Hoko's key messages about dotoku in the Sanshin style

You’re probably familiar with the expression that Zen is a transmission beyond words and letters.  It’s usually taken to mean that because words are limited they can’t fully express the dharma.  There’s also the problem of dualism, that as soon as we say this is awakening or this is buddha, we’re implying that there is something which is not awakening or buddha, and yet we also say that there is nothing outside of the buddha way or nowhere awakening doesn’t reach.

Thus, traditionally words and language have been seen as a problem for us.  However, Dogen says that awakened beings can and do express the dharma in their own words, not by copying what a teacher or someone else has said, or something that was appropriate yesterday.  It’s an expression for this moment that arises in this moment, and this is in fact the mark of someone who really deeply understands the dharma.  This is verification.

What we express with words suggests and includes also the Way that hasn’t been expressed, and we can understand that this activity isn’t so much what an individual human being is expressing but what the universe is expressing.  Dogen doesn’t rank expressions of the dharma as better or worse.  One person’s expression might be more subtle, more learned or more interesting than another's, but Dogen says they’re all complete expressions of the dharma, whether you’ve been practicing for a week or for many years.

By now you’ll recognize the pattern in the teaching that there is speaking, there is silence, and there is going beyond speaking and silence, and that none of these opposes, obstructs or negates the others.  We might be completely silent sitting zazen, but that doesn’t mean we’re not completely expressing the dharma.  Dogen tells us not to equate speechlessness with not communicating.

If we can only express 80% of reality through words but we do that action of expressing in a completely selfless way, 100% has been expressed.  There is no point at which the universe stops expressing itself completely, but even if somehow we can express the 100% of the dharma in words, if we can’t actualize the dharma in our lives and presence and action, then we’ve still fallen short of perfectly expressing the dharma.

Until we really understand, someone can ask a dharma question and we can give an answer that’s “right” without that understanding being actualized.  If someone asks what Okumura Roshi means by one = 0 = infinity, you might be able to explain it “correctly” but if you really live in that space of one = 0 = infinity, your expression is more than the verbal answer; your expression is your whole life.

In people who have been practicing a long time, dharma and wisdom and awakening are so deeply ingrained that all of their actions express them.  It’s not that they’re trying to convey something, but that there is no obstruction to the universe expressing itself moment by moment.  These are people who have gone beyond the need to make an effort to express the dharma.  If someone asks, "How do you express it?" they don’t need to flip a switch or shift into some other mode of living.  Everything they do already says it, whether using words or not.

Of course, "expression" includes someone receiving that expression; it’s not a one-way street.  Because of interconnectedness, someone is receiving whatever we put out there, whether we’re aware of that transmission or not.  Expression is another example of complete functioning, with nothing in isolation.

From Sotoshu 

道得 - Dotoku
(Able to Speak)

Dotoku literally means “able to speak.” This word carries a very important meaning within Dogen Zenji’s teachings. The Chinese character do has many meanings ①way, path, road, ②bodhi, awakening, ③say, talk, speak, ④lead, govern. Dou in “dotoku,” means “say,” or “speak.”