​Gate 93: Expedient means

Expedient means are a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with them] we manifest ourselves according to the dignified forms that living beings admire, and we teach and guide [living beings], accomplishing the Dharma of all the buddhas.
方便是法明門、隨衆生所見威儀、而示現化、成就一切佛法故.

We have three intersecting elements here: expedient or skillful means, deportment and the dharma of all the buddhas.  We’re going to be spending some time with the Lotus Sutra, because all of these things are references from that text.

Let’s start with expedient or skillful means.  You may also know this as upaya in Sanskrit or hoben in Japanese.  In general, using expedient means is finding the most effective way to move someone toward understanding two things: cause and effect (nothing happens randomly) and interconnectedness.  On that basis, we help beings move toward awakening or liberation.  There’s no one right way to do that.  The best way to do it depends on who you are as a bodhisattva and your circumstances, and on who the listeners are and their circumstances.  What we’re doing has to be appropriate for the place, the situation, and the people involved.  

The Buddha was said to teach according to what people could take in and work with, and this is why there are various teachings and some of them appear to contradict each other.  That means that liberating beings isn’t a one size fits all activity.  We can’t just look in a book or piece of scripture for the one true answer and say the same thing to everybody.  Those are what we call dead words.  Live words come out of a real awareness of the entirety of this moment.

Since everything is changing, the same teaching doesn’t apply to everyone now, and the same teaching doesn’t apply to one person over time.  One the one hand, that makes things a bit more difficult.  There’s no curriculum or fixed set of words on which we can rely, either as teachers or as practitioners.  On the other, that means everything is possible and whatever is of some benefit in liberating ourselves and others can be considered.

Thus even if a teaching isn’t ultimately “true” in the absolute sense, it might still be helpful to hold it provisionally because it might bring us closer to awakening.  We’re able to work with both absolute and relative truths.  For example, we recognize that we’re individual beings in individual physical bodies.  We can’t eat or breathe for each other, and all that is true in our experience.  Yet we also understand that in the absolute sense there’s no separation between beings, and that because of interdependence and interconnection, we’re all living one life together.  If we ignore our day to day functioning in the world because it’s based on a relative truth, that’s a big problem.  If we ignore non-separation, that’s also a big problem.  We have to see and hold both kinds of truth equally

Historically, one of the reasons that expedient means became important in this tradition was that it was a way to reconcile all the various teachings.  Beginning in China, teachings were arranged so that each one was a higher level than the one before it.  They started with the most basic and progressed to the most advanced or profound.  Each one was skillful or expedient for the practitioners at that level but wasn’t the entire absolute teaching because people weren’t ready for it yet.

However, it became useful for later for later practitioners to say that the earlier teachings (or the teachings of this or that sect) weren’t wrong, but (wink wink) they were expedient means.  Those poor benighted folks just weren’t ready to understand.  Their teachings aren’t fake or non-Buddhist, but they’re provisional and less profound than ours.  Our teachings are the real thing, the entirety of what Buddha had to say.  This is what happened with the “Hinayana” or smaller vehicle as seen by the Mahayana or great vehicle.  Supposedly, the Buddha used limited and expedient means until close to the end of his life and then he broadened and enlarged his teaching to include the complete truth.

Provisional teachings as expedient means aren’t considered deception or something bad.  They’re the result of both wisdom and compassion on the part of the bodhisattva: the wisdom to see and know what would be most effective, and the compassion to want to help someone understand.  Under this approach the bodhisattva has a lot of freedom to use whatever means someone needs in that moment.  This is where we get the characters in traditional stories who have "crazy wisdom."  Sometimes it’s the teacher who hits or expells students, sells or gives away temple property, or otherwise appears to do harm.  Within the context of the story, this is seen as expedient means that comes from wisdom and compassion and in the end someone always seems to have an awakening experience.  Sometimes it’s the outsider monk who lives in some unorthodox way and appears to break rules and precepts.  He may live with a girl, be sort of unkempt, say contradictory things and be generally eccentric, but somehow undernealth all that in the end there’s a larger purpose.

One famous example of expedient means is the parable of the burning house from the Lotus Sutra.  A wise and compassionate father uses white lies to rescue children from a burning building.  He lures them out by saying that there are three lovely carts outside for them to play with, even though there really aren’t.  Of course, it’s a metaphor for luring people out of the burning desires of samsara and into nirvana with the three carts or vehicles of Sravakayana, Pratyekabuddhayana and Mahayana, even though there really aren’t three but only one.

We’re going to come back to this idea of absolute and relative teachings and how many vehicles there are at the last part of the gate statement.  For now, let’s look at the reference in this gate to deportment:
we manifest ourselves according to the dignified forms that living beings admire.

The kanji for deportment here (威儀) can point to the four deportments:  walking, standing, sitting and lying down.  This is a sort of shorthand for all of human activity, particularly with regard to residential practice in the temple, but we can also apply it broadly.  As bodhisattvas we function outside of the temple as well, and this is still relevant.

The teaching is that we walk, stand, sit and even sleep with attention to how we’re conducting ourselves.  Sometimes it’s said that we should “Walk like the wind, sit like a bell, stand like a pine tree, and sleep like a bow.” (行如風、坐如鐘、立如松、臥如弓)  Why these four images?  They come from Chinese culture.  Walking like the wind is walking lightly but staying on the path without being distracted.  Sitting like a bell is zazen; like a bell, the body is empty but we’re relaxed and stable.  Standing like a pine is to stand upright on a firm foundation without wavering.  Sleeping like a bow is to sleep on the side, relaxed but maintaining connections throughout the body.  Maybe this comes from Buddha’s parinirvana, when he was lying on his side.  In any event, this kind of deportment reflects some self-cultivation and dignity in Chinese traditional culture, and it’s part of our practice tradition as well.

The other way we can read the kanji is that our deportment or conduct is always in accordance with the precepts, and that is fully undertaking our vows.  There is an important phrase in our Soto Zen tradition:  威儀即仏法 igi soku buppo, deportment is itself buddhadharma.  All of our actions of body, speech and mind are embodiments of the precepts because the precepts aren’t rules of conduct.  They’re descriptions of how the awakened bodhisattva moves through the world.

How is this related to expedient means?  We manifest ourselves according to the dignified forms that living beings admire, and we teach and guide .living beings.  We do an awful lot of teaching and helping without saying anything.  It’s all in how we act and move through the world as bodhisattvas.  Simply being openhearted and non-threatening and building trust goes a long way.  Others can come to admire us and want to seek us out.  Of course, we’re not doing this to gain more followers on Instagram and inflate our egos, we’re just walking lightly, sitting in a stable way, standing up straight and maintaining awareness of the body because that’s our practice.  Nonetheless, that’s the way we remain approachable and available to suffering beings and, notice how that begins with paying attention to your five skandhas and what’s going on in there.  It’s fine to chain yourself to a pipeline to make a point, but you can’t do that skillfully if you’re out of touch with yourself.  This is basis of teaching and guiding living beings as a bodhisattva.

I’ve talked before about what we mean by teaching and guiding living beings, but here's a quick review.  This kind of teaching is not intellectual teaching or book study.  The feeling here is helping something or someone to transform.  The idea is that bodhisattvas work to transform deluded or suffering beings into bodhisattvas like themselves.  This kind of teaching specifically includes demonstrating, embodying, physically manifesting something or showing a form.  Sometimes we have to make something concrete before we can understand it as practitioners or point it out to others.

Okumura Roshi says: The reality to which Shakyamuni Buddha awakened is the highest, deepest, and most subtle and wondrous.  “Highest” implies upward movement; “deepest” implies downward. In Buddhism this pair has special meaning. To go up means to see reality with wisdom or prajñā.  To go down means to use skillful means with compassion for all beings. The Buddha sees reality from the peak of wisdom and descends to help all beings awaken to and practice this reality. (1)

This points us back to one of the distinctive things about Buddhism: the content of Buddha’s awakening can’t be fully expressed in words.  It's not possible to point to one piece of writing or set of rules for all the the answers, and it’s why bodhisattvas have to be both compassionate and wise.  

There’s another important dimension to this idea that deportment or how we manifest is expedient means, and for that we return to the Lotus Sutra.  In the second chapter, Buddha explains that the whole reason that buddhas appear in the world is to help move everyone toward the same awakening as themselves.  However, not everyone has the capacity to take in and understand the teachings, so buddhas devise skillful or expedient means to lead people on.  

Later on in the 25th chapter (Universal Gateway), the Buddha explains that Avalokitesvara takes any bodily form necessary in the moment to save beings.  He becomes a layperson, an elder, a minister of state, somebody’s wife, a young person, or whatever is needed.  The idea is that buddhas and bodhisattvas take whatever form they need to take and manifest whatever they need to manifest.  If what you really need right now is an eccentric homeless monk with no shoes, that’s what Avalokitesvara will look like, but in the next moment for the next person he might look like Santa Claus or Wonder Woman -- dignified forms that living beings admire, or at least that get their attention so that teaching and transformation can happen!  Sesame Street taught a lot of kids to read because kids like Grover and Bert and Ernie and Snufflupagus.  If you sit children at a desk and try to teach them academic linguistics, it’ll never work.  In that moment, Avalokitesvara has purple fuzz and googly eyes.

Finally we need to look at the end of the gate statement: accomplishing the Dharma of all the buddhas.  This is where we close the loop.  The dharma of all the buddhas is the unsurpassable true awakening that Shakyamuni realized under the bodhi tree.  This is absolute reality, the truth that all buddhas teach -- Shakyamuni, the seven buddhas before him, the dharma that’s been transmitted all the way down to us today.  This is the content that can’t be expressed in words, the reality that goes beyond what we can describe in relative teachings, so this gate is saying that when we properly and completely embody the teachings as limited human bodhisattvas, at the same time we’re conveying or manifesting this complete, absolute truth or reality and that this is how we help all beings.

The dharma of all the buddhas is the one vehicle that transcends the two or three specific vehicles of the various particular schools.  Dogen’s teacher Rujing taught him that zazen itself is the practice of the one vehicle.  He said there are no divisions or separations in zazen and we’re not using zazen as means to get to another greater vehicle or practice.  Okumura Roshi says: In the Lotus Sutra we read: 
In the buddha-lands within the ten directions 
There is only the Dharma of One-Vehicle,
Neither a second nor a third,
Except the skillful teachings of the Buddha.

This means that in reality, there are no such classifications as the three vehicles (shravaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva); they are simply tentative skillful means.  Rujing uses these expressions to show that his zazen practice is not one of the three expedient means but is the practice of the Dharma of One-Vehicle. (2) 

According to this, using this body to sit zazen is the accomplishment of the dharma of all the buddhas.  Okumura Roshi also has another useful explanation in his book on the Mountains and Waters Sutra.  It’s particularly relevant because he ties together several things we’ve just talked about.  First, there's the image of going up, or gaining wisdom about absolute teaching, while also going down and working compassionately with beings.  Second, there's zazen as the complete manifestation of the one vehicle.  

I have just said that “stepping back” is to inwardly illuminate and study the self.  “Stepping forward” is to study myriad external things and to work together with other people in society.  Stepping backward is tai ho, but it is also called jō gu bodai. Jō (上) means “go high up”; gu (求) is “seek”; and bodai is “bodhi,” “awakening.”  So we practice going up higher and higher endlessly to seek awakening, to study Dharma, and to awaken to the reality of all beings; that is stepping backward. 

Stepping forward is called ge ke shu jō. Ge is “go down,” ke (化) means “teach,” though its root meaning is “transform”; shu jō is “living beings.”  So we practice coming down and teaching living beings using various skillful means.  These are the activities of the Great Compassion Bodhisattva using a thousand eyes and hands.  Thus the two sides of our bodhisattva practice are wisdom and compassion.  We take a backward step and clearly see the emptiness of all things; this is the practice of Avalokiteśvara in the Heart Sūtra.  We also take a forward step to help living beings in need; this is the practice of Avalokiteśvara in the "Kannonkyō” chapter of the Lotus Sūtra.  . . . We try to go up high and at the same time to go down.  These two seem contradictory.  We often ask: what is the relationship between practicing in the zendō and working in the world?  Dōgen’s understanding is that these are not contradictory at all; they are the two aspects of one walking within the blue mountain and of the blue mountains’ walking. (3)

One of our challenges with expedient means is knowing what exactly the person in front of us really needs.  That means we have to make judgements.  The problem is that our small minds can become condescending: Well, I’ll have to dumb this down quite a bit because she’s a newbie, or he’s not so quick, or they just don’t get it.  Maybe it’s not worth even trying to help those folks.  What starts out as a bodhisattva trying to assess the circumstances can turn into a big ego party.

Dogen felt strongly that the only right answer to a dharma question was one based on the dharma of the one vehicle.  He didn’t believe in expedient means, just like he didn’t see zazen as a tool for getting to something else.  He said you should only teach about absolute reality, whether or not the person can understand it.  In Shobogenzo Zuimonki, he says: 
When someone asks about the dharma or the essentials of practice, Zen monks must reply on the basis of the true dharma. Do not answer on the basis of expedient means that are not true, thinking the person is not a vessel (of the dharma), or is incapable of understanding because he is only a beginner.  The spirit of the Bodhisattva Precepts1 is that even if a person who is a vessel of hinayana asks the way of hinayana, you should reply only on the basis of mahayana.  This is the same as the Tathagata taught during his lifetime. The provisional teaching as an expedient means is really of no value. Ultimately, only the final true teaching is beneficial. Therefore, without being concerned with whether the person can grasp it or not, you must answer only on the basis of the true dharma.  When you see a person, value his true virtue. Do not judge him on his outward appearance or superficial characteristics.

Because there is nothing outside of this one unified reality, we can also make the case that there’s no difference between provisional teachings and absolute teachings.  Just like there’s no separation between form and emptiness, samsara and nirvana, small self and universal self, all teachings are included in the teachings of the One Vehicle.  If so. then we can use and appreciate provisional teachings or expedient means without clinging to them, what’s sometimes called mistaking the finger for the moon.  Expedient means are pointing us toward awakening to reality like a finger pointing at the moon, but we have to be able to distinguish between the finger and the moon itself.

It’s also said that Buddha’s method is that expedient means exist only for those who need them.  When need is gone they should disappear like imaginary jewels.  If you don’t need Grover and his googly eyes, he might not exist for you as a bodhisattva.

We have to remember that Zen practice is a practice: it’s something we do.  It’s not just something we think and read and talk about.  Our public and private actions are themselves a transmission of the dharma and a skillful means for carrying out our bodhisattva vows and liberating beings.

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Notes:
(1)  Okumura, S. (2012). Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 251.
​(2)  Okumura, S. (2010). Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen's Shobogenzo. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 110.
(3)  Okumura, S. (2018). The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner's Guide to Dogen's "Sansuikyo". United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 98.

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Questions for reflection and discussion:

• How do you practice with holding some teachings as provisional, on the way to a fuller and deeper understanding of the dharma?
• Choose one of the four activities of walking, sitting, standing or lying down and reflect on how your deportment while engaging in it is a part of your practice.
  
• Consider a time when a being (of any variety) appeared in your life just as you needed the lesson it taught you.  
• How do you practice both going up and going down, or stepping backward and stepping forward?