It is impossible to read the Shobogenzo or Eihei Koroku without stumbling through the main cases of the koans contained in this book. Now with Daido Loori, Roshi's commentary, capping verses and footnotes, these koans can be directly encountered with a great deal more skill and studied fruitfully in coordination with Dogen's other works. It is a landmark in the evolution of understanding Dogen, as well as in the progress of American Zen.

This is an invitation to compare this translation of Shinji Shobogenzo made by John Daido Loori and Kazuaki Tanahashi and the translation made by Master Gudo Nishijima. Nishijima was assisted by Michael Luetchford and Jeremy Parson in the final version, published in 2003 by Windbell publications. Both books are the translation of the same Dogen's anthology of 301 koan stories in Chinese. Nishijima added a brief comentary to each koan and highlighted what he considered the crux of the matter. He has the right expertise on the subject because he translated into English the complete version of Shobogenzo and so he knows how to separate the wheat from the chaff in his comments to Shinji Shobogenzo. Master Loori adds a comment, verses and notes to each koan but smudging what is the heart of the matter and introducing all the gimmicks, the technical jargon, and Chinese and Japanese usage that grow in Mount Tremper. Everything becomes a blur under Loori and crystal clear under Nishijima. Loori's comments are a good example of what Master Bankei (1622-1693) considered a way of studying and disseminating "old waste paper" as compared to the direct teaching of Nishijima on each koan. There is a lapse of two years between the publication of Nishijima translation of Shinji Shobogenzo and that of Loori and Tanahashi. They mention the translation of Shobogenzo in four volumes made by Nishijima but not that of Shiji Shobogenzo in one volume. Their silence is highly suspicious because experts in a field cannot ignore the state of the art on the subject and should not cold-shoulder the work of other experts in the same subject. The translation of Nishijima has been available in the bookstore of zen centers where both teach and lecture. One may appreciate or not the translation made by another expert but it is a matter of courtesy and rigour to mention it to the readers. So this is an invitation to read and compare made by a Zen practitioner in Spain who is used to study Dogen's texts translated into English and into French. Quiet often it is like looking for eggs and finding out chestnuts in the egg box.