我 “a self” → Suzuki: “egoism.” The bare positing of an I, dissolved stepwise by the mondo, recast as a moral vice; two lines later he renders the same character correctly.
The confrontation
The consensus
| Translator | Renders it | Source |
|---|---|---|
| The dictionary entry | “no self” | ReadZen entry 無我, nine curated occurrences, the Weikuan mondo among them |
| Suzuki sole outlier | egoism | The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind, pp. 91–92 (1958 edition; reprinted in Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings, ed. Barrett, 1956, p. 209) |
The dictionary's evidence
The dictionary entry 無我 carries nine curated occurrences, the Weikuan mondo among them; its preferred rendering is “no self.” The word Suzuki chose appears nowhere in the dictionary’s own voice: the same audit standard this site applies to every import word.
- Xingshan Weikuan (raised in the Linwo record) · J38nB422 舉：「興善惟寬禪師因僧問：『道在何處？』寬曰：『秪在目前。』僧曰：『我何不見？』寬曰：『汝有我故，所以不見。』僧曰：『我有我故即不見，和尚還見否？』寬曰：『有汝有我，展轉不見。』僧曰：『無汝無我，還見否？』寬曰：『無汝無我，阿誰求見？』」 0580c16–19Weikuan’s biography, Shaolin Monastery gazetteer · B24n0141 寬曰秪在目前曰我何不見寬曰汝有我故所以不見曰我有我故即不見和尚還見否寬曰有汝有我展轉不見曰無我無汝還見否寬曰無汝無我阿誰求見 0698a05–08
“Why do I not see the Way?” “Because you have a self (汝有我故), you do not see.” “With a you and an I, all the more there is no seeing.” “With no you and no I, who would there be to seek the seeing?” (same line · 2 recensions)
Layman Pang asked the lecturer on the Diamond Sutra: with no self-mark and no person-mark, who lectures? Who listens? The lecturer had no reply.
Having a self is called ordinary; having no self is called sagely. Yet this self-mark has roots that run very deep.
The tradition glosses the construction itself. In the Kanadeva transmission story the same grammar is answered in kind: 汝有我故所以不得，我無我我故自當得, because you have a self you do not obtain it; being without the self-I, I naturally obtain it. Weikuan’s own biography in the Shaolin gazetteer carries the mondo verbatim. And the dictionary’s companion entry 我見, the “view of self,” already draws the needed line: the term names a view or attachment, not every first-person statement. The mondo’s target is the posited self, not bad manners.
The literal reading
The monk asks where the Way is. Right before your eyes, says Weikuan. Then why do I not see it? 汝有我故: because you have a self, because an I is posited, there is no seeing. The mondo then dissolves the positing in steps: with a you and an I, no seeing; with no you and no I, the question of who would do the seeing dissolves too. 我 here is the bare assertion of a self, the thing the tradition negates as 無我, no self.
The alteration
Suzuki’s English hands the monk a character flaw. The word he chose names a moral-psychological vice, selfishness and self-importance, and so recasts a no-self pointer as an ethical rebuke: the monk cannot see the Way because he is self-centered. The Chinese predicates nothing about vanity. 有我 is having, positing, an I at all, and the cure the mondo enacts is not humility but the dissolution of the positing: 無汝無我, no you and no I, until no seeker of the seeing remains. The clincher sits on the same page: two lines below, Suzuki renders the identical 我 correctly, “as long as there is ‘I and thou’”, proof that he could parse the grammar he had just moralized. The vice-word aims the koan at the reader’s manners; the text aims it at the reader’s metaphysics.