‘That you accept the teaching of authentic transmission of this buddha robe in your body and mind with trust is a sign of encountering the Buddha. Not to be able to receive this dharma is a life to be lamented. Deeply affirm that covering your body with this kashaya even once is an amulet of protection for ensuring enlightenment.
It is said that if you dye your mind with one phrase or one verse of teaching, it will become timelessly radiant without lack. To dye your body and mind with a single dharma is just like this. Although the mind has no abode and is not possessed by the self, its power is concrete. Although the body has no abode, its power is concrete. A kashaya also neither comes nor goes. It is not possessed by the self or other; it abides where it is maintained and assists the one who maintains it. The power of what is attained by the kashaya must also be like this.
Making a kashaya is not limited to the ordinary or sages. Its meaning cannot be thoroughly understood by bodhisattvas of the ten stages and three classes. Those who don’t have seeds of enlightenment planted in the past do not see, hear about, and know a kashaya even for one lifetime, two lifetimes, or innumerable lifetimes. How then can they receive and maintain it? There are those who comprehend the merit of a kashaya touching their bodies even once, and there are those who don’t. Those who understand this merit should rejoice, and those who don’t should hope for it. Those who cannot should lament.’
‘If this principle of the authentic transmission of the Buddha’s robe is believed just once by this body and mind, that is a sign of meeting buddha, and it is the way to learn the state of buddha. [A life] in which we could not accept this Dharma would be a sad life. We should profoundly affirm that if we cover the physical body, just once, with this kaṣāya,it will be a talisman that protects the body and ensures realization of the state of bodhi.
It is said that when we dye the believing mind with a single phrase or a single verse we never lack the brightness of long kalpas. When we dye the body and mind with one real dharma, [the state] may be “also like this.” Those mental images are without an abode and are irrelevant to what I possess; even so, their merits are indeed as described above. The physical body is without an abode; even so, it is as described above. The kaṣāya,too, is without an origin and also without a destination, it is neither our own possession nor the possession of anyone else; even so, it actually abides at the place where it is retained, and it covers the person who receives and retains it. The merits acquired [by virtue of the kaṣāya] may also be like this.
When we make the kaṣāya,the making is not the elaboration of the common, the sacred, and the like. The import of this is not perfectly realized by [bodhisattvas at] the ten sacred or the three clever [stages]. Those who have not accumulated seeds of the truth in the past do not see the kaṣāya, do not hear of the kaṣāya, and do not know the kaṣāya, not in one life, not in two lives, not even if they pass countless lives. How much less could they receive and retain [the kaṣāya]? There are those who attain, and those who do not attain, the merit to touch [the kaṣāya] once with the body. Those who have attained [this merit] should rejoice. Those who have not attained it should hope to do so. Those who can never attain it should lament.’ (Shobogenzo Den-e)
The Monday Dogen study group has been ploughing through the successive fascicles on the okesa, or kashaya – this one is apparently the written version of a talk that he gave which was transcribed as the other fascicle.
We always read the Tanahashi translation – the first one here – and often compare passages with the Nishijima-Cross version – the second one. This time I could not decide which I prefered; the language is not so esoteric in these fascicles, so the differences are more superficial than they can be elsewhere. What do you think?
Shundo David Haye - Zen Priest 
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