About Kobutsushin

Kobutsushin or Kobusshin, also known in various English translations such as The Mind of Eternal Buddhas or Old Buddha Mind, is a book of the Shōbōgenzō by the 13th century Sōtō Zen monk Eihei Dōgen. The book appears ninth in the 75 fascicle version of the Shōbōgenzō, and it is ordered 44th in the later chronological 95 fascicle "Honzan edition". It was presented to his students in the fourth month of 1243 at Rokuharamitsu-ji, a temple in a neighborhood of eastern Kyoto populated primarily by military officials of the new Kamakura shogunate. This was the same location where he presented another book of the same collection called Zenki. Both were short works compared to others in the collection, and in both cases he was likely invited to present them at the behest of his main patron, Hatano Yoshishige, who lived nearby. Later in the same year, Dōgen suddenly abandoned his temple Kōshōhōrin-ji in Kyoto and began to establish Eihei-ji.