I met Kaz back in 76 I think. I'd returned from Tassajara  Zen Mt. Center to run the new Green Gulch Green Grocer in SF. We not only met at the SFZC, we met socially at Mike Phillips' and Carol Rae's and around the Bay Area.

Maybe it was 77, after I'd left the store and was living half in Bolinas and half in SF or Muir Beach (to be near son Kelly and ZC) that he asked me. That's the year he started this phase of his Dogen translating (which he'd begun in 1960). Kaz told me he was going to work on the Shobogenzo translation and asked me if I'd like to work with him as he needed native English speakers to do it right. He knew I'd studied modern Japanese and the old Buddhist Japanese and we got along. It was a great opportunity. In 1969 I'd studied Japanese at the Monterey Inst. of Foreign Studies (now the Monterey Inst. of International Studies) with a wonderful Japanese woman named Jun Mink. There's a whole bunch to say about this but I'll skip it for now.

When I returned to Tassajara for the Winter-Spring practice period of 1970, I started studying everything there that was Japanese - starting with the poem on the han (wooden board hit to announce zazen etc), other short chants. I was lucky to have the Japanese priests, Ryogen Yoshimura, and Kobun Chino to a lesser extent to help me. Then I delved into the Sandokai while Suzuki lectured on it and met with him briefly before and after each lecture. I wrote the characters on the blackboard for each of his lectures. He asked me to sit next to him and do it but I refused - he tried to insist but I absolutely refused. Later that summer I studied the Eko, the brief chants after the sutras delivered by one student or priest we called the kokyo, dedicating the merit of the sutra. I made a study book for each of these projects showing the basic meaning of each character (beautifully penned by Yoshimura and/or Kobun), the translations of the lines by Suzuki and other sources. There was no original or interpretive work on my part. When I was head monk and director in 1974 and 75, there were no Japanese there to study with but I did what I could with Dogen's Genjokoan and Fukanzazengi and made a study book for each - showing the characters, basic meaning of each from various dictionaries, and translation of the lines from available versions like Masao Abe's. I signed them Kisan (my Zen name is Kisan Zenyu, the latter the one Suzuki underlined - though he never used it nor I) made copies for the ZC libraries, and forgot it. Oh - I remember that Trudy Hartman did tons of typing for me on the this later project - it was a lot of work - thanks Trudy. It was all done at night and on days off, nothing official.

At some point I realized that all the hours I'd put into this study were just a tiny beginning. I had the image of climbing a great mountain only to find upon reaching what I thought was the top, that there was a far greater mountain left to ascend and I realized that upon reaching the top of it there would be another then another. That's enough of that, I thought.

So when Kaz asked me, I politely declined. Maybe by then I was in Bolinas writing songs. I don't know. Through the years Kaz and I have touched base many times and supported each other in small ways in our many ventures. But I never worked with him on his momentous translation of Dogen's Shobogenzo. And this weekend a number of times I felt a tinge of regret that this was so, regret not as in wish I'd done different, but as in a slight sadness that that's the way I wanted it and still want it.

The publication of this great work is also the focus of the SFZC sponsored Zen Translation Forum called "Lost and Found in Translation" over the weekend of Novemeber 6-7.

Go to Kaz Tanahashi cuke interview with more relevant links from there.