This fascicle of the Shôbôgenzô was composed at Dôgen's Kôshô monastery, on the outskirts of the capital of Heian (present-day Kyoto), in 1242, a year perhaps the most productive in its author's career.

The work takes its name from a state of concentration, known in Sanskrit sources as the sâgara-mudrâ-samâdhi. In this state, likened to an ocean on which appear images of the forms of all beings, it is said that the bodhisattva can see the mental activities of all beings or, more generally, can discern all phenomena (dharmas) in detail. The samadhi is often, though not exclusively, associated with the tradition of the Avatamsaka Sutra, which is said to have been taught while the Buddha was absorbed in this state.

Dôgen's piece represents a commentary on two texts. The first, which occupies him for some two thirds of his work, is a passage from the Vimalakirti Sutra, with a comment by the famous Tang-dynasty Zen master Mazu. The sutra tells how the bodhisattva should regard his body as merely the combination of dharmas arising and ceasing. In his comment, Mazu says that in fact the dharmas occur in each moment without relation to each other, a condition he identifies as the ocean seal samadhi. The second text is a teaching on the ocean by the Tang figure, Caoshan, one of the founding ancestors of Dôgen's Sôtô lineage.

Dôgen's commentary takes up almost every word in these texts, playing with their interpretation and glossing them with cryptic allusions to the sayings and poems of the Zen masters. In the process, as is often the case in his writings, he seeks at once to lift the language of his texts to a more mysterious metaphysical plane and to ground the metaphysics in the spiritual practice of the buddhas and ancestors of his tradition. At times, the effort seems a bit strained, and it is probably fair to say that the Ocean Seal Samadhi may not show us its author quite at his best; still, a test of these waters will give the reader a good taste of Dôgen's idiosyncratic approach to reading his sources.

The following English version, like all the translations of the Soto Zen Text Project, seeks to retain as much as possible of the syntax and diction of the original, even at the expense of readability. Other English versions of this work can be found at Kôsen Nishiyama and John Stevens, Shôbôgenzô, volume 1 (1975); Hee-jin Kim, Flowers of Emptiness (1985) (partial); Thomas Cleary, Shôbôgenzô (1986); Yokoi Yuho, The Shobo-genzo (1986); Gudo Nishijima and Chodo Cross, Master's Dogen's Shobogenzo, Book 2 (1996); and Kazuaki Tanahashi, ed., Beyond Thinking: A Guide to Zen Meditation (2004).

In this version, based on the piece appearing in Dharma Eye 14 (summer 2004), we have kept the annotation to a minimum; but, because of the obscurity of some of the text, we have added a few supplemental notes of interpretation (which may or may not be helpful). Additional notes will eventually become available on this site. The text translated here is from the edition in Kawamura Kôdô, Dôgen zenji zenshû, volume 1, pp. 119-126. Michael Radich, of Harvard University, made invaluable contributions to the research and translation.