Shinshu Roberts

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Meeting the Myriad Things

A guide to awakening buddha mind for the contemporary Zen practitioner.

In the words of Eihei Dgen, the thirteenth-century Buddhist monk who introduced the St school of Zen to Japan, “To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.” Centuries later, these enigmatic words from his seminal “Genjkan” (“Actualizing the Fundamental Point”) are still studied in Zen communities the world over.

But what did Dgen really mean when he encouraged studying the self to forget the self? In this clarifying new commentary, esteemed Zen teacher Shinshu Roberts takes readers on a journey to understand Japan’s great Buddhist philosopher. Roberts applies her deep familiarity with Dgen’s work to illuminate the text as a unified story in which Dgen reveals the nondual nature of reality.

In addition to a full translation of Dgen’s “Genjkan,” this book includes the commentary Okikigakish (“Notes of What Was Heard and Extracted”), written by two of Dgen’s direct students—the first time an English translation of this highly influential work has appeared in print.