Nyoho clothing
Accurately preserving, embodying
and transmitting Kodo Sawaki’s teachings about sewing, wearing and encountering Buddha’s robe Click the symbol above for resources for studying, encountering and making Buddha's robe
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Ehou ichinyo 衣法一如: kesa and dharma are one
Teachings about ehou ichinyo come from two fascicles of the Shobogenzo: Dene (Transmission of the robe) and Kesa Kudoku (Merit of the robe). Dogen makes the point that Buddha’s robe and Buddha’s teaching are the same. There was renewed interest in these teachings in the late Tokugawa (17th to mid 19th centuries), and in response some practitioners started to study not only the Shobogenzo but the Vinaya, the very early regulations that provide guidelines about how we should make and wear Buddha’s robe. All of that set the stage for Sawaki Roshi's 20th century nyoho-e movement. While these teachings are much bigger than Sanshin, we have a particular interest in them because our own ancestor was a major figure in this movement. It seems that many people in the West are unaware that Kodo Sawaki was one of the key figures who taught and encouraged practitioners in Japan to sew robes by hand in specific ways. He was itinerant and traveled around a bit outside of the Sotoshu training system promoting this sewing practice, while Eko Hashimoto worked to promote it within training temples with novices. Sawaki Roshi wrote: “Now then, what is the relationship between the kesa and our own school’s doctrinal principles? It is simply that the kesa and the Buddha Dharma are One Thusness.” He goes on to quote a verse: “The merit of the kesa is immense. All buddhas of the three times use the kesa as armor to protect themselves from delusion. All sages in the ten directions use it as a raft to cross the ocean of life and death.” According to this, the kesa is the same as practice and awakening. It’s how we liberate ourselves from delusion and from the birth and death of samsara. He concludes, “Wearing the kesa is itself the completion of the most important matter and the arrival at the ultimate place.” When we do the robe chant, we say that the robe is a formless field of merit. Yes, there is a physical piece of cloth, but something else is happening too. One of the elements of nyoho in general, or things made in accordance with the dharma, is that each thing is an individual thing, and it’s also only thing: there’s a cup, and it’s also the only cup. It’s another way of saying that the robe is itself a complete manifestation of practice or of the dharma. There’s a rakusu, and it’s the only rakusu. It covers everything, not separate from the entire Buddha way. In Kesa-kudoku, Dogen talks about the robe being handed down from buddha to buddha. “It is said that Shakyamuni, who was six feet tall, transmitted the robe to Maitreya, who was 1,000 feet tall, but the kesa was neither too long nor too short.” When we first receive a robe in a precepts ceremony, we put it on our heads and do the robe chant before putting it on. The next day, when we put it on, we put it on our heads and receive it again. We receive it every time we put it on: that robe is being handed down from Shakyamuni every time. This is the robe as Buddha’s teaching itself; it has no fixed size and fits everyone. Both Menzan Zuiho and Sawaki Roshi say that not only the robe as a whole but each stitch of the robe is a complete manifestation of the dharma. In early Buddhism, robes were made from rags rather than from new material. Monks would cut out the good parts of the fabric and discard the stained or damaged parts. Today, we cut up new material into pieces so that fabric becomes useless for anything else – it has no monetary value. Sawaki Roshi says this is also a practice of cutting off delusion and attachment. That cutting practice makes the fabric pure no matter what the materials really are. If you can’t cut off delusion, then even though you’re sewing Buddha’s robe, it’s still impure. It’s just like the rest of our lives: if we’re moving through the world full of greed, anger and ignorance, then no matter what wonderful Buddhist activity we’re doing, whether or not we’re doing zazen, work, study and ritual, there’s still something that’s gone awry. Sawaki Roshi says, “Only when likes and dislikes are abandoned and hating and loving have been discarded, does nyoho-e (robe of the Dharma of Thusness) manifest itself before us.” All this makes robe a lot more than just a membership badge in a sangha or a symbol of commitment to practice. The robe is a direct manifestation of the dharma. Practitioners have all kinds of sentimental attachment to robes. “I sweated blood over this thing and finally got it done.” “My teacher wrote on it.” “My teacher wore it.” “The ceremony was really special and now I feel like someone special too.” Those are understandable human responses, but that’s not the whole story. Taking on living by precepts and wearing the robe is complete immersion in the dharma, because ehou ichinyo, the robe and the dharma are one. When we put it on, that is in itself arriving at awakening. If we’re wearing a robe and still looking for the Buddha or the dharma somewhere else, we’ve gone off the rails. We’re actually wearing the dharma right on our bodies; we’re covered in dharma, which if course is also true at any time. Echu Kyuma was a 20th century scholar of this nyoho-e tradition, and he wrote a famous book called Kesa no Kenkyu, or Study of the Okesa, published in 1967. He says: If we take up wearing the kesa yet feel there is something lacking or that there is something else to seek, then that is nothing more than the desperation of the secular self. When one puts on the kesa and sits in zazen, the dharma of the buddha ancestors is complete. Without question, wearing the kesa is the buddha eye turning on itself. In this way, when one puts on the kesa, one’s own self is wrapped in the buddhadharma. Without measure, all things are painted in the color of the buddhadharma; they have always been wearing the kesa. |
