Prologue

Since beginningless time, the light of awakening has shone without interruption. It has never been extinguished, it has never increased. Transmitted from patriarch to patriarch, received from master to disciple, it illuminates all things with nothing standing outside it.

The Awakened One Śākyamuni, on the night of his awakening beneath the Bodhi tree, caught sight of the morning star and exclaimed: "I and all beings of the ten directions have simultaneously attained the Way of the Buddha." From that moment, and without ever breaking the thread, the lamp was transmitted hand to hand through twenty-eight patriarchs in India, then through six patriarchs in China, until it finally reached our Great Master Dōgen, who carried it to this land of Japan.

Now, authentic transmission is not a matter of doctrine carried in empty words, nor of letters inscribed on paper or silk. It is mind transmitting mind, light kindling light — transmission from mind to mind: from mind to mind, without detour. What an ancestor had realized in the intimacy of his own body and life, he transmitted to one who was capable of receiving it, and that one in turn transmitted it in the same way. Such is the great matter of Dharma transmission.

I have compiled here fifty-three cases, recounting the precise circumstance in which each transmission took place: the words spoken, the gesture made, the silence kept, the staff raised or the kōan posed — in a word, the living moment when the light passed from one heart to another. I have added nothing of my own. I have only attempted to faithfully report what the chronicles and records of the transmission lineages have preserved.

May whoever reads these pages not stop at the words. Words are the finger pointing at the moon; it would be a grave error to mistake the finger for the moon itself. What matters is to perceive directly the light that passes through each of these cases, just as one perceives the warmth of fire without needing to explain it.

At the time when I was residing at the monastery of Daijōji, in the province of Kaga, urged by my disciples who wished to have access to the transmission records of the patriarchs, I undertook to gather and comment on them, session by session, in the Dharma hall. These oral teachings were subsequently set down in writing. May they serve the monks who diligently practice zazen while contemplating the kōan of the ancients, those who keep vigil through the night in the meditation hall, those who sincerely seek the original face they had before their parents were born.

The light of Śākyamuni is always there. It did not wait for us to seek it in order to shine. But if we do not seek it, it remains like the sun behind the clouds: present, and yet veiled.

May it be offered to the three treasures — Buddha, Dharma, Sangha — and may all sentient beings, through this merit, fully realize Awakening.

Keizan Jōkin, tenth year of the Tokuji era (1309),
monastery of Daijōji, province of Kaga.