What is Dharma Transmission?

Tetsugan, Bodhi, P and I went to Omaha to visit Nonin and Elizabeth (and dogs Buddy and Sammy) for the 4th. I think we all had a lovely time. Bodhi had a playfest with Buddy and Sammy, so much so that his feet hardly touched the ground as in the picture above. Hanging out with Nonin, a true dharma friend for many years, is wonderful for me, especially when we push back and forth about the dharma. Late into the night we exchanged some of our concerns about the transmission of the dharma.

And tonight at Transforming Through Play Temple, we’ll be picking up some of the same themes while studying the following lines from the Genjokoan that deal with transmission:

When a person first seeks after the dharma, the person becomes far from the boundary of the dharma. When the dharma is correctly transmitted to the self, [you are] immediately the original person.

Recently I wrote about the necessary heightening of alienation that marks the beginning of real practice when the Way Seeking Mind is first aroused (click here for that post). Today I’ll introduce the second sentence – the transmission of dharma – and then write again tomorrow following our study session.

The first thing that I’m struck by today is how quickly Dogen moves from beginning practice to transmission, from alienation to fulfillment, as quickly as the movement from inhalation to exhalation.

Bokusan has this:

Only when you forget yourself and forget buddhadharma, is dharma transmitted to you…. You understand that even before taking one step there was already the original face and eye, the complete buddhadharma, abiding where Way Seeking Mind first arose. This cannot be understood without twenty or thirty years of endeavor in the face of extreme hardship.

Next to the part about extreme hardship (which I’ll come back to tomorrow), what strikes me here is how in Bokusan’s commentary (as well as in Sen’ne and Kyogo’s Notes), no mention is made of the Dharma Transmission ceremony but only the experience of confirmation.

IMHO, these two are often conflated in contemporary Soto Zen where Dharma Transmission is sometimes given simply to recognize a person’s long practice, sometimes as an organizational expedient, sometimes simply as full priest ordination so that a person can perform priestly functions. It is as if the ritual is the experience.

A few years ago I dug into the Soto Zen Buddhist Association database and found a stunning range of training time between priest ordination and Dharma Transmission (less than one year to over 35 years with and average of eleven years). I also found the birth year for those with Dharma Transmission was 1945 (64 years old this year) and 1952 for priests-in-training (57 years old this year). The concern for me is that on average, transmission in American Soto is occuring within generations rather than to the next generation.

Another type of survey was conducted by a friend at a teachers’ meeting also several years ago. He asked the group of about 40 Zen teachers from various lineages how many considered enlightenment as they understood it necessary for Dharma Transmission. Less than half raised their hands.

The main point here: although there is an ancient standard where the experiential cycle and the ritual cycle roll together, it is unclear (at best) if that ancient standard is being consistently upheld these days.

Dharma Transmission in American Soto Zen does not appear to mean the same thing from lineage to lineage or even from single transmission to single transmission.

Practitioners beware.