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Gate 100: Wisdom view

10/27/2025

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:

Physical eye
Divine eye: transcends ordinary time and space; in other words, we’re no longer constrained by our ideas about what time and space are
Prajna eye (or what we might take for wisdom view): sees emptiness, but lets go of form -- doesn’t distinguish anything; thus it can’t save beings
Dharma eye: sees beings and knows what to do to save them; what happens when we open the hand of thought
Buddha eye: sees everything everywhere, including all first four

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

doing something that personally matters to us
making good use of what we can offer
and making a difference for others.

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:

How do you see the connection between wisdom and the other elements of your practice, like the five faculties, the paramitas, ethics, zazen or other things?
How do you maintain the balance between recognizing form and emptiness as a wisdom practice?
In what ways is your practice "fulfilling" in the sense of the three aspects outlined above? Are there some aspects you don't find fulfilling, and if so, how might you make changes?
What do you think about the image of a circle describing our practice of the Way?

Gate 99: Stillness

10/20/2025

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:

What's your experience of letting go of distraction in your practice? What do you find most distracting, and what's your response?
How do you see the relationship between letting go of distraction and experiencing thusness?
What do you think about the study of becoming dehabituated to a repetitive sound? How do you practice with seeing each moment with fresh eyes?
How do zazen, work, study and ritual help you to settle down and experience awakening?

Gate 98: Balanced state of dhyana

10/13/2025

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:

How do you see the relationship between zazen and the ten powers? How do they function together?
Which of the ten powers puzzles you most, and why?
How do you continuously cultivate prajna in your own practice? How do you turn that prajna around to help others?
How has your practice given you a wider range of tools to use in encountering the world and responding skillfully?
How are you feeling about your commitment to practice these days? How might you take the opportunity of ryaku fusatsu, a jukai-e or tokudo in the sangha, or some other (re)commitment activity to reconnect to your vow?

Gate 97: Accretion of happiness

10/6/2025

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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

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