1. Or "to the later buddha" -- i.e., the future Buddha Maitreya.

2. The issue here is how two buddhas can coexist in the same buddha field. Some commentaries explain the difficult sentence on "obstruction" by resort to two senses of the tem: from the relative perspective, the buddhas do not obstruct each other because they are distinct; from the absolute perspective, they obstruct each other because they are one.

3. Or "they pass directly through past and present." The description of the old buddhas as "long past" may reflect the words of Nanyang Huizhong: "A monk asked, 'What is [the Buddha] Vairocana, the original body?' The master answered, 'The old buddha is long past.'"

4. Given their dates, the "meeting" between Dôgen's master, Rujing (1163-1228), and the former abbot of Rujing's Tiantong monastery, Hongzhi (1091-1157), must be understood in a metaphorical sense.

5. Dôgen is here playing with the spiritual "adornments" of the buddha's body, treating them in terms related to livestock: "fodder" often refers to what we might call the "food for thought" given by a master to a disciple; "grip" (or "halter") suggests a "hold" or "handle" on something.

6. The Chan master Sushan Guangren (837-909) here expresses his appreciation of the words of Loshan Daoxian (dates unknown), who was living on the Dayu Range, in southern Jiangxi.

7. This passage alludes to a story in which Xuefeng Yicun (822-908), upon hearing of the words of Zhaozhou Congshen (778-897), simply called him an old buddha and did not offer a response.

8. "National Teacher Dazheng" refers to Nanyang Huizhong (d. 775), about whom there are several legends of the sort reflected here.

9. The "ten thousand trees and one hundred grasses" refer to the phenomenal world, while the "nine mountains and eight seas" express the topographic features of the world surrounding Mt. Sumeru in Buddhist cosmology. "Sun face" and "moon face" invoke the names of two buddhas, the former said to live for 1800 years, the latter for one day; "skin, flesh, bones, and marrow" allude to words attributed to Bodhidharma and regularly used by Dôgen to mean the entirety or essential character of something.

10. In this passage, Dôgen is alluding to a conversation between Lohan Guichen (867-928) and Xuansha Shibei (835-908):

Once Xuansha asked the great master Zhenying of Dizang Cloister, "'The three worlds are but one mind.' How do you understand this?" The master pointed to a chair and said, "What do you call this?" Xuansha said, "A chair." The master said, "Reverend, you don't understand 'the three worlds are but one mind'." Xuansha said, "I call it bamboo and wood. What do you call it?" The master said, "I also call it bamboo and wood." Xuansha said, "I can't find a single person anywhere on earth who understands the buddha dharma."

11. Dôgen is here playing with terms expressing motion forward and back along a path (or away from and toward the subject), as well as three terms for speech. "One road that speaks out" renders an unusual expression that might also be understood as "one road beyond speech" (or "beyond the way").

12. Zhongxing's remark, "better without my body" (or perhaps simply "without me"), is ambiguous: some commentators take it to mean that his body will not collapse with the world; others, that it will collapse.