Flowers blooming on a withered tree: Giun’s verse comments on dogen’s treasury of the true dharma eye
Book
Heine, S. (2020). Flowers blooming on a withered tree: Giun’s verse comments on dogen’s treasury of the true dharma eye
. 1-279. 10.1093/oso/9780190941345.001.0001
Heine, S. (2020). Flowers blooming on a withered tree: Giun’s verse comments on dogen’s treasury of the true dharma eye
. 1-279. 10.1093/oso/9780190941345.001.0001
This volume, containing a translation, annotations, and historical studies of Giun’s (1200-1253) Verse Comments on Dōgen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (Shōbōgenzō honmokuju), represents the initial book-length contribution to a crucial though previously unnoticed sub-field in Japanese Buddhist studies involving text-historical and literary-philological examinations of a key example of the copious premodern collections of annotations and interpretations of the masterwork of Zen master Dōgen. It is the first study of the life and thought of Giun and of the 60-fascicle version of Dōgen’s masterwork, which are crucial for understanding the history of the Sōtō Zen Buddhist sect’s intellectual development. The main translation of this text consists of four-line verses and capping phrases composed by Giun, accompanied by additional capping phrases that were contributed by an eighteenth-century commentator, Katsusdō Honkō. The book also provides an examination of the background and influences exerted on and by Giun’s Verse Comments in relation to various aspects of Dōgen’s writings and Zen thought in China and Japan.
