Enlightenment Unfolds

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful, inspiring work
Review: Kaz Tanahashi and his collaborators have produced a remarkable portrait of Dogen Zenji, one of the most influential Buddhist teachers in history. The book includes several new translations from Dogen's Shobogenzo but goes substantially beyond this to include a variety of other writings from Dogen, including poems, informal lectures and Dogen's recollections of his own teacher, Rujing. The result of this is to bring Dogen much more to life than previous translations. Here we see Dogen as genuinely human, struggling with the limitations of a human life and profoundly inspired by that same life.

Rating:
Summary: Good for primary texts, bad for interpretation
Review: This is a fine book if you are looking for some English translations of Dogen's primary texts. Unfortunately, it is very sparse in it's interpretation of those teachings. If you want to see what Dogen had to say, buy this book. If you want to understand him, go elsewhere. I suggest that you start with "Flowers Fall" and then move on to "Dogen ?Kigen: Mystical Realist". These will give you a solid ground in Dogen's thought. The later, alas, seems to be out of print, but a few used copies are drifting about.

Rating:
Summary: Companion Volume to Moon in a Dewdrop
Review: This is the companion volume to MOON IN A DEWDROP : WRITINGS OF ZEN MASTER DOGEN, also edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi along with his excellent team of translators. Start with MOON IN A DEWDROP, a superb collection of the best-known Dogen fascicles, and including a fantastic Dogen-Zen glossary. Then continue on to this volume, which adds a few more classics as well as some of the lesser-known writings. Dogen is a much-loved, profoundly enlightened Zen Master -- a teacher with the clarity of an ice-crystal and a gentle, grandmotherly heart.