We have been teaching together [with Kaz] now for more than twenty years in sesshins, in international travel programs in Japan and China, as well as intensives on Buddhism that focus on the work of Zen Master Dogen and Ryokan, as well as on many of the Mahayana sutras.

The Shobogenzo is an enormous work that captures the vastness of Dogen's realization. Kaz, over many years, threaded the beads of these many fascicles into a great mala of wisdom.

In accepting death as inevitable, we don't label it as a good thing or a bad thing. As one of my teachers once said to me, “Death happens. It is just death, and how we meet it is up to us.

To work with Kaz on this kind of project is a fascinating process...He seems to be Dogen himself when offering the translations that we Western collaborators then refine with him.

My test for veracity has always been: How this will settle with a person who is dying? Boundlessness seemed to me to open the door to the true nature of mind that is pointed to in the Heart Sutra.

I am working on a technical paper on compassion. So I am reading everything I can on the subject, including my own mind and heart.

I remember having a discussion with [Kaz] about his translation of the word shunyata as "boundlessness," instead of the more traditional "emptiness." I said: "Kaz, everyone is used to the word emptiness for shunyata. This might not sit well with people. He said: "Translator's prerogative!" Then he added, "One cannot assume we know what they meant...." I agreed.