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Although the Buddha said he could find no ultimately unchanging entity such as a soul, we are nevertheless tempted to seek something permanent. Craving stability in our lives, we're tempted by the idea that if we dig deep enough, we'll find something that does not change. Unfortunately, were there to be such an entity it would be totally divorced from the reality of our lives.
In the Shobogenzo fascicle Zenki, translated variously as All Functions or Undivided Activity, Dogen looks at how we relate to the existence that we call "my life." He says, "Life is what I am making it, and I am what life is making me." That is to say that I am what I am at this moment because of my involvement with all the things of this moment. Dogen uses the example of sailing in a boat. I am steering the boat and at that moment that is who I am. Simultaneously. the boat is a boat because it is carrying me over the water. It is the active engagement between me and the circumstances of the moment that defines both who I am and the things I interact with. Right now, I am the person typing these words on a laptop that is recognized as a computer through its recording of my fingers striking the keys. The point is that I and all things always work together to create what we call life, and that both of us mutually experience change. There cannot be an unchanging component that exists outside of all things. What we can more fruitfully seek is how to relate to the inevitable changes that are our life so that we "steer the boat" in the best possible manner. Dogen draws the conclusion that "life is the self and the self is life." In each moment of my life, I am engaging in Undivided Activity. This moment is "the manifestation of all functions." Everything participates in this Self that constantly alters in response to the changing components of each moment. We are approaching the end of 2025, a turbulent year of drastic change. Of course, our calendar years are merely an arbitrary structure created to allow us to plan and manage our activity. Time does not end on December 31st and begin anew on January 1st.
Yet the tradition of stepping out of one year and stepping into another offers an opportunity to take stock of our lives. At the Milwaukee Zen Center, and many of our sister sanghas, New Year's Eve is a time for formal repentance. Known in Japanese as sange (to repent), the traditional verse of repentance (Sangemon) is: I now entirely repent all the evil actions I have perpetrated in the past, arising from beginningless greed, anger, and delusion, and manifested through body, speech, and mind. Actions, words and thoughts from the past that we regret are brought to mind and a deep sense of repentance aroused. We write them on pieces of paper and then we burn them, the blaze often accompanied by a chanting of the Heart Sutra. As the bright flames soar upward, we let go of our regrets. We repent in full awareness of our mistakes but without the self-condemnation of guilt. Our repentance becomes the fertile ground for a renewal of vows. Knowing that they are unattainable, yet ready to do our best in the coming year, we renew our bodhisattva vows: Beings are numberless, I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them. The Buddha Way is unsurpassable, I vow to realize it. It is my hope that we will enter the coming year with confidence that in our daily lives we will realize the compassion, joy, and understanding of the Buddha Way. When we stumble, we will repent, get up again and step forward, following the vows that lead us into a fresh new day. The Nirvana Sutra says, "all sentient beings without exception have the Buddha nature," a potential goodness that we can bring forth through practice. Remembering this definition, we apply it to Dogen's teaching in Shobogenzo Bussho that we are Buddha nature and led by this misunderstanding are faced with the question, "If we are Buddha nature, why is there such evil in the world?"
Dogen, however, understood "sentient beings" to mean "entire being," a whole so vast that it contains both being and non-being, both good and evil, and is an entity beyond comprehension, for "entire being'' encompasses comprehension itself. We cannot know it because we are it and even time is subsumed, for "entire being" is always Now. Buddha nature is Everything. Dogen also says of Shakyamuni's words, "It is his utterance of 'What is this that thus comes?", the vital question Huineng posed to Nanyueh. Nanyueh answered, "The moment I said it was 'this', I'd miss the mark completely." Huineng asked if we should engage in practice and realization and Nanyueh answered, yes, but they must not be defiled. Huineng agreed that, undefiled, they were "thus." Later, Dogen points out that "What" is the best we can do to describe the mystery of Buddha nature and that it comes as "thus." We can only allude to the essence of things as "thus." Buddha-nature consists of entities in their essential thusness and this is our problem as human beings, for our basic thusness is distorted by the grasping, clinging, hating and despising that add brutal ugliness to entire being/Buddha-nature. To help correct this, Shakyamuni taught the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path. This is why our practice of shikantaza is so helpful, for as we let go of thoughts, we move closer to a life of thusness free from preconceived notions, less driven by greed and aversion. In shikantaza, we taste being "thus" in this present moment of Buddha-nature. The Lotus Sutra tells us that only buddhas together with buddhas can know the reality of all beings. The universe is too vast for us humans to grasp. Yet the reality of my nature is in a certain sense a microcosm of the reality of all beings, for we exist together within that vast web of interdependence called Indra's Net.
Given this, an understanding of my reality may open the door to an understanding of the reality of all things. So, who am I? The most noticeable thing about me is that I am not now who I was, although the thread of memory connects us. My reality is change, constant change, both fast and slow. To be me is to be change, always someone new. And yet, I remain a distinct person at each instant. I am this person and no other. For change to occur, there must be something there to change. The Heart Sutra expresses this ultimate reality as: "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form." Emptiness (lack of fixed nature) is an attribute of form that opens it to the possibility of change and form is necessary if lack of fixed nature (emptiness) is to manifest. Furthermore, as I become aware that my existence is dependent upon others and that my actions, my responses, have an incalculable impact on others, I become aware that the true nature of all things is that we exist and change together. And suffer together as well. Buddha appeared in the world to alleviate our suffering by showing us how to exist together with wisdom and compassion grounded in an understanding of the true nature of reality. Buddha taught that it is our resistance to change and our desperate attempts to assert our independence from the mutuality of our existence that lie at the root of our suffering. Yes, only buddhas together with buddhas can know the vast reality of all beings, but as I come to understand the reality of my personal being, my compassion grows for all the beings with whom I share this ceaselessly transforming life. What is the truth of our existence? In the Buddha's time, thinkers agreed that to be defined as "existing" something must meet certain criteria: it must stand alone with an essential self-nature that is unchanging and permanent. When the Buddha taught that everything comes into being dependent upon causes and conditions and all things are impermanent, it was inferred that the apparent existence of things was therefore an illusion, that the truth is that nothing truly exists.
However, the great 3rd century CE Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna suggested that there are in fact two truths concerning the nature of our existence. The first, or Conventional Truth, is that of our everyday experience: tables and chairs, flowers and fruit, cars and airplanes. These things appear to have discrete and solid existence in this moment. My laptop does not vanish as I write. The second, or Ultimate Truth, points to the fundamental impermanence of all things and their complete interdependence. Does this mean that the tree outside my window is an illusion? That it does not exist? Of course not. The mistake is to see permanence and independence as defining existence. The tree exists right now, regardless of its eventual demise. Nagarjuna, pointing out how both truths illuminate our life, wrote: "Without a foundation in the conventional truth, the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved." It is by closely examining our world's conventional existence that we uncover the ultimate truth of its nature as impermanent and interdependent. And it is the ultimate truth of lack of a permanent nature that offers us the freedom to change, to be free of destructive habits, and it is the ultimate truth of interdependence that tells us that we live in connection with others. The two truths support one reality of a liberated, evolving existence. The word "dharma" has multiple meanings: the truth of how things are, the Buddha's teachings about this truth, and the myriad elements of existence that embody this truth. Dharma as the Buddha's teachings comes to us as sutras, written documents that have come down to us over thousands of years as expressions of the Buddha's understanding of the nature of reality. The study of such sutras as the Lotus Sutra and the Heart Sutra is an integral part of our practice.
But are written words the only sutras? In the Shobogenzo fascicle "Reading a Sutra" (Kankin), Dogen quotes the following exchange: "Yunju, Great Master Hongjue of Mt. Yunju, once saw a monk silently reading a sutra in his room. He asked the monk through the window, "Reverend, what sutra are you reading? The monk said, "The Vimalakirti Sutra." Yunju said, "I am not asking you about The Vimalakirti Sutra. What sutra are you reading?" "Reading" is an interesting word. It can mean comprehending the meaning of or discovering information about something by interpreting written characters, but it is not limited to that. "I read it on your face," we say. The important point is close attention and receptiveness to what we encounter. While words offer the Buddha's teachings about the dharma, the dharmas themselves offer the sutra of their true reality. To study the Buddha Way is to read the sutra of everything we encounter and every breath we take. It is said that at Yunju's words the monk had a realization. Perhaps he exclaimed with wonder, "I'm reading the sutra of my life." Every action we take, every joy, every grief, every leaf on every tree --each moment offers the sutra of our ever-changing, interdependent lives. To practice the Way is to read that sutra with compassion. Moreover, we are not only reading the sutra of our lives; we are also writing it. Hopefully, what we write will be helpful to others as they, too, study the Great Sutra of Life. The Heart Sutra says, "Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form," and this is often where the confusion begins. How can two things be the same? The answer is that they are not "things" at all in the ultimate sense. They are, rather, two elements of a single process, that of impermanence. Emptiness describes the lack of permanent elements in Form.
Buddhism teaches that all things are empty of "own being" which is to say that nothing comes into being in isolation, but rather as a response to myriad causal factors. Nothing has fixed, unchanging nature, but exists as a response to conditions. Here, too, lies a danger of misconception and some fall into the trap of defining "existence" as meaning permanence and therefore saying that nothing exists, everything is an illusion. The illusion, in fact, is that of permanence. A clearer understanding of "existence" is as a continuous process of change. Seeds mature into plants, children grow into adults. To exist is to change. Nothing stays as it is, although we see each stage as distinct and name it as such. As the Heart Sutra reminds us, the continuous alteration of form demonstrates its emptiness of anything like a fixed state of being that would be resistant to change. When I think of something as empty--empty glasses, empty bowls, empty pails --I think of them as ready to be filled. When I see an image on my screen dissolve so that another may appear, it feels as though the screen had briefly emptied to be ready for the new image. Something empty is ready to be filled. Perhaps one way to look at the nature of all things is that because they have no fixed nature, they are ready to participate in the dance of impermanence and interdependence that we call life. What Buddhism calls Emptiness might perhaps be more positively termed Readiness. Readiness (for change) is the nature of all things. All things are Ready. When we first approach Zen practice, we may think that practice leads to enlightenment. But in Bendowa, Dogen Zenji states that "In Buddhadharma, practice and enlightenment are one and the same." This "practice-enlightenment" may seem very mysterious.
Some translations instead use the term "practice-realization," and this offers a doorway to understanding. If we think of enlightenment as the realization of a mutually beneficial relationship among all things, we can understand how a practice embodying such a relationship is seen as realization. For Soto Zen, shikantaza, "just sitting," is the truest form of practice-realization. Letting go of thoughts, we experience the moments before or between thoughts where we are in undefiled relationship to all things. Uchiyama Roshi's emphasis on zazen as the most valuable form of realization makes sense. Yet questions arise for those whose lives are filled with work and family or for whom zazen is physically difficult. Is it relentless sitting of zazen alone that realizes enlightenment? What about the times off the cushion? According to one Chinese master, "Ordinary mind is the Way." We must be very careful here, for this is not our everyday, delusion-filled mind. It is the mind that exists undefiled before illusions arise, what Dogen describes as "beginner's mind, which transmits the undivided original practice, is exactly attaining undivided original enlightenment in the ground of nonfabrication." The beginner's mind, the ordinary mind, does not fabricate delusory thoughts that distort our relationship to the whole. Zazen is a wondrous method of practice-realization and essential for practice of the Way, but alone it is not enough. We must encounter every moment with a beginner's mind free from preconceptions. Practice-realization is to truly ask, "What is this?" and open the door to enlightenment in clear-sighted interdependence with the world we live in. As we study the Buddha Way, enlightenment looms large on our horizon. After all, that is what happened to Shakyamuni when he saw the morning star, an experience also called awakening. As the centuries progressed, words developed to describe what this experience of awakening was: kensho- to see one's true nature, or satori - intuitive apprehension of the nature of reality that transcends conceptual thought.
Yet, it seems to me that over time a striving for an experience called '"enlightenment" overshadowed a desire to awaken to something heretofore hidden. The word "enlightenment" became synonymous with the big bang and not what it created. Enlightenment became something to get that would assure endless well-being. And yet, in a seeming contradiction we are told that there is nothing to get, that the truth of impermanence negates any attempt to hold onto things. Dogen resolved this dilemma by defining what we call enlightenment not as something to get, but as all things existing in a mutually dependent relationship. Enlightenment is not something we get, it is something we become, joining enlightenment's interdependent world. That is what Shakyamuni did when he saw the morning star and said, "I and the great earth and beings simultaneously achieve the Way." He was no longer separate. This is hard to do, because our very existence has depended on standing outside of things to think about and control them, yet it is thoughts that separate us from the enlightenment of what Thich Nhat Hanh called "inter-being." For Dogen, the gate to enlightenment is the practice of shikantaza, in which we sit in stillness, let go of thoughts, drop conceptual barriers and join the inter-being of all things. He speaks of this in Bendowa, one of his earliest writings: "The whole-hearted practice of the Way that I am talking about allows all things to exist in enlightenment and enables us to live oneness in the path of emancipation." Referring to our practice of shikantaza (just sitting), Kodo Sawaki Roshi famously called it "good for nothing." These words have a slightly negative ring in English, where we call a useless person a good-for-nothing. However, Shohaku Okumura Roshi recently mentioned that this was Sawaki Roshi's interpretation of the Japanese term "mushotoku," which can be translated as "no-gaining," and I was reminded of a deeply inspiring section of the Heart Sutra.
The Heart Sutra tells us that due to the constantly changing nature of existence, nothing has a permanent, fixed nature that can be accurately captured by naming it. Nothing can be grasped, gained or held fast to; there is no attainment. The sutra states further: "With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajna paramita and the mind is without hindrance. Without hindrance, there is no fear. Far beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirvana." This takes place in shikantaza, where we sit upright facing the wall, letting go of thoughts. In this practice of no-gaining, we let our thoughts go and sit quietly in a space before thinking where we experience simple being. The sutra goes on to say that, freed of attainment, we rely on prajna paramita, the wisdom of appropriate relationships. Prajna is sometimes referred to as radiant light illuminating all things, bringing them into existence. Yet we do not utilize prajna, this wisdom of right relationships, because our thoughts and discrimination get in the way. Our desire to attain, to gain, to keep, distorts our relationship to other things within the great network of interdependence. Yet we, like everything else, are ourselves this light of constantly renewing relationships and can exhibit its radiance in our daily lives if we learn to respond without the distortion of views, preferences and desires for gain. Sitting quietly in shikantaza, we practice letting go. |
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