Shobogenzo one-minute overviews
About these overviews
Each overview captures the spirit of one Shobogenzo text in about a minute: its central idea and the connections without which that idea would lose its meaning. It is written in plain language so that readers have a starting point even without a background in Buddhist terminology.
On the pages the overviews are open by default. If you prefer them collapsed to a single line, which a click then opens, in Settings (the sliders icon in the bar at the top of every page) choose Collapsed in the Short overviews group; the choice is remembered in your browser.
An overview works from the full text and tries to convey its teaching faithfully, rather than merely list topics or shorten the original sentences. Modern technologies were used in preparing the overviews. The first paragraph of each overview appears in the Shobogenzo translations list; the full overview appears at the start of the corresponding text page.
One minute will not make anyone an expert on Dogen. An overview is an aid to finding your way, not an interpretation of the teaching, and may not be 100% precise: compressing a text can lose an important nuance.
An overview captures what appears to be the central idea (or ideas) of the text; other viewpoints are possible, and another reader may emphasise something else. The overview is meant as a starting point; the full text and notes are there for a deeper reading, and the full text is always what counts.
The small numbers in an overview
Some highlighted ideas of an overview end with a small number, like 86. It is the number of the passage of the text below the overview that the idea draws on. Click or tap it to go straight there; with a mouse, pointing at the number shows the opening words of that passage.
In the authorised translation these are the numbers in front of the paragraphs, like [86]. They come from the English edition, so they do not always run in order. The modern interpretation and the paper do not show these numbers: the passages of the interpretation are matched to the paragraphs of the translation by meaning, so the same number means the same place in every version of a chapter. A longer passage may have a number in two parts, like 42.3: the third part of passage 42. A paper and the texts without numbers, such as Fukan-zazengi, have passages of their own, 1, 2, 3…
The passage is highlighted for a moment, and the Back to the overview link takes you back. The numbers are left out when a page is printed.
The talk overviews and the talk transcripts and translations are explained in the same way.
If you find a mistake or something inaccurate (for example a sentence that misses what the text says, or a number that leads to the wrong passage), write to us through the contacts page.