The Roots of Goodness Zen Master Dogen's Teaching on the Eight Qualities of a Great Person

Zen master Kōshō Uchiyama illuminates the eight qualities of a great person as enumerated by the Buddha and the seminal thirteenth-century Zen master Eihei Dōgen.

As his life drew to a close, the seminal thirteenth-century Zen master Eihei Dōgen chose to make his final teaching a commentary on the Buddha’s own final teaching, which was on the eight qualities of a great person. In Dōgen’s phrasing, those qualities are

• having few desires,
• knowing one has enough,
• appreciating serenity,
• making diligent effort,
• not losing sight of the true dharma,
• concentrating on settling in meditative absorption,
• practicing wisdom, and
• not engaging in useless argument.

In The Roots of Goodness, the inimitable Japanese Zen teacher Kōshō Uchiyama Röshi delivers an insightful commentary on these eight qualities, plumbing their deep roots in Buddhism while also showing their applications to modern life. Daitsū Tom Wright, a longtime student of Uchiyama, translates his teacher’s words, presents an original translation of Dōgen’s fascicle, and offers his own commentary on the role this teaching played in Uchiyama Rōshi’s life and teachings.

KŌSHŌ UCHIYAMA, born in Tokyo in 1912, received a master’s degree in Western philosophy in 1937 and became a Zen priest three years later under Kōdō Sawaki Rōshi. Upon Sawaki’s death in 1965, he became abbot of Antaiji, a monastery then located on the outskirts of Kyoto. In addition to developing the practice at Antaiji and traveling extensively throughout Japan, lecturing and leading sesshins, Uchiyama  Rōshi wrote over twenty books on Zen, including translations of Dōgen Zenji in modern Japanese with commentaries, as well as various shorter essays. He was an origami master as well as a Zen master and published several books on origami. He died in 1999.

DAITSŪ TOM WRIGHT was born and raised in Wisconsin. After being active in the civil rights and anti–Vietnam War movements, he went to Japan in 1967 and lived there for over forty years, teaching English and other subjects at Ryukoku University in Tokyo. He was ordained by Uchiyama Kōshō Rōshi as a Buddhist priest in 1974 and continued to receive his teachings until 1998, the same year that Wright received transmission from Takamine Dōyū Rōshi. This book is the latest in a series of Uchiyama Rōshi’s works Wright has translated into English, including Opening the Hand of Thought. Wright, who now lives in Hawai‘i, is married and has one son.