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Entry into all conduct is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we attain realization of the Buddha-eye. 入一切行是法明門、得佛眼成就故。 This is very similar to Gate 101, Entry into the state of unrestricted speech is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we attain realization of the Dharma-eye. Most of the kanji in these two statements are the same and the structure is the same, so probably they’re related or showing us two sides of something. Let’s look at what conduct means here and then review what the buddha eye is and how these two things are connected. The kanji in the statement that’s being translated “conduct” is gyo 行. Gyo is a really important word in our tradition and there are various ways to translate it. One is conduct, but it can also mean practice, action or activity. Let’s start with conduct, because that seems fairly specific. Conduct usually means behavior or deportment. We think of good conduct as meaning having good manners, following the rules, and behaving ethically. Actually, this English word “conduct” is really interesting, because it can also be read conDUCT, as a verb rather than a noun. The original Latin word meant “brought together,” and as it made its way into English it meant safe passage, to conduct someone safely from one place to another, not unlike bodhisattvas conducting people safely to the other shore. ConDUCT has a sense of guiding, leading or managing. CONduct, or how we manage ourselves and our behavior, in the context of day to day practice can be concerned with forms and also with ethics or sila. These are how we actualize our understanding in concrete ways with this karmic human body. Considering our conduct is a great practice of letting go of self clinging. Getting along in a sangha requires us to consider the needs of others. We can’t just do whatever we want because we understand interconnectedness, and with that wisdom, compassion arises naturally. Practice forms reflect wisdom and compassion the way manners reflect etiquette. Etiquette has to to do with the underlying principles for how we get along in society, things like consideration, respect and honesty, along with graciousness and basic kindness. Those things don’t change over time. However, manners can be situational. What we do at a state dinner at Buckingham Palace is not what we do when we eat with friends at home, and what was appropriate a hundred years ago isn’t necessarily appropriate today, but basic principles of getting along underlie manners in both contexts. Dogen tells us that if we want to practice the Way, we should practice the conduct of the ancestors. Doing exactly what they were doing in that culture and time might not be a good fit here and now, but the attitude and the understanding is the same; in our zazen, in particular, we enter into the same space with them. Thus our actions -- our conduct -- are rooted in a larger understanding. It makes sense that precepts and ethics are a part of this thing. This is the sila section of eightfold path: right speech, action and livelihood. At Gate 101 we talked about unrestricted speech, so we can start to see how these two statements are connected. Gyo as action covers everything we do with body, speech and mind, the three things we use to create karma, whether we’re in the temple or not, and whether someone’s watching or not. This is about how we move through the world as bodhisattvas. Dogen Zenji says in Shobogenzo Zuimonki: Without having the slightest expectation, maintain the prescribed manner of conduct. Okumura Roshi has said that for people living in the training temple, the prescribed manner of conduct is following the schedule and wholeheartedly taking on all the activities of the day in the temple. Yet for laypeople and those of us who don’t live in the temple, it means taking care of our jobs and families, living in the community and paying attention to our lives in the world, and doing that in a sustainable and ethical way. In the training temple, the person who supervises novices’ conduct is the ino. Outside of the temple, we have to supervise our conduct as bodhisattvas for ourselves. Dogen Zenji goes on: Think of acting to save and benefit living-beings, earnestly carry out all good deeds, and give up former evil ones, solely for the sake of becoming the foundation of happiness for human and heavenly beings. Without stagnating in good deeds of the present, continue practicing your whole lifetime. Gyo can also be translated as performance, but we have to be really careful about that. This is performing as in simply carrying something out, not performing as in putting on an act or a show. There is certainly a tradition of very carefully constructing and “performing” or carrying out rituals in Japanese Buddhism, particularly the more esoteric schools. Where you do it is important, as is how it’s done and what imagery is present. All of these things are designed to affect the participants’ experience of what they see and hear. Ceremonies may be elaborate, but they’re not for entertainment or to impress people. In fact, this is one of the guidelines of practice at Sanshin: Keeping forms and ceremonies simple in order to understand what we’re doing and why, and to maintain their connection with zazen. Rather than just being performances, forms should come from the mind of shikantaza as an expression of our understanding. Our practice here includes a relatively small number of the forms and formalities you might see in other Soto Zen places. That’s not because the forms aren’t important. We do a few forms and do them simply so that we can understand why we’re doing what we’re doing and keep the connection between forms and the mind of shikantaza. Our outward forms come from inside. Whatever forms we choose to do, we try to do them thoroughly and without separation into an “I” that’s “performing” a “ritual.” We let go of extras like using our conduct to build our egos or compare ourselves to others. We just fold ourselves seamlessly into the activity of the community. When we do, those forms are alive as the complete functioning of practice-realization. Gyo also shows up in rigyo (利行), helpful conduct or beneficial action. In the largest sense, this means doing good for others with body, speech and mind, and in that way connecting them with the dharma. As bodhisattvas, this is how we liberate beings. We’ve seen gyo as conduct, but it can also mean practice, whatever we’re doing as a realization of awakening or manifestation of our buddha nature. There’s an important nuance here: it’s not whatever we’re doing TO realize awakening but AS a realization of awakening. As Dogen Zenji says, practice and realization arise together. In fact, Dogen Zenji wrote three fascicles of the Shobogenzo related to gyo:
Gyoji, or continuous practice: is often represented as a circle. There are two ways we can think about what continuous practice is. One is the need to practice moment by moment based on vow and repentence. We vow to save beings, but we’re never going to get to the end of that vow, so in next minute we recognize that practice will never be complete. Again and again we do vow and repentance; we can’t just do it once. Again and again we engage in zazen, work, study and ritual; we can’t just do it once. Even after we have some awakening experience or a bit of insight, now we have to practice with integrating that into our bodhisattva activity. The other way we need to understand gyoji is as another way to say that practice and realization arise together. In his Gyoji fascicle Dogen Zenji wrote: In the great Way of the buddhas and ancestors, there is always unsurpassable continuous practice which is the Way like a circle without interruption. Between the arousing of awakening-mind, practice, awakening, and Nirvana, there is not the slightest break. Continuous practice is the circle of the Way. In all of our activities on and off the cushion or in and out of the zendo, practice and realization are both there. Then there’s dai shugyo or great practice, practice that transcends all distinctions and separations. There’s good and bad and going beyond good and bad. There’s being affected by cause and effect and not being affected by cause and effect and going beyond being affected or not. There’s thinking and not thinking and going beyond thinking and not thinking. Going beyond distinction in our practice means not negating one side or the other and making then cancel each other out. We see form as form and emptiness as emptiness and we also see that they’re two sides of one reality. Finally there’s gyobutsu igi, the dignified conduct of practice buddhas. Dignified doesn’t mean snooty or stuffy. The root of the word means worthy, and the sense is usually worthy of respect. We look to buddhas as models of awakening and of how we should behave as bodhisattvas. We’re going to come back to practice-buddhas in a moment; first we have to consider that the subject of our gate statement is “entry into all conduct.” Does that mean we’re supposed to carry out every possible form? Enter into every single practice activity that’s offered? That seems impossible. At Gate 101 we saw that “entry into” in this case means dropping off body and mind and completely manifesting unrestricted speech, or for Gate 102, all conduct -- in all our actions, dropping off body and mind and fully realizing awakening. In all of our actions, we see that there is no gap between practice and realization and transcend all distinctions without disregarding forms. Entering into all conduct is remembering moment by moment that we’re bodhisattvas moving in a network of interdependence, over and over again opening the hand of thought and letting go of clinging to our five skandhas, paying attention to all of our actions of body, speech and mind, and knowing that there’s not one of them that isn’t setting up causes and conditions for the next thing to unfold. That next thing might be something that directly affects others, or it might just be that we’re establishing wholesome or unwholesome habits for ourselves. Over the years, when I’ve wanted to take shortcuts in practice and told myself “Oh well, no one’s around, so I’ll just do half the job today.” the remedy has been for me to remind myself to let go of clinging to my opinion and fully practice in this moment. Then my resistance to doing whatever it is calms down. Here’s the dynamic I’ve seen in myself over time, and maybe it happens for you as well. I notice that my activity is being driven by the need to support the practice of others. If there aren’t any others here, then continuing to carry out that activity feels like a lost opportunity to do something else. No one has come for zazen, so rather than sitting alone in the zendo I could be taking care of other things that I never have time to do. This is classic suffering, wanting things to be other than they are. At any other time, if people were here, I wouldn’t think twice about putting in the time to carry out practice activities, so clearly I have an opportunity to do some discernment about non-reliance. What’s driving my practice, my own bodhicitta or my job description? Let’s briefly review the last part of the gate statement, the buddha eye. We've already considered the five eyes from the Diamond Sutra. With the Buddha eye, we see the complete truth of all phenomena in the past, present and future, and this eye includes the functions of all the others. This is where all duality gets collapsed and there’s no divide between subject and object. There’s no buddha seeing something, there’s just seeing. The buddha eye doesn’t separate space into distinct places or time into separate days or hours. There’s just unsurpassable true awakening, where here and now is not separate from all space and time. Maybe you’ve seen eyes of Buddha painted on stupas, particularly in Vajrayana-influenced areas of the world. They can be painted on each of four sides to show that the buddha eye sees in all directions throughout space and time. The buddha eye sees the true reality of all beings. Some years ago Okumura Roshi explained what Dogen Zenji meant when he said in the Tenzo Kyokun: Do not see with your common eyes and do not think with your common sentiment. He explained the difference between bongen or the common eye and butsugen or the buddha eye. Bon is a word used for actions, qualities or people who are not buddha. Using the common eye results in chasing after, escaping from and competing with others. It’s the cause of transmigration through samsara. Bon and butsu are opposites. Butsugen or the buddha eye is one with jijuyu zammai, in which everything we encounter is our life, as Uchiyama Roshi says. Okumura Roshi made the point that when we’re working in the kitchen as tenzos we don’t think of that as something that requires the buddha eye. We’re just concerned about the tasks of getting cereal cooked and fruit chopped and water boiled, but actually, the kitchen is just as much a place of practice as the zendo. I think gyobutsu igi, the dignified conduct of practice buddhas, is the intersection of the two halves of the gate statement: conduct or practice, and the buddha eye. In order to really enter into practice as continuous realization, we have to see reality completely, without separation, or to say it the other way, when we see with the buddha eye, when we see the true reality of all things in the past, present and future, the dignified conduct of practice-buddhas is what arises. That means we don’t disregard what comes in through the senses. We accept that this human condition comes with delusions and we vow to see through them without judgement. We see one reality from two sides and express two sides in one action, and we use our understanding to liberate beings because we aren’t separate from them or from the total functioning of the universe, or this one unified reality. Okumura Roshi has written: In Gyo-butsu-iigi, `iigi means `form’ and `gyo’ stands for `practise’. So, `gyo-butsu-iigi’ means `practise Buddha’s decorum’ or `Buddha’s form’. `Gyo-butsu-iigi’ is the name of one of the chapters of the Shobogenzo. In that chapter, he uses the word `gyo-butsu’ as a name for Buddha. Our practice is a Buddha named `Gyo-butsu’. Not this person, but this person’s practice is a buddha. We’d usually think that a Buddha has to be a person, an awakened one, but as soon as we see it that way, there’s a person and the actions of that person and something called awakening. A practice-buddha is simply awakening without any fabrications about what awakening and buddhas and practice are. Dogen Zenji says in Gyobutsu-igi: All buddhas without exception fully practice dignified conduct. This practice is Practice Buddha. Sharing one corner of the Buddha’s dignified conduct is done together with the entire universe, the great earth, and with the entire coming-and-going of life-and-death. This is nothing other than the dignified conduct of the oneness of Practice and Buddha. Awakening may take some form that we can call decorum or conduct, but all conduct and buddha and the buddha eye and awakening and realization are all not separate from the beginning. When we see clearly, practice happens. When we practice, we make awakening concrete in the world. In other words, when we practice, buddha appears. This is a key theme of Dogen’s teaching: awakening doesn’t have meaning unless and until we engage in practice. In Gyobutsu-igi he says: Active buddhas alone fully experience the vital process on the path of going beyond buddha . . . . They bring forth dignified conduct with their bodies. Thus, their transformative function flows out in their speech, reaching throughout time, space, buddhas and activities. Active buddhas see with the buddha eye and go beyond buddha. They completely manifest awakening without having any idea about being buddha and manifesting awakening, and Dogen says this is vital process, something that’s alive and dynamic. This dignified buddha conduct is a practice, something we do moment by moment. Dogen goes on to say that even though it’s people who are engaging in this conduct, our limited karmic human form can’t defile it. Okumura Roshi says: The Lotus Sutra says only a Buddha together with a Buddha can fathom the true reality of all beings. Only a Buddha together with a Buddha means no human beings. So the subject of this practice is not this independent person, but all beings. This entire network practices through this single person’s body and mind. So this sitting is not my personal action, even though I use my personal body and mind. That separation falls down. The buddha eye sees karmic human form for what it is, so there’s no delusion or hindrance. This body and mind is perfectly fine as a vessel of the dharma, and our actions are complete manifestations of the dynamic functioning of the universe. Defilement doesn’t happen until we start poking our heads in and having ideas about what should be happening and whether we like it or not. I’m going to let Uchiyama Roshi have the last word. Just sit in the Reality of Life seeing hell and paradise, misery and joy, life and death, all with the same eye. No matter what the situation, we live the life of the Self. We must sit immovably on that foundation. This is essential; this is what “becoming one with the universe” means. If we divide this universe into two, striving to attain satori and to escape delusion, we are not the whole universe. Happiness and unhappiness, satori and delusion, life and death; see them with the same eye. In every situation the Self lives the life of the Self — such a self must do itself by itself. This universal Life is the place to which we return. Questions for reflection and discussion:
Entry into the state of unrestricted speech is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we attain realization of the Dharma-eye. 入無礙辯是法明門、得法眼成就故。 First let’s look at what unrestricted speech means in this gate statement. Then we need to understand “entry,” because there are some nuances there. Next we’ll talk about the dharma eye -- what that is and why it’s important -- and finally we’ll intersect everything and see how it all connects. Unrestricted speech sounds like just saying whatever we want at tops of our voices! Is this about being completely free to express ourselves in whatever way we want? What kind of restrictions are we talking about? The kanji here means hindrance, obstruction or disturbance, so this isn’t about restricting what we say in order to follow precepts or some other guideline. It’s not about censoring ourselves or controlling ourselves in that way. The gate is pointing to being hindered by attachment to mistaken assumptions about the nature of reality, or our view being limited by our delusion and inabiliy to see the whole landscape of this moment. We’re having a hard time carrying out Right Speech because of our ignorance., Whatever skill we may have in speaking or communicating, and whatever ability we may have to use our intellects, is being twisted because we’ve followed our misunderstandings about the universe right off the rails. Unrestricted speech comes from the point of view of unobstructed wisdom or prajna. It’s how we speak and teach when we act from a place of seeing clearly and deeply understanding impermanence, interdependence and the emptiness of the five skandhas. This points us back to the way body, speech and mind are connected when it comes to karmic action. First some thought arises in the mind, and of course, there’s a whole process about how that happens called the 12-fold chain of dependent origination. (For more on that, see our Buddhist Essentials page.) On the basis of that thought in the mind, we say something. If the thought was wholesome, there’s at least some chance that what we say will be, too. If not, we have a pretty good chance of saying something that breaks a precept or causes some kind of suffering. When we think stuff and say stuff, we’re likely to take some action with the body that’s related to what we think and say, so clearly we need to pay attention to thinking and speaking before they lead to a big mistake. That means that we can’t just monitor what we say or what we teach in isolation from the rest of our functioning and expect that everything will be OK. Nothing arises without a cause, and suffering has roots that we can trace and understand, so we can’t engage in unrestricted speech without engaging in zazen, work, study and liturgy: in other words, practice in its entirety. Entry into something sounds like there’s something we need to get or somewhere we need to go, and we have to be careful about getting caught up in the idea that there’s a fixed state that we need to reach in order for something to happen. “Entering into” in this context is to drop off body and mind, to realize that there’s already no separation so there’s already no restriction or hindrance. What’s keeping us from “entering into” is our five skandhas clinging to five skandhas. If we can let go of the clinging, we easily “enter into.” All this reminds me of the step in the hero’s journey called crossing the threshold. The hero’s journey is a standard set of 17 plot points that make up the structure of most screenplays, novels or epic stories. The fifth one is crossing the threshold, where the protagonist has finally accepted a challenge and stepped out of the ordinary world and into unknown territory in order to solve the problem. In most cases there’s a threshold guardian, some kind of natural barrier or dangerous being, something that prevents the hero from just deciding to cross and then doing it. In other words, there’s something scary about taking that step. When it comes to our practice, we may think we really want to drop off body and mind and enter into this space of non-separation, but we also really want to hang onto an idea about who we are. It can feel like annihilation to let go of clinging to these five skandhas. Who am I if I let go of my self-concepts? Do I disappear? Do I lose my identity? Do I become somebody else? Is it like amnesia? Will I die? How do I act or know what to do if I don’t know who I am? If I cross over and enter into this space of unrestricted speech, how do I know what to say? We can be afraid of being sort of unmoored or disoriented. Stopping our clinging to five skandhas can put us into a space we’re not used to being in, so we think it’s just a big cloud of confusion and unknown and the unfamiliar. Actually, entering into in the context of this gate statement is understanding or realizing -- making real, making concrete -- our wisdom and compassion, so it’s not floating around in a fog. We’re really stepping out of the fog of delusion and habituated thinking and into a space of clarity and reality. The kind of speech that arises from this unhindered and unrestricted place has several names within our tradition. We’ve talked about them before, but here's a quick review. Back at Gate 6 saw that paying attention to the actions of the mouth headed off a group of evils: lying, spreading rumors, slander, engaging in idle talk, and speaking in a way that causes problems between others. This is the tradtional definition of right speech on the eightfold path. At Gate 77 we talked about right speech and saw that on an everyday level, right speech doesn’t create suffering for ourselves or others. At the absolute level, it’s letting go of words and concepts altogether. Keeping this balance is how we keep the fourth precept about not speaking falsehood, seeing one reality from two sides and expressing two sides in one action. We need to say things in order to function in the world as bodhisattvas; at same time, we know that words are limited and can’t express entirety of this moment. Some of us in the sangha spent a long time recently talking about the Shobogenzo Bodaisatta Shishobo, or Four Embracing Actions of the Bodhisattva, one of which is loving speech, and we’ll return to that in a minute. The gate statement is saying that when our speech is not hindered by delusion and clinging and ignorance, that is itself a realization (making-real or manifestation) of the dharma eye. (See Gate 100 for a review of the five eyes from the Diamond Sutra.) When we use unrestricted speech we tap into the dharma eye, so that means our speech is a real concrete instance of carrying out our vow to liberate beings -- but how does that happen? In the Shishobo, Dogen Zenji says: Loving-speech means, first of all, to arouse compassionate mind when meeting with living beings, and to offer caring and loving words. In general, we should not use any violent or harmful words. . . . To speak with a mind that “compassionately cares for living beings as if they were our own babies” is loving-speech. It seems important that Dogen Zenji is saying we should speak with a mind that sees all beings as though they were our children. This is a practice that starts before we open our mouths. It starts with paying attention to our thoughts and perceptions. Regardless of what we’re actually saying, what’s our attitude when we talk to people? Can we really see the reality of interconnectedness and nonseparation and emptiness in that moment of that encounter? Do we really feel the need to take care of that conversation as though we were taking care of our own children? It’s easy to fall into social convention of asking how someone is, but do we really care? Sometimes simply showing some interest in someone’s wellbeing makes a big difference. I once read a Facebook post from someone whose partner was undergoing cancer treatment. This person was dismayed that no one had reached out to her as someone who was also affected by the situation, and she said, just responding to a Facebook post doesn’t count! She needed to actually talk to friends over coffee and to think about something besides managing the illness. The easy, convenient thing is just to click on a heart emoji or a sad face and feel good because we’ve provided some acknowledgement and support, but that wasn’t a real case of loving speech because this person needed something else and no one asked what that might be. This wasn’t someone I know well enough to get involved in that family’s situation, but it did make me realize that I needed to reach out to people I knew who were having health issues, and when I did, they were really appreciative. It was a kick on the backside from the universe that I need to pay more attention. This all means that we need to establish our practice and put in time on the cushion so we’re ready to meet the world and respond as skillful bodhisattvas with body, speech and mind, because if we’re not seeing all beings with the dharma eye, we can’t engage in unrestricted or loving speech. When people hear loving-speech directly their faces brighten and their minds become joyful. When people hear of a someone else’s loving-speech, they inscribe it in their hearts and souls. The power of unrestricted or loving speech to liberate beings goes beyond the one person you might be talking to at the moment. If others happen to hear that loving speech, they benefit too, and if they talk about it to their friends, the merit goes even farther. We never know where our words will end up across space and time. A skillful comment might not take root until some time later, and then, OH! that’s what that was about! OH! now I know what to do with that! We only have to think about how many times stories about dharma teachers are repeated. They were just responding to informal questions or making some comments, and yet years later those are turning words for somebody. Finally, Dogen Zenji says: We should know that loving-speech arises from a loving mind, and that the seed of a loving mind is compassionate heart. We should study how loving-speech has power to transform the world. It is not merely praising someone’s ability. We can say nice things, and maybe hold ourselves back from saying something we’ll regret later, but are we actually encountering all things as our children, with the clear wisdom and compassion of prajna, or are we putting on an act because we think we’re “supposed to?” Keeping ourselves from making mistakes is a good thing, but is it enough? We can’t stop there; we actually have to shift from relying on deluded thinking to relying on the dharma eye, and this is something we can cultivate. Dogen Zenji says that once we start paying attention to using loving speech, it becomes our usual way of being in the world. He says we won’t even notice what’s happening, but if we practice, gradually our speech will become kinder and less self-involved over time. Finally, he reminds us that this kind of speech is really, really important because it’s essential to resolving conflict with others and, we could also say, essential to the health of the network. Conflict is some indication of three poisonous minds. Someone somewhere is caught up in greed, anger or ignorance, and probably all three, and that’s the basis of suffering. Thus in this samsaric world on fire, if we can’t do anything else to ratchet down unwholesome stuff that’s happening, we can at least engage in unrestricted speech. That might not feel like much, but as we’ve seen, in order to engage in unrestricted speech we have to use the dharma eye, so there’s something powerful in back of this action. It’s not just nice words. We’re bringing our wisdom and compassion to that situation. So far I’ve been talking about speech in a general way, but the underlying sense of the Sanskrit here is teaching, discussing, discoursing. That’s speech being used in a particular way, being eloquent and using our rhetorical and intellectual skill, in this case to share the dharma. The kanji points to the Sanskrit word nirdesha: instruction, explanation or advice. For example, the Vimalakirti Sutra is sometimes called the Vimalakirti Nirdesa. In early texts, when Buddha or a bodhisattva is explaining something, it’s called nirdesha. This gate statement says that if we’re going to teach the dharma, or discuss the Buddha’s teachings, as bodhisattvas using the dharma eye, that teaching or discussion is going to come from a place of unrestrictedness. You may know that this sort of dharma talk is not the only way in which Zen teachers present the dharma. There is something called a teisho, literally presentation of the shout. It's not a sermon or an academic lecture, and not about concepts or factual knowledge. It’s a presentation of insight. Traditionally these things happen during sesshin and they deal with a koan or sometimes something from a sutra. Teisho has been described as insight returning to the source. It’s a demonstration of direct experiential understanding behind the words and content. The point is not to “teach” the koan but to show insight underneath the understanding of it. You may not be familiar with this sort of talk because we don’t do that sort of sesshin teisho here. There’s no talking during sesshin at all, and our practice is to let go of all thinking, including thinking about the dharma. Anyway, teisho as a direct presentation of the dharma doesn’t always make sense on the surface, particularly if the topic is a koan. When listening to teisho, you don’t need to try to understand every word with your intellect. Folks say they consider it another form of zazen, just sitting quietly and letting it wash over them and soak in, which makes me think that not only the speaker but also the listeners need to be unrestricted, listening without hindrance, being hijacked or jumping to conclusions about what’s being said. or deciding we like it or don’t like it or agree or disagree. This is listening without greed, anger and ignorance or any other kind of obstruction. Not only is the teacher directly presenting awakening or realization, the listener is directly receiving and participating in that awakening or realization. Neither side is becoming attached to the words or to any kind of distraction. They’re both just entering into the reality of this moment, in other words, unrestricted speech and unrestricted listening. Because the teisho is supposed to be spontaneous and expressing something in THIS moment, there are probably no notes, and it might not be delivered in a structured way with full sentences and carefully constructed paragraphs. It comes directly from what’s happening right now, not written out beforehand and rehearsed. For new teachers, I suspect giving talks is one of scarier things they have to learn to do. I was fortunate in that regard in two ways: one is I’m highly verbal already, and the other is that I used to coach presenters and speakers for a living, so I already understood the skills and the process. Even so, to get up in front of a group of practitioners and offer something useful to them is a challenge, especially when some of them have been in robes longer than you’ve been practicing! Thus new teachers tend to completely script themselves and then read their notes to the audience, or they just do book reports: I read this great book over the weekend and I want to share it with you today. The author says . . . Well, what do YOU say? What are YOU bringing to this talk? Beginners think they have nothing to add to the conversation. Hmmmm. If we can get past that point of ego and self-clinging, that’s where the juice is. I love visiting college classes and just batting questions back and forth. They ask interesting stuff and then I need to respond in that moment, drawing on all my study but also all my direct experience. Every year when we do the shuso hossen and the shuso takes questions from the sangha, that’s the part that makes them nervous and keeps them up at night: no notes, no prep, just you and the question and everyone watching and listening. They go straight for emptiness and the absolute in every answer because it’s an easy way to avoid the tough questions, and we tend to be nice and let them off the hook. That experience is designed to make us get out of our own way as teachers and just let the dharma come out -- believe me, it’s in there! When we open our mouths and get out of the way, something comes out (where did that come from?) If you get out of the way, it’s way more fun then tying yourself up in knots trying to give an intellectual discourse. Most of us here are laypeople and are never going to do a shuso hossen, and don’t consider ourselves dharma teachers, so why do we care about this unrestricted teisho thing? Well, have you ever been presented with a question that puts you on the spot? What do you think of your coworker’s performance on this project? Do you know why I’ve called you into my office (or why I’ve pulled your car over?) Daddy, is there really a Santa Claus? A tooth fairy? a God? How about when your sister or your friend says: Why me? Why did this terrible thing happen to me? I’m a good person, just doing my best to live. What do you say? Do you think you’re not called on to respond skillfully from a place of practice in this moment? You are if you’re a bodhisattva, which we’ve all vowed to be. Unrestricted speech partnered with the dharma eye is one of the most important tools we’ve got. Questions for reflection and discussion:
The wisdom view is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] wisdom is realized and fulfilled. 慧見是法明門、智惠成就滿足故。 Somehow, we need to see or view things in a certain way that we call wisdom so we can make that wisdom concrete in the world. It’s important that the English word being used here is "wisdom" rather than "knowledge" or "understanding." Wisdom in English is about taking everything you’ve learned and experienced and that’s given you a deep and clear vision of the universe and using that to exercise good judgement. Uchiyama Roshi says wisdom or prajna is the foundation from which we make choices. (1) With wisdom, every time we make a choice we make it from the point of view of interconnectedness. What’s the best thing for the network of interdependent origination? Does this put wholesomeness into the world, or unwholesomeness -- and not just for me. It’s the broadest possible view. Wisdom of course is the counter to ignorance. Ignorance means not understanding how universe actually works and relying instead on the stuff we make up in our heads. Ignorance is one of the three poisons. along with greed and anger, that’s at the root of all human suffering. It s’s safe to say that no one is completely wise or completely ignorant; we’re all carrying and balancing these two things all the time. Sometimes we’re able to take a clear and expansive view, and sometimes we’re really stuck in how we wish things were. This isn't the first time we’ve encountered a gate dealing with wisdom; when we talked about the 37 factors of awakening, that included a group of five faculties that lead to liberation. One of those (Gate 62) was wisdom, or prajna, which is said to be the highest virtue: The faculty of wisdom is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we really see all dharmas. We also talked about the six paramitas, one of which is wisdom. Gate 92 says, The wisdom pāramitā is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we eradicate the darkness of ignorance, together with attachment to views, and we teach and guide foolish living beings. Let's do a quick review of what we know already about wisdom in this tradition, and then consider what this gate statement is adding to that discussion. Wisdom is the largest possible view, the umbrella that includes all these teachings and gates, or we could say that these teachings are all aspects or elements pointing to wisdom. We need to understand how each of these aspects is connected to wisdom; otherwise we can use them for good or bad, wholesomeness or unwholesomeness. From the five faculties that lead to liberation: faith, effort, mindfulness and concentration are no good if they don’t contain wisdom. From the paramitas: diligence, patience, generosity and all other paramitas aren’t actually perfections unless they contain wisdom. Ethics or morality doesn’t work without wisdom either. Okumura Roshi has said that without prajna the precepts become a lifeless set of rules. We can just apply them rigidly without actually seeing the circumstances of this moment. If we strictly applied “do not kill,” for example, we couldn’t eat. We can make the same mistake in zazen. If I think this is “my” zazen, designed to make me better at getting what I want and being self-centered, that’s zazen without prajna. Wisdom encompasses both thinking and non-thinking. Even in zazen, it's not that thinking is bad and nonthinking is good. It’s not that we never use our intellect or discriminating mind. We just need to see that there’s something beyond thinking and not thinking, or form and emptiness. There’s nothing left out of wisdom. Wisdom holds it all. Since prajna is all about reality, it’s not just an abstract thing. It’s what helps us understand what our lives are really about and how to conduct our lives in this concrete world. Prajna puts us right in the middle of this place and time, seeing everything with nothing left out. Buddha’s wisdom is what arises when we open the hand of thought, and opening the hand is something we do, not something we think or imagine or conceptualize. It’s very difficult to talk about holding two sides of one reality, so the only way we can study it is to do it and experience it. That's a matter of not creating a separate self, not following our habit of five skandhas clinging to five skandhas. This clinging happens because of ignorance, the opposite of wisdom. Ignorance or delusion is a fundamental misunderstanding of reality that’s at the heart of all suffering. If you’ve been here listening to Okumura Roshi’s dharma talks over the years, you’ve heard him speak more than once about the five eyes, a teaching from the Diamond Sutra. If so, you might be thinking, oh -- wisdom view in this gate is the same as the prajna eye in the five eyes. I did too at first -- but now I don’t think so. Let's do a quick review here:
Again, the prajna or wisdom eye in these five eyes sees emptiness. It sees that all conditioned things are without a permanent self-nature because the causes and conditions that lead to them are changing all the time. But in doing that, it starts to ignore form. It can get so caught up in emptiness that it doesn’t distunguish between beings or things. It has the wisdom to see beyond form, but then it doesn’t come back, and on that basis, this wisdom is not completely realized in the world. Thus this eye is smart, but only so much so. It still needs the dharma eye that knows how to save beings in this real, samsaric world. Taking the wisdom view in this gate is being able to choose this actual reality of our lives over our fabrications, our ideas and stories and how we wish things were, and then, having chosen this complete and realistic view, knowing what to do next as a bodhisattva. We’re not cultivating a lofty, mystical view so that we can sit on top of the mountain in a purple cloud and enjoy a magical experience. We’re also not cultivating special powers that we can use for our own ends. We might aspire to be sages or wizards, but the bodhisattva is more than that. As bodhisattvas we use whatever powers or abilities we have to actively liberate beings. This gate says wisdom is realized and fulfilled. We make wisdom real and tangible in the world, and that’s what gives it meaning. In other words, that’s where wisdom is fulfilled. Doing something fulfilling is doing something with deep meaning and purpose, something satisfying, not to our small-self-ego but to our larger bodhisattva aspiration. We need the wisdom view in order for that to work, and wisdom or the universe needs us in order for that work to happen. No matter how universal our aspirations are, in this life at least we’re using this karmically conditioned body/mind to do that work, and it’s useful to know that the human condition is such that we need three things in order to feel like what we’re doing is fulfilling. 1) We need to feel like bodhisattva practice we’re doing personally matters to us, that we care about it and are interested in it, and that we’re leading our own lives in an authentic way. I don’t see how this happens without drawing on the wisdom that arises when the small self gets out of the way, and that’s ironic, isn’t it, because that’s when our personal lives become authentic. If all we’re doing is relying on our own ideas, or even what buddhas and ancestors tell us, without directly practicing and experiencing that wisdom for ourselves, somehow we’re going to feel inauthentic and like we’re separate from what we’re doing. It doesn’t matter to us in a direct and personal way. We’re just acting out our fantasies or putting on someone else’s clothes and playing a part. We don’t care, it’s not interesting or authentic, it doesn’t matter, and it’s not fulfilling or satisfying. 2) We need to feel that we’re making good use of the things we know and know how to do. Now that we’re cultivating this wisdom, what are we doing with it? Our karmic circumstances are all different. We’ve all got different skills, abiliies, experiences, interests, talents and capacities. I have a terrible sense of direction on a good day, but I’m pretty good at knitting a sweater or formatting a document. Someone else might not have any experience as a doan but be good at woodworking. All of that stuff falls under the big umbrella called wisdom. As bodhisattvas, we’re always doing discernment. What can I offer, and how do I do that? We might not think we have anything to offer in a given situation, but acting on wisdom in that moment sometimes isn’t what we think it is. It’s not having the answer to every problem, or dispensing a lot of sage advice, or fixing every broken mechanical object or computer in the place. Wisdom can be having the discretion and maturity not to repeat someone’s confidential information to others, or knowing that what someone needs right now is a hot meal, or being able to rephrase information in a way that someone can understand. When we have capacity to offer our natural abilities or our learned skills to others who need them, that’s the fulfillment of wisdom. It makes us feel like our lives are worthwhile when there’s an outlet for what we can offer. 3) We need to feel like our bodhisattva practice is making a difference for others now and in the future, that we’re having a positive impact and perhaps leaving a meaningful legacy, that we’re doing something with our lives that matters to others. Of course, we know because we’re part of the network of interconnectedness that everythng we do affects other beings; since we’re not really separated from others, we can’t help but have an impact. We also know because of cause and effect that everything we do plants seeds that will unfold across space and time. We often don’t see the outcome of what we set in motion, either because causes and conditions are complicated or because it takes a lifetime or more for that unfolding to come to fruition. Thus, for human beings, fulfillment is
Now we have a real challenge with regard to fulfillment. It would be so, so easy to use our personal satisfaction as the yardstick of success. This “I” wants a fulfilling life based on what I think that will bring me, that people will admire or love me or that I’ll simply feel good about myself and my ability to help others. How do we do this “wisdom is realized and fulfilled” without engaging in a lot of self clinging? If we’re really taking the wisdom view, we’re not stuck in our restricted small-self world. We’re seeing the small self and completely appreciating it for what it is. That includes all of our karmic circumstances that allow us to give what we can give, whether that’s our ability to make a great pizza or our ability to do brilliant cardiothoracic surgery. As Dogen says, all of our six senses are themselves instances of prajna, so wisdom is not just the working of the mind. Wisdom is realized when we simply function wholesomely and concretely in the world. At the same time, we also see that the five skandhas are empty, that there’s no small self that has a permanent nature or that we can grab onto and claim as "me," so we can ask ourselves what we’re really feeding with the need of this “I” for a fulfilling life. Is there anything there? Now when we say that wisdom is being fulfilled, we have to be careful because one sense of fulfillment is completion, and in so many aspects of our practice, fulfillment or completion is impossible. Yet we still make the attempt. We take bodhisattva vows knowing we can never fulfill, or complete, those vows, which have no beginning, end, front, back, or outside edges. We’ll never save all beings, extinguish all our desires, make it through all dharma gates, or make Buddha’s boundless (or boundary-less) way real or concrete in every possible way. In the same way, there’s no end or completion to wisdom. There’s no end point at which we say we’re as wise as possible. There’s no end point at which we’ve completely exhaused wisdom in the service of beings. Where is the outside edge of wisdom? Wisdom is simply the total dynamic functioning of this reality. There’s certainly no end to that, because there’s no separation between the actors and the functioning. There’s no stepping outside of this moment of unified reality. In this sense the fulfillment of wisdom is the recognition or understanding that there is nothing outside of this moment of the total functioning of wisdom. Something is being cultivated and developed and turned around back into the world for the benefit of other beings, and that wisdom is also the support coming to us as living beings for the continuation of our own lives and practice. There’s no separation between any of these elements, and fulfillment is already there and happening. A few of us had a conversation recently about the nature of the circle of the way and how our practice life is not a linear thing, where we’re cultivating something in order to get from here to there, pointing outward and taking something away from the circle of functioning for ourselves. Instead we don’t really have any choice but to return whatever we’re doing to the circle of the way because we’re not actually pointed away from it; that’s not possible. By its nature, a circle is always coimplete, or we might say fulfilled. In our tradition we have the phrase gyoji dokan. Gyoji is practice and dokan is preservation or maintenance, and together they mean continuous practice of the way. Sometimes we use the image of a circle for this. There are dozens of Western Zen centers that use a brush painted circle as their logo, or they use it somewhere in their branding. It makes sense as an image of a nonlinear path. We don’t go from here to there because there’s nothing other than here and we just keep coming back to that. As Dogen says repeatedly. practice and awakening are not two. Aspiration, practice, awakening and Nirvana arise together. Not only are the two ends of the line connected into a circle, but travel on the circle doesn’t have a direction. In this view it’s not necessary to decide whether whatever we’re doing is meaningful to us, whether we’re making “good” use of whatever we can offer, whether we’re making a difference or enough of a difference for others -- in other words, whether we feel fulfilled. Sawaki Roshi says, "If you aren’t careful, you’ll spend your whole life doing nothing besides waiting for your ordinary-person hopes to someday be fulfilled." Elsewhere he says, "Living out the buddha-dharma means fulfilling your function completely without knowing that you’re doing it. A mountain doesn’t know it’s tall. The sea doesn’t know it’s wide and deep. Each and every thing in the universe is active without knowing it." Wisdom and the action that arises from that wisdom and the person doing the action and the recipient of action aren’t really separate. One other thing we need to notice about image of circle: the inside is empty! Case 77 of the Book of Serenity says “The empty space of dokan is never filled up.” The circle of the way, the fulfillment of wisdom, starts with no-self or emptiness. The wisdom view that understands the nature of self and the five skandhas is the foundation for making that wisdom concrete in the world, and in that moment wisdom is fulfilled because there’s nowhere around the circle that it doesn’t reach. Note: (1) See Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom: Three Fascicles from Shobogenzo with Commentary. (2018). United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 15. Questions for reflection and discussion:
Stillness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it realizes, and is replete with, the samādhi of the Tathāgata. 寂定是法明門、成就如來三昧具足故。 This is another gate that requires us to look carefully at the words, It’s pointing back to a lot of old Sanskrit vocabulary. When I saw that the first word had been translated stillness, I assumed it was jaku, or the stillness of nirvana, and when I looked at the kanji, yes, that one was there. However, it was in combination with another one, jou, and taken together as jakujou it means samadhi. Thus there’s more than one word for samadhi in this gate. Let’s start with jaku, or peaceful, quiet, tranquil. There’s also a sense of something being extinguished, and this is the pointer toward Nirvana. Tradition says that we reach Nirvana when we blow out or extinguish the fires that keep us tied to rebirth and suffering in Samsara. Those fires have to do with greed, anger and ignorance, the three poisons. When we blow out those fires, we’re released from the grasping and clinging of our habituated thinking, and we’re free from the cycle of rebirth. In the early teachings there are two kinds of nirvana. One is that the three poisons and other hindrances no longer arise but we still have physical bodies. In the other, the body has also been extinguished and with it all the limitations of human form, so it’s a state of eternal calm. This is what we mean when we say an awakened being has died, or entered nirvana; Shakyamuni’s official death date in February is Nirvana Day in the Buddhist world. The kanji for jaku is also used when writing the death date of clergy; on such-and-so day this person entered Nirvana. Presumably, when members of the clergy die, the assumption is that they’ve been successful in their practice lives, blown out the fires of the three poisons, gone beyond having a body and landed in Nirvana. This is the stillness of jaku, and the jou of jakujou is to establish or be settled. Jakujou is to be settled in stillness - thus translation as samadhi. All this is pointing to concentrating the mind and letting go of distraction and delusion. This is where we unify body and mind in a deep way. Okumura Roshi says: “Serenity” is a translation of jakujo (寂静), “quiet,” “tranquil,” “serene,” or “solitary.” This does not simply mean silent or without noise in the external world. When our mind is torn into two or more pieces, there are always dispute, conflict, or anxiety. Such conditions make our mind unsettled and agitated. More often, when we sit in the quiet zendo, we begin to hear the noise from inside. Our zazen of letting go of thoughts allows us to sit immovably without being pulled by those conditions. We also find the stillness of Nirvana in the shihoin, or four seals. Uchiyama Roshi says that these four seals summarize all of Buddhism. The first is that all phenomena are impermanent, the second is that everything is suffering, the third is no-self, and the fourth is nehan jakujo, or Nirvana is tranquillity. We can experience this kind of tranquility when we stop the clinging that comes from the three poisons. When we understand impermanence, we see the basis of suffering. When we understand impermanence and suffering, we understand that there is no permanent self nature, and then on that basis we stop clinging and experience stillness or tranquility. Uchiyama Roshi says: What we call “I” or “ego” arises by chance or accident, so we just let go instead of grasping thoughts and “I.” When we let go of all our notions about things, everything necomes really true. This is the fourth undeniable reality, or nehan jakujou. It is also described as “all things are as they are,” shohou jissou. Therefore, when we let go of everything, we do not create artificial attachments and connections. . . . This is the present reality of life. It is the reality of that which cannot be grasped, the reality about which nothing can be said. This very ungraspability is what is absolutely real about things. (1) In this large, absolute sense, “real” jaku isn’t the one where we hold up a yardstick and say there is jaku or there isn’t. It escapes those confines, and of course this is a common pattern in Zen: the “real” thing is beyond real and unreal, beyond opposites, and that’s where real stillness is -- in not making a distinctions. There is noise and distraction and upset on the one hand, and in comparison there is jaku, peace, silence, tranquility. That’s a relative jaku. The real jaku is about the emptiness or Nirvana that we can’t grasp and describe and define. This is samadhi as jakujou, but at the end of the gate statement we have the samadhi of the Tathagata, so let’s look at that next. First we need to understand what a Tathagatha is, sometimes called the thus-come one. Tathagatha is one of the ten names of Buddha. The idea is that his awakening has come because he practiced in a way that other sentient beings can also practice, and his going and coming are both done in accordance with dharma. Uchiyama Roshi describes it as things being just as they are, or the suchness of things, but right away he warns us not to think that this suchness is a fixed entity or something we can understand through reason or intellect. He says what we experience when stop grasping and clinging is the reality of life, and there can’t be any other reality outside of that. We can imagine that the samadhi of a tathagatha, a being who does absolutely everything in accordance with dharma, is a pretty powerful thing. The word used here for the Tathagathha’s samadhi is zammai, as in Hokyo-zammai or jijuyu zammai. It points to the highest possible degree of nonseparation: mind and body, subject and object, the person who’s sitting and the universe as a whole. The tathagatha’s awakening goes beyond opposites or dichotomies in the largest possible way, so within that awakening or samadhi is complete tranquility. This is where shoho jisso comes in: the true form of all things is beyond opposites or dichotomies, so they exist within the greatest possible tranquility. Now we have a tathagatha, a being who comes and goes in thusness or suchness, seeing the true form or thusness or suchness of all things. Now we get some sense of the vastness or universality of this kind of awareness and functioning. As long as we have opinions and ideas and comparisons, we’re subject to disturbance. We need to make distinctions so that we can function in the world. Not doing that is spiritual bypassing, and we can’t live only in the world of the absolute. We have to be able to distinguish a red light from a green one, or candy from medicine. It’s when we tie those distinctions to our sense of self and use them to reinforce the five skandhas as permanent thing that we get into trouble. Can we make distinctions without judging? Jakujou at the beginning of the gate statement was aimed at blowing out the fires of delusion as an expression of the stillness of Nirvana, and doing that with this karmic body and mind. Zammai at the end of the statement is the most complete and seamless possible manifestation of the harmony of difference and sameness, or form and emptiness. The practice of letting go of the three poisons and putting out those fires realizes, or makes real, the stillness of Nirvana and is also replete with, or is completely filled with, this stillness without any gaps. In the same moment we’re practicing with this karmic body and mind, embodying awakening in a physical way as bodhisattvas, there is also a complete manifestation of awakening that’s not about a limited human being making individual effort to be better, to be wiser and more compassionate and less messed up. This isn’t some exotic, special circumstance; this is our daily practice, which includes our usual mundane activities, but we do them without grasping and clinging to impermanent things, so we do them in an unhindered way. The concentration of samadhi doesn’t just happen on the cushion. We saw that samadhi is about unifying, bringing together, whether that’s body and mind, subject and object, opposites and dichotomies. Doing our daily activities is the complete expression of that, seeing two sides of one reality and expressing two sides in one action. This is why work is one of the four elements of our practice: zazen, work, study and ritual. We can take work to mean all the daily activities of our lives. As practitioners we see all of those activities as Buddha’s way itself and we do them wholeheartedly. That’s samadi in action: these five skandas are not separate from action as an object -- "me" "doing" "something." That’s also a kind of concentration, where self steps aside and there’s only the action. Practicing like this little by little allows us to respond to what’s needed in this moment without a sort of self-conscious intention or choice. We just see that something needs doing and we do it. We have to be careful -- that’s not the same as zoning out and being on auto-pilot without being aware of sensory input and what’s going on around us. There was a study in Japan in the mid-80s about brain waves during zazen that showed that practitioners are actually MORE aware of stimuli. Researchers made the same sound over and over again, and after awhile, laypeople who were not experienced in zazen blocked that sound. They became habituated to it, but experienced monks kept hearing each sound clearly and they they remained dehabituated. Now, we all know what it’s like to try to sit when a clock is ticking or a fan is knocking or something. It’s incredibly annoying! We judge and label and want to shut that out of our awareness, but these dehabituated folks were able to hear each click over and over without deciding it was irritating and turning it off. They were taking in all the sensory input without coming to conclusion about what that experience was like for them. In other words, they eliminated distraction but not by eliminating the sound. They had the stillness and silence of jakujo right in the midst of hearing a repetitive, annoying noise. I find that a really helpful image of what happens with our day to day habituated thinking. We see the same thing, come to the same conclusion or opinion, take the same action over and over again in our lives and we don’t even realize we’re doing it. However, the bodhisattva sees each occurance with fresh eyes, takes in the entirety of the moment and the circumstances, and takes the best action, regardless of whether that falls into a well worn track or not. Zammai is simply being free from distraction. It’s called concentration, but it’s not about just staring hard at one thing, or sitting unmoving in a dark and quiet room. It’s concentration that doesn’t have purpose or really even an object. It seems impossible to concentrate on everything rather than on one thing, but that’s one way to think about not being distracted by our own discursive stuff. We don’t need to have a self-conscious intention or goal; we just do everything according to suchness or thusness or dharma, just like the Tathagatha. In the late 16th and early 17th century there was an important teacher called Menzan Zuiho. He was one of a group of reformers who thought Soto Zen had wandered away from what Dogen taught and wanted to return everyone to those teachings and practices. He wrote about zammai, and this is Okumura Roshi’s translation; this is a bit long, but I think it’s helpful. Now I will explain in detail the way to clarify and rely on this samādhi. This is done simply by not clouding the light of your Self. When the light of the Self is clear, you follow neither dullness nor distraction. The Third Ancestor said (in Xinxinming), “When the cloudless light illuminates itself, there is no need to make mental struggle, there is no waste of energy (It is empty, clear, and self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power).” This is the vital point of the practice-enlightenment of this samādhi. “The cloudless light illuminates itself” means the light of the Self shines brightly. “Not to make mental struggle” means not to add the illusory mind’s discrimination to the reality. When you make mental struggle, the light becomes illusory mind, and brightness becomes darkness. If you do not make mental struggle, the darkness itself becomes the Self illumination of the light. This is similar to the light of a jewel illuminating the jewel itself. For example, it is like the light of the sun or the moon illuminating everything – mountains and rivers, human beings and dogs, etc., equally, without differentiation or evaluation. Also, a mirror reflects everything without bothering to discriminate. Just keep the light [of the Self] unclouded, without being concerned with the discrimination of objects. This is the meaning of Hongzhi Chanshi’s expression in his Zazenshin: “The be-all (essential function) of the Buddhas and the end-all (functional essence) of the Ancestors; knowing without touching things, illuminating without facing objects.” When you practice and learn the reality of zazen thoroughly, the frozen blockage of illusory mind will naturally melt away. If you think that you have cut off illusory mind, instead of simply clarifying how illusory mind melts, illusory mind will come up again, as though you had cut the stem of a blade of grass or the trunk of a tree and left the root alive. This is very natural. (2) That last part is really important. If we just cut off the functioning of our minds, the sensory input, the thinking process, it will just keep coming back. Not having thoughts or mental functions isn’t the point of zazen and it’s not what we do. There’s no forcing or suppression or struggling with our minds and trying to get our own way -- there should be nothing forced in this practice. Sometimes we make a lot of effort, and our bodies get tired, and practice is not so easy, but it’s never about brute force. Instead we clarify how the mind works, how it grabs sensory input and makes a judgement and writes a story and creates self. Then we can let the mind go on doing what it needs to do to keep us alive and support our bodhisattva work in the world, but we don’t get distracted and tangled up. We can know without touching things and illuminate without facing objects. Yhat’s a famous phrase -- we can encounter and work with whatever comes our way without poking our heads in and making things messy. In this passage we have two other well known images for zammai. One is the sunlight that shines equally on everything; the other is the mirror that reflects everything equally. Both of these happen without the sun or the mirror making a discrimination between what gets illuminated or reflected. There’s no frozen blockage or mental struggle or wasted energy. When I first read this gate statement, I set out to determine what the difference was between the first samadi and the second one, between jakujo and zammai. Why was it written this way, using two different words, setting up one as a gateway to the other? Of course, in the largest sense there isn’t a difference because samadhi is beyond conceptualization, and any way we try to describe it is necessarily limited. If we say that jakujo leads to zammai, it’s too linear because awakening is already here all the time -- but provisionally, what can we take from this statement? I think we’re back to Dogen’s great doubt. If awakening is already here all the time, why do we have to practice? Ultimately he understands that while awakening is here, we can’t always act in accordance with that awakening. We can’t always act like Tathagathas, moving through the world according to suchness or dharma. Too often we’re pulled around by our habituated thinking and our self-clinging, and we forget about what Buddha taught. The gate statement says jakujo realizes or establishes zammai. Working to extinguish the fires of the three poisons realizes or makes real the awakening that’s already here. It’s how we embody the dharma as bodhisattvas in our work. Zazen, work, study and ritual all help us in that regard. In zazen, we drop off body and mind and concentrate on everything without distraction. In work, we actually manifest awakening by puting aside small self and becoming completely one with whatever activity we’re doing, - so the activity is doing the activity without our desire for reward getting in the way. In study, we turn to the teachings and guidelines of those who’ve been on this path longer that we have and ask them to show us what they’ve experienced about going through these dharma gates and settling down to seeing clearly and then embodying that understanding for the benefit of all beings. Through these activities we can enter into the same awakening as the buddhas and ancestors. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The awakening or zammai is there waiting for us to realize it right now with this body and mind. Notes: 1) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 12. 2) The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen's Bendowa, With Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. (2011). United States: Tuttle Publishing, footnote 2. Questions for reflection and discussion:
The practice of the balanced state of dhyāna is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it fulfills the ten powers. 修禪定是法明門、滿足十力故。 The kanji translated here as “practicing the balanced state of dhyana” can also be read as “practicing zazen,” so it might sound like this gate is about achieving some particular kind of mental or physical state. but really, it’s about establishing our sitting practice and just going forward with that day by day. We all know something about zazen, so we don’t need to go much into that as the first element of this gate statement, - but we’re going to intersect that with the ten powers, so we need to know more about those. There are various versions in the Buddhist tradition of something called the ten powers; in some cases these are the powers of awareness of a Buddha, and in others, they’re the ten powers of a bodhisattva. It depends on the text and the time and place within the tradition. Today I want to look at these as the ten powers of a bodhisattva, or bosatsu ju-riki, because we’re all bodhisattvas here, and that brings these powers a little closer to home. 1) Devotion to the Buddhaʼs teaching and no attachment to anything This is described as jin-shin-riki 深心力, a deep mind power. In other words, this isn’t just an everyday intention to practice or a general enjoyment of practice as something “I” like to do. This is a profound understanding of the dharma. I think there are two ways to look at this if we add one word to the line: devotion to the Buddha’s teaching and therefore no attachment to anything, and devotion to the Buddha’s teaching and also no attachment to anything. We know that the most basic things that Buddha taught were about non-attachment. When dealing with the three poisonous minds, we aspire to turn our greed into generosity. When we understand impermanence we see that there’s nothing we can really cling to. When we see that all five aggregates are empty, as it says in the Heart Sutra, we see that there is no self. Committing to practice and doing regular zazen where we drop off body and mind lets us see these things for ourselves the way Buddha sees them. Because we’re doing Buddha’s practice, studying his teachings and taking action in the world based on that, therefore we have no attachment to anything. Yet what about devotion to the Buddha’s teaching and also no attachment to anything? Even though we’re devoted to the three treasures, ultimately we don’t cling even to them. Buddha taught in various ways depending on who was in front of him and what their karmic circumstances were, so sometimes it seems like he was saying contradictory things. The dharma points us toward seeing and understanding the way the universe actually works and the three marks of existance, but just as once we’ve crossed a river we leave the raft behind, once we see for ourselves, we don’t need to cling to the teachings. We take bodhisattva action based on our own prajna, so we use the teachings to transcend the teachings. 2) Increasing oneʼs devotion (zojojin shinriki 増上深心力) This is another deep mind power. To increase your devotion is to hear everything as Buddha’s teaching, to see all sentient and insentient beings expounding the dharma and completely manifesting buddha nature. There’s a real feeling here of something increasing, growing, becoming more powerful as we cultivate our practice. The first power is a profound understanding of the dharma, and this second one is continuously deepening that understanding. We’ll never come to the end of zazen, work, study and ritual. We’ll never come to the end of our bodhisattva vows. We have myriad opportunities to understand every moment, everything we encounter, all activities and forms and beings as the dharma. Thus even when we think we’ve got a pretty good handle on this practice and what Buddha said, there’s always something even more subtle that we can understand. We have to keep that spirit of inquiry and be open to the next dharma gate and the next opportunity to open the hand of thought. 3) The expedient ability to instruct people and alter their conduct (hoben riki 方便力) Sometimes this is translated as the power of employing expedient means to guide and embrace sentient beings. As bodhisattvas, we see clearly who’s in front of us and what they need in order to be freed from suffering. Each person needs something different, and the same person needs different things at different times. There’s no one size fits all when it comes to liberating beings. We hear all the time about expedient means, usually related to skillful action or beneficial action, but it’s useful to consider why we use a word like expedient. Why not practical or effective? Expedient usually means some action that gets the job done but may be improper or even immoral. We don’t assume that all of our bodhisattva activity to liberate beings is problematic because we’re behaving selflessly on behalf of others. In the Buddhist context, rather than proper or improper, the distinction is between relative and absolute, or form and emptiness. In the world of emptiness, there are no belongings that are lost or stolen, no human bodies that get sick and die, no delusion brought on by ignorance or intoxicants, no beings who are suffering. And yet, in this world on fire there are suffering beings everywhere and it’s not helpful to tell them about emptiness in the midst of acute suffering. There are three poisonous minds in action, and precepts being broken. We have to aknowledge this world of form and work within that context. Just as Buddha taught different people differently depending on circumstances, we may have to put aside the true nature of reality, the absolute point of view, long enough to help suffering beings in a concrete way. This is expedient means in a Buddhist context. Sometimes we have to work with only part of the story in order to achieve our aspiration. One of the ways we do that is with language, and hoben or skillful means always gets tied up with the duality of language. The actual content of Buddha’s awakening can’t be expressed in language, so any attempt to teach the dharma using language will always be incomplete -- and yet we have to do it in order to liberate beings. We have to see reality from both sides and express both sides in one action. 4) Understanding what people think (chi riki 智力) Traditionally, this is a supernatural kind of wisdom to read the minds of sentient beings. Today we might not believe in such things, but nonetheless, before we can really help others, we need to have some sense of what’s going on in their heads. We have to watch and listen. Before I say something, is it true and helpful and well-timed? Will this person be able to hear it and take it in? Might there be some preconception at work or some prior experience that’s influencing thinking? Do I really understand what people are trying to achieve, or do I just think I know what they want to do? When we cultivate wisdom and compassion in our practice, we’re naturally better attuned to the experience of others. 5) Satisfying people with what they want (gan riki 願力) This is actually the power of the bodhisattva vow, fulfilling the desires of sentient beings. Every time we chant the four vows, we’re presented again with this huge challenge: freeing all beings from suffering, ending all delusions, going through all the dharma gates, seeing everything as the dharma and every moment as an opportunity for practice, and completely manifesting Buddha’s teaching, which has no boundary or endpoint, with this limited human form. On the one hand, this seems futile; we know we can’t do it. On the other hand, that’s a powerful thing. I know it’s not possible to complete these vows, and yet I vow to take them on anyway and to put my energy into selfless activity even though by nature I’m caught up in the three poisons. The fact of that contradiction makes this a powerful thing; this isn’t something we do casually. We’re not going to encounter this kind of aspiration very often in the world. Living a self-centered life and getting all the cherry pie I want seems much more appealing. To go against our programming is kind of a big deal, and yet we can’t cling to some idea about what great people we are for deciding to live as bodhisattvas. As soon as we do, we undercut the vow, so there’s a lot to work with here. 6) No cessation of exertion, or (gyo riki 行力) It’s certainly important to apply ourselves to our practice and make good effort, to be active in our practice and fully engage in zazen, work, study and ritual, whether in the temple or in our daily life activities. We need to practice with others regularly, because it’s so easy to go off the rails when we’re on our own, with no chance to experience how our practice fits in with the practice of the sangha. There’s that kind of power of exertion, or activity, making the effort to come to sesshin or book discussion or participate in a work day, sitting zazen every day and having some direct experience of nonseparation and nonreliance, but we also have to make sure that body, speech and mind are all telling the same story -- in other words, that we’re completely manifesting Buddha’s teaching all the time, and there’s no gap between what we think and say and do. It’s not enough to go around saying “My teacher says . . .” or “I read in a book that . . .” What are we actually doing with this body and mind? Do we actually understand and experience the dharma, or is it still something "out there" that we just read and talk about? For the bodhisattva, there’s no cessation of exertion or practice because we’re already completely not separate from the dharma. The universe is practicing through us all the time and there’s nothing outside of Buddha’s way. There’s no disuption of practice, no hindrance to awakening. 7) Including all vehicles without abandoning the Mahāyāna (jo riki 乗力, the power of the vehicle which transcends all vehicles, i.e., the Mahayana) In the Buddhist tradition, a vehicle is anything that can carry beings to the other shore of liberation. Depending on what source you’re looking at, there are anywhere from one to five vehicles. Sometimes rhe vehicle is someone’s karmic situation: as a disciple who is working to liberate himself but not all beings, or as someone who liberates himself without help from anyone else but is also not working to liberate others, or as a bodhisattva, etc. Sometimes the vehicle is the set of teachings or tradition, like Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. In the development of the Buddhist tradition, by the time we get to the Mahayana, the Lotus Sutra is saying that really there’s only one vehicle, which is the Buddha’s actual ultimate teaching, and that all the other vehicles are expedient means to attract people to the One Vehicle. All of these circumstances and traditions and schools and sects aren’t wrong, but they don’t tell the whole story. Soto Zen falls within the Mahayana school of Buddhism, so of course we privilege Mahayana as a vehicle to some degree, but we also recognize that it too is expedient means. We practice within the Mahayana and we don’t abandon it simply because it’s a skillful means, but we remember that it’s pointing us toward something beyond Mahayana forms and teachings, to including all vehicles as Buddha’s awakening that can’t be expressed in words. 8) The mysterious power of showing the appearance of the Buddhas in every world in each pore of the body (jinpen riki 神変力, the power of the miraculous manifestations of the Tathagatas in all the worlds in the space of a single hair-follicle) Again we have a supernatural, miraculous power, and this one points particularly to the powers used by a Buddha or bodhisattva to teach and transform beings. Jinpen riki just means a divine power, but all the translations of this item I’ve seen make reference to manifesting all the Buddhas of all the worlds in a single pore or hair follicle. Clearly this is an image of interconnectedness and all dharmas being reflected by all other dharmas. The Avatamsaka Sutra says: Countless eons throughout the three periods of time, As well as the different features related to their formation and decay, Are completely displayed in a single pore of the Buddha. The volume of space throughout the ten directions can be known, But the scope of the Buddha’s pores cannot be measured. Sentient beings with all their differences Manifest completely on a single hair’s tip. His spiritual transformations fill the world. The Buddha, with the unlimited strength of his spiritual powers, Extensively proclaims his epithets equal to the number of sentient beings. He enables all to hear according to their likes and pleasures. Multitudes in measureless, boundless lands, The Buddha encompasses in a single pore. The Thus Come One then sits–serene amidst the assemblies. The power of all sentient beings’ blessings and virtue Completely manifests within the Buddha’s pores. Now they return to the ocean of great blessings: Buddha or awakening or the true functioning of the universe has no outer boundary. It’s endlessly big and we can’t measure it, so we have an innumerable amount of eons and everything they contain within the single pore of the Buddha. All dharmas are reflected by all dharmas. We can think of this as a special high-end power that only Buddhas have, but actually this is already happening all the time. Because of interdependence and interconnectedness, everything is always present in everything else. We’re already reflecting myriad dharmas from our 84-thousand pores and hair follicles, and when we sit zazen and deeply realize non-separation, we can see that as bodhisattvas this is not a mysterious power we need to acquire. In zazen, all the parts of your body and mind come together in one activity of sitting and non-thinking. 9) Making people turn toward the Buddhaʼs teachings and leading them to perfection (bodai riki 菩提力, the power of enlightenment which enables sentient beings to aspire for enlightenment and attain Buddhahood) This is about bodhicitta, or the aspiration for awakening, and as we know, we can’t just give that to someone, even as bodhisattvas. We can’t arouse anyone else’s bodhicitta, but we can help to create some conditions that make it possible for others to recognize their aspiration when it arises, or maybe remove some hindrances. We can inspire others by the way we carry ourselves and our practice in the world, how we respond to what we encounter, hopefully with wisdom and compassion, not by forceful evangelizing, which rarely works anyway. If someone wants information about what you’re doing, it’s fine to have a conversation, but the best thing we can do is be ourselves and live our lives in Buddha’s way. 10) Satisfying all kinds of people with even a single phrase (tenborin riki 転法輪力) Tenborin is turning the wheel of the dharma, or teaching dharma. This is the power of turning the Dharma-wheel by expounding a single phrase in accordance with the different capacities, natures, and desires of sentient beings. Turning the wheel of the dharma is a very old metaphor. Recall that a moment ago we were considering vehicles. Turning the wheels of a vehicle moves it forward. If you’re a wheel-turning king in India, you have a mighty chariot that conquers a lot of territory. If you’re the Buddha, you turn the wheel of the dharma vehicle and cover a lot of ground that way. As bodhisattvas, we turn the dharma wheel or share the dharma by communicating the right thing at the right time to whoever is in front of us in a way they can take in and use. Like so much of this tradition, this list of ten things is actually ten ways to look at reality. It’s useful to consider them individually, but in the end we can’t really pull them apart. You probably noticed some themes emerging: 1) We can’t do any this bodhisattva work completely without cultivating prajna, or wisdom. We need to see what Buddha is really teaching, we need to see who we’re really working with and talking to, and we have to be able to apply one to the other. Also, it’s not enough to say, well, I’ve got it now so it’s time to teach it to others. We have to continuously cultivate and deepen our own practice. We can’t just decide to go out and save the world, because we won’t have the tools to do it. 2) We need the biggest possible box of tools at our disposal so we can use the best one in each situation. Sometimes we lean on wisdom and sometimes on compassion. Sometimes we’re working in the world of emptiness and sometimes in the world of form. Sometimes it’s important to function within our particular family style or denominational style, and sometimes we need to put that aside. We can’t fall into “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” -- if we do, we get stuck. 3) This practice takes committment and energy and activity. Vow is important and we can ride that wave a bit as bodhisattvas, and then we have to go out and actually do zazen, work, study and ritual in order to save beings. Also, as much as we’re committed to doing our part and meeting the dharma halfway, we also know that Buddha nature and awakening are already here. We’re already completely manifesting Buddha nature without a gap, and yet we still have to practice. The basis for all of this is zazen, where we open the hand of thought and drop off body and mind. That’s where we can let go of the hindrances that are narrowing our view and blocking our ability to function freely within this one unified reality -- even if only for a little while. This is how we learn to see the way Buddha sees and what makes us powerful bodhisattvas. Questions for reflection and discussion:
Accretion of happiness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it benefits all living beings. 福聚是法明門、利一切衆生故. The word translatted “happiness” here can mean blessings, good fortune, good luck or wealth. It can also be action that leads to good things -- or merit -- so "accretion of happiness" could be read “accumulation of merit.” Aha -- now it starts to make more sense in a dharma context. Merit in Japanese is kudoku or in Sanskrit, punya. It's literally the virtue or power of good deeds, in other words, karmic consequences. Traditionally, the abstract positioning of this was as a sort of spiritual wealth that you earned and spent. You accumulated merit through your good actions and then dedicated it to other beings who needed it. Punya can be thought of as something karmically fruitful -- a wholesome result of a wholesome action by bodhisattvas -- and traditionally it can be accumulated. Punya skandha is a heap of merit. However, bodhisattvas transfer that merit to all beings to help with their awakening rather than keeping it for themselves. The purpose of the ino intoning an eko after we chant a text during a service is to transfer merit. We’ve generated benefits by our chanting, and the purpose of that is not to keep them for ourselves but to dedicate them to buddhas or ancestors or all beings. Eko have a standard three-part form, which is good to know when you have to write one for a particular occasion. You don’t just say any old thing; the eko includes: 1) How the merit was generated: usually, what texts were chanted, for example, "Having chanted the Heart of Great Perfect Wisdom Sutra . . ." 2) Who’s receiving the merit: for example, "We dedicate the merit of our chanting to the great teacher Shakyamuni Buddha, the great ancestor Eihei Dogen, the eminent ancestor Keizan Jokin, the successive ancestors who transmitted the light of Dharma, and to the eternal Three Treasures in the ten directions." 3) What we hope for as a result of the transfer of merit: for example, "May the true Dharma flourish in the ten directions, may all nations dwell together in harmony, may peace and tranquility pervade this sangha, and may all beings live together joyfully." You also can’t chant just any text and then put an eko after it. It has to be a text that generates merit, generally a sutra or a dharani. Sometimes in North America, individuals or small groups want to put together a chanting service for themselves, but they don’t understand the arc of that story. It’s a nice performance, but it’s not Soto Zen liturgy. Certain things get included and in a certain order for a reason. Chanting the bodhisattva vows doesn’t generate merit, for instance, and neither does the repentence verse. Those things have other purposes. In our morning service here we do the two most common texts, the Heart Sutra and the Daihi Shin Darani. In the world of Soto Zen, we dedicate the merit of the Heart Sutra to the One Buddha Two Founders (ichibutsu ryoso) (1) and the Daihishu to those who are ill or have died. In the longer standard service, either the Sandokai or the Hokyozammai is dedicated to the lineage, and there are chapters of the Lotus Sutra dedicated to temple founders and patrons and past abbots. The point of all that chanting is to serve all beings of past, present and future by generating and sending them merit, and there are teachings that say that this is the way to protect punya or merit. If the bodhisattva’s intention in accumulating merit is to transfer it to all beings, that’s a selfless intention, and thus the merit is real and is effective for helping others. There are other things we do in this tradition that generate merit: bathing the baby Buddha during Buddha’s birthday; making offerings on the altar of things like water, light, tea, sweets and food; circumambulating while chanting sutras, particularly memorials; or chanting the names of Buddha, which is not just a Pure Land exercise, because we do it during oryoki meals and on other occasions. Traditionally, sponsoring the printing of sutras and dharma materials created huge merit. Supporting the sangha was also powerful because it was a group of bodhisattvas already generating and transfering a lot of merit, and donations helped make that possible. And yet . . . There’s famous story in our tradition which I’m sure you’ve heard. Soon after the first ancestor Bodaidaruma arrived in China, he had an audience with Emperor Wu. The emperor asked: “I have constructed monasteries, had sutras copied, and allowed the ordination of a great many monks and nuns; surely there is a good deal of merit (kudoku 功德) in this?” Bodaidaruma said, “There is no merit (mu kudoku 無功德).” The emperor asked, “How can there be no merit?” Bodaidaruma replied, “This merit you seek is only the petty reward that humans and devas obtain as the result of deeds that are tainted. It is like the reflection of a thing which conforms to it in shape but is not the real thing.” The emperor asked, “What, then, is true merit?” Bodaidaruma replied, “Pure wisdom is marvelous and complete; in its essence it is empty and quiescent. Merit of this sort cannot be sought in this world.” It’s an illustration of exactly what we were considering. The emperor did all these things looking for earthly rewards, but because of that, he missed out on the real merit, which you can’t find in this samsaric world of form and separation. It’s the acts done on basis of emptiness and compassion that are purest and most beneficial acts, and the ones that heap up the most merit. Wisdom or prajna is an essential part of this thing. As soon as we realize emptiness, we also realize non-separation. It’s when we deeply understand and experience non-separation that the transfer of merit really happens. The ability to share or transfer merit is actually a key characteristic of the bodhisattva. In the Karandavyuha Sutra, a bodhisattva asks Buddha how much merit Avalokitesvara has accumulated. He says if you were to provide robes, food, bowls, bedding, seats, medicine and utensils to all the Buddhas and arhats for an unimaginable length of time, that would be the same as the tip of one hair of Avalokitesvara. Or, if it was raining over the whole world all the time and you were able to count the drops of rain, or if you counted all of the drops of water in all the oceans, each one is less than the merits of Avalokitesvara. Also if you counted all the hairs on all the four legged animals in the world, or all the leaves on the trees of the forest, it would be less than the merits of Avalokitesvara . . . and it goes on like this. Avalokitesvara has a lot to work with in saving beings. The power of his or her practice of wisdom and compassion generates a tremendous amount of merit, which then gets thrown back to beings who need help. In the broadest sense, of course, there is no such thing as reward or merit and no one who generates it or owns it to give it away, so in a sense it’s given away as soon as it arises and it can’t really "accumulate.” It’s just jijuyu zammai, the total dynamic functioning of the universe. Dogen gives us an example of this when he writes about being the tenzo: " . . . rejoice in your birth into the world, where you are capable of using your body freely to offer food to the Three Treasures: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Samgha. Considering the innumerable possibilities in a timeless universe we have been given a marvelous opportunity. The merit of working as a tenzo will never decay. My sincerest desire that you exhaust all the strength and effort of all your lives - past, present, and future - and every moment of every day into your practice through the work of the tenzo, so that you form a strong connection with the buddhadharma. To view all things with this attitude is called Joyful Mind." Earlier in the week at the Wednesday evening book discussion we read this from Katagiri Roshi on giving: "If we can practice giving in [a selfless way with an understanding of nonseparation], the merit of giving reaches at once to all beings, and all beings are in a position to receive it. Thus the relationships of practicers and all beings create an endless, agile interconnection and interpenetration. When we do zazen, we have to cast the pebble into the ocean first. The ripples caused by this action are forms, the doing of zazen. 'Do zazen' spreads endlessly everywhere just like ripples. From this aspect zazen as the practice of giving is a great universal activity disclosed in personal practice." The things we call good deeds done by ourselves are forms completely expressing the emptiness of total dynamic functioning of the universe, so in that way there’s no person or being that can heap up merit separately from other beings. After we read that in the group, we thought about how the nature of our giving affected someone else’s ability to receive. Are we giving in a selfless way based on prajna and emptiness, or are we giving based on three poisonous minds in order to get something for ourselves, including a good feeling from helping someone else? If there’s any stickiness there, there is no reward for us and no merit that we can dedicate to others, so the nature of our giving absolutely affects the potential for receiving. In that group we also read and discussed Todo-san’s comments on beneficial action: According to Dogen, beneficial actions will return to those who perform them without any expectation of reward. So here is a paradox: when a person performs a beneficial action without expecting any reward, that person receives some benefit in return for that action. However, if a person helps others with some expectation of a reward, such actions essentially become a means of barter, therefore producing no reward. According to Dogen, actions can be either defiled or pure, depending upon the motivation of the person performing them. If a person performs a generous act without any expectation of personal gain, although rewards for the action are not important to that person, the person does receive a reward. If the person has even the slightest expectation of any reward, however, the action is defiled and the person definitely is not rewarded. What strange logic! So it’s not enough just to do good acts; as bodhisattvas we have do to them based on seeing with Buddha’s eye, or seeing the true reality of all beings, not just because someone says so or we want to be liked or we want to think of ourselves as good people. That means it’s important to practice and cultivate wisdom if we’re going to generate merit for all beings. Otherwise it would be easy to just take the list of precepts and do what it says without a second thought and then say, “There. Job done.” However, if I don’t see and understand for myself out of my own direct experience that we are distinct but not separate, I can’t fully generate merit and transfer it to you even if I want to. I can have good intention and aspiration, but some hindrance will still get in the way, and that’s my delusion. So how do we use merit to benefit all beings? We need to talk about the field of merit, or fukuden. You might not think you know this image or the word fukuden until you think about the robe chant: Great robe of liberation, virtuous field far beyond form and emptiness -- sometimes translated "a formless field of merit," as in the first translation I learned decades ago. In Japanese, it's dai sai geddapukku, muso fukuden-e. What is a field of merit? Whatever receives our gifts or offerings or dedications. This recipient, whatever it is, is like a field that we cultivate by planting good seeds. Good karmic actions have a good karmic result, and giving results in merit. I think another way to consider robe as a field of merit is the teaching that anything we do while wearing a robe is a seed of prajna, so the field is not only the recipient of our dedications but the ground or container of those dedications. It’s both a cultivation of wisdom and a manifestation of wisdom. With regard to the robe, field metaphor comes from traditional story in which Buddha needed to create a robe to distinguish his followers from those of other teachers. He asked Ananda to make a robe using the pattern of the rice field. For us, the field also represents the day to day world of our activities and responsibiities where we carry out bodhisattva practice. Unfolding and wearing the Tathatgata’s teachings is what we literally do following the robe verse, but also we carry and share the dharma in the world, making it available to others and embodying practice and teachings, and that generates merit by helping beings to awaken. But here’s the thing: the amount of merit depends on the state or condition of the field in which the seeds are planted. The greater the worthiness of the recipient, the greater the merit, just like seeds planted in fertile field yield more crops than seeds planted in poor soil. There are writings in the canon that say that if a bodhisattva is asked to give up his life for another being, he/she/they have to decide whether the recipient has as much compassion as he does, and whether giving up his life will enable the recipient to save more beings than he could. The two richest fields of merit are the Buddha and the sangha. Giving to them is supposed to generate the most merit, again because the Buddha and practitioners who follow his teachings are actively maintaining precepts, sitting, and cultivating wisdom, the three parts of the Eightfold Path. If you give to Buddha and monks, you get a share of the merit they generate because you’re helping to make it possible. One other way that the sangha is a huge field of merit has to do with ango or practice period. When a sangha practices together during the three months of the retreat, it’s supposed to generate a mighty supernatural power because of the vast store of merit it’s accumulated with sustained intensive practice by all these practitioners. Then all that merit can be used to save hungry ghosts in hell realms who are so far gone they can’t be reached any other way. Within the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition, some folks dedicate merit at the end of their period of sitting. Someone who tried it said it changed her attitude and the quality of her sitting. It stopped being about her and started being about sitting with and for all beings. It might be interesting to try in our own personal practice. Maybe you'd like to come up with a one or two line dedication verse of your own to say silently as you get ready to stand up. Notes: (1) See on our Buddhist Essentials page: Two founders and two head temples Acceptance of the right Dharma is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it eradicates the afflictions of all living beings. 攝受正法是法明門、斷一切衆生煩惱故（攝受正法是れ法明門なり、一切衆生のの煩惱を斷ずるが故に）。 This acceptance of the right dharma or true dharma isn’t just a random phrase; it has a fairly large backstory, which comes from The Sutra of Queen Śrīmālā of the Lion’s Roar and connects this phrase with bodhisattva vows. Buddha empowers an Indian queen, Srimala, to teach the dharma, and she talks about buddha-nature and emptiness. One of the most important things about this sutra is that it includes three bodhisattva vows, spoken by Queen Srimala herself. They are:
Shortly, we'll consider the giving up of body, life and wealth, but first, let’s just notice that accepting the true dharma is part of a bodhisattva vow, and that means it’s about liberating all beings. The gate statement says that accepting the true dharma eradicates the afflictions of all living beings, so right away we know that we’re in realm of bodhisattva activity. I just noted that accepting the true dharma was part of the third vow, but The Buddha says in this sutra, “Just as all forms are contained in space, so likewise the bodhisattva vows, which are as numerous as the sands of the Ganges River, are all contained in these three great vows.” Accepting the true dharma is itself the broadest possible bodhisattva vow, or the great vow. The sutra goes on to say that the results and benefits of this great vow are immeasurable. They allow bodhisattvas to present teachings and vehicles appropriate to the needs of each practitioner,. so everyone is included The one accepting the true dharma is identical with the true dharma itself, and the person who accepts the true dharma is identical with the paramitas, or perfections. Let’s look at these last two. The one accepting true dharma is identical with true dharma itself, and that happens because this person abandons three thngs: body, life and wealth. That sounds pretty extreme -- harsh, ascetic, unrealistic. "Abandon” here doesn’t mean harming the body, ending your life or living in an unhealthy state of poverty. It means giving up attachment to body, life and wealth. With regard to the body, our focus changes from the old age, illness and death that come with our birth in this human form in world of samsara toward the dharma body or dharmakaya instead. The human body is limited and impermanent, but the dharma body is without boundaries in space and time. This dharma body is made up of Buddha’s teachings, or the true reality of all beings, so the Buddha is still here even though his physical body died 2500 years ago because the dharmakaya is ongoing. With regard to life, our focus changes from being worried about physical death, being worried about not getting everything done before we die, or what will happen to our possessions or our souls after we die, toward cultivating prajna, or wisdom, and our understanding of the buddha-dharma. This prajna is also without boundaries in space and time, like the dharmakaya. Finally wealth -- our habit changes from clinging to generosity. Our focus shifts from needing to get, keep and protect as much as we can to realizing that we’re receiving offerings from all beings all the time, and we’re also making offerings to all beings all the time. That’s because of jijuyu zammai, or total dynamic functioning. All dharmas are interpenetrated and functioning together, so it’s not possible for us to do anything in isolation. This one unified reality is a constant exchange between all of the elements within it, which is everything. Thus clinging to a limited set of stuff in an unwholesome or unskillful way doesn’t make sense. The one accepting the true dharma is identical with the true dharma itself because there’s a shift away from a limited human condition in which we’re worried about old age, sickness and death and clinging tightly to our stuff as a way to ward all that off. We move toward a much more expansive, openhearted, wise and compassionate point of view that’s less self-centered and makes it possible for us to think about liberating all beings. If you practice here on weekday mornings you know that after the liturgy we have a reading from the Shobogenzo Zuimonki. There, Dogen frequently talks about abandoning body, life and weath for the sake of practice. He’s constantly warning against attachment to these things as a real obstacle to practice and awakening. Of course, he’s talking to people who’ve left home for the sake of the Way, where the expectation really is that you give up just about everything, rely on the sangha for provisions, and practice in some conditions that are not comfortable for the body. He’s mostly not talking to householders and laity, however what he’s saying is still valuable for us. When he talks about dropping off body and mind, he’s talking about releasing our attachment to personal views. When he’s talking about living in poverty, he’s telling us to work with the three poisons of greed, anger and ignorance. His point is: put practicing the dharma at the center of whatever lifestyle you’re living. Don’t make it a weekend hobby or a self-improvement program. Make your bodhicitta the origin of your thoughts, words and actions. Some examples from the Zuimonki (and there are many others to be found throughout that text): Even though we might cherish our body and hold it dear, we cannot keep it forever. Abandoning our life which we must leave behind sooner or later, if only for a day or a few moments for the sake of the buddha-dharma, will surely be the cause of eternal happiness. (p. 94-95) A person of the buddha-dharma should not possess any treasure or property other than robes and a bowl. What is the need for a closet? You should not own things which have to be hidden from others. You try to hide things because you are afraid of thieves; if you abandon them you will be that much more at ease. (p. 115) The primary point you should attend to is detatching yourself from personal views. To detach yourself from personal views means to not cling to your body. Even if you have thoroughly studied the words and stories of the ancient masters and have been practicing zazen continuously and immovably like iron or rock, if you cling to your body and do not detach yourself from it you will be unable to attain the Way of the buddhas and patriarchs in ten thousand aeons or a thousand lifetimes. Even though you think you may have realized the provisional teachings and the true teachings or the authentic Exoteric and Esoteric scriptures, if you have not detached from the mind which clings to your body, it is like vainly counting another’s wealth without possessing even a half-penny of your own. I implore you to sit quietly and seek the beginning and the end of this body on the ground of reality. Your body, hair, and skin, were originally comprised of the two droplets from your father and mother. Once the breath stops, they scatter and finally turn into mud and soil on the mountains and fields. How can you cling co your body? (p. 136) The last benefit of accepting the true dharma, or the great vow is that the person who accepts the true dharma is identical with the paramitas, or perfections. These are giving, discipline, patience, perseverance, meditation and wisdom. The Queen Srimala Sutra explains them as follows: Giving: “Good sons and daughters who accept the True Dharma give even their body and limbs for those who respond to giving. By protecting these [living beings’] intentions, they teach them. When they are thus taught and caused to abide in the True Dharma, this is called the perfection of giving (dāna). (and each follows this form) Morality: “Good sons and daughters teach the protection of the six senses, the purification of body, speech, and mind, and the cultivation of the four correct postures [in walking, standing, sitting, and reclining] to those who respond to discipline. . . . Patience: “Good sons and daughters teach nonhatred, supreme patience, and neutrality in outer expression to those who respond to patience. . . . Perseverance: “Good sons and daughters do not teach indolence but the desire [to practice], supreme perseverance, and cultivation of the four correct postures to those who respond to perseverance. . . . Meditation: “Good sons and daughters teach tranquility, constant mindfulness not conditioned by external objects, and recollection of all actions and speech over long periods of time to those who respond to meditation. . . . and finally: Wisdom: “Good sons and daughters, when questioned concerning the meaning of all things, extensively teach all treatises and all arts, without trepidation, causing those who respond to wisdom to reach the ultimate in science and art. By protecting these [living beings’] intentions, they teach them. When they are thus taught and caused to abide in the True Dharma, this is the perfection of wisdom (prajñā).” Interestingly, in each case the bodhisattva activity is to protect living beings’ intentions, in other words, to help them cultivate their bodhicitta. Everyone has to do that for themselves -- no one can give you bodhicitta -- but we can help create the conditions that support others and ourselves in our practice, and support each other in making and carrying out vows. In order to do that, we have to accept the true dharma, and that takes courage. We have to accept this one unified reality in its entirety, and the sutra reminds us that that includes 84-thousand dharma gates. In this case, it’s referring to 84-thousand discourses of the Buddha, but sometimes we take it to mean an uncountable number of opportunities to practice in our everyday moment-by moment encounters with the world. It also takes courage because it means being willing to admit that a lot of the time, we manage our perceptions to make things more comfortable for ourselves. We can ignore the stuff that we wish wasn’t there, or find more acceptable reasons or justifications for the way things are. We just want things to be different, and that’s basis of suffering. To willingly choose to take the harder and more realistic path is not easy. To willingly put away the fairy tales and grow up goes against the habits of self-protection that we’ve had for our whole lives. If the true dharma leaves nothing out, then it also leaves no one out. All kinds of suffering beings get to come into our scope or sphere. They’re bringing in with them every kind of affliction: mental disturbance, emotional negativity, unwholesome views, three poisons, just delusion and confusion in general -- everything that results in suffering -- but we don’t get to ignore then and not help them. The sutra goes on to say that those who accepts the true dharma “become friends without being asked for the sake of all living beings. In their great compassion, they comfort and sympathize with living beings and become the Dharma mother of the world.” That sounds like parental mind. The three minds, or sanshin, that come from Dogen’s Tenzo Kyokun are joyful mnd, magnanimous mind, and the mind of kindnesss or nurturing, or parental mind, sometimes called grandmotherly mind. Later the sutra says those who accept the true dharma enter “into Dharma friendship when the [four groups of followers] (monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen) are forming rival factions that cause the destruction and dispersion [of the sangha]. Those who enter into Dharma friendship will certainly receive the prediction [of their future buddhahood] by all the buddhas.” The sutra ends by making the point that it’s better to accept the true dharma than to do all the good deeds in the world, because it’s larger and more extensive. A bodhisattva vow is bigger than any individual good action that we may take without the intention to save all beings. It’s still a good action and still good to do it, but how much more “virtuous” is it to take that action as part of bodhisattva activity? A good action can be connected to ego or reward. There can be some self-clinging or even just some trace of an idea about "me" and "them," or what these five skandhas are doing and what that makes us. Taking good action simply because it arises from the bodhisattva vow doesn’t create that separation and delusion. Actions are limited, but the bodhisattva vow is boundless. This gives us some things to consider with regard to the difference between the beneficial action of a secular nonprofit and the beneficial action of a bodhisattva. Is there any material difference in the world? Queen Srimala would say that while the nonprofit work was certainly good action, the bodhisattva vow was bigger, and when you think about a nonprofit mission statement, it usually includes a target constituency or defines a set of stakeholders. The standard bodhisattva vows and any personal vows we may write just say "all beings," Our constituency is unlimited! What does accepting the right dharma look like? It’s not just going along with something because the Buddha said so or because you read it in the latest Zen book. Accepting the right dharma is seeing the world the way Buddha sees it, based on prajna, Once you see things that way, once you have a direct, personal experience of what the buddhas and ancestors are talking about, you can’t un-see it. You can try to give up this practice and give up those insights and go back to your life the way it was before, maybe to make other people happy, but you can’t. If you try, you will be very unhappy and feel like your life is now a big lie. You can’t un-see the true dharma once it’s got you. Trust me. Once you develop some prajna and start to see what the buddhas and ancestors are talking about, there’s no other logical way to see things. You have to accept the true dharma because there it is, big as life, and there’s no getting around it. Yet as hard and uncomfortable as it is to accept the way things are, the good news is that according to this gate, that’s the start of dealing with the suffering of all beings, including ourselves. Uchiyama Roshi says: By accepting and properly understanding the true nature of both accidental and undeniable realities, and by living in accord with this understanding, the matter of living and dying will cease to be such a terrible problem. (1) In other words, if we clearly see and accept the reality of both our karmic circumstances and the three marks of existance, or both form and emptiness, we make less trouble for ourselves and things start to get easier. That’s the moment we can really start to dedicate ourselves to our vow. In his statement of his personal vows, Dogen includes accepting the true dharma: When I encounter the true dharma, I will discard mundane principles and accept and maintain the buddha-dharma. Like Queen Srimala, he’s vowing to abandon mundane attachments like body, life and wealth, and focus on right dharma as a life direction. Okumura Roshi also makes this connection between prajna and vow: To follow the bodhisattva path, we practice prajna paramita, the wisdom that sees impermanence, no-self, emptiness and interdependent origination. When we clearly see this reality, that we and other things exist together without fixed, independent entities, our practice is strengthened. We understand to live by vow is not to accept a fixed doctrine but is a natural expression of our life force. (2) This is an important point. We can memorize everything the buddhas and ancestors ever said or taught, but that won’t help us with accepting the true dharma, because we can’t pin down the true dharma. It’s moving and changing and functioning all the time. That’s another reason why this gate statement is not about just going along with something you read in a Zen book. We need to have the prajna to see it for ourselves as it happens all around us, and the courage to act on it as our vow. That is how we eradicate the afflictions of all living beings. Notes: 1) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 11. 2) Okumura, S. (2012). Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 9. Questions for reflection and discussion:
To teach and guide living beings is a gate of Dharma illumination; for we ourselves neither indulge pleasures nor become tired. 化衆生是法明門、自不受樂、不疲倦故. At Gate 93 we reviewed what we mean by teaching and guiding living beings. This kind of teaching specifically includes demonstrating, embodying, physically manifesting something or showing a form. Sometimes we have to make something concrete before we can understand it as practitioners or point it out to others. Teaching and guiding living beings is how we move through the world as bodhisattvas. It’s doing the day to day work of liberating beings by embodying the practice in a practical way: keeping precepts, engaging in the four embracing actions, being wise and compassionate in dealing with human and non-human beings. Sometimes we’re teaching directly and sometimes we’re simply leading by example. In that way, we’re all dharma teachers and bodhisattvas. We don’t need to wait for a public ceremony or a special status. That also means that dharma teachng and support is flowing back and forth among all the nodes of the network we call sangha or practice community. It’s not a pyramid and it doesn’t go top-down; this is one reason that it’s important that we show up to practice with each other as a community. It’s like a parachute game where everyone’s around the outside of the parachute holding the edges of the cloth, and you synchronize movements to lift it up and down or rotate it. The parachute is round, so no one’s at the head of the line. Everyone participates equally, keeping an even tension in connection with others. We’re all holding up our piece of this dharma parachute, lifting it up and down, moving it around with bodies and minds, and responding to what others are doing to keep the game going. Just thinking about it, or deciding not to play, creates problems. It doesn’t help beings transform. The parachute is just going to lie there. Full-on, wholehearted participation in this one unified realityis what we do. Sometimes that participation takes the form of activity. Sometimes it takes the form of rest and quiet. Resting is still wholehearted participation; it’s not being cut off. This balance between activity and non-activity is the intersection this gate statement deals with. Within Sanshin style, this is the element we sometimes call balancing peace and progress. This is where we start taking practice off the cushion and trying to understand the significance of zazen and study in modern daily life. We live with tension between chasing after or escaping from things -- and avoiding taking any action at all in order to remain calm. Our practice of zazen teaches us how to take the necessary wise and compassionate action without fanning the flames of our delusion. We get these teachings from Uchiyama Roshi. This wasn’t an abstract or theoretical problem for him; it comes from his experience as a Japanese in a changing society. In the Tokugawa era (1600-1868), Japan was closed to outside influences, social classes were fixed, a centralized government held power, the size of the population was stable and there wasn’t much change. Fixed social classes meant that there was no competition or freedom of choice. A stable population doesn’t need advances in agriculture to feed a growing number of people. Without competition, there was peace of mind. Instead of putting energy into development and progress, it went into refining the culture, increasing sophistication and elevating its aesthetics. During the Meiji era (1868-1912), Japan began to be influenced by Western ideas about organization and government as well as science and technology. It had to study and adopt these Western forms of progress so that it wouldn’t be left behind or swallowed up as a Western colony, but peace of mind was lost as a result. Uchiyama Roshi born at the beginning of the Taisho era (1912) and he saw and lived with the effects of this change in his society. This experience prompted his question: how do we find a balance between progress and peace of mind? He thought about how Japan was going to integrate its serene traditional culture with more driven Western development. He studied Western philosophy and Christianity as well as Buddhism, trying to come to an understanding. He concluded that the bodhisattva path and working hard for all beings rather than oneself was the answer. I think that this is exactly what the gate statement is saying, and we’ll come back to that in the end. First let’s look at elements in second half of the gate statement. We can see this balance of activity and movement with rest and non-activity, but this is pointing to something rather specific. "Indulging pleasures" here is pointing to the pleasure that comes through the discrimination of the five senses (see more about dependent arising here). Contact between senses and sense-objects gives rise to our perceptions of things and our compulsion to label things pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. This gate is not saying that everything pleasant is bad and we should avoid being happy or comfortable, and it’s not referring here to things like sympathetic joy or appreciating things in your life and practice. It’s saying we have to be careful about being caught up in the picking and choosing and chasing and running away. Even more specifically, the kanji here are pointing to keeping the third precept, not indulging in sexual greed. Historically, this meant monks not chasing after women. In this time and place, it means something else. Originally this was a teaching about the impurity of the body, because the point was to move on from this human realm and leap off the wheel of samsara and birth and death and land in nirvana. In a different time and culture, we practice differently with this precept, but it’s still an instruction to consider purity and impurity. Sex in itself isn’t bad -- it if was, all of us bodhisattvas would be here as a result of something bad. The problem is unhealthy attachment: engaging with the other person solely to meet the needs of the small self, and expecting that activity and that person to give you everything you need to be happy and satisfied and content. This is about managing the three poisons of greed, anger and ignorance, and it’s the three poisons that make something impure. We’re greedy for certain kinds of experiences, but that clinging makes us dependent. We only feel OK if we can do or have or experience certain things. Of course, that’s a problem because of impermanence. That person or belonging or whatever we’re attached to is going to change or die or break or leave or something, and then where are we? It makes for unhappy relationships. We can tell ourselves that it’s all because we love the other person so much. How can that be about our own ego? However, do we really want the best for them, or do we want what we want, which is for all of our desires to be gratified and satisfied? Is that really in the best interest of them or you? If we’re chasing after sex in an unskillful way, it’s because we’ve built up a series of ideas about what the five skandhas are and what their relationship is to everything else. That’s the karma of our habituated thinking. Sex is just one of the human appetites that can keep us distracted and agitated, and we might think that we’re helpless in the face of the things the human body tells us it needs. Yet Uchiyama Roshi says something really interesting in The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo: [Y]ou come into contact with people who irritate you everyday. Finally, you cannot bear it any longer and explode with anger, or you hold in your chronic discontent and make yourself crazy. When there is a person who bugs you, it is not only because he exists, but also because of your conditioned point of view. We must understand this thoroughly. If we have a good appetite, delicious food attracts our attention. If we feel sexual desire, the opposite sex attracts our attention. In other words, only when appetite and sexual desire exist, will the world responding to those conditions appear before us. When naishiki (the individual life force called “I”) arises, the world which “I” see, according to my conditioned consciousness will appear and seeing it, I pursue or flee from the objects that I perceive in it. If we’re really clear about what these five skandhas are, we’re better able to see our habituated thinking and basis for what we’re doing. Zazen is one place that can happen. We can drop our ideas about what the small self is demanding and see interconnectedness and be honest with ourselves. Okumura Roshi picks up where Uchiyama Roshi leaves off: When the three wheels [of body, speech and mind] are pure [in other words, not driven by the three poisons], we don’t take action based on the thoughts coming from our karmic consciousness. This creates a tiny space that allows us to step back and see that that we don’t need to be driven by our ideas and emotions. Our body, speech and thought are not defiled by the karmic consciousness that comes from our past experiences. When we encounter objects, they don’t become objects of our desire. When we meet people, we no longer calculate how useful or helpful they are to ourselves in reaching our goals, and we have fewer problems with others. We see that people and things don’t exist for the sake of fulfilling our own desires. They have their own reasons for being. Of course, we have to take care of our desires, but we can see each and every thing as Buddha-dharma. Being free from attachment is what keeps us from getting worked up and demanding things from our lives, realistic or not, and it also keeps us from giving up, being full of despair and discouragement and just not doing anything. That brings us to the second element, becoming tired. Sawaki Roshi said, "The reason we human beings are often exhausted is that we do things with personal profit in mind." When we’re attached to an outcome, then we have a yardstick. Either I made it or I didn’t, either I was successful or I wasn’t, either I worked hard enough and tried hard enough or I didn’t. If not, that feels like a loss, and when the losses pile up, then we can become fatigued and discouraged and give up and do nothing. If there’s no yardstick and no competition with others, then there’s no basis for this feeling of loss or defeat. Uchiyama Roshi says: True religion takes no notice of the human desire to make things profitable for ourselves or of our calculating measurement. If we throw away our ordinary expectations and take an attitude of settling down on whichever side of the balance we fall, it is right there that a truly peaceful life unfolds itself. Doing zazen is to stop being an ordinary person. An “ordinary person” is living by karma rather than living by vow. He’s not saying we shouldn't have direction in life or make effort to improve things for ourselves and others. He’s saying we throw away our expectations of personal profit, because as we know, suffering happens because we want things to be different than they are. Can we do our best, make good effort, and not cling to expectations about the outcome? Elsewhere, Sawaki Roshi says: Human beings put I into everything without knowing it. We sometimes say, “That was really good!” What’s it good for? It’s just good for me, that’s all. We usually do things expecting some personal profit. And if the results turn out different from our hidden agenda, we feel disappointed and exhausted.” When we’re feeling this persistent fatigue, it may be time to stop and look at how we’re measuring “success.” I keep trying to do or get this thing for myself, and I keep falling short somehow -- it’s not fair! We need to have direction and aspiration or we’d never take action, but how are we forming those goals and deciding what to aim at? How much of our ego is tied up in that? Is there a hidden agenda, as Sawaki Roshi says? It’s important not to misunderstand this teaching and think that mortificationn of the body is part of our practice. Being constantly sleep deprived or overworked or too busy to take care of our lives is not good for our wellbeing. We shouldn’t be ignoring or minimizing that stuff. Yet we can compare ordinary beings living by karma (getting pulled around by karma) and bodhisattvas who are living by vow. We know when we take the bodhisattva vow that we’re never going to finish it and reach the goalpost, and yet somehow we don’t hold same yardstick up to that activity. Dang! I only saved 17 beings this week, and my goal was 23! We’re OK with doing that work moment by moment and not keeping score, and we typically don’t feel disappointed and exhausted. This gate statement is intersecting teaching and guiding living beings with not getting on the roller coaster of indulging sense pleasures on the one hand and being tired and inactive on the other. That should sound pretty familiar to us as descendents of Uchiyama Roshi; it sounds just like his ZZ diagram in Opening the Hand of Thought. He says that in zazen while we’re aiming for nonthinking, we are usually wobbling between sleeping and thinking. Dogen calls it dullness and distraction in the Fukanzazengi . It also sounds like his investigation into balancing peace and progress. Progress can encourage competition, and the result of competition is a few winners and many losers. Winners have power and money and sit at the top of the pyramid -- but there are no real winners because achieving power and money leads to suffering: fear of loss and no peace of mind. If we turn our efforts to working for all beings’ benefit and development rather than competing for our own gain, we harness the energy of our discovery, innovation and building for the creation of wholesomeness and liberation from suffering. Uchiyama Roshi's conclusion is that the best way to navigate these two sides is to walk the bodhisattva path and work hard for all beings rather than oneself. Teaching and guiding living beings -- turning our attention away from being self-involved -- is how we stop getting caught up in the delusion of grasping and clinging and three poisons, and also how we keep from being discouraged and exhausted. One of the stories that gets told about Suzuki Roshi is that someone asked him how to deal with being discouraged, and he said we do it by encouraging others. When we’re focused on the small self, we’re cutting ourselves off from the network of interconnectedness and we stop seeing the big picture of reality. When we do, we quickly run out of resources because we think this five skandhas is all there is. "Exhaust" means to drain. We’re chasing and running and doing and using up all our resources trying to get what we want, and draining ourselves dry. It feels like there’s nothing left in the pipeline and nothing more coming in. Actually, we’re not separate from the network, and not cutting ourselves off from living beings and the rest of the universe is the reality of this moment. If I’m trying to impose my small-self story onto reality and operating on that basis, I’m always going to run into roadblocks. Refusing to acknowledge that my viewpoint isn’t necessarily the way things work is the most basic cause of frustration and suffering. I used to work for a regional government agency. It was bigger than counties but smaller than the state, and it was formed because there are some elements of functioning that don’t recognize boundaries. Creeks and rivers and aquifers flow across counties. Roads and bus routes don’t stop at the county line. People live in one city, work in another, and need to make a daily commute. However, jurisdictions would stop at a boundary, so a road that was pretty good would suddenly become terrible at a county line, or the entire region would be using the groundwater but one particular city would be affecting the water quality for everyone, or major employers would need workers but there was no affordable housing nearby and there were no buses running when second or third shift workers needed to get to work. By creating a regional agency, the whole metro area could see how everything was connected and affecting each other whether they liked it or not, and find ways to agree to work together. At the time, there were only one or two other regional agencies in the whole country working this way. Keeping everything siloed and refusing to acknowledge that these systems are already connected would have meant more frustration. We’re connected whether we like it or not, or refuse to acknowledge it or not, and recognizing the reality of that helps with the tendency to become tired and depleted. We can stop working against what’s really happening and also we can stop feeling alone in our activity. For us, zazen is where we inquire into the nature of indulging sense pleasures and being tired and how to navigate that. Uchiyama Roshi says: So you have to realize that right now you are practicing zazen and it is not the time for thinking. This is correcting your attitude, correcting your posture, letting the thoughts go and returning to zazen. This is called “awakening from distraction and confusion.” Another time you might be tired. Then you have to remind yourself that you are practicing zazen right now, and it is not the time for sleeping. This is correcting your attitude, correcting your posture, really opening the eyes and returning to zazen. This is called “Awakening from dullness and fatigue.” Zazen means awakening from distraction and confusion and from dullness and fatigue, awakening to zazen billions of times. The zazen of living out this fresh and raw life means awakening the mind, certifying through practice billions of times. This is shikantaza. On one hand, it’s not time for thinking: correct your attitude and posture, let go of thoughts and return to zazen. On the other hand, it’s not time for sleeping: correct your attitude and posture, really open your eyes and return to zazen. Give up your sex fantasies and wishing you were somewhere other than the zendo and come back, and also stop coasting along and idly waiting for the bell to ring, re-engage in this moment and come back. In both cases, awaken mind of this moment of actual raw reality. Zazen is where we start dropping off body and mind and making ourselves available to all beings. We’re not denying our own needs and the things we need to do and have in order to live in the world in a healthy way, but we also know it’s not the whole story, and swinging too far to one side or the other isn’t skillful. This gate is a great reminder that we don’t just practice for the sake of others and leave ourselves out, just like we don’t practice only for our own personal gain. We can see from the gate statement that teaching and guiding living beings helps and supports us as well. We get the chance to loosen the grip of the three poisons at the same time that we’re engaged in beneficial action for others. Questions for reflection and discussion:
The four elements of sociability are a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with them] we accept all living beings and, after we have attained [the truth of] bodhi, we bestow the Dharma upon all living beings. 四攝法是法明門、攝受一切衆生、得菩提已、施一切衆生法故 What’s being translated here as "the four elements of sociability" we probably know by another name: Bodaisatta Shishobo, or the four embracing actions of the bodhisattva. Let’s review what these four embracing actions are and then consider the other segments of this gate statement: accepting all living beings, attaining the truth of bodhi, and bestowing the dharma on all living beings. Dogen wrote an entire fascicle of the Shobogenzo about the four embracing actions, so clearly they’re very important in our tradition. Okumura Roshi has also written fairly extensively about them, so I want to review the main points of what they have to say about each one, but one of the things we quickly see is that just like with so many other lists in this tradition, these four are really aspects of same thing. Offering underlies all four. Dogen says offering is simply not being greedy. Yes, sometimes we can actively make something we have available to someone who needs it, but even simpler than that, we can simply stop clinging. When we have things in our lives that need to move on, we can just not get in the way when that time comes. That means we can offer things we don’t actually possess. Dogen describes giving flowers blooming on a distant mountain to the Tathagatha. We simply don’t hinder the total dynamic functioning of reality in this moment by getting stuck in our own five skandhas clinging to five skandhas. As we know, clinging is the basis of all suffering. We want things to be differant than they are because we have some idea of what “should” be happening. What offering means to a bodhisattva is to be aware of the moving and changing of things and to respond skillfully to that. It's not based on small self but on universal self. Not only does offering benefit the beings around us, but also ourselves. Dogen says that if we function within a community with an attitude of openhandedness, other people can settle down and feel safe, but we also cultivate peacefulness for ourselves as well as setting in motion wholesome karma for everyone. Interestingly, the practice of offering also includes the practice of receiving. That takes skill too, and sometimes we’re not very good at it. Being a recipient can feel like we’re at the lower end of a hierarchy because a giver has more power and more resources and is giving us a handout. Or, maybe we think that of course we’re receiving tribute because we’re especially worthy or valuable. Both of these are exercises in ego, because they’re about five skandhas clinging to five skandhas. Offering and receiving doesn’t have to be grandiose. It’s a moment by moment attitude and practice. Loving speech is about encountering all beings with wisdom and compassion. Because of our awakening, we can see beings (including ourselves) clearly and we see interdependence. On that basis, compassion arises naturally and we speak to others as though they were our children -- not because we think they’re immature or helpless, but because we tend to speak to children in a kindly or nurturing way. Loving speech promotes harmony and is encouraging to others. Dogen goes on to say that when we use loving speech with someone, not only does that person feel good, but others who may hear it indirectly or hear about it later also benefit, and it may influence their behavior as well., Beneficial action is using skillful means to benefit living beings. The main points here are that we don’t pick and choose who we help, deciding whether they’re worthy or deserve help, and we don’t expect any reward in return; we’re just motivated by the bodhisattva vow and our own awakening. Benefitting living beings is about moving them toward liberation from suffering. That kind of action can take myriad forms, depending on what those beings need from us and what our karmic circumstnaces allow us to offer. Something that’s beneficial to one person in one circumstance is not helpful or is perhaps even harmful to another person in another circumstance. Likewise, skillful action from one bodhisattva might not be skillful action from another. Once when I was traveling to Japan, on one of the domestic legs of my flight suddenly a flight attendant appeared at my elbow, confirmed my identity and asked whether I spoke Japanese. Well, I admitted, I spoke it at a very low level. She said a Japanese passenger had taken ill and the crew was having trouble communicating with him. I certainly wasn’t good enough to have a medical conversation with someone, which could be a matter of life or death. I could have simply gone to be present with him or the family, which is probably what an American chaplain would do, but I remembered that once when I went with a Japanese clergy friend to visit his wife in the hospital, we had to make sure we didn’t look like clergy. We wore normal clothes and I wore my ball cap to cover my bald head. Why? Because in Japan, clergy are associated with funerals, not with chaplaincy. Nobody wants to see clergy in a hospital. If I had gotten up and imposed myself on the sick person on the plane, it would completely have been for the sake of my own ego. It wasn't beneficial action in that circumstance. Identity action reinforces the teaching that we’re carrying out skillful action that involves and benefits both ourselves and others. Identity action is about non-separation; we put ourselves in others’ places and see what they need or how they’re suffering. We take care that offering what we think is good for ourselves isn’t harmful for someone else and vice versa. Mainly, we recognize that we’re not functioning in isolation and that we what do affects others. Identity action isn’t self-sacrifice and it's also not greed and arrogance. We have to understand interdependence and find the middle way. This is how we actualize "practice and enlightenment are one." Okumura Roshi’s image for this is five fingers and one hand. The “identity” element is the hand itself, but there’s no hand outside of the functioning of the individual fingers, and each one operates differently. It’s the complete manifestation of Indra’s net. I particularly like his description of how these four embracing actions are connected: Among the Four Embracing Actions, dana (offering) is the foundation of all four practices. Loving speech is an offering that uses language, and beneficial action is a form of offering using body and mind. Identity action is a method we can use to make our offerings acceptable to others. Making our offerings acceptable to others is an interesting thing to consider. We can offer the best thing we have, but if others aren’t in a position to accept it, it’s no good. That means that as bodhisattvas, our offering has to come from our ability to see what’s actually needed in a given situation, not just what we want to give based on our own ideas. If you want to give your friend your opinion and advice but it’s not a teachable moment, there’s no point. You can say stuff, but it’s not going to help. If you want to give your surplus items to your favorite charity but these aren’t items it can actually use, you’re not really helping, no matter what kind of story you’ve told yourself about how generous you’re being with your cast-offs. When I worked at another temple, other groups would sometimes come and use the place for their own retreats. Frequently, whoever was in charge of the cooking wanted to leave us the leftovers rather than packing them out at the end of the event and dealing with them themselves. “We thought we’d just leave you this,” they'd begin as they were leaving, and I’d start shaking my head. There wasn’t anyone around during the week to eat leftovers, and when it all went bad, then we had the job of composting all that stuff and washing all the containers. It happened over and over again. It was easy for these visitors to tell themselves a story about how it would be generous somehow to leave all that food behind for their own convenience, but when we showed them the reality of our lives there, they could see that it wasn’t actually a compassionate thing to do in that circumstance. Next let's consider accepting all living beings. There are a couple of ways to think about this. One is that we see all beings and conciously or intentionally don’t turn away from or disregard any of them. We recognize that because there is nothing outside of Buddha’s way, or this one unified reality, we have to include all beings in our practice. We might not agree with their opinions or like everything they do, but we can’t cut them off. We have to offer everyone the same compassion, nurturing mind and supportive attitude while they work on liberating themselves from suffering. Another way to think about this is in the absolute sense. Accepting all living beings is not a choice we make about our attitude or actions, telling ourselves that “today I’m going to do my best to accept everyone and keep an open mind.” That’s still based on comparing one thing with another and deciding that even though one thing is more appealing or desirable than another we’re not going to turn the lesser one away, or deciding that two things are equal or the same. This kind of accepting all beings comes from understanding that this one unified reality is really one thing with multiple names. It means we encounter each thing as absolute reality or as Buddha. Each thing is already the same and connected with us, so we don’t need to have an opinion about it or decide whether or not to accept it. Awakening to this kind of sameness means we already accept all beings as a part of our own life, because we and they are already completely functioning together. There’s a good image of this in our tradition. The ocean doesn’t reject the water coming from any river. Water is water regardless of what river brings it in. In the beginning we might cultivate offering, kind speech, and doing good for others as a means of coming to understand interconnectedness. That’s one reason that living in community is an important ground for practice. We get to engage in carrying out the four embracing actions every day with others who have the same aspiration. However, when we see interconnectedness deeply for ourselves, then we carry out the four embracing actions because that’s what’s arising. There’s no option to do anything else, so we don’t have to make distinctions and choices. The next part of the gate statement says "after we have attained the truth of bodhi." This “truth of bodhi” is a phrase that shows up again and again in the Shobogenzo and in other places. It means we awaken to things as they are and see reality the way Buddha sees it. We really understand impermanence, suffering and no-self (the three marks of existence) and we’re not deceived by the stuff we make up in our heads. Here again, the four embracing actions are both a gateway into awakening and a manifestation of awakening. If we understand impermanence, it’s easier to break our habit of clinging to things and instead make an offering, whether that takes the form of kind speech or beneficial action. If we understand the nature of suffering, then naturally we want to skillfully offer something to others that might ease their suffering, and from absolute perspective we want to avoid being or creating the obstruction that prevents the total functioning of the universe and causes suffering for everybody by ignoring reality. If we understand that there is no fixed and unchanging self, then we don’t need to speak harshly to shore up our egos. We don’t need to worry that by helping someone else we’ll lose something for ourselves. The last part of the gate statement says we bestow dharma on all living beings. The kanji used here (施) can mean bestow, but it carries a connotation of dana, so dharma itself is an offering. Dharma as an offering shows up in several sutras. In the Vimalakirti Sutra, someone holds a weeklong event for giving alms to monks and also to all the poor people of the region. Vimalakirti says that’s not the way to make offerings; your event should be about bestowing the dharma, because what good are these material things in the larger picture? The host asks what that means, and Vimalakirti gives a very brief summary of Buddha’s teaching, concluding that carrying out all of those teachings is bestowing the dharma, and that that’s real almsgiving. If you’re giving material goods, and you’re doing it with no expectation of reward, then that also is bestowing the dharma. The Flower Garland Sutra makes the point that teaching the dharma is an offering to all the Buddhas, but teaching doesn’t just mean giving a talk or explaining texts. It’s also just carrying out our practice. Doing our own practice enables the practice of others. Moving through the world as a bodhisattva encourages others to be skillful and thoughtful themselves. That means using kind speech and engaging in beneficial action is teaching through our own day to day words and actions. We don’t have to call attention to what we’re doing or think about it as teaching. By doing our practice we’re simply serving as role models of skillful activity that liberates beings from suffering, so the benefits of what we’re doing go beyond the immediate recipients to others who see or hear about our practice. That’s bestowing the dharma on all living beings. The Diamond Sutra says that “the offering of Dharma surpasses all other forms of offering.” This comes after several generations of a family make offerings to the Buddhas over a long period of time. Finally, one of them asks whether there’s some better offering than what they’ve been giving. The Buddha of that time says that actually, practicing and upholding the teachings and making it possible for others to hear and practice the dharma is the best kind of offering. Thus sometimes the skillful thing is to give people food or clothing if that’s what they need, or to call an ambulance when someone falls down and gets hurt. Those are both legitimate ways of alleviating suffering. However, sometimes the thing to do is to quietly go about your daily practice of engaging in these four embracing actions without being concerned about who’s watching and without worrying about whether or not it’s making a difference to anyone else. We can’t predict the outcome of our unfolding karma, but we can try to set up wholesome causes and conditions and contribute something beneficial to the network. Now let’s put all the pieces back together: The four elements of sociability are a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with them] we accept all living beings and, after we have attained [the truth of] bodhi, we bestow the Dharma upon all living beings. This sounds to me like a good description of total dynamic functioning. Carrying out these four actions, based on a deep understanding of offering and non-separation, allows us to bring all living beings into our sphere, if you will, and at the same time we’re also sending back out truth and wholesomeness and dharma to all those beings. That sounds more linear than I think it actually is. The gate statement says that after we attain awakening we offer the dharma, but we can keep in mind Dogen’s points about practice and awakening being the same thing. Bodhicitta arises, we practice, our practice supports the practice and liberation of others, and that continues to fuel our aspiration. We’re doing that with all beings, including and accepting them. Our practice is a complete manifestation of thusness whether we really understand that or not, and we benefit others even without any intention to do that. Questions for reflection and discussion:
Expedient means are a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with them] we manifest ourselves according to the dignified forms that living beings admire, and we teach and guide [living beings], accomplishing the Dharma of all the buddhas. 方便是法明門、隨衆生所見威儀、而示現化、成就一切佛法故. We have three intersecting elements here: expedient or skillful means, deportment and the dharma of all the buddhas. We’re going to be spending some time with the Lotus Sutra, because all of these things are references from that text. Let’s start with expedient or skillful means. You may also know this as upaya in Sanskrit or hoben in Japanese. In general, using expedient means is finding the most effective way to move someone toward understanding two things: cause and effect (nothing happens randomly) and interconnectedness. On that basis, we help beings move toward awakening or liberation. There’s no one right way to do that. The best way to do it depends on who you are as a bodhisattva and your circumstances, and on who the listeners are and their circumstances. What we’re doing has to be appropriate for the place, the situation, and the people involved. The Buddha was said to teach according to what people could take in and work with, and this is why there are various teachings and some of them appear to contradict each other. That means that liberating beings isn’t a one size fits all activity. We can’t just look in a book or piece of scripture for the one true answer and say the same thing to everybody. Those are what we call dead words. Live words come out of a real awareness of the entirety of this moment. Since everything is changing, the same teaching doesn’t apply to everyone now, and the same teaching doesn’t apply to one person over time. One the one hand, that makes things a bit more difficult. There’s no curriculum or fixed set of words on which we can rely, either as teachers or as practitioners. On the other, that means everything is possible and whatever is of some benefit in liberating ourselves and others can be considered. Thus even if a teaching isn’t ultimately “true” in the absolute sense, it might still be helpful to hold it provisionally because it might bring us closer to awakening. We’re able to work with both absolute and relative truths. For example, we recognize that we’re individual beings in individual physical bodies. We can’t eat or breathe for each other, and all that is true in our experience. Yet we also understand that in the absolute sense there’s no separation between beings, and that because of interdependence and interconnection, we’re all living one life together. If we ignore our day to day functioning in the world because it’s based on a relative truth, that’s a big problem. If we ignore non-separation, that’s also a big problem. We have to see and hold both kinds of truth equally Historically, one of the reasons that expedient means became important in this tradition was that it was a way to reconcile all the various teachings. Beginning in China, teachings were arranged so that each one was a higher level than the one before it. They started with the most basic and progressed to the most advanced or profound. Each one was skillful or expedient for the practitioners at that level but wasn’t the entire absolute teaching because people weren’t ready for it yet. However, it became useful for later for later practitioners to say that the earlier teachings (or the teachings of this or that sect) weren’t wrong, but (wink wink) they were expedient means. Those poor benighted folks just weren’t ready to understand. Their teachings aren’t fake or non-Buddhist, but they’re provisional and less profound than ours. Our teachings are the real thing, the entirety of what Buddha had to say. This is what happened with the “Hinayana” or smaller vehicle as seen by the Mahayana or great vehicle. Supposedly, the Buddha used limited and expedient means until close to the end of his life and then he broadened and enlarged his teaching to include the complete truth. Provisional teachings as expedient means aren’t considered deception or something bad. They’re the result of both wisdom and compassion on the part of the bodhisattva: the wisdom to see and know what would be most effective, and the compassion to want to help someone understand. Under this approach the bodhisattva has a lot of freedom to use whatever means someone needs in that moment. This is where we get the characters in traditional stories who have "crazy wisdom." Sometimes it’s the teacher who hits or expells students, sells or gives away temple property, or otherwise appears to do harm. Within the context of the story, this is seen as expedient means that comes from wisdom and compassion and in the end someone always seems to have an awakening experience. Sometimes it’s the outsider monk who lives in some unorthodox way and appears to break rules and precepts. He may live with a girl, be sort of unkempt, say contradictory things and be generally eccentric, but somehow undernealth all that in the end there’s a larger purpose. One famous example of expedient means is the parable of the burning house from the Lotus Sutra. A wise and compassionate father uses white lies to rescue children from a burning building. He lures them out by saying that there are three lovely carts outside for them to play with, even though there really aren’t. Of course, it’s a metaphor for luring people out of the burning desires of samsara and into nirvana with the three carts or vehicles of Sravakayana, Pratyekabuddhayana and Mahayana, even though there really aren’t three but only one. We’re going to come back to this idea of absolute and relative teachings and how many vehicles there are at the last part of the gate statement. For now, let’s look at the reference in this gate to deportment: we manifest ourselves according to the dignified forms that living beings admire. The kanji for deportment here (威儀) can point to the four deportments: walking, standing, sitting and lying down. This is a sort of shorthand for all of human activity, particularly with regard to residential practice in the temple, but we can also apply it broadly. As bodhisattvas we function outside of the temple as well, and this is still relevant. The teaching is that we walk, stand, sit and even sleep with attention to how we’re conducting ourselves. Sometimes it’s said that we should “Walk like the wind, sit like a bell, stand like a pine tree, and sleep like a bow.” (行如風、坐如鐘、立如松、臥如弓) Why these four images? They come from Chinese culture. Walking like the wind is walking lightly but staying on the path without being distracted. Sitting like a bell is zazen; like a bell, the body is empty but we’re relaxed and stable. Standing like a pine is to stand upright on a firm foundation without wavering. Sleeping like a bow is to sleep on the side, relaxed but maintaining connections throughout the body. Maybe this comes from Buddha’s parinirvana, when he was lying on his side. In any event, this kind of deportment reflects some self-cultivation and dignity in Chinese traditional culture, and it’s part of our practice tradition as well. The other way we can read the kanji is that our deportment or conduct is always in accordance with the precepts, and that is fully undertaking our vows. There is an important phrase in our Soto Zen tradition: 威儀即仏法 igi soku buppo, deportment is itself buddhadharma. All of our actions of body, speech and mind are embodiments of the precepts because the precepts aren’t rules of conduct. They’re descriptions of how the awakened bodhisattva moves through the world. How is this related to expedient means? We manifest ourselves according to the dignified forms that living beings admire, and we teach and guide .living beings. We do an awful lot of teaching and helping without saying anything. It’s all in how we act and move through the world as bodhisattvas. Simply being openhearted and non-threatening and building trust goes a long way. Others can come to admire us and want to seek us out. Of course, we’re not doing this to gain more followers on Instagram and inflate our egos, we’re just walking lightly, sitting in a stable way, standing up straight and maintaining awareness of the body because that’s our practice. Nonetheless, that’s the way we remain approachable and available to suffering beings and, notice how that begins with paying attention to your five skandhas and what’s going on in there. It’s fine to chain yourself to a pipeline to make a point, but you can’t do that skillfully if you’re out of touch with yourself. This is basis of teaching and guiding living beings as a bodhisattva. I’ve talked before about what we mean by teaching and guiding living beings, but here's a quick review. This kind of teaching is not intellectual teaching or book study. The feeling here is helping something or someone to transform. The idea is that bodhisattvas work to transform deluded or suffering beings into bodhisattvas like themselves. This kind of teaching specifically includes demonstrating, embodying, physically manifesting something or showing a form. Sometimes we have to make something concrete before we can understand it as practitioners or point it out to others. Okumura Roshi says: The reality to which Shakyamuni Buddha awakened is the highest, deepest, and most subtle and wondrous. “Highest” implies upward movement; “deepest” implies downward. In Buddhism this pair has special meaning. To go up means to see reality with wisdom or prajñā. To go down means to use skillful means with compassion for all beings. The Buddha sees reality from the peak of wisdom and descends to help all beings awaken to and practice this reality. (1) This points us back to one of the distinctive things about Buddhism: the content of Buddha’s awakening can’t be fully expressed in words. It's not possible to point to one piece of writing or set of rules for all the the answers, and it’s why bodhisattvas have to be both compassionate and wise. There’s another important dimension to this idea that deportment or how we manifest is expedient means, and for that we return to the Lotus Sutra. In the second chapter, Buddha explains that the whole reason that buddhas appear in the world is to help move everyone toward the same awakening as themselves. However, not everyone has the capacity to take in and understand the teachings, so buddhas devise skillful or expedient means to lead people on. Later on in the 25th chapter (Universal Gateway), the Buddha explains that Avalokitesvara takes any bodily form necessary in the moment to save beings. He becomes a layperson, an elder, a minister of state, somebody’s wife, a young person, or whatever is needed. The idea is that buddhas and bodhisattvas take whatever form they need to take and manifest whatever they need to manifest. If what you really need right now is an eccentric homeless monk with no shoes, that’s what Avalokitesvara will look like, but in the next moment for the next person he might look like Santa Claus or Wonder Woman -- dignified forms that living beings admire, or at least that get their attention so that teaching and transformation can happen! Sesame Street taught a lot of kids to read because kids like Grover and Bert and Ernie and Snufflupagus. If you sit children at a desk and try to teach them academic linguistics, it’ll never work. In that moment, Avalokitesvara has purple fuzz and googly eyes. Finally we need to look at the end of the gate statement: accomplishing the Dharma of all the buddhas. This is where we close the loop. The dharma of all the buddhas is the unsurpassable true awakening that Shakyamuni realized under the bodhi tree. This is absolute reality, the truth that all buddhas teach -- Shakyamuni, the seven buddhas before him, the dharma that’s been transmitted all the way down to us today. This is the content that can’t be expressed in words, the reality that goes beyond what we can describe in relative teachings, so this gate is saying that when we properly and completely embody the teachings as limited human bodhisattvas, at the same time we’re conveying or manifesting this complete, absolute truth or reality and that this is how we help all beings. The dharma of all the buddhas is the one vehicle that transcends the two or three specific vehicles of the various particular schools. Dogen’s teacher Rujing taught him that zazen itself is the practice of the one vehicle. He said there are no divisions or separations in zazen and we’re not using zazen as means to get to another greater vehicle or practice. Okumura Roshi says: In the Lotus Sutra we read: In the buddha-lands within the ten directions There is only the Dharma of One-Vehicle, Neither a second nor a third, Except the skillful teachings of the Buddha. This means that in reality, there are no such classifications as the three vehicles (shravaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva); they are simply tentative skillful means. Rujing uses these expressions to show that his zazen practice is not one of the three expedient means but is the practice of the Dharma of One-Vehicle. (2) According to this, using this body to sit zazen is the accomplishment of the dharma of all the buddhas. Okumura Roshi also has another useful explanation in his book on the Mountains and Waters Sutra. It’s particularly relevant because he ties together several things we’ve just talked about. First, there's the image of going up, or gaining wisdom about absolute teaching, while also going down and working compassionately with beings. Second, there's zazen as the complete manifestation of the one vehicle. I have just said that “stepping back” is to inwardly illuminate and study the self. “Stepping forward” is to study myriad external things and to work together with other people in society. Stepping backward is tai ho, but it is also called jō gu bodai. Jō (上) means “go high up”; gu (求) is “seek”; and bodai is “bodhi,” “awakening.” So we practice going up higher and higher endlessly to seek awakening, to study Dharma, and to awaken to the reality of all beings; that is stepping backward. Stepping forward is called ge ke shu jō. Ge is “go down,” ke (化) means “teach,” though its root meaning is “transform”; shu jō is “living beings.” So we practice coming down and teaching living beings using various skillful means. These are the activities of the Great Compassion Bodhisattva using a thousand eyes and hands. Thus the two sides of our bodhisattva practice are wisdom and compassion. We take a backward step and clearly see the emptiness of all things; this is the practice of Avalokiteśvara in the Heart Sūtra. We also take a forward step to help living beings in need; this is the practice of Avalokiteśvara in the "Kannonkyō” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra. . . . We try to go up high and at the same time to go down. These two seem contradictory. We often ask: what is the relationship between practicing in the zendō and working in the world? Dōgen’s understanding is that these are not contradictory at all; they are the two aspects of one walking within the blue mountain and of the blue mountains’ walking. (3) One of our challenges with expedient means is knowing what exactly the person in front of us really needs. That means we have to make judgements. The problem is that our small minds can become condescending: Well, I’ll have to dumb this down quite a bit because she’s a newbie, or he’s not so quick, or they just don’t get it. Maybe it’s not worth even trying to help those folks. What starts out as a bodhisattva trying to assess the circumstances can turn into a big ego party. Dogen felt strongly that the only right answer to a dharma question was one based on the dharma of the one vehicle. He didn’t believe in expedient means, just like he didn’t see zazen as a tool for getting to something else. He said you should only teach about absolute reality, whether or not the person can understand it. In Shobogenzo Zuimonki, he says: When someone asks about the dharma or the essentials of practice, Zen monks must reply on the basis of the true dharma. Do not answer on the basis of expedient means that are not true, thinking the person is not a vessel (of the dharma), or is incapable of understanding because he is only a beginner. The spirit of the Bodhisattva Precepts1 is that even if a person who is a vessel of hinayana asks the way of hinayana, you should reply only on the basis of mahayana. This is the same as the Tathagata taught during his lifetime. The provisional teaching as an expedient means is really of no value. Ultimately, only the final true teaching is beneficial. Therefore, without being concerned with whether the person can grasp it or not, you must answer only on the basis of the true dharma. When you see a person, value his true virtue. Do not judge him on his outward appearance or superficial characteristics. Because there is nothing outside of this one unified reality, we can also make the case that there’s no difference between provisional teachings and absolute teachings. Just like there’s no separation between form and emptiness, samsara and nirvana, small self and universal self, all teachings are included in the teachings of the One Vehicle. If so. then we can use and appreciate provisional teachings or expedient means without clinging to them, what’s sometimes called mistaking the finger for the moon. Expedient means are pointing us toward awakening to reality like a finger pointing at the moon, but we have to be able to distinguish between the finger and the moon itself. It’s also said that Buddha’s method is that expedient means exist only for those who need them. When need is gone they should disappear like imaginary jewels. If you don’t need Grover and his googly eyes, he might not exist for you as a bodhisattva. We have to remember that Zen practice is a practice: it’s something we do. It’s not just something we think and read and talk about. Our public and private actions are themselves a transmission of the dharma and a skillful means for carrying out our bodhisattva vows and liberating beings. Notes: (1) Okumura, S. (2012). Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 251. (2) Okumura, S. (2010). Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen's Shobogenzo. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 110. (3) Okumura, S. (2018). The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner's Guide to Dogen's "Sansuikyo". United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 98. Questions for reflection and discussion:
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About the text
The Ippyakuhachi Homyomon, or 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination, appears as the 11th fascicle of the 12 fascicle version of Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo. Dogen didn't compile the list himself; it's mostly a long quote from another text called the Sutra of Collected Past Deeds of the Buddha. Dogen wrote a final paragraph recommending that we investigate these gates thoroughly. Hoko talked about the gates one by one between 2016 and 2024. She provides material here that can be used by weekly dharma discussion groups as well as for individual study. The 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination
[1] Right belief [2] Pure mind [3] Delight [4] Love and cheerfulness The three forms of behavior [5] Right conduct of the actions of the body [6] Pure conduct of the actions of the mouth [7] Pure conduct of the actions of the mind The six kinds of mindfulness [8] Mindfulness of Buddha [9] Mindfulness of Dharma [10] Mindfulness of Sangha [11] Mindfulness of generosity [12] Mindfulness of precepts [13] Mindfulness of the heavens The four Brahmaviharas [14] Benevolence [15] Compassion [16] Joy [17] Abandonment The four dharma seals [18] Reflection on inconstancy [19] Reflection on suffering [20] Reflection on there being no self [21] Reflection on stillness [22] Repentance [23] Humility [24] Veracity [25] Truth [26] Dharma conduct [27] The Three Devotions [28] Recognition of kindness [29] Repayment of kindness [30] No self-deception [31] To work for living beings [32] To work for the Dharma [33] Awareness of time [34] Inhibition of self-conceit [35] The nonarising of ill-will [36] Being without hindrances [37] Belief and understanding [38] Reflection on impurity [39] Not to quarrel [40] Not being foolish [41] Enjoyment of the meaning of the Dharma [42] Love of Dharma illumination [43] Pursuit of abundant knowledge [44] Right means [45] Knowledge of names and forms [46] The view to expiate causes [47] The mind without enmity and intimacy [48] Hidden expedient means [49] Equality of all elements [50] The sense organs [51] Realization of nonappearance The elements of bodhi: The four abodes of mindfulness [52] The body as an abode of mindfulness [53] Feeling as an abode of mindfulness [54] Mind as an abode of mindfulness [55] The Dharma as an abode of mindfulness [56] The four right exertions [57] The four bases of mystical power The five faculties [58] The faculty of belief [59] The faculty of effort [60] The faculty of mindfulness [61] The faculty of balance [62] The faculty of wisdom The five powers [63] The power of belief [64] The power of effort [65] The power of mindfulness [66] The power of balance [67] The power of wisdom [68] Mindfulness, as a part of the state of truth [69] Examination of Dharma, as a part of the state of truth [70] Effort, as a part of the state of truth [71] Enjoyment, as a part of the state of truth [72] Entrustment as a part of the state of truth [73] The balanced state, as a part of the state of truth [74] Abandonment, as a part of the state of truth The Eightfold Path [75] Right view [76] Right discrimination [77] Right speech [78] Right action [79] Right livelihood [80] Right practice [81] Right mindfulness [82] Right balanced state [83] The bodhi-mind [84] Reliance [85] Right belief [86] Development The six paramitas [87] The dāna pāramitā [88] The precepts pāramitā [89] The forbearance pāramitā. [90] The diligence pāramitā [91] The dhyāna pāramitā [92] The wisdom pāramitā [93] Expedient means [94] The four elements of sociability [95] To teach and guide living beings [96] Acceptance of the right Dharma [97] Accretion of happiness [98] The practice of the balanced state of dhyāna [99] Stillness [100] The wisdom view [101] Entry into the state of unrestricted speech [102] Entry into all conduct [103] Accomplishment of the state of dhāraṇī [104] Attainment of the state of unrestricted speech [105] Endurance of obedient following [106] Attainment of realization of the Dharma of nonappearance [107] The state beyond regressing and straying [108] The wisdom that leads us from one state to another state and, somehow, one more: [109] The state in which water is sprinkled on the head Archives
November 2025
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