just the feeling around this ineffable thing that, you know, was somewhere, not exactly in the room, but just the teaching of Dogen and Keizan and other members of our tradition in Japan, just the... No one said it, you know, but just directly that the feeling was a wonderful, wonderful feeling of... Just a wonderful feeling. And then the fact that something might be done about it was all the more wonderful. So, um... The basic program of what would be translated is in three categories. Before I tell you three categories, I want to tell you the other people at the conference. So in addition, there was a Zen scholar named Griffith Fault, who's an expert on Soviet Zen and also Chinese Zen monastic regulations and also the regulations and ceremony books for for Soto Zen and other kinds of Zen practice.

[01:04]

And then there was also Professor Dr. Nara. He's the president of Komazawa University. Komazawa University is kind of like the university of the Soto School in Tokyo. He was not a Zen scholar. He was a specialist in Indian Buddhism. But that makes him, in some ways, a better person to be kind of the figurehead of this translation program because he has no investment in Zen studies. So the different schools of Zen scholarship won't be jealous of him or suspicious of him because he comes from a different branch of Buddhist studies. Even though he's a Soto Zen priest, he's not invested in that type of scholarship. And different branches of within Buddhist studies have different styles, and there is some competition and difficulty between different ways of interpreting certain texts.

[02:08]

So he's a good person for that. And then there was the representatives of the school, the representative of the international division of the school, Well, some of you have met, they've been down here. One is named Lester Yoshinami. Another guy's name is Kenzan Yamimoka. Kenzan Yamimoka is in charge of the international division. And Lester, actually, was born in America, I think. But he's Japanese. By the way, here's a thing about Lester, which I can tell you it's not very confidential, but it is kind of sweet. Right. That kind of unusual thing. A lot of Sokos and priests become successors to their father. And Lester's father was a priest also. But his father died. And when his father died, his mother took over the temple. She wasn't a priest, but she took over a temple and became a priest. That was the guy who decided to handle it.

[03:13]

So Lester became the disciple of his mother. His mother is his master. Kind of unusual. I've heard of that before and then. For a person to have, not very often, for a man to have a female master, that's sort of uncommon. But to have it then also be a mother is. So anyway, that's Lester. And then there's the secretary of their division was there, too. So those three, Dr. Nara, and the forward, I didn't tell you, and Tetrigan Glassman from New York Central was there, too. And his, specifically, was there. So that's when we were at the conference. No, she's what we call Nietzsche-ren. And the Nietzsche-ren have probably been playing on, too, but I won't get into that right now. Did you say that that school was there, that was the entire... That's the entire conference, correct.

[04:13]

The cabinet of the school then came and met us. At the beginning of the ceremony, the cabinet, like a cabinet on the but they have an assembly, large assembly for the school. I don't know how many people are in it, whether it's a hundred or whatever, but something like that. And then this is the cabinet of the organization. Yeah, they came and met us. And there was a feeling of solemnity, seriousness, and I don't like the word preciousness, but something like... and valuable nafsadalwa or bu. Anyway, so there's three categories of things translated. And in Japanese, one's called shuten, which means the scriptures of the school. The other one's called kyoten, which is like the scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism in general that are used in the school.

[05:19]

And the records, goroku. recorded sayings. So, the Shuten has Kuten, and Kuten is, there's ten volumes within the Shuten, excuse me, nine volumes within the Shuten. And the first volume, the first section, is Chogagenza, which is, of course, by far the biggest, 95. Then there's the Ehe Korotu, which is a recorded saying that's filled in. As you know, a short case, but it has an independent status in this region. And the 10 basic texts of the school in Japan.

[06:22]

None. And the idea is to translate them all and they can go. And for the Shovagenta, and maybe all of them, to translate them with the original on one page, on one page, translation on the other side with lots of notes. I think that the principle here in translating this and the other words is that if you do a translation of a Buddhist text and you do not... to scholarly standards, the text may wind up just basically be circulating within your sect, so to speak. But if you do come up to scholarly standards, not to mention the highest quality standards, then just because of the work of scholarship, it will go into all the libraries across the country, both east and west.

[07:25]

High quality work in scholarship gets into libraries and into schools even high-quality work about something that's not important, you know, which sometimes happens. But work that may be good translation but not scholarly will not be taken up and circulated. So that's part of the reason for doing this is to get it around them, you know. I've seen some good trends, but actually there is a thing called the Mnumata Institute in Berkeley. And the project there is to translate the whole of the Chinese canon into English. And the first phase of the thing is to translate 139 texts. And the first four come up, which you may have seen. Lotus Sutra and the other thing. And there's really no notes. And already it's getting kind of like bombed by the reviewers, by the highest-powered scholars at bombing, because they really feel like

[08:33]

Without the notes, a lot of this material is inaccessible to the reader. So the funny thing is that, not the funny thing is, but the funny thing in terms of the way I see it is that by making the work scholarly, not only do the scholars like it, but it makes it more accessible to it. The idea that it makes it more accessible to the ordinary reader. Or the ordinary reader has to work harder. They can actually get at the text, whereas If you don't have the footnote and so on, they read to the text, but they don't know what they're reading. That's the idea. So Shogo Genzo would be this kind of thing, where Shogo Genzo particularly is a very difficult text, as you know. In many parts of the Shogo Genzo, the ordinary reader reading the original would say, gee, this could mean two or three or four, or perhaps even the main thing. The way Dogen writes, There's all kinds of possibilities there in certain sections.

[09:34]

Some sections are straightforward. Other sections are highly problematic. And so if you just translate them, like some people do, even though you might do a very good job, and you might choose to make the best choice, it's also important, according to a lot of scholars, that people know that you did make a choice and that the original has four other possibilities. all of which are there even though they're not correct. But he couches the correct message in a field of other cultural misinterpretation. And he wants to do it that way. And so the original looks like that. And the Japanese person reading that doesn't know which one it is. The right interpretation or the best interpretation is there, but they actually don't know which one it is. So they're stymied. If you read the English translation of the best one, you don't have any problem, you just zip right through. So, it's only by footnotes that you can be told that, in fact, you're coming into a very complex section.

[10:41]

And that's what they want to do. So, that book would be a very, that Chobaginza would be a rather big book, right? Because Chobaginza has 95 chapters and English translation is usually about this size. What? They're almost foot wide. So it would be, Twice or even more than twice that big because it would be English, almost twice as much. Well, no, but English is already that side. So you would add on the Japanese to that, including twice as big as the English, because Japanese is more condensed and so is Chinese. But then it would be over the North. So it would be a huge volume of very high scholarships, so it would be pretty expensive. But probably even then said it could afford one or more. and libraries can afford, the individuals wouldn't be able to necessarily, but then there would be a slim version, flimmer version, it could just be English translation with less notes, so the individuals could possibly have this. But there is a possibility then that perhaps within five years of maybe next fall, we would have the whole show begins to be translated well, very well.

[11:54]

with the highest popular standards in that field for the cast. And, I mean, I don't think it would be tricky. It's wonderful that we have that. Pardon, gentlemen, what they're interested in doing. I think they've come to understand that, well, I think they think that Dogen's got a really great teaching and they want it to spread all over the world. Of course, someone might think, and this is part of what makes this whole thing perhaps more interesting than I like, is that the Japanese want to take over the world. And Dogen's the best one, is it? Because he's their greatest seeker, you know? So, you know, to make the whole world disciples of Dogen, to which, you know, and then you own Dogen, right? Because you're Japanese, so... Some people might think that's what it's about. But I think it's also about that they really appreciate his teaching and they know that some other people do it in other parts of the world and they want them to have the best possible access to it.

[13:07]

The original thing that they said in their proposals, their main thing is to make the original more available to Westerners. But some Westerners are not interested in the original. They want to do more than that. But that's their first agenda is for it to be available to teachers and other scholars in the best possible form so that it will come across as accurate and true to the original as possible. So as to reduce misunderstanding around the world about his teaching. That's a Shobo Gemzo. Now there's other ones of here too, but they're basically the same principle. And also they have teachings, Kazon's main works around here too. That was their original intention, but I'll say more about what we came up with, but that was their thing. Then the next section is the Kyoten, which has things like Prajnaparamita scriptures, particularly, of course, the Heart Sutra, and the Lotus Sutra, certain parts of the Lotus Sutra that are trying to regularly entend, but we don't yet do, but we might eventually do, but they don't want to translate those.

[14:23]

And those we might be able to use existing translations of the Lotus Sutra. Daishindarani, the Paranyavana scripture, and various other, and then various kinds of agathas, or verses. The road chant, the meal chant, the four vowels, the Pocono Sutra. Many of the chants that we already do, plus a few others. the refuges, the confession, these things. Right now, most end groups have the Eastern English translation, but all of them, almost all of them are a little different. Even the simplest things are different. So, I led this section of the meeting, and in that section I said that I felt like this had, this is the part that you can't just hire a scholar and give them to the people. because everybody's already got translation, even if the translations are not in some ways accurate, it's what people are used to.

[15:32]

So to get them to change will be a process. And so what we have to do in order to do this work is to get together the leaders or followers or whatever of various groups and discuss with the groups who want to do this. Do you want to have If you want to work towards making a translation, the translation would be done mostly by us. Because we already have many, many translations. So it would be like adjudicating among the various translations to see, with some help, to see which one we could agree upon. And hopefully it doesn't wash them all down, or water them down. But for example, all footage, 10 directions, three times. all Buddhas... Throughout space and time. Yeah, throughout space and time, or, you know, all Buddhas venerable ones. Bodhisattva is non-sattva. It says venerable. We don't say venerable, but it does say venerable there in Chinese.

[16:33]

Should we drop the venerable, or do we feel kind of adding in venerable ones? So, these kinds of things. And I guess I know the school, but I feel that Of course, if we could get a translation that felt better than the one that we have now, according to what I think, that would be okay with me. And then if everybody else would chant that, that would be fine with me. I would like them to go all over the country and be able to go to any Zen center and find my favorite translation that had been done by them, so I already knew it. But if I had to give up some of my stuff, I mean, you know, some of the stuff I think, in order for that to happen, that may not be so good, but I guess I kind of like the idea that I would be able to go, or anybody could go to any Zen center or at least Soto Zen Zen, and you know all the chance by heart when you arrive, and you need to be a difference. That's part of the agenda here. This could be done, anyway, over here. And then you send our results back there to have them check and confirm.

[17:39]

The third category is similar in a sense, but they're all Zen works. Sando Kai, Okio Zamai, Shinjin-mei, Shotoka, Shotoroku, and other records. But those will also be translated. Again, some of these are already the meanings that have already been translated, so again, we need to coordinate and have study groups among various entities to come up with. We think it's the best translation. You can see if the various groups with before we even start to see if it could support this work. If the group don't even want it to be done, I'm not going to spend my time working on translation anyway. And then the whole thing might not be possible, because in fact it may be that you guys don't want this. But I think in some sense, the first category is the least problematic in terms of acceptance, and the most problematic in terms of translation.

[18:43]

The middle section is the most problematic in terms of sex, and the least problematic in terms of the pledge to protect all of the deaf, which is the point of the coordinating of the people. Yet I don't know if politically it's going to happen. Okay, that's fine.

[19:50]

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