​Gate 102: All conduct

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:

• Gyōji (Continuous practice) 行持
• Gyōbutsu igi (Dignified conduct of practice buddhas) 行佛威儀
• Dai shugyō (Great practice) 大修行

It's practicing as a manifestation of the dharma, as opposed to practicing to transform into someone or something else.  Clearly this was an important element for him; he’s given us three opportunities here to investigate what practice is, or what conduct is.

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.

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Questions for reflection and discussion:

• Think about a time when you felt resistance to engaging in Zen forms.  What was the source of that resistance?  If you overcame it, how did that happen?
• What do you think about the difference between etiquette and manners?  How do you see the relationship to practice?
• ​How do you see the difference between practice we do to manifest awakening and practice we do as a manifestation of awakening?
• How do you see bon and butsu as a pair?  How do you think they function together?