In Dharma Seminar from May 22 – June 26, we will study six cases in the Denkōroku, Keizan’s brief biographies and teaching stories of teachers in our lineage. Our focus will be the first six Chinese ancestors, beginning with Bodhidharma.
Along with Dōgen (1200–1253), Keizan Jōkin (1264–1325) is considered to be one of the two founding patriarchs of the Sōtō Zen school. The Denkōroku, usually translated as Transmission of the Lamp, provides a lineage of Sōtō Zen ancestors from Shakyamuni Buddha through twenty-eight generations in India, twenty-three generations in China, to Dōgen Zenji and Ejo Zenji, a disciple of Dōgen with whom Keizan trained. Keizan was also the founding abbot of the Sōjiji Zen monastery.
There are many English translations of the text available, including Thomas Cleary’s Transmission of Light: Zen in the Art of Enlightenment by Zen Master Keizan and two versions available online, Denkōroku: Record of the Transmission of Illumination by the Great Ancestor, Zen Master Keizan from the Sōtō Zen Text Project, and Francis Dojun Cook’s The Record of Transmitting the Light at Terebess Online.
