Branching Streams: Shikantaza, Koan, and Integrated Zen

After the exchange the other day with Jundo about shikantaza and koan introspection, I pulled out Hee-Jin Kim’s Dogen on Meditation and Thinking and the passage that I offer at the bottom of this post struck me as particularly on point, expressing Dogen’s teaching very well, although in rather difficult language. I wished that Katagiri Roshi were still alive so that he could see this and we could schmooze it around.

I think what we’re talking about is integrated practice or compartmentalizing in the name of Zen. If so, it is a serious issue and I want to reflect more about it before saying much. 

Reminds me that I’ve received an invitation from the Zen Forum International to debate the issue of shikantaza and koans. I think that dharma debates are a good idea, really, as debating seems to have moved along the acculturation of the dharma in India and then from India to East Asia.

Although I appreciated being asked, I’ve decided not to participate, because of all the other things I’ve got cooking right now (and wanting to get another book project started). Also, part of the proposed format calls for people logging into Zen Forum International to vote on who’s winning. That just doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t think dharma debates should be decided by number of votes.

So I’ll continue sharing my views here on this blog (and inflicting my students with them), at least for the time being.

In that spirit, before I offer the Hee-Jin Kim passage, I would like to warm up to the topic with a couple poems from Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani’s incredible book, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikiba, Woman of the Ancient Court of Japan. These poems strike me as demonstrating the point – one taste rain leaving nothing out:

On the night of the sixth [at a temple retreat], the sound of the night monk’s voice reciting the Sutras mingled with the sound of the incessant rain, and truly this seemed to be a world of dreams…

Should I leave this burning house
of ceaseless thought
the one taste rain
falling upon my skin? (p. 140)

(Note: I’ve futzed with the translation of the third line based on the translator’s notes.)

Watching the moon
at dawn,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely,
no part left out. (p. 89)

And now for Kim (pointer: take a breath after each sentence to ease the digestion):

“Language, thinking, and reason constitute the key to both zazen and koan study within Dogen’s praxis-oriented Zen. The koan’s and zazen’s function is not to excoriate and abandon the intellect and its words and letters, but rather to liberate the restore them in the Zen enterprise.

“In short, enlightenment is not brought about by direct intuition (or transcendent wisdom) supplanting the intellect and its tools, but in and through their collaboration and corroboration in search of the expressible in deeds, words, and thoughts for a given situation (religious and secular). Zazen and koan in this respect strive for the same salvific aspiration of Zen.

“The language of the old paradigm koan becomes a living force in the workings of the koan realized in life (genjo koan). With their reclaimed legitimacy in Zen, language, thinking, and reason now enable practitioners to probe duality and nonduality, weighing emptiness, and negotiate the Way. Method and realization, rationality and spirituality, thinking and praxis, go hand-in-hand in Dogen’s Zen….”
– P. 78, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking