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Stillness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it realizes, and is replete with, the samādhi of the Tathāgata. 寂定是法明門、成就如來三昧具足故。 This is another gate that requires us to look carefully at the words, It’s pointing back to a lot of old Sanskrit vocabulary. When I saw that the first word had been translated stillness, I assumed it was jaku, or the stillness of nirvana, and when I looked at the kanji, yes, that one was there. However, it was in combination with another one, jou, and taken together as jakujou it means samadhi. Thus there’s more than one word for samadhi in this gate. Let’s start with jaku, or peaceful, quiet, tranquil. There’s also a sense of something being extinguished, and this is the pointer toward Nirvana. Tradition says that we reach Nirvana when we blow out or extinguish the fires that keep us tied to rebirth and suffering in Samsara. Those fires have to do with greed, anger and ignorance, the three poisons. When we blow out those fires, we’re released from the grasping and clinging of our habituated thinking, and we’re free from the cycle of rebirth. In the early teachings there are two kinds of nirvana. One is that the three poisons and other hindrances no longer arise but we still have physical bodies. In the other, the body has also been extinguished and with it all the limitations of human form, so it’s a state of eternal calm. This is what we mean when we say an awakened being has died, or entered nirvana; Shakyamuni’s official death date in February is Nirvana Day in the Buddhist world. The kanji for jaku is also used when writing the death date of clergy; on such-and-so day this person entered Nirvana. Presumably, when members of the clergy die, the assumption is that they’ve been successful in their practice lives, blown out the fires of the three poisons, gone beyond having a body and landed in Nirvana. This is the stillness of jaku, and the jou of jakujou is to establish or be settled. Jakujou is to be settled in stillness - thus translation as samadhi. All this is pointing to concentrating the mind and letting go of distraction and delusion. This is where we unify body and mind in a deep way. Okumura Roshi says: “Serenity” is a translation of jakujo (寂静), “quiet,” “tranquil,” “serene,” or “solitary.” This does not simply mean silent or without noise in the external world. When our mind is torn into two or more pieces, there are always dispute, conflict, or anxiety. Such conditions make our mind unsettled and agitated. More often, when we sit in the quiet zendo, we begin to hear the noise from inside. Our zazen of letting go of thoughts allows us to sit immovably without being pulled by those conditions. We also find the stillness of Nirvana in the shihoin, or four seals. Uchiyama Roshi says that these four seals summarize all of Buddhism. The first is that all phenomena are impermanent, the second is that everything is suffering, the third is no-self, and the fourth is nehan jakujo, or Nirvana is tranquillity. We can experience this kind of tranquility when we stop the clinging that comes from the three poisons. When we understand impermanence, we see the basis of suffering. When we understand impermanence and suffering, we understand that there is no permanent self nature, and then on that basis we stop clinging and experience stillness or tranquility. Uchiyama Roshi says: What we call “I” or “ego” arises by chance or accident, so we just let go instead of grasping thoughts and “I.” When we let go of all our notions about things, everything necomes really true. This is the fourth undeniable reality, or nehan jakujou. It is also described as “all things are as they are,” shohou jissou. Therefore, when we let go of everything, we do not create artificial attachments and connections. . . . This is the present reality of life. It is the reality of that which cannot be grasped, the reality about which nothing can be said. This very ungraspability is what is absolutely real about things. (1) In this large, absolute sense, “real” jaku isn’t the one where we hold up a yardstick and say there is jaku or there isn’t. It escapes those confines, and of course this is a common pattern in Zen: the “real” thing is beyond real and unreal, beyond opposites, and that’s where real stillness is -- in not making a distinctions. There is noise and distraction and upset on the one hand, and in comparison there is jaku, peace, silence, tranquility. That’s a relative jaku. The real jaku is about the emptiness or Nirvana that we can’t grasp and describe and define. This is samadhi as jakujou, but at the end of the gate statement we have the samadhi of the Tathagata, so let’s look at that next. First we need to understand what a Tathagatha is, sometimes called the thus-come one. Tathagatha is one of the ten names of Buddha. The idea is that his awakening has come because he practiced in a way that other sentient beings can also practice, and his going and coming are both done in accordance with dharma. Uchiyama Roshi describes it as things being just as they are, or the suchness of things, but right away he warns us not to think that this suchness is a fixed entity or something we can understand through reason or intellect. He says what we experience when stop grasping and clinging is the reality of life, and there can’t be any other reality outside of that. We can imagine that the samadhi of a tathagatha, a being who does absolutely everything in accordance with dharma, is a pretty powerful thing. The word used here for the Tathagathha’s samadhi is zammai, as in Hokyo-zammai or jijuyu zammai. It points to the highest possible degree of nonseparation: mind and body, subject and object, the person who’s sitting and the universe as a whole. The tathagatha’s awakening goes beyond opposites or dichotomies in the largest possible way, so within that awakening or samadhi is complete tranquility. This is where shoho jisso comes in: the true form of all things is beyond opposites or dichotomies, so they exist within the greatest possible tranquility. Now we have a tathagatha, a being who comes and goes in thusness or suchness, seeing the true form or thusness or suchness of all things. Now we get some sense of the vastness or universality of this kind of awareness and functioning. As long as we have opinions and ideas and comparisons, we’re subject to disturbance. We need to make distinctions so that we can function in the world. Not doing that is spiritual bypassing, and we can’t live only in the world of the absolute. We have to be able to distinguish a red light from a green one, or candy from medicine. It’s when we tie those distinctions to our sense of self and use them to reinforce the five skandhas as permanent thing that we get into trouble. Can we make distinctions without judging? Jakujou at the beginning of the gate statement was aimed at blowing out the fires of delusion as an expression of the stillness of Nirvana, and doing that with this karmic body and mind. Zammai at the end of the statement is the most complete and seamless possible manifestation of the harmony of difference and sameness, or form and emptiness. The practice of letting go of the three poisons and putting out those fires realizes, or makes real, the stillness of Nirvana and is also replete with, or is completely filled with, this stillness without any gaps. In the same moment we’re practicing with this karmic body and mind, embodying awakening in a physical way as bodhisattvas, there is also a complete manifestation of awakening that’s not about a limited human being making individual effort to be better, to be wiser and more compassionate and less messed up. This isn’t some exotic, special circumstance; this is our daily practice, which includes our usual mundane activities, but we do them without grasping and clinging to impermanent things, so we do them in an unhindered way. The concentration of samadhi doesn’t just happen on the cushion. We saw that samadhi is about unifying, bringing together, whether that’s body and mind, subject and object, opposites and dichotomies. Doing our daily activities is the complete expression of that, seeing two sides of one reality and expressing two sides in one action. This is why work is one of the four elements of our practice: zazen, work, study and ritual. We can take work to mean all the daily activities of our lives. As practitioners we see all of those activities as Buddha’s way itself and we do them wholeheartedly. That’s samadi in action: these five skandas are not separate from action as an object -- "me" "doing" "something." That’s also a kind of concentration, where self steps aside and there’s only the action. Practicing like this little by little allows us to respond to what’s needed in this moment without a sort of self-conscious intention or choice. We just see that something needs doing and we do it. We have to be careful -- that’s not the same as zoning out and being on auto-pilot without being aware of sensory input and what’s going on around us. There was a study in Japan in the mid-80s about brain waves during zazen that showed that practitioners are actually MORE aware of stimuli. Researchers made the same sound over and over again, and after awhile, laypeople who were not experienced in zazen blocked that sound. They became habituated to it, but experienced monks kept hearing each sound clearly and they they remained dehabituated. Now, we all know what it’s like to try to sit when a clock is ticking or a fan is knocking or something. It’s incredibly annoying! We judge and label and want to shut that out of our awareness, but these dehabituated folks were able to hear each click over and over without deciding it was irritating and turning it off. They were taking in all the sensory input without coming to conclusion about what that experience was like for them. In other words, they eliminated distraction but not by eliminating the sound. They had the stillness and silence of jakujo right in the midst of hearing a repetitive, annoying noise. I find that a really helpful image of what happens with our day to day habituated thinking. We see the same thing, come to the same conclusion or opinion, take the same action over and over again in our lives and we don’t even realize we’re doing it. However, the bodhisattva sees each occurance with fresh eyes, takes in the entirety of the moment and the circumstances, and takes the best action, regardless of whether that falls into a well worn track or not. Zammai is simply being free from distraction. It’s called concentration, but it’s not about just staring hard at one thing, or sitting unmoving in a dark and quiet room. It’s concentration that doesn’t have purpose or really even an object. It seems impossible to concentrate on everything rather than on one thing, but that’s one way to think about not being distracted by our own discursive stuff. We don’t need to have a self-conscious intention or goal; we just do everything according to suchness or thusness or dharma, just like the Tathagatha. In the late 16th and early 17th century there was an important teacher called Menzan Zuiho. He was one of a group of reformers who thought Soto Zen had wandered away from what Dogen taught and wanted to return everyone to those teachings and practices. He wrote about zammai, and this is Okumura Roshi’s translation; this is a bit long, but I think it’s helpful. Now I will explain in detail the way to clarify and rely on this samādhi. This is done simply by not clouding the light of your Self. When the light of the Self is clear, you follow neither dullness nor distraction. The Third Ancestor said (in Xinxinming), “When the cloudless light illuminates itself, there is no need to make mental struggle, there is no waste of energy (It is empty, clear, and self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power).” This is the vital point of the practice-enlightenment of this samādhi. “The cloudless light illuminates itself” means the light of the Self shines brightly. “Not to make mental struggle” means not to add the illusory mind’s discrimination to the reality. When you make mental struggle, the light becomes illusory mind, and brightness becomes darkness. If you do not make mental struggle, the darkness itself becomes the Self illumination of the light. This is similar to the light of a jewel illuminating the jewel itself. For example, it is like the light of the sun or the moon illuminating everything – mountains and rivers, human beings and dogs, etc., equally, without differentiation or evaluation. Also, a mirror reflects everything without bothering to discriminate. Just keep the light [of the Self] unclouded, without being concerned with the discrimination of objects. This is the meaning of Hongzhi Chanshi’s expression in his Zazenshin: “The be-all (essential function) of the Buddhas and the end-all (functional essence) of the Ancestors; knowing without touching things, illuminating without facing objects.” When you practice and learn the reality of zazen thoroughly, the frozen blockage of illusory mind will naturally melt away. If you think that you have cut off illusory mind, instead of simply clarifying how illusory mind melts, illusory mind will come up again, as though you had cut the stem of a blade of grass or the trunk of a tree and left the root alive. This is very natural. (2) That last part is really important. If we just cut off the functioning of our minds, the sensory input, the thinking process, it will just keep coming back. Not having thoughts or mental functions isn’t the point of zazen and it’s not what we do. There’s no forcing or suppression or struggling with our minds and trying to get our own way -- there should be nothing forced in this practice. Sometimes we make a lot of effort, and our bodies get tired, and practice is not so easy, but it’s never about brute force. Instead we clarify how the mind works, how it grabs sensory input and makes a judgement and writes a story and creates self. Then we can let the mind go on doing what it needs to do to keep us alive and support our bodhisattva work in the world, but we don’t get distracted and tangled up. We can know without touching things and illuminate without facing objects. Yhat’s a famous phrase -- we can encounter and work with whatever comes our way without poking our heads in and making things messy. In this passage we have two other well known images for zammai. One is the sunlight that shines equally on everything; the other is the mirror that reflects everything equally. Both of these happen without the sun or the mirror making a discrimination between what gets illuminated or reflected. There’s no frozen blockage or mental struggle or wasted energy. When I first read this gate statement, I set out to determine what the difference was between the first samadi and the second one, between jakujo and zammai. Why was it written this way, using two different words, setting up one as a gateway to the other? Of course, in the largest sense there isn’t a difference because samadhi is beyond conceptualization, and any way we try to describe it is necessarily limited. If we say that jakujo leads to zammai, it’s too linear because awakening is already here all the time -- but provisionally, what can we take from this statement? I think we’re back to Dogen’s great doubt. If awakening is already here all the time, why do we have to practice? Ultimately he understands that while awakening is here, we can’t always act in accordance with that awakening. We can’t always act like Tathagathas, moving through the world according to suchness or dharma. Too often we’re pulled around by our habituated thinking and our self-clinging, and we forget about what Buddha taught. The gate statement says jakujo realizes or establishes zammai. Working to extinguish the fires of the three poisons realizes or makes real the awakening that’s already here. It’s how we embody the dharma as bodhisattvas in our work. Zazen, work, study and ritual all help us in that regard. In zazen, we drop off body and mind and concentrate on everything without distraction. In work, we actually manifest awakening by puting aside small self and becoming completely one with whatever activity we’re doing, - so the activity is doing the activity without our desire for reward getting in the way. In study, we turn to the teachings and guidelines of those who’ve been on this path longer that we have and ask them to show us what they’ve experienced about going through these dharma gates and settling down to seeing clearly and then embodying that understanding for the benefit of all beings. Through these activities we can enter into the same awakening as the buddhas and ancestors. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The awakening or zammai is there waiting for us to realize it right now with this body and mind. Notes: 1) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 12. 2) The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen's Bendowa, With Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. (2011). United States: Tuttle Publishing, footnote 2. Questions for reflection and discussion:
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About the text
The Ippyakuhachi Homyomon, or 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination, appears as the 11th fascicle of the 12 fascicle version of Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo. Dogen didn't compile the list himself; it's mostly a long quote from another text called the Sutra of Collected Past Deeds of the Buddha. Dogen wrote a final paragraph recommending that we investigate these gates thoroughly. Hoko talked about the gates one by one between 2016 and 2024. She provides material here that can be used by weekly dharma discussion groups as well as for individual study. The 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination
[1] Right belief [2] Pure mind [3] Delight [4] Love and cheerfulness The three forms of behavior [5] Right conduct of the actions of the body [6] Pure conduct of the actions of the mouth [7] Pure conduct of the actions of the mind The six kinds of mindfulness [8] Mindfulness of Buddha [9] Mindfulness of Dharma [10] Mindfulness of Sangha [11] Mindfulness of generosity [12] Mindfulness of precepts [13] Mindfulness of the heavens The four Brahmaviharas [14] Benevolence [15] Compassion [16] Joy [17] Abandonment The four dharma seals [18] Reflection on inconstancy [19] Reflection on suffering [20] Reflection on there being no self [21] Reflection on stillness [22] Repentance [23] Humility [24] Veracity [25] Truth [26] Dharma conduct [27] The Three Devotions [28] Recognition of kindness [29] Repayment of kindness [30] No self-deception [31] To work for living beings [32] To work for the Dharma [33] Awareness of time [34] Inhibition of self-conceit [35] The nonarising of ill-will [36] Being without hindrances [37] Belief and understanding [38] Reflection on impurity [39] Not to quarrel [40] Not being foolish [41] Enjoyment of the meaning of the Dharma [42] Love of Dharma illumination [43] Pursuit of abundant knowledge [44] Right means [45] Knowledge of names and forms [46] The view to expiate causes [47] The mind without enmity and intimacy [48] Hidden expedient means [49] Equality of all elements [50] The sense organs [51] Realization of nonappearance The elements of bodhi: The four abodes of mindfulness [52] The body as an abode of mindfulness [53] Feeling as an abode of mindfulness [54] Mind as an abode of mindfulness [55] The Dharma as an abode of mindfulness [56] The four right exertions [57] The four bases of mystical power The five faculties [58] The faculty of belief [59] The faculty of effort [60] The faculty of mindfulness [61] The faculty of balance [62] The faculty of wisdom The five powers [63] The power of belief [64] The power of effort [65] The power of mindfulness [66] The power of balance [67] The power of wisdom [68] Mindfulness, as a part of the state of truth [69] Examination of Dharma, as a part of the state of truth [70] Effort, as a part of the state of truth [71] Enjoyment, as a part of the state of truth [72] Entrustment as a part of the state of truth [73] The balanced state, as a part of the state of truth [74] Abandonment, as a part of the state of truth The Eightfold Path [75] Right view [76] Right discrimination [77] Right speech [78] Right action [79] Right livelihood [80] Right practice [81] Right mindfulness [82] Right balanced state [83] The bodhi-mind [84] Reliance [85] Right belief [86] Development The six paramitas [87] The dāna pāramitā [88] The precepts pāramitā [89] The forbearance pāramitā. [90] The diligence pāramitā [91] The dhyāna pāramitā [92] The wisdom pāramitā [93] Expedient means [94] The four elements of sociability [95] To teach and guide living beings [96] Acceptance of the right Dharma [97] Accretion of happiness [98] The practice of the balanced state of dhyāna [99] Stillness [100] The wisdom view [101] Entry into the state of unrestricted speech [102] Entry into all conduct [103] Accomplishment of the state of dhāraṇī [104] Attainment of the state of unrestricted speech [105] Endurance of obedient following [106] Attainment of realization of the Dharma of nonappearance [107] The state beyond regressing and straying [108] The wisdom that leads us from one state to another state and, somehow, one more: [109] The state in which water is sprinkled on the head Archives
December 2025
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