Gate 103: State of dharani

Accomplishment of the state of dhāraṇī is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we hear the Dharma of all the buddhas and are able to receive and retain it.
成就陀羅尼是法明門、聞一切佛法能受持故。

Maybe like me, when you first see this statement you think it sounds familiar.  It sounds an awful lot like the verse we chant to open the sutra.  We’ll consider that, but first let’s look at the elements specific to this gate statement.  (Note that dharani is the Sanskrit spelling, but darani is the way it's spelled in transliterated Japanese.)

“Accomplishment of state of dharani” might seem like an unusual phrase.  A dharani is an incantation or spell; the most familiar to us is likely the Daihi Shin Darani.  (See it in our chant book here.)  However, there are many more.  In the training temple, for instance, we chant the Shosaimyo Kichijo Darani in front of kitchen altar every morning to prevent disaster.
No mo san man da moto nan oha ra chi koto sha sono nan to ji
to en gya gya gya ki gya ki un nun shifu ra shifu ra hara shifu
ra hara shifu ra chishu sa chishu sa chishu ri chishu ri soha ja soha ja 
sen chi gya shiri ei so mo ko

The Kanromon or Ambrosia Gate that is usually chanted for an evening service or hungry ghost ceremony is one long string of dharanis one after another.  These aren’t normal language; it's transliterated Sanskrit, considered a magical language.  This is how we usually think of dharani, but the gate statement says “accomplishing a state of dharani.”.  What is that?

There’s a chapter in a collection of Mahayana sutras called the Mahasamnipata that uses the term dhāraṇī-prati-labdha.  It means one who has attained memory or attained dharani -- so this is dharani as memory rather than as simply a spell that we chant.  The text says that a bodhisattva attains memory after doing 32 kinds of purifications, and then the rain of the dharma falls and puts out the fires of delusion and samsara and makes all the qualities of the Buddha grow.  This is nirvana, extinguishing the flame of suffering,  desire or delusion.

The text says: He who has attained memory (dhāraṇī) knows the practice that is never forgetting any dharma of the Buddha. In this way, son of good family, the Bodhisattva who has attained memory practices not forgetting.

A dharani as a verse may serve as a mnemonic, a way to remember the essence of various teachings as well as an incantation for protection, and by extension, attaining dharani or a state of dharani is being able to retain and uphold all of Buddha’s teaching so that nothing is lost.

For our friends in the Pure Land tradition, attaining dharani is the 46th vow of Amida Buddha in the Infinite Life Sutra:  When I attain Buddhahood, all the Bodhisattvas in other worlds, upon hearing my Name will realise the Dharma of Away from Birth and attain Dharani.

In the sutra, Hōzō Bosatsu made 48 Great Vows promising to create a  Pure Land and guaranteed rebirth in the Pure Land to anyone who would sincerely recite his name, particularly at the time of their death.  When he fulfilled all these vows, he attained Buddhahood and became Amida Buddha.  This 46th vow says that by hearing his name, bodhisattvas will realize the Dharma of Away from Birth and attain dharani,  In the world of form, there is arising and perishing and birth and death, and in the world of emptiness there is no birth and death.  In attaining dharani, the bodhisattva can carry both of these truths; conditioned things are impermanent, and also when everything is one piece and without any fixed self-nature, there is no coming and going, or birth and death.

Some translations of this vow don’t use the phrase "attaining dharani."  They say that bodhisattvas will spontaneously be able to hear and learn any dharma teaching they wish, which is almost a direct parallel with our gate statement: we hear the Dharma of all the buddhas and are able to receive and retain it.

Also, the introduction to the Lotus Sutra describes the Buddha at a gathering of 12-thousand monks, two  thousand students, six thousand followers of nuns, 60-thousand sons of gods, eight dragon kings. and various other special beings, and there were also 80-thousand bodhisattvas who “all had attained dharani and joyful, unobstructed eloquence and turned the irreversable dharma wheel.”  I think its interesting that amongst all these incredibly special people and deities and dragons and whatnot, the bodhisattvas had attained dharani and were put in their own category.  The implication is that it’s not enough to be a dragon king or a deity.  It’s the bodhisattvas who are in a position to attain dharani and be able to hear and learn whatever dharma they wish.

Attaining dharani, or being within awakening, we can remember and practice all of Buddha’s teachings.  That’s not a matter of memorizing a long list of teachings and then going down the list and practicing each thing like a checklist.  It’s a matter of seeing the entirety of the reality of this moment and on that basis understanding all the various teachings and how they fit together.  By going through one door, we go through all doors.  We can see broadly enough to know how to apply the dharma to each situation.

Not only that, we can expound the teachings clearly to others.  That’s turning the dharma wheel, and the  irreversible nature of that is important.  Attaining dharani is sometimes coupled with "non-retreating wisdom" -- we don’t forget what Buddha taught, and we have the energy and conviction to share the dharma in the world so it doesn’t get lost.  The sutra says we do that with joyful eloquence, or unobstructed eloquence of joyful speech, which is one of the four kinds of unobstructed eloquence.  This one in particular is about being able to talk about the dharma in ways that people can understand and in ways that make them happy.

Attaining a state of dharani means we have the wisdom to understand and remember Buddha’s teachings and the compassion to share them skillfully with others.  This is "retaining and upholding," and we can see why it makes sense that we use dharani as the label for some of our verses.  It literally means “that by which something is sustained.”  However, as a mnemonic for remembering teachings, dharani don’t make sense because they were transliterated from Sanskrit to Chinese and then to Japanese for their sound rather than their meaning.  The sound itself was said to contain the magical properties, so you can’t really translate them into English for meaning, and we usually don’t know what text they’re supposed to be summarizing anyway.

Now, there is also the teaching that everything is the Buddha’s dharmakaya, or dharma body, and that all sentient and insentient beings are preaching dharma all time.  In that way it doesn’t matter whether we understand what we’re chanting or believe in it as a power to avert disaster.  The act of completely carrying out our function as jijuyu zammai is the retaining and upholding of the dharmakaya.

Attaining a state of dharani is not going into a trance while chanting something repetitive and rhythmic.,  The point of this gate statement is not to hypnotize ourselves or others!  Entering into awakening, we completely see the true reality of all beings and understand all of Buddha’s teachings about that, we practice our understanding ourselves, we share the dharma with others in ways that they can grasp, and help them become liberated from suffering and find some peace and  contentment.

Let’s put the gate statement next to the Opening the Sutra verse:
The unsurpassed, profound and wondrous dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas.  Now we can see and hear it, accept and maintain it.  May we unfold the meaning of the Tathagata’s words.

This seems to have many of the same elements.  There’s seeing and hearing, and accepting and maintaining (or receiving and retaining).  There’s unfolding the dharma, sharing the dharma with others.  However, this verse is not a dharani but a gatha.  A gatha is a poem for chanting or singing, not just written down to read to oneself.  The form is a bit of Zoroastrian influence on our practice that we picked up along the Silk Road.  

There’s a gatha for just about everything we do in a day in the temple: waking up, washing the face, brushing the teeth, shaving the head, using the toilet, eating meals.  They help us remember that every action, including the mundane day to day stuff we do to carry out daily living, is practice.  Why is it important to recognize opening a sutra?

"Opening" can mean two things:
1) It’s a literal unrolling of a scroll or opening of a book in which a sutra is written.  Sutras are relics of Buddha and we handle them with care.  We don't put them directly on the floor, or stack things on top of them.  It’s important to pay attention when we’re getting ready to study.

2) It’s revealing, introducing, or making the sutra available by reading it out loud or talking about it and explaining it.  This is how the dharma is heard and received, so we encounter phrases like "unfolding the Tathagata’s words."

The Opening of the Sutra verse is Kaikyouge in Japanese.  It's not specific to Zen; we find it also in Tendai and other traditions.  There are four lines of seven kanji which are quite regular, unlike the English version.

無上甚深微妙法  /  百千万劫難遭遇  /  我今見聞得受持  /  願解如来真実義
Mujō jinjin mimyōhō  /  hyakusenmangō nansōgu
gakon kenmon toku juji  /  gangenyōrai shinjitsugi

This verse is at least as old as the 500s AD.  It shows up in liturgical texts from that time in China and it has some connection to the Lotus Sutra as well.

The unsurpassed, profound and wondrous dharma 
Todo-san has pointed out that this phrase is pointing in two directions.  Unsurpassed means highest and broadest and indicates movement upward.  Profound and wondrous means subtle and deep and indicates movement downwards.  This dharma is both expansive and absolute, and detailed and concrete, and this is both the dharma that means the way the uniiverse functions in reality and the dharma that means what Buddha awakened to and taught.

When we see "the dharma of all the Buddhas" in the gate statement, we hear the whole entire story, all senient and insentient beings preaching the dharma, or completely manifesting the truth of this moment, both in the largest possible sense of being within the network of interdependent origination -- that’s the prajna or wisdom element -- and in the sense that we’re encountering actual living beings that are suffering and need our help -- that’s the compassion element.  Something unsurpassed, profound and wondrous is not something we can understand intellectually.  It’s not something we can measure or compare based on our limited human thoughts and concepts, so we have to give up preconceptions about what we’re about to receive.  Accomplishment of the state of dharani, or remembering what Buddha taught, is the same as seeing both dimensions of the dharma: the highest and the deepest, the wisdom and the compassion, and the dharma of all the Buddhas.

The verse goes on: 
is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas.  
On the one hand, the chance to study the dharma is pretty uncommon.  To encounter people carrying out practice that’s been authentically transmitted down through the lineage, or a teacher who really understands the dharma and can explain it in ways that encourage us to practice, is pretty rare anyway, let alone in 21st century North America, where Soto Zen is not a mainstream tradition.  Yet the previous lines just said that the dharma is everywhere, from the highest and broadest to the subtlest and deepest.  It brings me back to Dogen’s original question -- if awakening is already here, why do we have to practice?

Well, how often do we actually meet with the dharma?  The dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas.  We’re swimming in dharma, immersed in dharma every moment of every day because we can’t not be, but we can go our whole lives and not really see it or connect ourselves with it.  For that, we have to practice and do zazen, work, study and ritual.  Then we meet the dharma: Oh!  Something is here!  I never realized.  I was too caught up in my mental fabrications and self involvement to notice.

Now we can see and hear it, accept and maintain it.  
The gate statement says we’re able to receive and retain it.  Seeing and hearing some teachings about dharma, we’re ready take those in.  Now, that too requires some intention; it’s not just a matter of downloading stuff and filing it away along with all of our other information.  We have to be ready to engage with it.

There are so many places in our practice where we encounter this pattern.  One of the reasons that precepts are important as one of the threefold learnings of the eightfold path is that they help us settle.  By not perpetuating suffering for ourselves and others, we can calm down and let go of distraction and fully engage in practice.  Zazen of course is important in a similar way.  

We also see this pattern of preparing to receive teachings in ceremonies for receiving precepts, both lay and ordained, and ryaku fusatsu.  The order of service is not random at all; the arc of that story is really important.  We can’t just string together our favorite texts in any order we want and call that Soto Zen liturgy.  In the ryaku fusatsu, for instance, we start with repentance, then bodhisattva vows.  We’ve cleaned the slate and now we’re renewing our aspiration.  Then we invoke buddhas and bodhisattvas as witnesses, we do a ritual purification of the space with wisdom water, and now we’re ready to hear the Kyojukaimon.

Now we can see and hear it, and now we can receive and accept teachings without hindrances and distractions, but there’s also this element in both the verse and the statement about maintaining or retaining.  In both cases, the root is to hold onto something.  Retain means to hold something back.  Maintain comes from manu tenere, to hold onto something with the hand, and eventually it came to mean to practice something habitually.  

When I see "maintain" in this verse, I’m immediately pointed back to the three kinds of three treasures: abiding, manifesting and maintaining.  How do we see, hear, accept and maintain the dharma?  We’ve heard this many times. but quick review:
The absolute three treasures are Buddha as unsurpassable True Awakening (Annutara-samyak-sambodhi), dharma as the Reality that is pure and free from defilements, and sangha as the virtue of peace and harmony.  The manifesting three treasures are Buddha as Gautama, later Shakyamuni, who appeared in the world as a teacher, the dharma as the content of his awakening and what he taught and transmitted to others, and the sangha as the people who gathered around Shakyamuni to form the first practice community.  The maintaining three treasures are the Buddha figures and images that we encounter today, and I would argue also anyone who embodies awakening, the dharma as teachings that we encounter in sutras, books, videos, websites, etc. and the sangha as us right here, modern day practice communities still carrying on zazen, work, study and ritual.  Thus we have the absolute three treasures that we can’t grasp with the intellect, the manifesting three treasures that we’ve decided to accept as historically appearing in the world, and the maintaining three treasures are what we actually encounter ourselves today right here.

Retaining and maintaining dharma is remembering our commitment to practice and embody awakening right here and now, moment after moment.  We retain in our memory what the Buddhas and ancestors and our teachers have taught us and how they practiced, and we aspire to keep that alive in a concrete way.  Buddha remains alive today only when we embody his practice, when we manifest prajna, sila and samadhi, or wisdom, ethics and concentration.

Our Opening the Sutra verse means something like this.  It’s rare to encounter and really understand and enter into the dharma.  Now I’m about to receive some teachings, and I’m ready to see and hear them and take them in at all levels, then integrate them and let them completely sink in so I remember how to live as a bodhisattva all the time and so I can see both form and emptiness and then turn that understanding around to liberate beings.

We’re clearly not saying, Thanks for the swell teachings that I’m going to gobble up on my own so I feel better and become successful.  Just as we generate merit by chanting and then turn that around to dedicate to others, we absorb dharma teachings so we can turn them around and offer them in the world.  

When you receive dharma transmission as a teacher, your job is then to make sure you hand that tranmission to someone else before you die so that the lineage goes on and the three treasures remain in the world.  You don’t take that on for yourself.  The buck can’t stop with you.  You’re just a conduit for the ongoing maintaining three treasures.

May we unfold the meaning of the Tathagata’s words.

Unfold can mean we’re physically opening a book or unrolling a scroll containing dharma teachings, but it can also mean that we’re going to unpack and realize the dharma, and these can be two different things.

We can unpack the meaning of some teachings that are hard to understand because they’re dense or the words are difficult.  This is what Okumura Roshi does when he explains Dogen’s writings to us.  We can investigate the teachings so that we understand them ourselves for our own growth or benefit, but that’s not enough and we can’t stop there.  We have to realize these teachings, make them real in the world with our own bodies and minds.  That’s how we unfold them.  We sort of put them into motion so they affect others all along the network.

May we unfold the meaning of the Tathagata’s words is sometimes translated as the Tathagata’s truth.  Buddha spent his teaching life sharing with others the truth that he saw when he had his awakening experience under the bodhi tree.  His words and teachings are an expression of the true reality of all beings.  Not only are we investigating words and teachings for understanding, we’re actively participating in the truth of awakening.  What’s the meaning of the words, and what’s the meaning of the truth expressed by the words?

It might sound like we take in all this dharma and receive it and keep it for ourselves, sort of like curating a collection, but remembering what Buddha taught and remembering to practice by their nature are not only about our own situation.  To receive and retain the dharma means moving through the world as a bodhisattva, with an outward as well as an inward focus.  I’m reminded of the number of times in the Shobogenzo Zuimonki in which Dogen Zenji refers to our being vessels of the dharma.  Dharma gets poured in and we accept and receive it and take care of it.  Just like water takes the shape of the container it’s in, the dharma manifests in each of us according to our karmic conditions.  He says over and over, Never think that you’re not a vessel of the dharma, that you’re not receiving and carrying and embodying dharma.  To remember to practice is to retain the dharma as this kind of vessel, to be a source of skillful action in the world that relies or is based on bodhicitta.

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Questions for reflection and discussion:

• What's your experience of chanting texts and having them stay in your memory?  How might this support your practice?
• How does your practice help you to understand what Buddha (or Dogen, or your teacher) teaches about the reality of this moment and how the universe functions?  Would you have the same understanding if you were only reading in an academic way?
  
• What meaning do you find in chanting the Opening the Sutra verse before hearing the dharma with your sangha?  If you're a teacher, how does it prepare you to teach?
  
• How do you prepare yourself to take in dharma teachings as a bodhisattva, aspiring to turn them around and help liberate others from suffering?