Zen Texts (BDK English Tripitaka)

This volume includes four important Chan/Zen texts. Essentials of the Transmission of Mind (Chuanxinfayao) is based on the teachings of the ninth-century Chan master Huangbo Xiyun. It represents perhaps the earliest reliable doctrinal treatise of the classical phase of Chan that began with Mazu Daoyi, whose hall-mark is the use of oral dialogue between teacher and student-in this case, between Huangbo and the recorder of the text, the literati Pei Xiu. The text's central theme is its emphasis that the mind-when free of discriminating thought or conceptualization-is Buddha-nature itself. A Treatise on Letting Zen Flourish to Protect the State (Køzengokokuron) was written in 1198 by the Tendai monk Myøan Eisai, as a response to the Kamakura government's imperial sanction against the propagation of the Zen school in Japan. Through this work, which quotes from more than one hundred Indian and Chinese Buddhist texts, Eisai provides an excellent introduction to Chan/Zen principles and argues for the development of the Zen school as an ideal form of religion for the benefit of the Japanese people. Thoroughly annotated, with an appendix listing Eisai's cited sources. A Universal Recommendation for True Zazen (Fukanzazengi) by Eihei Døgen (1200–1253), founder of the Søtø Zen school in Japan, is a brief exposition on the profound meaning and function of the practice of “true" zazen, or shikantaza (“pure sitting"), as the means for ultimate awakening. Greatly influenced by Døgen's works, including Fukanzazengi, the fourth Søtø patriarch Keizan Jøkin (1268–1325) wrote Advice on the Practice of Zazen (Zazenyojinki) as an instructional guide to zazen practice for monastics and laypeople, emphasizing the priority of shikantaza.