early 1970s · compiled by Angie Boissevain and Judy Cosgrove · 29 talks
Kobun's commentary on the Platform Sutra of Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch, given to the Monday morning group in the early 1970s. In the book his commentary runs beside Wing-Tsit Chan's translation of the sutra; here only Kobun's words are reproduced, so each talk is headed by the section numbers he was speaking to. The full paired text is in the PDF below.
The Platform Sutra was the first sutra Kobun studied with the group which met on Monday mornings, in the early 1970's, at students' houses.
We were reading from The Platform Scripture translated by Wing-Tsit Chan, St. John's University Press, New York, 1963. This book is out of print, although several used copies are still available at this writing. Other translations of the Platform Sutra are available. It is probable that these more recent translations come closer to Kobun's intention.
— from the Editors' Note
In the book Kobun's commentary runs beside Chan's translation of the sutra, column against column. Only Kobun's words are reproduced here — the translation is Chan's work, not his, and not ours to give away. Each talk is therefore headed by the section numbers Kobun was speaking to, so his commentary can be followed against any translation. The editors' own bridging notes, which explain the sections the book passes over, are kept and marked as theirs.