Just the feeling around this ineffable thing that, you know, was somewhere, not exactly in the room, but just the teachings of Dogen and Keizan and the other members of our tradition in Japan, just the... No one said it, you know, but just... You're right, like a feeling, this wonderful feeling of... It's a wonderful feeling. And then the fact that something like you've done about it was all the more wonderful. So 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 a Zen scholar named Griffith Paul, who's an expert on and also Chinese Zen monastic regulations, and also the regulations and ceremony books for and other kinds of Zen practice.

[01:03]

And then there was also Professor Dr. Nara, who's the president of Komazawa University. Komazawa University is kind of like the university of the Soto School in Tokyo. He was not a then 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 project. program because he has no investment in Zen studies. But he won't. So the different schools of Zen scholarship won't be jealous of him or suspicious of him. Because he has a different variety of Buddhist studies. Even though he is a priest, he's not invested in that type of scholarship. And different branches within Buddhist studies have different styles. And there is some competition. difficulty between the different ways of interpreting certain text, but he's out of that.

[02:07]

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

[03:11]

So Lester became the disciple of his mother. His mother is his master. Kind of like the usual. Never heard of that before. for a person to have, not very often for a man to have a female master. That's sort of uncommon. But to have then also be your mother's. So anyway, that's Lester. And then there's the secretary of the division was there, too. So those three, Dr. Nara, and I didn't tell you on the last minute from New York since when he was there, too. And his assistant was there. So Dustin, we're at the conference. She had started in public. No, she's, she's, uh, she's maybe called Nichiren. And the Nichiren have a lot of things going on, too, but I won't think of that right now. You say that that was, who was there, that was the entire... That the entire conference, correct.

[04:12]

That various, the cabinet of the Soto then, the public school, came and met us. At the beginning of the third morning, the cabinet They have an assembly, a large assembly. I don't know how many people are in it, whether it's a hundred or whatever, but something like that. And this is the cabinet of the organization. They came and met us. There was a period of solemnity, seriousness, and I don't want to word preciousness, but something like in valuing this about all the women. Anyway, so there's three categories of things translated. And in Japanese, there's one 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.

[05:20]

And the records, Goroku, recorded sayings. So the Shuten has Kuten, and Kuten has ten volumes within the Shuten, excuse me, nine volumes within the Shuten. And the first volume, the first section, is the Shobo Genza, which, of course, by far the biggest. Ninety-five. That's close. Then there is the Ehe Koroku, which is a recorded saying, it's a dogen. The Pukansa Zangvi, a special short piece, but it gives to the beginning of peasant and status in this region. Gakudori or Jinshu, Any idea to translate them all, they know.

[06:28]

And for the Trova Genzo and maybe all of them, to translate them with the original, on one face and one page. Translation on the other side, you make lots of notes. I think the principle here in translating this on the other words is that if you do a translation of a Buddhist text and you do not come up to scholarly standards, the text may wind up just basically be circulating within your set, so to speak. But if you do come up to scholarly standards, not to mention the highest quality standards, then just because it's a work of scholarship that will go into all libraries across the country, both East and West, high-quality work in scholarship gets into libraries and into schools

[07:33]

Even high quality work about something that's not important, 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. Actually, there is There is a thing called the Mnemonic Institute in Berkeley. And the project there is to translate the whole of the Chinese canon into English. And the first phase of it, they used to translate 139 texts. And the first four come out, which you may have seen, Lotus Sutra and some other things. And there's really no notes. And already, it's getting kind of like bombed by the reviewers, by the highest-powered scholars I've found, because they really feel like without the notes, the blog's material is inaccessible in the liter.

[08:43]

So the funny thing is that, not 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 the ordinary reader. All the ordinary reader have to work harder. They can actually get text, whereas if you don't have the book notes and so on, they read through the text, but they don't know what they're reading. But that's the idea. So Shobo Genzo would be this kind of thing where Shobo Genzo particularly is a very difficult text, as you know. In many parts of the Shobo Genzo, the ordinary reader reading the original would say, gee, this could mean two or three or four or perhaps even none of the things. The way Dogen writes, there's all kinds of possibilities there in certain sections. Some sections are straightforward. Other sections are highly straightforward. problematic.

[09:46]

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 counters the correct message in a field of other possible misinterpretation. And you want 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 it. So it's only by footnotes that you can be pulled. In fact, you're coming into a very complex section. And that's what they want to do.

[10:48]

So that book would be a very, that Schobergenza would be a rather big book, right? Because Schobergenza 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, the English is already that size. So you would add on the Japanese to that. It wasn't quite as big as the English, because Japanese is smug and dense. You saw it's Chinese. But then it would be all the North. So it would be a huge volume of very high scholarships. So it would be pretty expensive. But probably . or more, and libraries can be important. The individuals wouldn't be able to necessarily, but then there would be a slimmer version. It could just be a translation with less notes. So the individuals could possibly have this. But there is a possibility, then, that perhaps within five years of maybe at this fall, the whole show begins to be translated well, very well.

[12:00]

with the highest possible standards in that field for the test. And I think it would be wonderful that we have that. Why are the chapters interested in doing this? What's their interest in doing? I think they've come to understand that, 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. Because he's their greatest sleeper, you know. So, you know, to make the whole world disciples of Dogen, to which... And then you own Dogen, right? Because you're Japanese. 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 to have the best possible access to it.

[13:12]

The original thing that they said in their proposal, their main thing is to make the original more available to Westerners. But some Westerners are not interested in the original. So 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 accurate and true to the original hypothesis, so as to reduce misunderstanding around the world of his teaching. That's the Shova Gamza. Now, there's other ones that you have, too, but they're basically the same principle. And also, they have teachings that came on the main works around there, too. But that was their original intention. 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 Parnita scriptures, particularly, of course, the Heart Sutra.

[14:16]

And the Lotus Sutra, certain parts of the Lotus Sutra that are trying to regularly in Japan, but we don't get to do, but we might eventually do them if they want to translate those. And those might, we might be able to use existing translations of the Lotus Sutra. Daishandarani, the Paranayurvana scripture. And various other, various kinds of agathes or verses. The roar chant, the kneel chant, the four vows, open the sutra. Many of the chants that we're already doing, plus a few others. The refuges, the confession, these things. Right now, most end groups have these in 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 this section, I said that I felt like this is the part that you can't just hire a scholar and give them to the people.

[15:23]

Because everybody's already got translations. And even if the translations are not in some ways accurate with what people are used to. 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 when the groups want to do this. Do 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 of it is 10 directions three times. all buddha's drop space of time yeah drop space of time or you know all buddha's venerable ones we don't say venerable but it does say venerable there in chinese should we drop the venerable or do we feel comfortable adding any venerable so these kind of things

[16:44]

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 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 may have been done by them so I already know it. But if I have to give up some of my stuff, I mean, you know, some 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 any of us could go to any Zen center, or at least Soto Zen center, and we know all the channels by car when we arrive, and there would be a difference. And that's part of the agenda here. This would be done, anyway, over here. and then we send our results back there to check into the center. The third category, It's similar in the sense, but they're all Zen works, , [...] and other records.

[17:55]

Those will also be translated. And again, some of these are audio minis that have already been translated. So again, it would be to coordinate and have studied in various studies and use . We think it's the best translation you can see if the various groups, before we even started to see if they could support this work. If they could not even want it to be done, they might have been the time working in a translation that people don't even want it anywhere. 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. The middle section is the most problematic in terms of acceptance, and the least problematic in terms of . But I don't know politically if anything happened.

[19:05]

That's it, please. Can I click the keypad? This is a tank.

[19:56]

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