Chan and Zen are the Chinese and Japanese branches of the spiritual tradition that practitioners of Zen Buddhism look to for wisdom teachings and practice.
This book is a work of translation and interpretation by Nelson Foster, who succeeded Robert Aitken as Dharma heir at the Zen temple in Honolulu. Today, Foster teaches Zen at the Ring of Bone Zendo in Nevada County, California, and also at the East Rock Sangha, which has sitting groups in three New England states.
The relationship between Chan and Zen is made clear in the author’s preface: “The amazing Chinese development of Buddhism known as Chan [became] the principal source for the later Japanese phenomenon Zen.” It is a precious legacy, Foster says, and his purpose in looking to classic texts is to find gems that “hold exciting potential for us moderns.”
Storehouse of Treasures requires careful, close reading. It’s not designed for easy quick “takeaways.” This is a book for the Zen practitioner who wants to go deeper, particularly into texts.
One example comes from chapter 10, where Foster explores fourteen different English translations of the Zen text “Four Infinite Vows,” which is a statement of commitment that’s typically recited each day in Zen centers and temples, and homes where people practice Zen. He explains:
“Of these translations, ten used the word ‘save’ in the first line, including the one that I’d chanted with slight variations for more than forty years: ‘The many beings are numberless; I vow to save them.’… [T]ranslators have leaned on the verb to ‘save.’ ”
After a thorough discussion of the implications and Zen commitments and practices, Foster suggests otherwise. To “save” is too convoluted a word/idea, given its implications in Christian thinking — “and even when the word appears in a decidedly nontheological context like ‘Save the whales!’ it has at least a muted messianic tone.” Foster ends up advising a different use of language in this Zen rite and practice — “from saving to liberation” — based on the essential Buddhist understandings of saṃsāra and nirvana and “the metaphor of the two shores and of liberation as a crossing from one to the other.”
