Treasury of the True Dharma Eye by Dōgen

Published 1253 · 290,517 words · about 35 hours at an average pace · Religion & Spirituality, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction

How many words are on a page? A ReadingRate study

How hard is Treasury of the True Dharma Eye to read?

Treasury of the True Dharma Eye scores 74 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 68 out of 100
Sanskrit and Chinese terms such as skandhas, prajna, samadhi, kashaya and tathagata arrive without a glossary, and Dogen coins phrases like 'refrain from' and 'the time being'. The English itself stays plain, so it is less ornate than Lolita but more specialized than Notes from Underground.
Sentence structure: 50 out of 100
Sentences are mostly short declaratives, but Dogen loops them back on themselves: 'Fulfilling fulfills fulfilling and sees fulfilling.' The grammar bends under the repetition and inversion, not under nested clauses.
Abstraction: 82 out of 100
Time, emptiness, practice-realization and mind-nature carry whole fascicles, though anecdotes, rules and robe measurements keep ground contact. It sits near Waiting for Godot in abstraction, with more concrete procedure.
Information density: 78 out of 100
Lineages, sutra citations, ritual procedures and koans stack up fast across fascicles. Each sentence compresses a doctrinal point that assumes you track earlier ones, comparable to Doctor Faustus in demand.
Argumentative complexity: 72 out of 100
Dogen builds arguments by reversal and recursion: practice is realization, birth is beyond birth, unwholesome action is 'just refrain from'. Reasoning chains are short but turn on paradox, so the reader must hold opposing positions at once, as in Phenomenology of Spirit but in a far smaller compass.
Prerequisite knowledge: 82 out of 100
He assumes the Heart Sutra, Lotus Sutra, Avatamsaka Sutra, the Chinese Zen lineages and dozens of koans. A reader without Buddhist background will miss references to Huineng, Shrenika or the five skandhas, yet the opening fascicle explains much of the lineage.
Terminological opacity: 80 out of 100
Sanskrit terms like samadhi, dharani and skandhas sit beside Dogen's own coinages. The translators gloss some in brackets, but 'the fundamental point' and 'refrain from' work as technical terms through repetition, close to Discipline and Punish in opacity.
Rhetorical indirection: 78 out of 100
Dogen speaks through koans, reversed phrases and unanswered questions. Mayu fans himself instead of answering, and Dogen then reads each word of such exchanges. Compared with Of Grammatology, the thesis is enacted as much as stated, though he also lectures plainly in the rules and polemics.
Systemic scope: 68 out of 100
Dogen ranges across metaphysics, time, nature, monastic rules, hygiene, gender, lineage history and the politics of Japanese and Chinese Buddhism. This breadth is close to Orientalism, narrowed by his single tradition.

How Treasury of the True Dharma Eye is regarded

Treasury of the True Dharma Eye holds a literary regard score of 82 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where Treasury of the True Dharma Eye sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (526 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye scores 12 out of 100. A second mythos, irony, pulls at it with a weight of 0.15. About the map of stories.

Mode: Myth
The entire world of the ten directions is a shramana’s single eye.
Symbol: Anagogic
The entire earth is the true human body. The entire earth is the gate of liberation. The entire earth is the single eye of Vairochana. The entire earth is the dharma body of the self.
Mythos: Romance (Summer) phase 6: Penseroso (romance vi)
If you do not leave the monastery for a lifetime, these four dependences are practiced.
Genre: Anatomy + Confession
Then, I made a vow to myself: However unsuited I may be, I will become an authentic holder of the buddha dharma

Where the story of Treasury of the True Dharma Eye takes place

  • Kosho Horin, Yoshimine and Eihei monasteries, Japan, 1231-1253 (1231 to 1253), the main setting
  • Indian and Chinese ancestors, Buddha to Tang (500 BCE to 900)
  • Song China under Rujing at Tiantong, 1223-1227 (1223 to 1227)

5 things that are true of Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, with the passage for each

  1. Mayu keeps fanning himself when asked why he fans although wind is permanent.

    Mayu just kept fanning himself.

  2. Fascicle 7 prescribes washing the hands seven times after using the toilet.

    Thus, wash three times with ash, three times with dirt, and once with honey locust powder. In this way, washing seven times at each use of the toilet is the right amount.

  3. Dogen gives a willow-twig procedure including scraping the tongue until near bleeding.

    You keep scraping with the blade of the torn willow twig almost until the tongue starts to bleed.

  4. The text says seven-year-old girls who express dharma should be honored as buddhas.

    Even seven-year-old girls who practice buddha dharma and express buddha dharma are guiding teachers of the four types of disciples

  5. Dogen says the pebble that struck bamboo awakened Xiangyan.

    One day, while he was sweeping the path, a pebble flew up and struck a bamboo. At the unexpected sound, Xiangyan had thorough awakening.

Scenes in Treasury of the True Dharma Eye that Frye would name

19 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, Valley Sounds, Mountain Colors
a pebble flew up and struck a bamboo. At the unexpected sound, Xiangyan had thorough awakening. Classic sudden recognition after burning his books.
Anagnorisis, One Bright Pearl
his toe hit a rock and began to bleed. In sharp pain he suddenly had a realization Xuansha's pain-induced recognition pivots his career.
Alazon, Ungraspable Mind
I am Diamond King Chou. I specialize in the Diamond Sutra. Deshan the braggart scholar is humbled.
Sparagmos, Continuous Practice
he took a sharp knife, cut off his left arm, and offered it to him. Huike severs his arm.
Hamartia, Great Practice
No, such a person does not fall into cause and effect. The old man's wrong answer costs him five hundred fox lives.
Confession, Power of the Robe
I rejoiced, tears wetting the collar of my robe. Dogen's first-person account of seeing the robe verse in Song.

Books that share these scenes with Treasury of the True Dharma Eye

About the author

Dōgen