 [summer-fall 1989], pp. 40-50.) 
Shb
genz zazen gi : Principles of Seated Meditation.
Zen Quarterly 11:2-3 (1999), pp. 5-8. 
Kokan Shiren
and the Sectarian Uses of History. In J. Mass, ed., The Origins of Japan's
Medieval World: Courtiers, Clerics, Warriors, and Peasants in the Fourteenth
Century , pp. 295-317. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Soto Zen at
the Beginning of the Twentieth Century. Wind Bell 32:2 (1998), pp.
17-24. 
The Mountain
Spirit: Reflections on Reading the Shb genz . In Proceedings of
the International Conference on Korean Sn Buddhism . Seoul: Bibaek
Institute, 1998. (Reprinted as The Mountain Spirit: Dgen, Gary Snyder, and
Critical Buddhism, Zen Quarterly 11:1 [1999], pp. 18-24.) 
Commentary on
A. Andrews, Hnen's Journey from the jysh to the Senchakush
.' In Hnen jdoky no sgteki kenky [A
Comprehensive Review of the Pure Land Buddhism of Hnen], pp. 89-92. Kyoto:
Bukky Daigaku, 1998. 
Reading
Others' Minds. In D. Lopez, ed., Buddhism in Practice , pp. 69-79.
Princeton Readings in Religions . Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1995. (Earlier version appeared in The Ten Directions 13:1
[spring-summer 1992], pp. 26-34.) 
A Discussion
of Seated Zen, in D. Lopez, ed., Buddhism in Practice , pp. 197-206.
Princeton Readings in Religions . Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1995. (Earlier version appeared as Enni's Treatise on Seated Zen
. The Ten Directions 9:1 [spring-summer 1988], pp. 7-11.)

Filling the
Zen Sh: Notes on the Jissh yd ki . Cahiers d'Extrme Asie
7 (1993-94), pp. 221-248. (Reprinted in B. Faure, ed., Chan Buddhism in
Ritual Context , 2003.) 
Gregory, Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism. Cahiers d'Extrme Asie
7 (1993-94), pp. 446-449. 
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Shb genz
eiyaku o kangaeru: kaishaku to hhron ni tsuite
[On meaning and method in translation of the Shb genz ].
St shh 686 (11/92), pp. 72-75; 687 (12/92), pp. 82-87.
(English translation appeared in Zen Quarterly .) 
Dgen Studies
in America: Thoughts on the State of the Field. Zen kenkyjo nenp 
[Annual of the Zen Research Institute, Komazawa University] 3 (1992),
endmatter pp. 1-17. (Reprinted in Zen Quarterly 4:3 [Autumn 1992], pp.
7-12; and The Ten Directions [fall-winter 1992], pp. 20-24.)

No-Mind and
Sudden Awakening: Thoughts on the Soteriology of a Kamakura Zen Text. In R.
Buswell and R. Gimello, ed., Paths to Liberation: The Mrga and Its
Transformations in Buddhist Thought , pp. 475-505. Studies in East Asian
Buddhism 7. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992. 
Ten Thousand
Ways to Make a Buddha: Universal and Particular in Dgen's Zen. In The
Future of the Earth and Zen Buddhism , pp. 17-23. Tokyo: Stsh Shmuch,
1991. (Reprinted in Zen Quarterly 4:2 [Summer 1992], pp. 5-7.)

Buswell, The Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea. History of
Religions 31:2 (11/91), p. 210. 
Dobbins, Jdo Shinsh: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan. Journal of Japanese
Studies 17:2 (Summer 1991), pp. 381-386. 
Kamens, The Three Jewels. Journal of Religion 71:1 (1/91), pp. 128-
129.The Story of Hui-Neng. Wind Bell 25:2 (fall 1991), pp. 28-34.

The One
Vehicle and the Three Jewels: On Japanese Sectarianism and Some Ecumenical
Alternatives. Buddhist-Christian Studies 10 (1990), pp. 5-16.

Tanabe and Tanabe, ed., The Lotus Sutra in Japanese Culture. Journal of
Asian Studies , 49:1 (2/90), pp. 173-175. (Revised version appeared in
Wind Bell 24 [fall 1990], pp. 21-23.) 
Putting the
Cart Before the Horse: Reflections on Enni's Treatise on Seated Zen .
The Ten Directions 10:1 (spring-summer 1989), pp. 7-21. 
Dgen's
Manuals of Zen Meditation . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

The Four
Levels of prat tya-samutpda According to the Fa-hua hsan-i
. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies
11:1 (1988), pp. 7-29. 
Ch'ang-lu
Tsung-tse's Tso-ch'an i and the Secret' of Zen Meditation. In P.
Gregory, ed., Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism , pp.
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129-161. Studies in East Asian Buddhism 4. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1986. 
Recarving the
Dragon: History and Dogma in the Study of Dgen. In W. LaFleur, ed., Dgen
Studies , pp. 21-53. Studies in East Asian Buddhism 2. Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, 1985. 
Annotated
translation of Yanagida Seizan, The Li-tai fa-pao chi and the Ch'an
Doctrine of Sudden Awakening. In W. Lai and L. Lancaster, ed., Early Ch'an
in China and Tibet , pp. 13-49. Berkeley Buddhist Studies Series 5.
Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1983. 
Collcutt, Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval
Japan. Journal of Asian Studies 41:4 (8/82), pp. 841-843. 
Kodera, Dgen's Formative Years in China. Journal of Asian Studies 40:2
(2/81), pp. 387-89. 
Abstracts of
Japanese articles on Buddhist studies. Revue Bibliographique de Sinologie
12-13 (1980), entries 936, 941. 
Dgen's
Shb genz sansuiky . In M. Tobias and H. Drasdo, ed., The
Mountain Spirit , pp. 37-49. New York: Overlook Press, 1979. (Reprinted in
Mountain Record [winter 1986, spring 1987].) 
Translation of
Kajiyama Yichi, Mahyna Buddhism and the Philosophy of Praj. In A.K.
Narain, ed., Studies in Pali and Buddhism , pp. 197-206. Delhi: B.R.
Publishing, 1979. 
Nishimura and Stevens, Shbgenz , vol. 1; Yokoi, Zen Master Dgen
; Kennett, Zen Is Eternal Life ; Kim, Kigen Dgen: Mystical
Realist . Shambala Review 5:1-2 (Winter 1976), pp. 53-55.

Shibayama, Zen Comments on the Mumonkan . Shambala Review 4:6
(5-6/76), pp. 10-11. 
T'an ching
(Platform Sutra). Philosophy East and West 25:2 (4/75), pp.
197-212. (With L. Lancaster) 
Review of Luk,
Transmission of the Mind. Codex Shambala 4:2 (1975), pp. 12-13.

Translation of
Yokoi Kakud, Fundamental Understanding of St Zen Buddhism. Komazawa
daigaku bukky gakubu kenky kiy [Bulletin of the
Faculty of Buddhist Studies, Komazawa University] 31 (3/73), pp. 1-6. (With F.
Bielefeldt) 
 
</blockquote>
<a
href="https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/Bielefeldt.doc"
target="_blank">Ch'ang-lu Tsung-tse's Tso-ch'an I and the "Secret" of Zen
Meditation</a> (DOC) <a
href="https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/Bielefeldt.doc"
target="_blank"> 
</a>by Carl Bielefeldt 
In: Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism 
Edited by Peter N. Gregory 
Includes content by: Peter N. Gregory, Alan Sponberg, Daniel B. Stevenson,
Bernard Faure, Carl Bielefeldt 
Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism 4., University of
Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1986, 129-161. 
 PDF: <a href="../dogen/BielefeldtDogen.pdf"
target="_blank">Dgen's manuals of Zen meditation</a> 
University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles,
London, 1988
 
DGEN STUDIES IN AMERICA: THOUGHTS ON THE
STATE OF THE FIELD 
by Carl Bielefeldt, Stanford University 
From Zen kenky jo nenp 3 (1992), endmatter pp. 1-17. 
<a
href="http://www.china2551.org/Article/EnglishBudhis/Research/200803/5213.html"
target="_blank">http://www.china2551.org/Article/EnglishBudhis/Research/200803/5
213.html</a>
 I have been
asked to take as my subject here the state of the field of Dgen studies in
America. This I shall try to do.[1] However, in taking up this subject, I should
warn you in advance on two points. First, although I have myself done some study
of Dgen, my own academic interests stand somewhat outside most American work in
this field, and I am not particularly expert in, or even in many cases familiar
with, this work. I shall not, therefore, try to give you here either a
comprehensive bibliography of the literature or a detailed appraisal of
individual examples; rather, I shall restrict my remarks to a brief historical
survey of English-language publications and a more general overview of the ways
that Dgen has been and is being treated in America.[2] Second, although we may
of course in a loose sense speak of a field of American Dgen studies, from
what I know of the work on Dgen, my own feeling is that it may be misleading
both historically and analytically to speak as if what we have in America
represents anything so imposing as a field of Dgen studies at least if we
mean by this much more than a collection of books and articles on certain
aspects of Dgen. I shall try in what follows to explain why I say
this.
There is no doubt
that American interest in Dgen has increased remarkably in recent years. A
frequenter of the book shops of Jinbch, I note that the Dgen boom in
Japanese publication that began some years ago has not yet run its course.
American book stores may not have anything quite like the daunting Dgen
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sections we find in Tokyo, but I venture to say that there are now more books in
print in America on Dgen than on any other single figure in the history of Zen
or even, I suspect, in the history of East Asian Buddhism as a whole.[3] As a
result of these books, Dgen (at least the name Dgen) is now familiar not
only to specialists in Zen or East Asian Buddhism but to many scholars in other
fields and even to many among the general public with interest in Asian
culture.
Nevertheless, if
Dgen has grown quickly to become Americas favorite Zen master, he has done so
with surprisingly little help from American scholarship. Most of the Dgen
titles are trade books, intended for a popular audience; most of them are
translations, few of which reflect significant research in primary sources. Many
of them are not by scholars and not by Americans. If we look beyond the covers
of these books for examples of original American scholarship on Dgen, the list
is much less impressive. In fact, the academic study of this Zen master remains
in its infancy remains, that is, not only young but small, weak and immature.
Thus, historically speaking, it may simply be premature to imagine an academic
field of Dgen studies in America. It may even be premature to predict that
the considerable American interest in Dgen is leading toward such a field. My
own sense, at least for the immediate future, is that it is not.
I shall come back
to the future at the end. Meanwhile, I want to emphasize that it is not only the
age and size but also (and more importantly) the shape of American work that
makes me reluctant to speak of something as broad as Dgen studies in America.
Insofar as there has been American scholarly work on Dgen, it has been for the
most part concerned with only one kind of Dgen.
When we look at
Japanese scholarship in this century, we can find at least three major kinds of
Dgen: first and most conspicuously, of course, there is Dgen the Zen master,
the patriarch of the St Zen school and teacher of shikan taza; second, Dgen
the philosopher, the metaphysician of being-time (uji) and the Buddha nature;
and finally, Dgen the Japanese, the Kamakura-period Buddhist author and
religious leader. Each of these Dgens has his own origins: the Zen master Dgen
was largely inherited by modern scholarship from the sectarian studies (shgaku)
of the Edo period; the philosopher Dgen was born from the pre-war Japanese
encounter with Western thought; the Japanese Dgen has been created largely by
post-war historiography. Similarly, each of these images of Dgen appears
against and becomes defined by the background of his own setting: the Zen master
belongs to the religious history of Zen tradition; the philosopher seems to move
in the abstract atmosphere of timeless, universal truths; the Japanese is bound
to the specific circumstances of medieval society and culture.
Of course, this
kind of simple tripartite typology is too crude to do real justice to the
varied, complex, and shifting styles of Dgen studies in Japan (and I welcome
your corrections to it). The categories are by no means clearly bounded but
overlap to such a degree that perhaps most scholarship cannot be fairly embraced
by any single one alone. The line, for example, between the Zen master as
thinker and the philosopher as Buddhist is obviously not easy to draw. Indeed
the study of what I am calling Dgen the Zen master is a field of such
proportions that it reaches from what in another context we would call
constructive theology to highly revisionist (and sometimes quite positivistic)
historiography. In the end, perhaps what such extremes have in common is only
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that they treat Dgen in terms of the history and thought of Zen
tradition.
In any case, I
trouble you with this crude typology here only as a heuristic device to help me
emphasize the particular character of American academic interest in Dgen. If
you can grant me for the moment at least something like my three ideal types
of Dgen in Japanese scholarship, I want to suggest that it is only my second
type, the philosopher (or perhaps the philosophical theologian), that has so far
shown signs of flourishing in the American environment. Of the Zen master, and
especially of Dgen the Japanese, we have yet to see very much. First, let me
give you a brief historical sketch of English-language publications on Dgen;
then I shall step back to reflect a bit on the academic sociology, as it were,
within which my various Dgens are (and are not) being studied in
America.
 
*
* * * *
If the various
Dgens of Japanese scholarship were born at very different times Edo, pre-war
and post-war the Dgens in America (insofar as we can find a plurality) are
very young. When I first began to read about and practice Zen as a philosophy
student in San Francisco in the 1960s, Dgen existed in America almost only as
a Zen master and this perhaps less on paper than in the imaginations of a few
zazen students at the San Francisco Zen Center and other such St-related Zen
communities. Our books on Zen Buddhism at the time were mostly by, or influenced
by, D. T. Suzuki; and, as you know, the Rinzai professor Suzuki did not much
appreciate the St patriarch Dgen.
I confess that,
except for occasional flashbacks, my picture of the 1960s has long faded, but I
recall from this decade only three significant English sources on Dgen.[4] The
first was The St Approach to Zen, an obscure little collection of essay and
translation by the late professor of this university Masunaga Reih.[5] Early in
the decade, A History of Zen Buddhism, by the Sophia University professor
Heinrich Dumoulin was translated into English from the German.[6] This book,
which contained a lengthy chapter on Dgens life and thought, was for many
years the most extended and substantial treatment of Zen history in English and
served to introduce Dgen to a wide American audience; it has been superseded
only by Prof. Dumoulins own recent revised and enlarged two-volume version, Zen
Buddhism: A History.[7] In 1967, Jiyu Kennet, the English St nun trained at
Sjiji, published a collection of St Zen materials, including some of Dgens
writings.[8] These three early treatments of Dgen, though very different, had
at least three things in common: first, none was written by an American; second,
all (albeit in different senses and degrees) were products of and sympathetic
toward St tradition; and therefore, finally, all took as their object some
version of what I am calling Dgen the Zen master.[9]
Thus, in the
early 1970s, when I started graduate Buddhist studies at Berkeley, the American
Dgen was still only a Zen master, and Zen masters were still only on the
margins of academic Buddhist studies, which tended to look down from its
scholarly heights on the popular American literature on Zen and the unlettered
enthusiasms of American Zen students. By the early 1980s, however, when I
finished my dissertation, Zen studies was becoming recognized as a legitimate,
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even vital new area of academic Buddhist studies, and Dgen was beginning to
develop an established academic identity. Interestingly enough, this new
identity has developed for the most part outside of Buddhist studies.
The 1970s saw a
large leap in the English resources on Dgen, with a good number of his writings
being re-translated or newly rendered. In 1971, for example, Prof. Masunagas
translation of the Shbgenz zuimon ki appeared from the University of Hawaii
Press, a publisher that has been particularly active in Dgen studies and Zen
studies in general.[10] Yokoi Yh translated the Eihei shingi,[11] as well as
the Fukan zazen gi, Gakud yjin sh, and the twelve-fascicle (jni kan bon)
Shbgenz.[12] The first volume of Nishiyama Ksens complete translation of
the Shbgenz appeared in 1975.[13] Particularly welcome during this period,
though never to my knowledge brought together in a single volume, were the
careful, annotated translations of the Shbgenz and other texts, published
throughout the decade in the journal The Eastern Buddhist, by Norman Waddell,
often in collaboration with Abe Masao.[14] In addition to these works of
translation, the 1970s also saw the publication of Hee-jin Kims important Kigen
Dgen: Mystical Realist. This book, produced in 1975, was the first (and even
today, over fifteen years later, remains the only) general academic study in
English of Dgens life and thought; it has continued to serve over the years as
Americas best single introduction to Dgen.[15] .
Prof. Kims work
combines a close familiarity with St shgaku with the authors own
interpretation of Dgens thought as religious philosophy. This interest in
philosophy has been central to the work of Abe Masao, a man who has done much to
spread an appreciation of Dgen in America. Prof. Abes scholarship differs
markedly, of course, from that of D. T. Suzuki, but it is probably fair to say
that he more than anyone else has inherited Suzukis mantle in America both in
the sense that he has taken on Prof. Suzukis mission as interpreter of Zen to
the West, and in the sense that his interpretation, like Suzukis, is closely
linked to the Kyoto school of Japanese philosophy. Unlike Suzuki, Abe has made
Dgen central to his interpretation of Zen.[16] Especially during the decade of
the 1980s, through his publications in English, his many lectures and seminars
throughout America, his ongoing dialogue with Christian theologians, he has
carried Dgens thought beyond the Zen centers and the academic Zen studies
programs to a broad audience of American intellectuals.[17]
In any case, it
has largely been Prof. Abes image of Dgen the religious philosopher that has
dominated American interest over the 1980s. The decade has seen a steady stream
of new translations of the Shbgenz, and occasionally of other texts, by
Thomas Cleary,[18] Francis Cook,[19] Hee-jin Kim,[20] Kazuaki Tanahashi,[21]
Thomas Wright,[22] Yokoi Yh,[23]and others. More significantly, this period
has also witnessed, for the first time, the production of original scholarly
studies of Dgen by a number of young American scholars trained in Western and
often Japanese philosophy, who seek to interpret Dgens thought through the
techniques of phenomenology, analytic and comparative philosophy, and so on.
Examples of these new interpretations can be found in books such as Tom
Kasuliss extremely popular Zen Action-Zen Person,[24] Steven Heines
Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dgen,[25] David
Shaners The Body-Mind Experience in Japanese Buddhism: A Phenomenological
Perspective of Kkai and Dgen[26] or Joan Stambaughs recent Impermanence and
Buddha Nature: Dgens Understanding of Temporality.[27] Clearly, in such books
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we are in the presence of a Dgen who has transcended St Zen, not to mention
Kamakura Japan, to take his place among the World Philosophers.
 
* * * *
Culturally
speaking, that it should be the transcendental philosopher who has been most
successfully exported to the West should not surprise us: he was, after all,
from the beginning created with the foreign market in mind a model first
developed in pre-war Japan from imported Western ideas as a part of the project
to modernize and internationalize the countrys intellectual history, in order
to establish the place of the insular culture among the nations of the world.
Predictably, the nations of the world now find their own ideas reflected in the
model, and many Americans now find themselves more attracted to it than to the
old Zen master. What seems more surprising is the relative neglect of a figure
as famous as Dgen by American students of Zen history, who are supposed, after
all, to be attracted to old Zen masters. 
Within the
specific culture of the American academy, it may well be that Dgens very fame,
both in America and Japan, is partly to blame for his neglect: he is, as it
were, too big to offer an immediately promising subject of study at once too
familiar to the American public to be academically fashionable and too imposing
in the Japanese secondary literature to be easily manageable. Hence, the student
of Zen studies (who in America after all still has almost the entire field from
which to lay professional claim to a specialty) is likely tempted to look around
for more exotic, less overworked areas where there is greater room for original
scholarship. Nothing is so appreciated in the American academy as original
scholarship.
It may also be
not only the fact but the particular type of Dgens fame that is to blame: his
dual status as philosophical giant and as sacred ancestor of St tradition has
probably made him less, rather than more, attractive to Zen studies as it is
typically done in America. Academic Zen studies arose in America during the
1970s largely within the environment of a scientific Buddhology centered in
Indology and dedicated to rigorous historical and philological inquiry into
ancient Buddhist texts. As a living East Asian religion that celebrated its
freedom from the texts and norms of ancient Indian Buddhism, and as a religion
that was tainted by its association with popular, anti-intellectual American
fads of the 1960s, Zen was an alien (not to say heretical) subject that
needed to be domesticated. 
Zen students,
seeking academic styles that would distance them from Zens alien ways and make
them respectable Buddhologists, have tended to be shy of the big ideas of Zen
philosophy and embarrassed by the popular pieties of Zen religiosity.[28] Dgen,
as object of both philosophical speculation and religious cult, has been in this
sense doubly problematic for academic Zen studies. No doubt a number of the
scholars of my generation who have begun to establish the field of American Zen
studies originally came to these studies, as I did, with interest in Dgen. I
have, for some reason, been slower than most to outgrow this interest, but most
of my generation has succeeded in finding more appropriate subjects. Apart from
my own little study of the Fukan zazen gi,[29] James Koderas work on the Hky
ki may be the only American book to deal with Dgen in the context of Zen
Pgina 11
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history.[30]
The early
direction of academic Zen studies in America was particularly influenced by two
books published in 1967: Yanagida Seizans Shoki zensh shisho no kenky,[31]
which became a kind of bible of the field during its inception in the 1970s;
and Philip Yampolskys The Platform Stra of the Sixth Patriarch,[32] which, as
the first scholarly study of a Zen text by an American academic became a
standard against which the field could measure itself. Both these books, of
course, dealt with the origins of Zen in the Tang dynasty, and both sought to
reevaluate Zen tradition through the techniques of modern textual and historical
scholarship. Subsequent American Zen studies has tended to favor this same
subject and these same techniques.
Although we are
now beginning to get some excellent original American studies of Tang-dynasty
Zen, the field remains weaker for later periods and for Japan (not to mention
Korea and Viet Nam). Profs. Yanagida and Yampolsky have themselves moved on from
their earlier studies to consider topics in Japanese Zen, and recent American
Zen studies shows some signs of following suite; but the fact remains that most
areas of Japanese Zen have yet to be explored. This is unfortunately true not
only within Zen studies but also in other fields of Japanese studies from which
we might have hoped for scholarship on Dgen as medieval Japanese figure. In
fact, this last of my three Dgens is the least known in America. 
While the study
of Japanese Zen (and, apart from some notable exceptions, of Japanese Buddhism
more broadly) has lagged behind work on China, American scholarship has made
significant advances in Japanese history, literature, and religion. Yet this
scholarship has not, for the most part, been attracted by the technicalities of
Buddhist thought and has, therefore, largely stayed clear of the great
thinkers of Kamakura Buddhism the Dgens, Shinrans and Nichirens preferring
to leave such towering figures to the specialists in Buddhist studies. Since
American Buddhist studies has not yet been ready to accept the challenge, we
still have nothing approaching an adequate history of Kamakura Buddhism within
which to place Dgen and, therefore, little sense of him as a participant in and
creator of medieval Japanese religious culture.
In short, then,
it seems that the conditions of the American academic community have so far not
been very conducive to the development of the study of Dgen as an historical
figure, either within Zen tradition or the Japanese past. If we can take as
representative of American scholarship the collection of papers, entitled Dgen
Studies, published in 1985 as a result of the first Kuroda Institute conference
on Dgen, it is still almost entirely Dgens ideas that preoccupy us.[33] Yet
conditions are rapidly changing, and I would like to close with a few thoughts
on the future of Dgen studies in America.
 
* * * *
Among the most
general changes that may effect this field is the increasing incorporation of
Asian humanities into American university education. One sign of this change is
the recent graduation of Buddhist studies from the relative isolation of Asian
language programs into religious studies departments. If this move may be
tending to increase the distance of Buddhologists from their colleagues in Asian
Pgina 12
CarlBielefeldt.txt
philology and classical languages, it is also bringing them into much closer
contact with the interests and methods of new colleagues and thereby breaking
down the old barriers, almost as daunting in America as in Japan, between the
disciplines of Buddhist studies and religious studies. How might such contact
affect the future careers of my three Dgens?
At first glance,
religious studies would seem the ideal environment for further development of
scholarship on Dgen as religious philosopher, providing an intellectual setting
in which he can be viewed alongside, and in conversation with, the great
thinkers of the worlds religions. Some American academic institutions may in
fact provide such a setting. But it must also be realized that the discipline of
religious studies in America has itself been undergoing considerable change in
recent years, moving from earlier emphases on theology, intellectual and church
histories, history and phenomenology of religions, and so on, toward increasing
concerns for recent developments in hermeneutics and critical theory, culture
studies and social history. In this new environment, the old ways of doing the
humanities, with their focus on the cultural products of the social elite, are
being called into question; and in religious studies departments deeply
influenced by this environment, the study of the great religious traditions
and of the great religious thinkers of the past is giving way to new interests
in popular religious mentalities that are best discovered in the ordinary
beliefs and everyday practices of the community.
There is an
obvious sense in which such developments do not bode well for Dgen studies,
which has been after all, both in Japan and America, a prime example of the old
ways of the humanities. Certainly the new religious studies environment will
not be conducive to the study of Dgen as philosopher; for the time being, it
may be difficult for such study to find a comfortable home in at least the more
up-to-date institutions. But the study of Dgen as Zen master, at least as this
study has traditionally been approached, is also not likely to flourish: if
American Zen students were unattracted to such study in the earlier Buddhist
studies environment (where they were at least expected to read the great books
of the tradition), it is difficult to see what in the new environment will
encourage them to the years of textual work involved in fitting Dgen into Zen
tradition. We should probably not expect soon to see many American specialists
in such subjects as the Chinese sources of Dgens doctrine or the textual
history of the Shbgenz. On the other hand, since Japanese scholarship is so
good at such subjects, perhaps we do not need many of these American
specialists.
If there is a
bright spot in this rather gloomy forecast, I suspect it may lie in the study of
the last of my three Dgens, the medieval Japanese. To be sure, in a narrow
sense and over the short term, a redirection of our attention from the great
figures of the past to their historical contexts will make the great figure of
Dgen as Kamakura cultural hero less immediately attractive as an object of
study; similarly, a preference for social history and culture studies over the
history of ideas will not encourage an appreciation for such obvious subjects as
the place of Dgens doctrine in the history of Japanese Buddhist thought.
Topics like Dgen and Shinran or Dgen and hongaku thought are not likely to
be central to the concerns of the next generation of American scholarship. In a
broader sense, however, and over the longer run, the new directions of religious
studies should help to liberate Dgen from such topics and make him more
Pgina 13
CarlBielefeldt.txt
attractive to a wider range of American scholarship.
As Zen students
are led from the sanctuary of traditional Buddhist studies into the fray of
Asian religious and cultural life, the flood of historical realities they will
encounter should work to erode the old Buddhological prejudices against Zen as
alien and Japan as marginal. As American Zen studies becomes more sensitive to
the varied cultural contexts of Zen, the specific historical instantiations of
the religion will take center stage, and the particular features of Zen in Japan
may begin to get the attention they have so far not enjoyed. Given what I have
suggested here are his several handicaps as an object of such attention, I doubt
that this process will start with Dgen; but eventually American scholarship
should rediscover his value, less now perhaps as universal philosopher or
enlightened Zen patriarch than as an important expression of and therefore a
major resource for understanding the religious life of medieval Japan.

At the moment, I
can think of no young scholar at a major American university who plans to
specialize in Dgen. I can think, however, of several at my own university and
elsewhere who have particular interest in the later history of St Zen, both
medieval and modern.[34] Research in this history (especially of Edo and Meiji)
could do much to help Americans understand the historical origins and
ideological characteristics of our current images of Dgen and thus indirectly
spark renewed curiosity about the person and the books that may (or may not)
stand behind these images. Perhaps from among these scholars, perhaps from among
their students, will come a new generation of Dgen studies in
America.
 
* * * *
But enough of
such daydreaming about the future; let me close here with one brief final point
less speculative and more urgent. Whatever direction American Dgen studies is
to take, if it is to flourish it will need considerably better access to Dgens
own writings than it now has in English. I need hardly point out to this
audience the difficulties presented the reader by much of Dgens corpus, with
its unusual style, surprising linguistic play, obscure allusion to the
literature of Chinese Zen, and so on. Of course, for most serious Dgen
scholarship, there can be no real substitute for work in the original texts, but
the texts are sufficiently difficult that even the specialist can benefit
greatly from scholarly translation.
With all due
respect to their authors, and appreciating the considerable variety (and often
high quality) of our current translations, I think it fair to say that few have
been done with the scholarly reader in mind. Hence, they have tended to make
Dgen, as it were, too easy covering over what is obscure in the original
with a good guess, resolving what is ambiguous or multivalent with a single
reading, often smoothing the exotic imagery and striking metaphor into a bland
abstraction, sometimes masking (or even omitting) what seems irrelevant to the
message or might be distasteful to the audience. Such translation surely has its
purposes and its value, and no doubt it has made Dgen more accessible to many
readers; but it is too far from the original to serve as an adequate resource
for many (I would say most) scholarly purposes. Thus perhaps the prime
Pgina 14
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desideratum for American Dgen studies today is a set of authoritative English
versions of at least his major writings (including the Eihei kroku, which has
so far received far too little attention) versions that are sensitive not only
to the texts themselves but to the wealth of commentary and scholarship that has
been done on them, versions that provide full annotation to the textual
features, historical background and literary sources of the
originals.
If I have been
close to right here in my characterization of the American field, then we cannot
expect it soon to produce a scholar capable of (or inclined to undertake) such a
difficult and technical project. In any case, it should not be left to a single
scholar or to the American field: it should be the long-term job of a team of
Japanese and American scholars, representing differing expertise and disparate
points of view. Similar teams have been at work in Kyoto, producing excellent
translations of Shinran. Komazawa University is by any measure the Mecca of
Dgen studies, and I appeal to friends of American Dgen studies among you to
consider such a project here. To a large extent, of course, you would have to
consider it a gift a form, if you will, of intellectual foreign aid; but I
suspect that the process of studying the texts together and arriving at a
mutually acceptable reading might even have its occasional benefits for Dgen
studies here at home.
 
<blockquote>
[1]This paper
is a revised, annotated version of a talk to the Zen Kenkyjo, Komazawa
University, 7 October, 1991. The work was done under grants from the Fulbright
Program and the Social Science Research Council.
[2]With only
occasional exceptions, I omit reference in my survey to the treatment of Dgen
in journal articles or works on broader subjects and limit myself to
representative books that deal specifically with him.
[3]Indeed,
within Buddhism as a whole, his only serious recent competitor for the American
Buddhist dollar (apart from Gautama) may be Tsong-kha-pa.
[4]My memory in
general is not good, and writing this as I am in Tokyo, away from my books, I
must beg indulgence for the failures in memory that have caused me to overlook
work deserving mention in the following account. I should like to thank David
Riggs and Richard Jaffe for reminding me of (and introducing me to) several
titles.
[5]Toky Layman
Buddhist Society Press, 1958. This book never had much circulation in America
and, I believe, has been out of print for many years. Prof. Masunaga also
published a number of other translations in Japan that rarely made their way to
America.
[6]Boston:
Beacon Press, 1963; the German version appeared in 1959.
[7]The Dgen
material appears in vol. 2, Japan (New York: MacMillan, 1989). See also Prof.
Dumoulins Zen Enlightenment: Origins and Meaning (Tokyo and New York:
Weatherhill, 1979).
[8]Selling
Pgina 15
CarlBielefeldt.txt
Water by the River; reissued as Zen is Eternal Life (Emeryville, California:
Dharma Publishing, 1976).
[9]I include
Father Dumoulins work as a product of St tradition in the sense that it
reflects the Komazawa shgaku of its time. In addition to these three titles, we
might mention in passing here Phillip Kapleaus Three Pillars of Zen (New York:
Harper and Row, 1966), which, though it contained only a little on Dgen
himself, did through its considerable popularity at the time serve to introduce
St religion (of the sort taught by Yasutani Hakuun) to many
Americans.
[10]A Primer of
St Zen: A Translation of Dgens Shbgenz Zuimonki (Honolulu).
[11]Regulations
for Monastic Life by Eihei Dgen: Eihei-Genzenji-Shingi (Toky Sankib Busshorin,
1973).
[12]Zen Master
Dgen: An Introduction with Selected Writings, with Daizen Victoria
(Weatherhill, 1976).
[13]Shbgenz:
The Eye and Treasury of the True Law, with John Stevens (Sendai: Daihokkaikaku).
The work was completed in four volumes, the last of which appeared in 1983; it
has been reissued by Nakayama Shob in a one-volume version (Tokyo,
1988).
[14]The Eastern
Buddhist, new series (hereafter cited as EB) 4: 1, 2 (1971); 5: 1, 2 (1972); 6:
2 (10/73); 7: 1 (5/74); 8: 2 (10/75); 9: 1, 2 (1976); 10: 2 (10/77); 11: 1
(5/78); 12: 1 (5/79).
[15]Published
as an Association for Asian Studies Monograph (no. 29; Tucson, Arizona:
University of Arizona Press); a revised edition was brought out by the same
press in 1987.
[16]Prof. Abes
interpretations of Dgen have just been collected in A Study of Dgen: His
Philosophy and Religion (Albany, N. Y.: SUNY Press, 1992).
[17]Prof. Abe
has played a leading role in the recent development of Buddhist-Christian
dialogue, including the on-going buddho-theo-logical consultation informally
known as the Cobb-Abe Group. Thus, in certain circles in America, Dgen may
have become not only a famous figure in the history of Zen but also one of the
chief representatives of Buddhist thought a spokesman, as it were, for the
Buddhist world view to whom Americans may turn for the final word on what
Buddhists think about things.
[18]Record of
Things Heard (Boulder, Colorad Praj Press, 1980) (translation of the Zuimon
ki); Shb genz: Zen Essays by Dgen (Hawaii, 1986).
[19]How to
Raise an Ox: Zen Practice as Taught in Zen Master Dgens Shb genz (3d ed.;
Los Angeles: Center Publications, 1990); Sounds of the Valley Streams:
Enlightenment in Dgens Zen (SUNY Press, 1988) (both rendering selections from
the Shbgenz).
[20]Flowers of
Emptiness: Selections from Dgens Shbgenz (Lewiston, N. Y. and Queenston,
Pgina 16
CarlBielefeldt.txt
Ontari E. Mellen Press, 1985).
[21]Moon in a
Dewdrop, with others (San Francisc North Point, 1986) (containing selections
from the Shbgenz and other texts).
[22]Refining
Your Life (Weatherhill, 1983) (translation of the Tenzo kykun, with commentary
by Uchiyama Ksh Rshi).
[23]The
Shbgenz (Toky Sankib Busshorin, 1986; originally published in separate
fascicles, 1985-86); The Eihei-kroku (Sankib, 1987). Recently, the Kyoto
Soto-Zen Center has been particularly active in publishing on Dgen in English;
see, e. g., Okumura Shohaku, Shobogenzo-zuimonki: Sayings of Eihei Dogen Zenji
(Kyoto, 1987); Okumura, Dogen Zen (1988).
[24]Hawaii,
1985. Prof. Kasulis once offered his own perspective on the English materials on
Dgen; see The Zen Philosopher: A Review Article on Dgen Scholarship in
English, Philosophy East and West 28:3 (7/78).
[25]SUNY Press,
1985. See also Prof. Heines A Blade of Grass: Japanese Poetry and Aesthetics in
Dgen Zen (P. Lang, 1989). He has published a review of several translations of
and articles on Dgen in Truth and Method in Dgen Scholarship: A Review of
Recent Works, EB 20: 2 (Autumn 1987).
[26]SUNY Press,
1985.
[27]Hawaii,
1990. Though as far as I know it has not yet issued in a book, mention should
also be made here of the excellent philosophical work of John Maraldo; see, e.
g., his piece in Dgen Studies (for which, see below, note 33) or The
Hermeneutics of Practice in Dgen and Francis of Assisi: An Exercise in
Buddhist-Christian Dialogue, EB 14: 2 (Autumn 1981).
[28]As one
prominent Zen philosopher has said of my own work, we want to see only the
horizontal, not the vertical, dimension of Zen.
[29]Dgens
Manuals of Zen Meditation (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988).
[30]Dgens
Formative Years in China: An Historical Study and Annotated Translation of the
Hky-ki (Praj Press, 1980). For a rare Buddhological treatment, see William
Grosnick, The Zen Master Dgens Understanding of the Buddha Nature in Light of
the Historical Development of the Buddha Nature Concept in India, China and
Japan (dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1986).
[31]Kyot
Hzkan.
[32]New York:
Columbia University Press.
[33]Edited by
William LaFleur and published in the Institutes Studies in East Asian Buddhism
series by the University of Hawaii Press. The book includes papers by Profs.
Abe, Kim, Cook, Kasulis, Maraldo, and myself, with an introductory essay by
LaFleur and a concluding essay by Robert Bellah. A second Kuroda Dgen
conference included unpublished papers by the Zen Kenkyjos own Suzuki Kakuzen,
Pgina 17
CarlBielefeldt.txt
as well as Tamaki Kshir, Tamura Yoshiro, and others.
[34]Probably
the first published product of this interest will be William Bodifords
excellent St Zen in Medieval Japan, a book manuscript based on research done
here at Komazawa under Prof. Ishikawa Rikizan and scheduled to appear in the
Kuroda Institutes Studies in East Asian Buddhism series. 
</blockquote>

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