Gate 104: State of unrestricted speech

Attainment of the state of unrestricted speech is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we cause all living beings totally to rejoice.
得無礙辯是法明門、令一切衆生皆歡喜故.

Now you might be thinking that we’ve considered this gate already, because we dealt with the state of unrestricted speech back at 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.  That one was about teaching the dharma, or discussing the Buddha’s teachings, as bodhisattvas from a place of unrestrictedness using the dharma eye.  Gate 102 was about entering into all conduct as the complete, unhindered functioning of the universe, and Gate 103 was about dharani as memory as well as an incantation: remembering to see beyond our individual delusion and see clearly how the universe really works.  Here we are again at Gate 104 with unrestricted speech.

Gates 101 and 104 about unrestricted speech are bookending gates about memory and conduct.  That says to me we’re considering body, speech and mind, the three things that create karma.  

When we think about it, the first round of unrestricted speech was a manifestation of wisdom.  This one is a manifestation of compassion, bringing joy and delight to people.  

Let’s review briefly what we've learned about unrestricted speech so far.  It comes from the point of view of unobstructed wisdom or prajna, and it's how we speak and teach when we act from a place of seeing clearly and deeply understanding impermanence, interdependence and the emptiness of the five skandhas .  

“Entering into” or attaining in this context is to drop off body and mind, to realize that there’s already no separation so there’s already no restriction or hindrance.  What’s keeping us from entering into or attaining is our five skandhas clinging to five skandhas.  If we can let go of the clinging, we easily “enter into” or attain.  

Unrestricted speech is not just about saying whatever we want without feeling held back or unsure.  The restriction isn’t about not having courage or motivation or begrudging the dharma; it’s about not getting tripped up by the three poisons.  "Unrestricted" here is muge 無礙, without hindrance.  You might recognize it from the Hannya Shingyo: ko shin mu kei ge mu kei ge ko mu u ku fu, or Thus the mind is without hindrance. Without hindrance, there is no fear.  This is the bodhisattva’s experience of emptiness, and indeed, this unrestrictedness is said to be a defining characteristic of emptiness (if we can say that there is any way to define or describe emptiness).

The Mahaparinirvana Sutra has a lot to say about unhindered-ness and language in the functioning of the bodhisattva.  On the basis of understanding emptiness, the bodhisattva gains the four unhindered-nesses: unhindered-ness in dharma, meaning, language and eloquence.  The sutra says:
In the unhindered knowledge of dharmas, one knows all things and their names.  In the unhindered knowledge of meaning, one knows all about the meaning of things [of the Dharma], arriving at the meaning by the names established for them.  In unhindered knowledge of language, one knows the morphological, phonological, prosodical, and oratorical aspects of words.  In unhindered knowledge of eloquence, the Bodhisattva-mahasattva has no hindrance in oratory, and is unmoved. He has no fear, and it is difficult to defeat him.

Let’s take these one by one.

Unhindered knowledge of dharmas: Bodhisattvas know all the things we encounter at all various levels and stages of awakening, how we encounter name and form, taking things in through the sense gates and provisionally putting labels on them.  It’s said they uphold the words of dharma and don’t forget them.
The sutra says: Upholding is like [the actions of] the earth, mountains, eyes, clouds, man, and mother. The same is the case with all things.  When we read this, we think: how do the earth and eyes and mothers uphold the dharma?  They simply fully carry out their dharma position without having ideas about that and being hindered by craving and aversion.  

We have to move through the world being able to distinguish candy from medicine and a red light from a green light, and we have to be able to talk about the dharma in order to help people to practice, even though language is limited.  Bodhisattvas don’t forget the words of the dharma and they don’t forget to practice.

Unhindered knowledge of meaning: Bodhisattvas know that although there appear to be three vehicles -- the Theravada, the Mahayana and the Vajrayana -- these are actually all one vehicle.  There’s really only one dharma, one way the universe really works, but we have to explain and understand the dharma according to conditions.  It seems to mean different things depending on what we’re able to take in and work with at any given time.

Bodhisattvas don’t attach fixed meaning to the names of vehicles or the names of anything, so they understand the real meaning, or what things really signify.  They don’t get stuck and blinded by their own interpretation.  In other words, they know the functions of things are not just what we assign to them.  They can let go of the “what’s in it for me” approach and see the real dharma positions of things and what they’re really doing.

Unhindered knowledge of language: Bodhisattvas can give endless different names to things depending on the situation in order to speak in a relevant way.  When we can’t describe something in language, like emptiness or awakening, sometimes we have to use similes or metaphors, or if we’re explaining something to someone who has no experience of something similar, we can say, “In a way, it’s like this other thing that you already know about.” 

Different names can illuminate different aspects of the same thing, and bodhisattvas don’t get stuck with just one point of view.  They can see and appreciate this name and viewpoint, but also all the others, like a hall of mirrors that reflect each other, or like Indra’s net, where all dharmas are connected to each other and reflect each other.  Again, the teaching is “no fixed meaning.”

Unhindered knowledge of eloquence: Bodhisattvas, in the course of innumerable kalpas, talk about all dharmas to all beings, using endless names, meanings and ideas.  They can talk to anyone at any time about anything without getting tired or running out of material, stories, examples or illustrations.  At first, we might think of someone we know who never seems to get tired of talking, but I’d suggest that an important aspect of eloquence is also knowing when to be silent, when you’ve said enough and someone needs time to take it in, or when words are just not the right tools.

Bodhisattvas have complete knowledge of each of these four things, all the nuances and subsets and what to do in every case, and yet, every time, Buddha says they don’t cling to anything about them.  They know that the way they use language is the best and most effective, but they don’t cling to any approach or technique.  They’re ready to give it up or switch to something else at any time, and they know that the dharma can’t really be expressed in words, but they do it anyway.

Someone asked Buddha how there can be knowing if there is no clinging.  How can we say we know about these things and are able to make use of them if we’re not grasping them?  He says: Clinging is not unhinderedness.  Where there is no clinging, there is unhinderedness.  Hence, any Bodhisattva who has any clinging is not one unhindered. If not unhindered, he is no Bodhisattva. Know that such a person is a common mortal.

He goes on to say that ordinary people cling to their five skandhas, and that leads to greed, which leads to suffering and being bound to the samsaric world of birth and death.  In other words, they’re not liberated from suffering like the bodhisattva, so ordinary people don’t have four unhindered-nesses of the bodhisattva and they’re unable to offer the unrestricted speech that this gate says leads living beings to rejoice.  This unrestricted speech of the bodhisattva is based in a complete understanding and awareness of emptiness.  As we saw in the Heart Sutra, it’s the mind without hindrance, and again, this isn’t just everyday speech; this is particularly about sharing the dharma although there are myriad ways that that happens and we’re all engaged in it in some way.

We’ve spent plenty of time over course of all these gates talking about speech.  The new wrinkle this time is that this kind of speech results in delight and joy for others.  This delight and joy is not the pleasure we get from taking in fun and exciting sensations through the body and then chasing after more.  It’s not about just helping folks get more chocolate cake and cherry pie.  This kind of joy specifically refers to the skillful operation of the sixth level of consciousness, so now we need to briefly review what these levels of consciousness are, and for that we can return to the Heart Sutra because that’s familiar territory for us.

The sutra lists the five skandhas that make up this thing called “I” -- form, feeling, perception, formation and consciousness -- then it lists the six sense gates: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind.  Then it intersects those two lists to make six kinds of consciousness.  Each one is the connection between consciousness and one of the sense gates: eye consciousness, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind.  It’s the sixth one, mind consciousness, that we’re concerned with related to delight and joy.

Mind consciousness involves awareness, recognition and memory, and uses them to understand all the other five consciousnesses, i.e. to understand eye consciousness, or what’s coming in visually, to understand ear consciousness, or what’s coming in audibly, etc.  Something comes in through the sense of smell, it’s something I’ve smelled before and I recognize that it’s incense, or fresh oranges, or fish.  I remember what to do with that, and maybe I take some action.  There can be some part of that process where I decide whether or not I personally like or dislike that smell and I have an opinion about it, but that isn’t a requirement.  I can recognize something and take action about it without getting caught up in my own story and distorting that experience.

That’s when joy and delight arises that’s not based on my personal self-clinging, and that’s the kind of rejoicing in the gate statement.  How can we speak in such a way that others arouse joy that’s based on wisdom and compassion and not on the three poisons?  We talked about sympathetic joy all the way back at Gate 16 as one of the four brahma viharas, or divine abodes.  The classical image of sympathetic joy is the joy of a parent when the child grows and develops and prospers.  Parents feel very connected to their children, so they’re happy when they learn to walk and talk, do well in school, get a date for the prom, get a good job.

How do we cultivate or create the conditions for this sympathetic joy?  It’s actually not so easy to be happy for someone else without some little bit of envy.  Why her and not me?  Why don’t I get what I want and need?  It’s the usual five skandhas clinging to five skandhas and creating suffering.  Sometimes it seems like our contentment and someone else’s contentment can’t co-exist.  If he gets something, that comes at my own expense.  If she’s happy, it shows me how unhappy I am.  It’s so easy to pull out the yardstick and start measuring and comparing as if there’s a finite amount of joy in the world and we have to fight each other for it.  The bodhisattva understands that there is no independent, fixed self that needs to be defended, so one person’s happiness doesn’t have to be a threat to someone else’s happiness.  It doesn’t hurt me to be happy for you when something good happens.  If we practice and loosen the grip of this idea that there is a fixed and unchanging self nature that persists through time and that we need to defend, we are naturally able to feel others’ joy.  Sympathetic joy doesn’t mean we can’t be happy for ourselves when good experiences come along, or that others can’t celebrate with us.  It does mean that we’re not so caught up in our own craving and aversion that the only pleasure and delight we get comes from our own ideas.

Sawaki Roshi said, In everything, people follow their feelings of joy, anger, sadness and comfort. But that’s something different from everyday mind. Everyday mind means cease-fire. Without preferences, without animosity, without winner and loser, without good and evil, without joy and pain – that’s everyday mind.

Cease-fire -- that’s interesting.  We can let go of this burning need to win.  We can live without winners and losers, good and evil, using everyday mind or seeing the way the bodhisattva sees, from the perspective of emptiness.  Cease-fire is the unhindered-ness of the bodhisattva, as we saw a minute ago, and different from the common mortal who’s stuck in samsara.

The gate statement says that unhindered speech causes living beings to rejoice, and that’s an interesting word.  Originally it meant to bring joy to others rather than to feel joy and delight ourselves.  Now we know what we mean by rejoicing and we know what we mean by unrestricted speech.  We move through the world, carrying out our activities while recognizing whatever we encounter for what it truly is, calling it by an apprioriate name for those circumstances without getting stuck in the labeling or in any particular worldview.  We can talk to anyone in any situation and explain things clearly without the hindrance of our own biases and agendas and ignorance.  On that basis we can help others take skillful action and lessen their suffering.

When the three poisons quiet down, we can all recognize the joy that’s already there, which has nothing to do with how much cherry pie we have.  It has to do with seeing that we can enjoy the cherry pie and we can also live without it.

Interestingly, in order to experience joy, we need to liberate ourselves from our ideas about joy.  If I think happiness is tied only to feeding these five skandhas, then my whole life becomes samsara and chasing after things and avoiding things, and if I’m caught up in that stuff, there’s no way I can help anyone else.

This is an interesting gate to consider in light of a recent piece of research from the Pew Research Center.  Two-thirds of women (66%) say that in the past year, they have personally thought “a lot” or “some” about big questions, including whether there is any purpose to suffering, and why terrible things happen to people, and 55% of men report the same.  When seeing or hearing about terrible things happening to people, 71% of women and 53% of men say they often feel sad for those who are suffering.  Forty six percent of women and 34% of men report often feeling the desire to help those who are suffering.  Nearly everyone reported feeling these things sometimes; the important word here is often.  Seventy one percept of women and 53% of men often feel sad but 46% of women and 34% of men often want to help.  It seems there’s lot more “I feel sad for others” than “I want to help others.”

Interestingly, about a third of people say they often or sometimes feel happy “if the person suffering seems to have deserved it” (37% / 31%), and about 10% of people often feel this way.  That’s not sympathetic joy, it’s just the opposite --  pleasure in someone else’s suffering.  This is the human condition; we’re hardwired to compete and survive.  It’s the condition of the “common mortal” in the sutra but it’s not the  condition of the bodhisatva, and we might ask ourselves why, even when we empathize with the suffering of others, we don’t always feel the desire to help.

Sometimes we’re feeling overwhelmed, either by compassion fatigue if we’re working directly with people, or by its cousin, news fatigue, which affects between two thirds and four-fifths of people at least sometimes.  Frequently, we just don’t know what to do to be helpful, and this is a topic that comes up over and over again in our sangha conversations.  When faced with a world on fire, what can I possibly do that would make any difference?  Then we become paralyzed.  We can’t do anything because we can’t do everything.  How about simply speaking to everyone we encounter as a bodhisattva would speak?  Speech is a front-line activity in connecting with other people and a hugely important practice opportunity in the Soto Zen tradition.  We can pay attention to our habits of speech such that at least we’re not causing suffering, and maybe we can be catalysts for a bit of joy.

Yet again, it’s not simply a matter of being polite; that’s not the kind of habit we’re talking about here.  It’s deeper than that.  It’s habits of thought that lead to habits of speech.  We need to practice as bodhisattvas and cultivate wisdom to see things as they really are, and then our speech is naturally compassionate and promotes joy.  It can be as simple as actually paying attention to people, asking them questions about themselves rather than just talking about ourselves, and actually being interested in the answers.  We bring spirit of inquiry to our zazen practice when we get on cushion, and we can bring the same curiousity and inquiry to our conversations and into the rest of our lives.  We all know how lovely it is to feel like someone cares about what we think and how our lives are going.  That’s an important kind of joy.  Is that going to stop the war in the Middle East or rebuild temples damaged in a Japanese earthquake?  No, but it might cause that person not to say or do something that causes suffering in the next being he encounters, and that’s where it all starts.

We'll end with a bit of the Avatamsaka Sutra that seems to pull together all of the last four gates that I mentioned in the beginning, so again we’re going to hear about conduct, speech and memory, or body, speech and mind.

Unhindered is the Buddha’s knowledge that all is illusory;
He clearly comprehends all things in all times,
Delving into the mental patterns of all sentient beings:
This is the realm of Skilful Teaching.

The bounds of his total recall are not to be found;
The ocean of his eloquence is also unlimited.
He is able to turn the wheel of the pure, subtle, truth:
This is the liberation of Great Light.

The nature of actions is vast and inexhaustible―
His knowledge comprehends it and skillfully explains;
All his methods are inconceivable:
Such is the entry of Wisdom.

Turning the wheel of inconceivable truth,
Demonstrating and practicing the way of enlightenment,
Forever annihilating the suffering of all sentient beings.

---

Questions for reflection and discussion:

• Which of the four unhindered-nesses presents the greatest challenge in your practice, and how are you working with it?
• How do you experience delight and joy that's not related to gratifying the desires of the small self?
  
• How do you understand Sawaki Roshi's teaching that "everyday mind means cease-fire?"
• What do you think about the apparent societal gap between feeling sorry for suffering people and taking action to help?