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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. We have no empirical evidence that life continues after death, yet our longing to continue is so extraordinarily powerful that all major religions posit some form of ongoing existence. In the case of Buddhism, this is rebirth. "Rebirth" is preferred to "reincarnation," for today's being is a unique creation of its context and cannot be replicated under new circumstances. Yet, it is suggested that something of what exists today may be reborn.
Within Buddhist teachings the question of rebirth is filled with contradictions. The earliest teachings that set forth the goal of never returning to this life of samsara are set against the reward and punishment system of karma that can require many lives to reach fulfillment. The teachings that mind and body are one and cease together at death are set against the idea that there is a transfer of energy like that when one candle flame ignites another. These theories have been helpful to people for thousands of years and should not be discounted, but from my personal perspective one thing seems certain. What I know as "me" will not reappear. Whatever may be reborn will not be the person named Tonen and thus the arguments lose their relevance for me. Still, within this interdependent world my intention must be to lead as beneficial a life as possible, for my karmic actions do bear fruit in the here and now. They determine who I really am. It is my actions that define what I call "myself." My actions also ripple forward in a stream of cause and effect that goes on forever. I was born as the result of uncountable actions and though I will die, who I have been will impact numberless future lives. This small self will have made its contribution to that great stream of life we sometimes call the Self. My hope is that my actions will be of benefit both today and hundreds of years from now. The word "dharma" has several meanings, but the one I hope to examine in these brief writings is reality as it is, not what we want it to be nor what our mind grasps too readily. To study the dharma is to see clearly the complex interrelationships among all things, to look closely at what it means to be alive.
In my efforts to understand who I am in myself and what I am in relationship to the whole universe I find myself turning to lines from Faith in Mind, attributed to the Third Ancestor, Jianzhi Sengcan, as translated by Andy Ferguson : Just say "not two", for in "not two, all things are united and there is nothing not included." To be "not two" means things cannot be separated, but neither does it mean that everything is "one" for if that were so, there would be nothing but an undifferentiated blob. So how do I understand myself in relation to the world I live in? I am unique, there is no one in the world exactly like me, yet my uniqueness has been fashioned, in part, by my experience of an interdependent existence. My function within the whole has defined my unique contribution as a part within that whole. I cannot be "me" without the whole and the "whole" cannot exist without me. A steering wheel is only a steering wheel within the car that it steers, a car that is only a car because of the mutual functioning of all its parts. I get up in the morning within a life that is both uniquely my own and simultaneously critical to a world that exists only because I am part of it. I make this world and this world makes me. Every day I put on my socks and accept my role within this world, hoping it will be beneficial. |
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