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Review: [untitled]

Author(s): T. Griffith Foulk


Source: Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Winter, 1996), pp. 507-510
Published by: Sophia University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2385439 .
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BOOK REVIEWS 507
movement in the sixteenth century; it was one of the primary cultural phenomena of
the Tokugawa period; it was a central aspect of traditional Japanese education and so-
cial morality; it has been one of the crucial intellectual influences on twentieth-century
Japan; and it has remained the source of much liberal political and social thinking
even in the postwar period. Shin studies, even those oriented to Christian encounter in
the broad sense, must begin to move also toward these institutional facts in the future.
Thus, although Keel did not set out to write history, the central problematic embedded
in this book, which concerns the actual meaning of Shinran's language, cannot be
resolved until scholars adopt a radically holistic theoretical approach, one that will in
particular attempt to account for Pure Land society.
In any case, Keel and the few other Christian thinkers who have paid attention to
Japan's major Buddhist tradition have correctly identified that something about Shin-
ran's thought has become, in the twentieth-century intellectual context, perhaps the
most challenging body of historical religious material that Christian thinkers face any-
where. To properly meet the challenge, however, Keel and other Christian thinkers are
going to have to work with more complete accounts of Shin tradition. For their part,
Shin scholars are also deeply responsible for the current inadequacy of communication
(see the note by Jan Van Bragt on p. ix). They themselves are going to have to recast
the interpretation of Shin in ways that allow it to escape from its current monopolistic
capture by a theologized semantic field, a capture that limits the possibilities for wider
encounter with a greater variety of Western inquiries.
Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community: A Translation of 'Eihei
Shingi'. Translated by Taigen Daniel Leighton and Shohaku Okumura.
State University of New York Press, 1996. xxii + 272 pages. $19.95
T. GRIFFITH FOULK
Sarah Lawrence College
THE present volume is an annotated translation of a set of Buddhist monastic rules
known as Eihei Shingi, rendered here into English for the first time. Dogen, 1200-
1253, of course, is widely known as the patriarch of the Soto Zen lineage in Japan and
the founder of Eiheiji, the largest of the approximately twenty-five Soto training
monasteries in Japan today. Eihei Shingi as we have it now has gone through a number
of changes and redactions since Dogen's time, but it does accurately reflect his under-
standing of the Buddhist monastic institutions and procedures he encountered in Sung
China and his own approach to replicating them in Japan. Since the seventeenth cen-
tury, moreover, Eihei Shingi has played a key role in the Soto school's understanding
of itself as a distinct tradition deriving from Dogen. The work thus has great value as
a historical document, and it continues to be used within the Soto school as a source
of inspiration and authority in matters of monastic discipline.
The translators, as Taigen Daniel Leighton's Introduction makes clear, are them-
selves practitioners and teachers of Soto Zen in the U.S., and they view Eihei Shingi
as a spiritual guide and model for monastic practice that is (potentially, at least) as
relevant today as it was in the thirteenth century. There is a tendency in academic cir-
cles in the West these days to denigrate such attitudes and motivations as unseemingly
508 Monumenta Nipponica, 51:4
pious and to assume that they must necessarily impede the professional exercise of
cold-eyed, critical scholarship. I do not believe that the position the translators take,
standing as they do within the normative tradition of Soto Zen, necessarily entails
any loss of scholarly judgment or critical acumen. On the contrary, as a profession-
al academic who has long worked on ancient Buddhist monastic rules, I am delighted
to see that there are Zen practitioners in the West today who care enough to study
them, and who set their sights on producing accurate translations. The criticisms that
follow are not intended to put down the 'amateurs' who have dared to tread on my
'professional' turf, but rather to encourage greater cooperation between trained scho-
lars of Buddhism and scholarly minded practitioners and teachers of Buddhism in the
West who wish to study the basic texts of their respective traditions in the original
languages and make them available in translations.
An unfortunate consequence of the translators' otherwise admirable belief in the
relevance of Eihei Shingi for the modern world is their tendency to discuss bygone fea-
tures of Buddhist monastic discipline as if they were still being practiced, with no sig-
nificance changes, in Japan today. Indeed, they present Eihei Shingi in such a way that
the average reader might well take it to be a set of rules written by Dogen at Eiheiji and
implemented at that monastery more or less continuously from the thirteenth century
down to the present. The translation, for one thing, is illustrated by photographs of
buildings now standing at Eiheiji and by contemporary ground plans of the monks'
hall and the monastery as a whole. The translators' notes, moreover, often discuss in
the present tense procedures detailed in the text, as though they could still be observed
being practiced today at Eiheiji just as they were in Dogen's time. It would take a care-
ful scrutiny of the Introduction, and some additional historical information not con-
tained therein, for the reader to realize that Eihei Shingi as such has never been used to
regulate training at Eiheiji. This is because (a) it was not compiled as a single text until
1667, more than four centuries after Dogen's death, and (b) following that compila-
tion, although it was much studied and greatly revered within Soto circles, it was never
deemed suitable for day-to-day use in regulating Eiheiji or any other monastery.
As Leighton notes in the Introduction, Eihei Shingi is in fact a collection of six
texts on different aspects of Buddhist monastic discipline that Dogen prepared for his
followers at three monasteries between the years 1237 and 1249. The six are: (1) 'Ad-
monitions for the Cook' (Tenzo Kyokun), (2) 'Procedures for Practicing the Way'
(Bendoho), (3) 'Procedures for Taking Meals' (Fushukuhanpo), (4) 'Regulations for
the Common Quarters' (Shuryo Shingi), (5) 'Procedures for Relating to Monks Five
Retreats Senior to Oneself' (Tai Taikogogejari Ho), and (6) 'Rules of Purity for
Monastery Officers' (Chiji Shingi). Dogen based all of these texts on his own ex-
periences in the great public monasteries of Sung China and on written monastic rules
that were in use there. Writing in classical Chinese, he incorporated many direct quota-
tions from 'Rules of Purity for Ch'an Monasteries' (Ch'an-yuan ch'ing-kuei), 1103,
and from Chinese translations of Hinayana Vinaya texts. In two of the works, 'Admo-
nitions for the Cook' and 'Rules of Purity for Monastery Officers', Dogen also cited
numerous anecdotes pertaining to the monastic offices in question that he had gleaned
from koan collections and biographies of famous patriarchs.
The six texts were first brought together to make a single monastic code, Eihei
Shingi, in 1667. The text on which the present translation is based, however, is one that
was reedited in 1794 by the fiftieth abbot of Eiheiji, Gento Sokuchui. Leighton makes
no mention of it, but in 1805 Gento also published a smaller monastic code, Eihei
BOOK REVIEWS 509
Shoshingi, that was based in part on Eihei Shingi and was a practical manual intended
for use at Eiheiji. About the same time, efforts began to rebuild Eiheiji along the lines
of the Sung-style monastery that Dogen had originally founded. The fact that Eihei
Shingi contained procedures for practice in a Sung-style monks hall and common
quarters, for example, led to a reconstruction of those two facilities, which had long
since ceased to exist at Eiheiji. Historical facts such as these do nothing to diminish the
religious authority and relevance of texts such as Eihei Shingi. On the contrary, the
fact that the text and the modes of communal practice it recommends were all but for-
gotten in Japan for several centuries before being revived bears witness to its potential
for inspiring other such reconstructions of Zen tradition in the West.
The translation is, for the most part, sufficiently accurate and intelligible to be serv-
iceable. It suffers, however, from numerous minor and not-so-minor errors. The key
term shingi, for example, does not mean 'pure standards', as if the rules themselves
were pure, but rather 'standards of [maintaining] purity [of the monastic com-
munity]'. The titles Bendoho, Fushukuhanpo, and Tai Taikogogejari
Ho are mis-
translated as 'The Model for Engaging the Way', 'The Dharma for Taking Food', and
'The Dharma when Meeting Senior Instructors for Five Summer Practice Periods', re-
spectively. The word ho
&
in all of these titles simply means 'procedures' or 'method',
not 'model' and not 'Dharma' in the sense of 'teachings' or 'truth' (for correct trans-
lations, see above). The technical term hosshin, which refers to giving rise to the bodhi-
citta, or 'thought of enlightenment', is mistranslated as 'awakening their hearts' (p. 33).
The expression busso is incorrectly rendered as 'Buddha ancestors' (p. 150 and else-
where): it should be 'buddhas and ancestors'. The word for merit, fuku, is miscon-
strued as meaning 'fortune' or 'blessings' (pp. 104, 160 & 162); the standard Buddhist
trope of a 'field of merit' (fukuden) is rendered as 'blessing field' and misinterpreted
in the notes (pp. 770, 162 & 196); and a reference to dedicating merit, eko, to protect-
ing deities is misinterpreted (p. 100). Mistakes such as these betray a lack of familiarity
with the traditions of East Asian Buddhism that Dogen knew so well.
Some other errors in the translation stem directly from the unwarranted assumption
that current practices at Eiheiji are a reliable guide to determining the meaning of
terms appearing in Eihei Shingi. In Dogen's day, for instance, anja referred to lay
postulants (candidates for novice ordination) who lived in monasteries and functioned
as servants for the monks. When these laymen served meals they were called jonin, or
'pure men' (a translation of the Sanskrit upasaka), and when they announced the
name of the dishes to be served they were called kasshiki. But the translators mistaken-
ly assume that all of these positions were filled by monks since that is presently the case
at Eiheiji.
Most of the above mistakes will probably go unrecognized by general readers, but
there is another aspect of the book that will be a bother to those readers: the frequent
use of Japanese words without translating them, as if they were already widely known
and accepted in English. The names of the following monastic officers, for example,
are used as English throughout: tenzo, jisha, anja, shuso, ino. The rationale, perhaps,
is that these terms are currently in use in American Zen centers, but readers not
familiar with Zen will be forced on nearly every page to consult the glossary at the end
of the volume.
Another problem with the translation (or non-translation) of technical terms is
inconsistency. The names of many other monastic officers ('abbot', 'guest manager',
'bath attendant', 'infirmary manager'), for example, are simply rendered into English
510 Monumenta Nipponica, 51:4
without any indication of the original Sino-Japanese, and without being included in
the glossary. In a few cases, the same Sino-Japanese terms (for example, anja, shuso)
appear as anglicized words (anja, shuso) on one page, and as translated words (atten-
dant monk, head monk) on another.
Finally, it is difficult to know who is speaking-Dogen, or some Chinese text he is
quoting-at different places in the text. The translators do an inadequate job of mark-
ing such transitions, and the editorial devices they employ (indentations, quotation
marks, notes) are inconsistent and confusing. In the translation of Chiji Shingi, for
example, Dogen's comments sometimes appear in indented blocks of text that look
like quotations of other writings, while passages that actually are his quotations of
other Chan records go unmarked as such.
It is a shame that this volume is marred by so many small mistakes and glitches, for
most of the translation is sound and useful. If the translators and editors had only
enlisted the aid of academic specialists in the field at the end of the process,it would
not have taken much to turn this into a first-rate piece of work. As it stands, the book
will still be useful for anyone wishing to learn more about the history and ideals of
Zen monastic practice.
Religion in Japan: Arrows to Heaven and Earth. Edited by P. F. Kornicki &
I. J. McMullen. Cambridge University Press, 1996. xxv + 312 pages. ?40.00.
JANET R. GOODWIN
Los Angeles
AT first glance the collection of essays in this volume seems a bit unusual for a book ti-
tled Religion in Japan. Neither the major schools of Buddhism nor mainstream Shinto
receive much attention; instead, we find essays on offbeat topics such as spells and fox
spirits. Upon careful consideration, however, this book may be just what the professor
ordered to provide a full picture of a religious tradition that emphasizes ritual and prac-
tice over doctrine, and to which magic and occult practices are even now not strangers.
This seems appropriate for a volume dedicated to the distinguished scholar of Japa-
nese religion, Carmen Blacker, a pioneer in taking seriously phenomena that others
might shrug off as 'superstition'.
The coverage in this volume is historically and geographically broad. Essays cover
periods from classical to contemporary times and embrace Okinawa and the Ainu in
Hokkaido. This breadth plus a diversity of topics call for a standard introduction in ad-
dition to the opening essay on Blacker's life and career. Unfortunately the editors did
not provide one. Had they done so, they might have pinpointed several issues that link
some of the essays together-issues such as the relationship between the religions of
two different cultures, continuity with the past, and the role of ritual in the Japanese
community.
The book opens with an article by David Waterhouse on the kuji, a nine-syllable
Taoist spell used by shugendo and martial-arts practitioners. Waterhouse has tackled a
difficult problem, since the history of kuji is poorly documented. His evidence is some-
times too sparse for his arguments to be persuasive; for instance, his conclusion that
the kuji 'probably became known in Japan first via Pure Land Buddhism' (p. 37) is

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