Gate 108: Wisdom states

The wisdom that leads us from one state to another state is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it], having water sprinkled on the head, we accomplish total wisdom.
從一地至一地智是法明門、潅頂成就一切智故.

Ever since Gate 106 we’ve been talking about receiving the assurance that we will all become Buddhas, even Mara and even Devadatta.  Gates 108 and 109 are two parts of the same story, so this essay sets us up for the last one.  The question we’re being asked to investigate is: how do we become buddha’s children or successors ?  The corrolaries are: What is initiation? and What is graduation?  In other words, we’re considering the beginning point and the end point of practice.

Based on our everyday thinking we'd assume that the first day we get on the cushion, we enter into something and start practicing.  We’re beginners, and we spend the rest of our lives learning about Buddhism and the dharma, make some progress toward something, get better at doing Zen, and at some point become a Buddha, probably when we’re taking our last breath.  This is the wisdom that leads us from one state to another state.

In the early Indian tradition, there are ten bodhisattva stages.  These are things that you achieve after arousing bodhicitta, aspiring to practice and making vows.  You do various practices over many, many lifetimes and the culmination is that you attain buddhahood.  The Chinese developed these ten stages into 52, so there were even more milestones to hit.

In the ten-stage system, the first is joy, which you achieve by awakening undefiled wisdom.  At some point you reach the stage of non-retrogression, where it’s not possible to slip backward into lower stages, and then it’s a given that you’ll become a Buddha.  The highest stage is that of becoming a buddha after one more life.  This is the end of line; you’ve done everything you need to do, and when your karma is finished playing itself out, your next stop is buddhahood.

In Buddhist cosmology, there’s a special holding pen for bodhisattvas who are at this stage, a green room, if you like.  It’s known as Tushita Heaven.  There are many heavens and levels of heavens in our tradition; Tushita is part of the karma-dhatu, or the world-system of the Earth, as opposed to a realm like Amitabha’s Pure Land which is a completely separate world-system.

Tushita is reachable through practice, and like all other bodhisattvas, Shakyamuni resided there for awhile as Bodhisattva Protector of Illumination before being born as Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha.  
At the moment, Maitreya is in the Tushita Heaven, waiting to be born as the next Buddha.  We don’t know when that will happen, but it could be a very long time.  Time runs differently in Tushita: one day and night there equals 400 Earth years.

Tushita is where bodhisattvas are poised to become buddhas after a long time of practice.  In the beginning, the aspirational figure is Samantabhadra, the bodhisattva of practice, or “great activity.”  By the end, the aspirational figure is Maitreya, the future Buddha.  The Larger Sutra of Immeasurable Life says:
Each of these bodhisattvas, following the virtues of the Mahasattva Samantabhadra, is endowed with the immeasurable practices and vows of the Bodhisattva Path, and firmly dwells in all the meritorious deeds. He freely travels in all the ten quarters and employs skillful means of emancipation. He enters the treasury of the Dharma of the Buddhas, and reaches the Other Shore. Throughout the innumerable worlds he attains Enlightenment. First, dwelling in the Tusita Heaven, he proclaims the true Dharma. Having left the heavenly palace, he descends into his mother’s womb.

This is the part of the story we associate with Shakyamuni.  He’s up in Tushita, he looks around for someone suitably virtuous to be his mother, chooses Maya, and descends into her womb.  The story goes that he takes the form of a white elephant and enters her side, and that his eventual birth is painless for her, without any blood or mess.  

However, before they leave Tushita, bodhisattvas have to preach the dharma to all the other deities and bodhisattvas in this heaven realm . . . and guess what they preach, according to the Sutra of the Collected Past  Deeds of the Buddha?  The 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination.

These are the circumstances of this text: the bodhisattva calls everyone together and sits on the lion seat to preach the dharma, saying, "My body before long will descend to the human world. I now would like to preach, in their entirety, the gates of Dharma illumination, known as the gates of expedient means for penetrating all dharmas and forms. I will leave them as my last instruction to you, so that you will remember me. If you listen to these gates of Dharma, you will experience joy."

There is much rejoicing, and when everyone settlees down, he says:
"Now, the 108 gates of Dharma illumination:  When bodhisattva mahāsattvas at the place of appointment in one life are in a Tuṣita palace and they are going to descend to be conceived and born in the human world, they must inevitably proclaim, and preach before the celestial multitudes, these 108 gates of Dharma illumination, leaving them for the gods to memorize. After that, they descend to be reborn.  Now you must, with utmost sincerity, clearly listen and clearly accept [the 108 gates]. I now shall preach them."

Now we can see why the last two gates are about reaching the final bodhisattva stage and becoming a buddha.  It’s the occasion for proclaiming these gates in the first place, so there’s an interesting circularity here, which is not uncommon in Buddhist texts.  

Yet what is this in the gate statement about sprinking water on the head?  It sounds pretty Christian, like baptism.  Baptism has several functions related to purification and initiation.  It’s about wiping away of sin in preparation for being accepted into the church and beginning a new life.  In our tradition, Buddha is said to sprinkle water or nectar on the heads of bodhisattvas on their attainment of the tenth stage.  The Avatamsaka Sutra says:
If one attains the great spiritual powers of the anointed And abides in the most supreme meditations, Then in the presence of the Buddhas One will be annointed and ascend to that rank; One will be anointed with the elixir of deathlessness By all the Buddhas in the ten directions.

We can really see the relationship here between sprinking water on the head and accomplishing total wisdom, as the gate statement says.  The sutra makes many references to the Buddha annointing bodhisattvas not only with elixir or nectar, but with various virtues and abilities and insights.  My guess is that in certain rituals of our tradtition we can read water as standing in for the wisdom or powers that come with these elixirs.  

In Japanese, this ceremonial sprinking is kanchō or kanjo 灌頂.  It’s a term that comes from the Sanskrit abhisheka and it’s older than Buddhism.  It’s also part of the Hindu tradition.  Abhisheka is a religious ritual in which you pour a liquid offering over an image of a deity while chanting.  That liquid might be milk, honey, oil, rose water, or a number of other things.  This might feel familiar to you as the part of Buddha’s birthday activities in April where we pour sweet water or tea over the baby Buddha.

In China, there’s a water sprinkling festival in April, where people clean the Buddha statues but also splash water on each other for blessings and purification.  In Thailand, people sprinkle the monks with perfumed water.  In the Vajrayana tradition there’s a process for animal liberation, which includes chanting mantras to bless the water and sprinking it over them to purify negative karma.  Thus this pattern shows up in various ways throughout the Buddhist tradition.

Pouring on the head can be an offering, but it can also be a consecration or initiation, maybe an empowerment.  When a royal person succeeded to power in India, water from each of the oceans was poured out of golden jars onto his head.  

Within Buddhism, kanjo is most often found in the esoteric or Vajrayana traditions, like Shingon or Tibetan Buddhism.  It’s a symbolic transition from one state to another.  Pouring water over top of head is a way to declare a legitimate successor and also to initiate someone into practice with a series of empowerments.  When it’s an initiation, it’s not like letting someone into a secret society; the symbolism is like watering a seed in the earth.  The point is to quicken someone’s progress toward awakening.  In the sects that understand buddha nature as the potential for awakening, rather than as awakening itself, this make sense.  You want to water that seed to cultivate someone’s spiritual potential.  In Shingon, kanjo also confirms that a student has graduated to a higher level of practice.  The image is of the teacher pouring wisdom or teachings down to the student.

This all makes sense when it’s associated in this gate statement with moving along the bodhisattva path toward buddhahood.  Buddha is declaring a true successor.  This is part of the world of the authentic transmission of the dharma, which we know was a major theme in Dogen’s teaching and practice.  Is this why he included the 108 gates in one version of the Shobogenzo?  Maybe -- I don’t know.

Other than on Buddha’s birthday, we don’t typically pour things over other things here at Sanshin, so where does all this come in for us?

Well, you’ve seen kanjo or abhisheka every time you’ve been here for a jukai-e or a novice ordination.  The people receiving precepts offer incense to the Buddha and the preceptor and make three bows.  The preceptor invokes the three treasures and a series of buddhas and ancestors, we all chant the ten names of Buddha, the kaitei each receive their rakusu, and then we do the verse of repentence three times.

The next thing we have to do is take refuge in the three treasures, but we can’t do that without being completely purified.  One part of that purification is the verse of repentence, where we acknowledge and take responsibility for past harmful actions of body, speech and mind, but there’s one more thing we have to do.  One by one the kaitei come back up to the preceptor to receive wisdom water. 

Preceptors make the wisdom water by touching a wand of pine needles to their own heads and then to the water three times.  As preceptors, we’re standing in for Buddha.  We sit in front of Buddha being a living embodiment of the altar and we put Buddha’s wisdom into the water before putting that on the head of the kaitei.  In our tradition, you have to be a transmitted teacher to do this because you’re passing on something that’s been transmitted to you.  It’s come down to you all the way from Buddha himself and you’re handing it on to a new generation of practitioners.  Each kaitei receives three portions of wisdom water on the head and when we’re all done with this, then preceptors return the wisdom from the water to their own heads

To me, if this is a symbolic transition from one state to another, then this water is a purification.  We’re receiving some wisdom, and that wisdom is itself a purification.  When we see with the eyes of Buddha, we don’t feel compelled to do unwholesome action because we can see that it’s based on delusion.  In that moment, we’re purified in a way that goes beyond good and bad.  Then we can take the three refuges and the 16 precepts, and at the end of that section, the preceptor says, “Surely you are a child of Buddha,” meaning surely you’re a bodhisattva who will attain buddhahood.

The Bonmōkyō says that when we receive the bodhisattva precepts we’re in the same position as buddhas, and we become Buddha’s children.  Now we can see the parallel with Buddha sprinkling water on the heads of 10th stage bodhisattvas.  When you take lay precepts, you may not feel like an accomplished practitioner who’s ready to come down from Tushita as a Buddha.  Here at Sanshin, we highly suggest you practice for a year before taking precepts to make sure that this is the right path for you and that you really want to publicly commit to it.  You learn about Buddha’s robe by sewing a rakusu, which takes most people at least several months, and you attend a five-day precepts retreat to learn about them.  However, in my experience, most kaitei here are not particularly well-versed in the dharma or deeply experienced in practicing with a sangha, and that’s not a barrier to making a commitment to practice.  Rather than being an end point or even a midway point in people’s practice, taking the precepts seems to be a starting point.  Folks are stating their intention to develop a practice; it’s an initiation rather than affirming a practice that’s already well-established and well-rounded with zazen, work, study and ritual.

What a paradox!  You’re just getting started, but Buddha is putting water on your head like a 10th stage bodhisattva and predicting your Buddhahood.  How can this be?

As we saw at Gate 106, we have to consider Dogen Zenji’s emphasis on practice and awakening not being two.  As soon as we sit down in zazen, Buddha is there, not next to us or floating around us, but right there in this body and mind.  there’s a saying that zazen is not a practice of human beings, it’s a practice of buddhas, so someone does even a minute of zazen, and Buddha shows up.

Do we really need a ritual to make us Buddha’s children?  Buddha’s children 仏子(busshi) generally means all practitioners, people who believe in the teachings and do the practice.  Sometimes it applies to all living beings, because all beings are buddha nature and all of them are part of the network of dependent origination.  In the 3rd chapter of the Lotus Sutra, Shakyamuni says: “This threefold world is all my domain, and the living beings in it are all my children. Now this place is beset by many pains and trials. I am the only person who can rescue and protect others.”

From that point of view, we don’t need water sprinkling and formal ceremonies to move us toward buddhahood -- it’s happening anyway -- but there’s something important in the human experience about initiation and graduation.  Buddha is extending an invitation:  if you want to study the dharma and practice, it’s right here waiting for you.  It’s up to you whether or not you accept.  This is the approach we take here at Sanshin, which we nickname nonreliance.  No one is forcing you to practice, or live by precepts; you have to take it up and commit to it on your own, based on your own bodhicitta.

Okumura Roshi has always characterized jukai-e as being about kaitei being willing to be Buddhists in public.  You’re no longer a nightstand Buddhist at that point.  You’ve stood up in front of other people, accepted the invitation and made the committment.  In response, Buddha has sprinkled water on your head and said, Aha -- you’ve finally recognized that you’ve been a bodhisattva all along.  Welcome to the group.  And by the way, there’s no way out.  There’s nothing outside of Buddha’s way.

If you practice for awhile and do a lot of discernment and decide you’d like to become ordained clergy in this tradition, you do a ceremony with the same elements as jukai-e including the kanjo, or wisdom water.  In the opening remarks, the preceptor says, “This is the ceremony performed simultaneously with all Buddhas, and it is a touchstone for immediate and instantaneous attainment of liberation. Even though the fruit of enlightenment is not yet ripe, a home-leaver is truly a child of the Buddha.”
  
Even though novices are really novices, and they don’t yet know now to manifest awakening and teach the dharma, still, they’re already children of Buddha.  Just like the jukai-e, after the novice receives all the robes and bowls, it’s time to take the precepts but first, there’s wisdom water.  It always feels to me like the message is: You’re already a purified and perfected Buddha just by showing up here,  You’ve already made the committment and given your life to sharing the dharma and enabling people to practice, but let’s do concrete things that make that tangible to you and the sangha.

In the human experience, one of the purposes of ritual is to make the history and teachings and stories of a community real.  We will probably never see a Buddha in Tushita sprinking nectar on the head of a celestial bodhisattva, but we see the same thing happening every time someone decides to be a public Buddhist, and that’s the way that activity and all its meaning becomes part of our shared experience as a sangha.

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Questions for reflection and discussion:

• What was important to you about your own initiation into Buddhist practice?  How did it set the stage for your practice today?
• What has watered the seed of your practice and aided you in deepening and developing it?
• How does ritual make our teachings and stories real to you?  What's your favorite example?
• How do you see your own practice trajectory from here?  What would you most like to learn and do?