{"id":46,"date":"2019-02-14T16:01:28","date_gmt":"2019-02-14T16:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shobogenzo.net\/?page_id=46"},"modified":"2021-02-15T16:12:47","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T16:12:47","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.shobogenzo.net\/index.php\/history\/","title":{"rendered":"History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nishijima Roshi\u2019s Zen Seminar in English \u2013 The Early Years<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first met Nishijima Roshi (or Sensei<\/em> as we all called him) in October 1977, when he was 57 and I\nwas a young 33. Having arrived in Tokyo to work as an engineer at NEC, I was\nlooking for something to complete my life, but didn\u2019t know what. One day I saw\nan ad in the Japan Times, the English language newspaper, for a \u201cZen Seminar in\nEnglish\u201d and immediately felt some interest. I had no idea that responding to\nthis small ad, placed there every week by Harumi Saito, would have such a\nprofound influence on my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sensei had retired from the Ministry of Finance two years\nearlier and had started holding these weekly Saturday seminars<\/a> at\nthe Tokyo Young Men\u2019s Buddhist Association (Todai Bussei) rooms in Hongo\nSanchome soon after. Already he had attracted a number of Japanese students,\none of whom, Mr Hideo Ida, was to be a significant support for his Buddhist\nwork for many years to come. A few months earlier, Sensei had decided to hold a\nclass for foreign people before his Japanese class. It consisted of an hour of\nzazen followed by an hour\u2019s lecture in English. He already had three regular\nattendants, Stephen Cruise, Jeff Bailey and Larry Zacchi and I was to join them\nin sitting every week and listening to Sensei talk about the Shobogenzo in his\nsimple English. In Sensei\u2019s explanations of the supremacy of action I found\nsomething that resonated with my experience as a mountaineer and I continued to\nattend the Saturday seminars on a regular basis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sensei was tireless in his efforts to teach buddhism to the\nsmall collection of foreign students now attending the seminar. Although his\nEnglish was somewhat rudimentary in some areas, he would repeat his\nexplanations in many different ways until we could grasp what he was trying to\nconvey. Mr Ida gave Sensei a position as priest-advisor to his cosmetics\ncompany, which meant that he had an office and a base from where he could continue\nwith his work on the Shobogenzo. In addition to the version he was publishing\nin modern Japanese (Gendai Goyaku Shobogenzo), he was also working on an\nEnglish translation. He explained to us that he thought it was very important\nto spread Dogen\u2019s teachings to western countries, and that he found us foreigners\nwere enthusiastic in practicing zazen, and in trying to understand what\nbuddhism was about. He made us feel part of his mission to spread buddhism\nbased on Dogen\u2019s teachings to the world. We felt part of something very\nimportant for humanity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sensei never faltered in his commitment to his mission to spread Dogen\u2019s teachings, and it seemed as if he attracted just the people he needed to further his dreams. He asked us if we would help him to edit his English translation of the Shobogenzo and for the next 5 years, we worked to complete this task. His translation was rather interpretive, which made it easier to understand. However, his English was fairly basic and his raw translations needed comprehensive editing. From early in 1978, Jeff, Larry and I worked on the translation, producing a readable English version that Sensei then used as the basis for his Saturday lectures. Over the next 5 years, I completed 36 chapters, which I am gradually making available for download on the Texts page of this website. Thanks to Andrew Deakin and members of Dogen Sangha UK for typing in and editing the chapters. In 1982, Mike Cross joined our group, radically changing our assessment of what was needed to make an understandable English translation of the Shobogenzo. This resulted in Sensei and Mike starting on the task of translating from scratch. The task was to continue for more than a decade, and resulted in the group publishing Master Dogen\u2019s Shobogenzo in four volumes between 1990 and 1997. All four volumes are available to buy in paperback on Amazon, and digital versions are available for downoad here.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ida Ryogokudo Zazen Dojo<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1980s, Sensei told us that he intended to move to live in the US when he was 70, which would have been in 1989. In preparation for this, he had made connections with the department of religious studies at the University of Santa Barbara and had been involved in raising funds for a chair at the university. In 1987, he and I had attended the first \u201cBuddhist-Christian Conference” in San Francisco (audio report here<\/a>) and Sensei made many valuable contacts during the conference. As 1989 approached, Mr Hideo Ida, who had been Sensei\u2019s first Japanese student, and who owned a cosmetics company in Tokyo, offered us the use of a dormitory building in Moto Yawata, a suburb of Tokyo, and agreed to fund its conversion into a Zen Centre for the group. As a result, Sensei decided that it would be better for him to put his energies into forming a centre for teaching rather than to start a new life in the US, with all the difficulties that would doubtless have involved. Together with the five students who had been helping him translate the Shobogenzo, Sensei decided to form a group that would be responsible for bringing this buddhist centre into being. We decided on the name Dogen Sangha, as we were a sangha founded on the teachings of Dogen Zenji, although Sensei did not feel completely happy with using Dogen\u2019s name without the title \u2018Zenji\u2019. We shared out the work involved in planning the conversion of the dormitory into a place where people could stay and practice zazen and issued a booklet setting out our aims in establishing the centre. You can view the booklet here (originally in Japanese, translation by Reiko Pearson). <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nishijima Roshi\u2019s Zen Seminar in English \u2013 The Early Years I first met Nishijima Roshi (or Sensei as we all called him) in October 1977, when he was 57 and I was a young 33. Having arrived in Tokyo to work as an engineer at NEC, I was looking for something to complete my life, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “History”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-46","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shobogenzo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shobogenzo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shobogenzo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shobogenzo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shobogenzo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.shobogenzo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":473,"href":"https:\/\/www.shobogenzo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/46\/revisions\/473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shobogenzo.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}