"Treasury of the True Dharma Eye") is the title most commonly used to refer to the collection of works written in Japan by the 13th-century Buddhist monk and founder of the Sōtō Zen school, Eihei Dōgen.
In Mahayana Buddhism, the term True Dharma Eye Treasury (Japanese: Shōbōgenzō) refers generally to the Buddha Dharma; and in Zen Buddhism, it specifically refers to the realization of Buddha's awakening that is not contained in the written words of the sutras.
In the legend as told in the Wumenguan, the Buddha holds up a flower and no one in the assembly responds except for Arya Kashyapa who gives a broad smile and laughs a little.
Dahui Zonggao, the famous 12th-century popularizer of koans in Song dynasty China, wrote a collection of kōans with the Chinese title Zhengfa Yanzang (正法眼藏).
In his book Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation, the modern scholar Carl Bielefeldt acknowledges that Dōgen likely took the title from Dahui for his own kōan collection, known now as the Shinji Shōbōgenzō.
He later used the same title again for what is now his most well-known work, the Kana Shōbōgenzō (now almost always referred to simply as "the Shōbōgenzō"): Indeed the fact that Dōgen styled his effort "Shōbō genzō" suggests that he had as his model a similar compilation of the same title by the most famous of Sung masters, Ta-Hui Tsung-kao [Dahui Zonggao].
A few years later, however, he embarked on a major project to develop extended commentaries on many of these and other passages from the Ch'an literature.
The fruit of this project was his masterpiece--the remarkable collection of essays known as the kana, or "vernacular", Shōbō genzō.
[3] Modern editions of Shōbōgenzō contain 95 fascicles based on the late-17th-century 96-fascicle version of Hangyo Kozen, the 35th abbot of Dōgen's monastery Eihei-ji.
The only chapter originally intended to be part of the Shōbōgenzō missing from the revised Honzan version at this stage was Ippyakuhachi Hōmyō Mon because it was not discovered until 1936.
Today, arguably the most faithful printed version in Japanese is the 1988 edition compiled by Kōdō Kawamura consisting of the original 75-fascicle version from the single 1547 Ryūmonji manuscript, the 12-fascicle 1446 Yōkōji manuscript, nine uncollected works not originally intended for the Shōbōgenzō, and initial drafts of seven chapters.
Senne is believed to be the author of the Shōbōgenzō Gokikigaki due to the use of the honorific modifier go (御), which would not normally be used to refer to one's own writing.
In fact, the first time the Goshō is known to be mentioned in historical documents is in 1586, when it was saved from a fire at Senpuku-ji, a temple in Oita Prefecture in Kyushu.
The Buddhist studies scholar Genryū Kagamishima has written that Senne and Kyōgō's commentaries form the doctrinal core of the modern Sōtō Zen school.
[8] One of the earliest commentaries on the Shōbōgenzō was written by a monk named Tenkei Denson (1638–1735) in opposition to the emerging pro-Dōgen movement led by Manzan.
[8] Around the same time Menzan Zuihō was dedicating much of his life to analyzing the Shōbōgenzō in order to uncover Dōgen's source material.
[4] Menzan also made extensive use of Senne and Kyōgō's Goshō commentary in when studying the Shōbōgenzō, and he criticized Tenkei for having rejected it.
[8] Within a few years the monk Honkō made a commentary on the text and translated it into what was at the time the more respectable language of Classical Chinese.
An abridged collection of a variety of Dōgen's work appeared at this time called The Record of Eihei Dogen, which the famous poet Ryōkan wrote a verse on.