Abstract: This chapter examines the reasons Trei Enji’s Darumatara zenky setts ksho has been neglected despite its importance, bringing up the debate between the sectarian self-understanding and ideology of the present Japanese Zen schools, each of which claims the highest degree of authenticity as the true recipient of the historical Buddha’s legacy, the famous “special transmission outside [scholastic] teachings” (kyge betsuden). The Ta-mo-to-lo ch’an ching, the Chinese translation of a canonical text primarily concerned with essential Buddhist meditation techniques, is a little-known sutra that has nevertheless played an interesting role in the development of the Chinese and Japanese Buddhist traditions, particularly the Ch’an/Zen schools. The Indian meditation treatise was translated into Chinese in the early fifth century CE, which attracted renewed interest among Sung Ch’an people as a text associated with Bodhidharma, and that was transmitted to Japan and later “rediscovered” by the eighteenth-century Japanese Zen teacher Trei Enji (1721-1792). The result of this encounter is his voluminous commentary entitled Darumatara zenky settsu ksho, first published in 1784. Despite the importance of Trei in Rinzai Zen and the erudition of his commentary, there is no modern printed edition of the text and, seemingly, no in-depth study of it.

Keywords: meditation, Bodhidharma, Ta-mo-to-lo ch’an ching, Trei Enji, Darumatara zenky setts ksho,