James Myōun Ford Rōshi recently asked, “What would you say are the essential Dōgen texts?”

Below you’ll find my response as well as what I’d say (if he’d asked) about essential Hakuin texts.

But first, a word from Hakuin about the importance of study:

“I have always lamented Zen’s ignorance of the sutras,
Monks plodding ahead aimlessly like blind donkeys.
Even after kenshō, unless you know Buddha’s words,
You’re like a carriage only fitted out with one wheel.
And if you read the scriptures without having kenshō,
You’re only a parrot imitating someone else’s speech” (from Complete Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn, 78).

I don’t want to pick an argument with Hakuin, but I’d say that study is also important before kenshō in order to till the field of the heart-mind, and show us, as Katagiri Roshi said, how stupid we are.

Caution: By the phrase “Zen study” I don’t mean sitting alone and reading Zen books. Zen study, in my view, is done in relationship with a teacher who is steeped in the way. Otherwise, study can simply be a way to stuff your head with buddha knowledge and, as such, can be used to solidify the defensive walls of self.

This kind of solo study is also likely to remain unintegrated with your project of cultivating awakening, and encourage spiritual by-passing. In addition, we large-brained primates have a way of hunting-and-gathering those tidbits that support our present view and dismissing those tidbits that don’t.

Zen study, on the other hand, undertaken in the context of the teacher-student relationship, offers the best way to embody text as Zen practice.

My list of essential Dōgen texts

I intended to limit my list to just ten fascicles, but in the spirit of Dōgen who modified the traditional “Ten Names of Buddha” such that it includes eleven names, I’ve settled on eleven texts. I went with those fascicles that would be most important for people new to Dōgen studies, not because I think that’s all that’s necessary. The first six in my list are mostly early Dōgen with an eye toward the actual practice and the last five are more from his middle period when he fully actualized his genius. Many other fascicles from this period could have been selected.

And truly, in my view, everything Dōgen wrote is essential. But that’s not what James asked. In what he did ask, I assume he meant “essential Dōgen texts from the Shōbōgenzō.” Other texts, Record of Things Heard, trs. Cleary (Zuimonki), Dōgen’s Extensive Record, trs. Okumura and Leighton (Eihei koroku), and “The Record Celebrating the Jewel,” see Takashi James Kodera: Dogen’s Formative Years in China, are also essential Dōgen. 

One well-known text I don’t recommend is “Upright Cultivating Verification” (Shushogi), because it is a cut-and-paste, greatest-hits job from the late 1800’s. Granted it was (and remains) an important text for the Japanese Sōtō denomination, but because it doesn’t address zazen (no mention) or verification (one mention in the title), it is of limited use for students today.

Below I’ve used the Tanahashi English titles for simplicity and have added a brief comment about why I think the fascicle is essential. By the way, it’s always helpful to look at more than one translation and we now have several complete versions available. Here it is:

1. “Guidelines for Studying the Way:” This is an early Dōgen text, written for his training students, and has ten essential points for practice, presented in a more rough and raw manner than fully cooked later Dōgen.
2. “Universal Recommendations for Zazen:” One of Dōgen’s two meditation manuals. Indispensable for cultivating verification. 
3. “On the Endeavor of the Way:” This is also early Dōgen and wasn’t known widely until about 1800, 550 years after the old boy died, so although it didn’t play a role in 2/3’s of Sōtō history, it is widely read today. It contains the powerful and beautiful “Self Enjoyment Samadhi” section and eighteen Q&As. 
4. “Actualizing the Fundamental Point:” Also known by the Japanese title, “Genjokoan.” This short text is widely regarded as a summary of Dōgen’s extensive teaching. It ends with the “fanning kōan” that expresses the resolution of the young Dōgen’s question, “If we’re already buddha, why practice?” It also ends with a powerful Bodhisattva vow/call-to-action.
5. “Instructions on Kitchen Work:” How to roll up our sleeves and put the “Genjokoan” to work in our lives.
6. “The Bodhisattvas Four Methods of Guidance:” Giving, kind speech, beneficial action, identity action – written for householders and a compelling expression of how to take the practice from sitting to living.
7. “The Point of Zazen:” This is the other fascicle devoted explicitly to zazen. Here Dōgen unfolds zazen as the “thinking, not thinking, non thinking kōan,” works through the sudden-gradual issue with the “polishing the tile kōan,” and then distinguishes earnest, vivid sitting (aka, shikantaza) and silent illumination by ever-so-politely reworking the great Hongzhi’s poem on zazen.
8. “Great Practice:” In this fascicle, Dōgen brilliantly comments on the “wild fox kōan.” Essential for just-sitting and kōan-introspection Zen.
9. “Prostrating to Attainment of the Marrow:” In this feisty fascicle, Dōgen most clearly expresses his view on the radical equality of the realization of women and men (and by extension, whatever other demographic divisions we might create). Of course, he also speaks to the importance of bowing.
10. “Refrain from Unwholesome Action:” This is Dōgen’s unpacking of the three pure precepts from the perspective of non-doing (Chinese, “wu-wei”), so reflects the Taoist impact on Zen, and includes commentary on the “bird’s nest roshi kōan.”
11. “Buddha Nature:” This includes thirteen kōans and Dōgen’s commentary with checking questions. It can be seen as a kōan manual.

My list of essential Hakuin texts

There have been many great teachers in the Zen tradition, so studying just one person (e.g., Dōgen), encourages a lopsided understanding – “a carriage only fitted out with one wheel.” Hakuin is often cited along with Dōgen as Japan’s two greatest teachers, in part because they both left extensive writings. Norman Waddell has focussed on translating Hakuin for the last decade or so and so we have quite a wonderful collection of Hakuin available now to the English reader.

Most recently, Waddell published the 743-page Complete Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn. How can a person get a toe-hold in that huge volume of work? In response to this question, I’ve focussed my list on texts that are especially good summaries of Hakuin’s teaching. Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin is another essential text. Here’s my short list: 

1. “119. General Discourse Introductory to a Lecture Meeting on the Lotus Sutra:” Story of Hakuin’s final enlightenment and the thief kōan.
2. “78. Instuctions to the Assembly at the Opening of a Lecture Meeting on the Lotus Sutra:” Probably the clearest summary of Hakuin’s teaching.
3. “310. Ekyū Returned to His Home and Did Not Return for a Long Time. The Reason, I Heard, Was a Bad Cold. I Sent Him This Poem As an Angry Fist to Admonish Him:” Gives a flavor of Hakuin’s rough human feelings and his hands-on approach with this students.
4. “349. Untitled [Eshō-ni]:” Addresses Eshō, a nun and close student, who had a deep realization. Introduces the “East wall strikes west wall” kōan.
5. “348. Thoughts on an Old Friend:” For both Hakuin and Dōgen, the Lotus Sutra was an extraordinarily important sutra. Hakuin shares a bit about why that was in this section.
6. “233. Kannon Bodhisattva, The Sixteen Arhats, and Various Devas:” Kannon bodhisattva was also a powerful inspiration for Hakuin’s verbal and visual teaching. This section also presents the “sound of one hand kōan.”
7. “105. Instructions to the Assembly at the Opening of a Lecture Meeting on the Vimalakirti Sutra:” A short verse that powerfully connects kenshō with the bodhisattva heart.
8. “292. Instructing Senior Priest Tetsu Who Returned for Further Study:” Another verse for a wayward student.

I’m left feeling that both of these lists are quite lacking and incomplete. But, I hope, the lists might give earnest seekers a place to start exploring their own awakened heart-mind by sampling the awakened heart-mind of these two great teachers.

In my last post, I shared a bit of the criticism that Hakuin (1686 – 1768) heaped on the silent illuminationists of his day, generally some practitioners in the Sōtō school. That lead me to reflecting on what Hakuin might have said about today’s practitioners of kōan introspection.

First, it’s important to note that phrases like “kōan introspection” and “Sōtō Zen” are general categories and there is more difference within groups than between groups. That said, one of the ways that practitioners vary within the broad field of kōan introspection is how fierce or how friendly we approach the work.

Hakuin seems to come down strongly on the fierce side of these foci. Here is a common admonition from Hakuin for how to approach a kōan:

“…You must arouse a spirit of fierce, burning determination and bore continuously in throughout the twenty-four hours of the day. Bore in no matter what you are doing, bore deeper and deeper until you completely exhaust all your resources and run completely out of words (1).”

Indeed, in the Complete Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn (CPB), Hakuin uses the word “bore” sixty-two times, almost all in context of how to work with a kōan. “Fierce,” “burning determination,” “run completely out of words.” Hakuin also likens kōan to poison blossoms, thickets of thorn, barriers, and an enemy. He likens the process of kōan introspection to something to “… attack … from the sides, attack … from the front and from the rear, keep gnawing away…, gnawing, gnawing, until there is no place left to gnaw (2).”

How do Zen teachers today approach kōan introspection? One notable and creative example are teachers John Tarrant Roshi, Megan Rundel Sensei, and others of the Pacific Zen Institute. They seem to encourage (among other things) seeing the kōan like a friend or a good dog that might follow you around. You can hear more about this perspective here in a fascinating Q&A that Megan Rundel Sensei led at a non-kōan Sōtō group.

So the contrast between the language used for fierce (bore, attack, gnaw) or friendly (good dog, friend) kōan introspection is striking. What is the right way to approach a kōan?

In my view, there isn’t one right way. However, for most people working with a first kōan, a strong quality of fierceness will be necessary to break through (more about breakthrough, aka, “kenshō” his this talk – Awakening Irrepressible Joy) or the practitioner will waste valuable time spinning in their default setting. And yet, there also isn’t one right way fierceness presents – a twenty-five-year old’s fierce practice will probably look very different from a seventy-five-year old’s.

Even for Hakuin, there seems to have been much more nuance than his fierce words indicate. In his above self-portrait as a young monk (3), for example, the inscription presents how Hakuin thinks others see his fierceness:

Within the zazen hall
I am hated by thousands of Buddhas;
In the company of myriad demons
I crush those who practice false Zen
An annihilate those blind monks who can’t penetrate Mu.
This evil worn-out old shavepate
Adds one more layer of ugliness to ugliness.

These rough words are juxtaposed by the image of a smiling, radiant, gentle, even friendly image of himself as a young monk in samadhi. And within the words themselves, Hakuin’s self-description can be seen as friendly poking – for example, “evil worn-out shavepate” – at the very least, showing a sense of humor about himself and his fierceness.

The painting itself also has a friendly history. “As a monk,” writes Seo, “he had been accused of fathering a child with the daughter of an oil merchant. Although the charges were unfounded, Hakuin took responsibility for the child until the true father spoke up some time later. The child is said to have later become the monk Sōrei, who entered the temple Ryūshō-ji in Iida the year this painting was done. This painting is believed to have been a gift from Hakuin to Sōrei as he entered the temple.”

Ferocious, friendly or something else, what quality of energy do you bring to the practice? Caution: If you only bring your default energy, your habitual way of approaching your life, you may well be sleep walking.

(1) Complete Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn, trs. Norman Waddell, “8. Ascending the Teaching Seat on the Ninth Day.”

(2) Ibid., “187. To Layman Isshii.”

(3) The Sound of One Hand: Painting & Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin, Audrey Yoshiko Seo & Stephen Addiss, p. 42.

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Hakuin (1686 – 1768), the great revitalizer of Rinzai Zen, had blistering criticisms of practitioners of silent-illumination meditation. Indeed, Seo and Addiss identify this as one of the main themes of Hakuin’s teaching, “A continued denunciation of those who contribute to the decline of Zen, particularly through the incorporation of Pure Land Buddhist practices and/or the sole use of ‘silent meditation’ (1).”

However, in The Complete Poison Blossoms in a Thicket of Thorn (CPB), much of the vitriol is directed at silent illumination and the Sōtō monks who practiced it, as well as those in the Rinzai school that had continued the “unborn” approach of Bankei (1622-1693), and not so much at the Pure Land school.

In this post, I’ll dig into the nature of Hakuin’s criticisms and invite the reader to consider whether and how these criticisms apply to our contemporary dharma scene. I plan to return to this latter theme in a future post. First, though, more than a few words about who it is that Hakuin is criticizing.

Disclaimer: we really don’t know much about either Sōtō or Rinzai Zen in the 1700s. Hakuin frequently reports observations like this: “These days in temples throughout the country people are immersing themselves in the dead, stagnant waters of quiescent silent illumination Zen.”

In digging around in the available histories of the period, especially Zen Buddhism a History: Japan, by Heinrich Dumoulin, I find no mention of this thriving community of Sōtō monks practicing silent illumination. What we do know about what was happening then in Sōtō school that has impacted our practice today was the work of Gesshū Sōko (1618–1696), Manzan Dōhaku (1636-1715), Menzan Zuihō (1683-1769), and Gentō Sokuchū (1729-1807), among others, who led a movement to return to the letter of Dōgen’s teaching.

During the previous century, the 1600s, a new influx of Ch’an teachers from China had come to Japan, and became known as the Obakū school, offering the combination of Ch’an and Pure Land popular on the mainland. Most well-known teachers in both the Sōtō and Rinzai schools through the 1600s and 1700s had some direct monastic training within this new school. And as you might expect, it worked for some and not for others, instigating strong reactions and reforms in both the Sōtō and Rinzai schools. The sorting out of Pure Land influences in the Sōtō and Rinzai schools during the 1700s, for example, may have been more a reaction to the Obakū school than to the native Pure Land schools of Japan.

Gentō Sokuchū, as the 50th abbot of Eiheiji, is renowned in Sōtō Zen lore for having set fire to the large mokugyo (fish drum) that was used for chanting, apparently because he also wanted to expunge Pure Land elements from Sōtō Zen. Gentō, by the way, was an older dharma brother of Ryōkan (1758–1831), the great poet monk. Gentō’s efforts to “purify” the Sōtō practice disturbed Ryōkan so much that he literally headed for the hills and lived out his life as a hermit poet (2).

Given that all these monks, including Ryōkan, were into the letter of Dōgen Zen, and that Dōgen in all his writing never mentioned “silent illumination,” it seems unlikely that these teachers or the monastics in their monasteries were framing their practice as “silent illumination.”

Since other sources do not confirm Hakuin’s reports about the prominence of the practice of silent illumination, I got to wondering if Hakuin was constructing a foil, a straw man, in order to contrast his vigorous style of kōan introspection and turning the wheel of the four great vows? After all, it would be consistent with elements of his robust, wholehearted, extroverted style to exaggerate just a tiny bit. If so, he may have been constructing a narrative that followed on the heels of Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163), who was widely regarded, like Hakuin became, of being responsible for reforming the kōan practice of his day, while also emphasizing the importance of kenshō.

On the other hand, Hakuin’s impression of thriving hordes of silent illuminators might come from Hakuin’s early pilgrimage years when he travelled widely, perhaps gaining first-hand knowledge of on-the-ground Sōtō Zen in the early 1700’s that wasn’t maintained in the available records. Which is right? This question, to my knowledge, cannot be answered at this time.

Hakuin does not appear to have been acquainted with the Sōtō monks mentioned above nor another who is well-known today, Tenkei Denson (1648-1735), an advocate for the use of kōan. Tenkei also published a controversial commentary on Dōgen’s Shōbōgenjō, and generally had a view of things much more like Hakuin than his Sōtō contemporaries and received plenty of blow-back for it.

It is also worth noting that not all of the experiences Hakuin reported with Sōtō Zen were negative. Hakuin tells (CPB #423) of spending a practice period at Sōtō temple, Inryō-ji, and having a wonderful experience. Hakuin had glowing words for the Inryō-ji Sōtō teacher, saying, “Daigan Rōshi was an excellent priest, a straight and unbowed branch of the Zen forest, a splendid panicle of rice from its Dharma fields.”

Hakuin was even invited to be the next abbot of Inryō-ji, one of the many indications in the works of Hakuin that the Sōtō and Rinzai schools were not as distinct in his day as they are today.

Finally, in CPB and in other works, Hakuin regularly reports meetings with Sōtō monks who came to Shōin-ji to have practice interviews with him. Based on all this, it seems to me that Hakuin’s criticisms of Sōtō practitioners were based primarily on principle rather than sectarian motivations.

What principles?

Hakuin’s blistering criticisms of silent illumination (Soto) Zen

Hakuin had five main criticisms of silent illumination that he repeated in various forms throughout his career:

1. 1. The zazen of silent illumination Zen is a passive pursuit of a state of perfect purity, and sometimes just a do-nothing practice of zoning out, sleeping, and generally wasting the resources of donors.
   2. Silent illumination Zen takes kensho as something that is inherent, too pure to experience, or already realized, and so denies the reality and significance of a personal experience of kensho.
   3. Because silent illumination Zen denies kensho, it has no inclination for post-satori development like Hakuin’s method for post-satori practice – digging into many koans and sutras.
   4. Silent illumination Zen takes the dharma as a belief system and so the power of such teachings as “formlessness” and “no mind” is lost in doctrinal dharma (as opposed to personally putting it to work).
   5. Silent illumination Zen denied karma and rebirth.

Rather than pedantically explain these one-by-one, I’m inclined to let Hakuin speak for himself. Here are a couple examples where he touches on most of the above themes:

“These days in temples throughout the country people are immersing themselves in the dead, stagnant waters of quiescent silent illumination Zen. Making no headway whatever, achieving nothing at all, they just dilly-dally their lives away in that state, half-alive, half-dead. They reject the essential matter of koan work, shoving it aside without a thought, having no more use for it than a merchant would for a mattock or plow. One of their teachers says things like this: ‘Don’t look at the koan stories; they are a muddy quagmire that will only suck your self-nature under. Don’t look at words or letters; that is a dense thicket filled with entangling vines that will strangle all the life from your Zen spirit. Your self-nature has no love for words and letters. It has no fondness for koans. It wants simply to retain an easy tranquility, a free and unrestricted state of mind. That is the true and authentic meaning of Zen’s direct pointing. The self-nature that is inborn in each and every person is originally perfectly clear, free, and unrestricted (3).'”

and

“There are priests today who pride themselves on teaching the doctrine of silent illumination, do-nothing Zen. They dispense with all acts that benefit either themselves or others. They preach the doctrine of no-mind while their minds are filled with thought, they seek formlessness while still clutching tightly to form. They are content when they have located a temple with comfortable quarters and plenty to eat, and there they sleep their lives vainly away in a state of ignorance (4).”

If you are a follower of Sōtō Zen, especially in a lineage that conflates silent illumination with shikantaza (aka, “just sitting”), Hakuin’s criticism might seem startling and even offensive to you. “Anyway,” you might say, “just because Hakuin was critical of some Sōtō Zen practice, doesn’t mean that his criticisms were valid or still are today.”

I agree. A question for Sōtō Zen practitioners in our times, though, is simple – are they?

(1) The Sound of One Hand: Painting and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin, Audrey Yoshiko Seo and Stephen Addiss, pp. 8-9.

(2) See “Emerging from Nonduality: Kōan Practice in the Rinzai Tradition Since Hakuin,” by Michel Mohr, in The Kōan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism, p. 245.

(3) CPB, “189. Reply to Priest Rempō of Keirin-ji.”

(4) CPB, “429. Gudō’s Lingering Radiance.”

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Currently, there is much talk in the Zen blog world about how old one needs to be to teach Zen. See James Myoun Ford’s post here.

I’ll only get into a part of the issue, of course, because I’m doing a “Hakuin-focus blog year.” In that spirit, I’ll get around to what seems to have been his view on this and some hopefully-timely advice as well. But first the issue of what “wisdom” is.

Partly, this is a translation issue and shows how translation impacts how we think. Those who see “wisdom” as something acquired with age, something the English word certainly suggests (“the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment”), also then tend to think that only an older person should teach Zen or anything that is about wisdom.

However, the word that’s generally being translated as “wisdom” is “prajna.” Buswell and Lopez in their wonderful The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism say that it is “…perhaps closer to ‘gnosis’ (‘knowledge of spiritual mysteries’), ‘awareness,’ and in some contexts ‘cognition’; the term has the general sense of accurate and precise understanding, but is used most often to refer to an understanding of reality that transcends ordinary comprehension.”

“Wisdom” as an understanding that transcends ordinary comprehension has nothing to do with age. So a very young person could be a Zen teacher if what you’re looking for, and I hope to Buddha this is foremost for you, is someone who has had this wisdom experience and who can help you realize this prajna too. In Zen, we generally call this wisdom experience “kenshō.”

Now, in our day, after an initial kenshō, years of subsequent kōan study are devoted to the tangled thicket of thorns we refer to in our system as “the Harada-Yasutani Kōan Curriculum.” This period is really important. And then after “completing” the training, some additional time just shutting up is also a good idea. James’ post points this out too.

So even if a person were to start at twenty-one, establish their zazen seat, find a teacher, kenshō at about twenty-five, complete the curriculum by thirty-five, and have some “under the bridge time” for at least a few years – well, they’ll be forty by the time they begin.

By the way, as Tetsugan has pointed out, we see this follow-up digestion time in most of the ancients’ biographies too, including for Dōgen and Hakuin.

In my case, I received my first transmission from Katagiri Rōshi when I was just a boy of thirty-three, having had some kenshō, but not being well-cooked by any means. I then went to Japan and did some monastic practice, then waited for all of about a year before starting to teach. Way too soon! Subsequently, I learned the way I’ve learned most everything – through the school of hard knocks. Fortunately, due to the generosity and kindness of a handful of clear teachers, especially James, I’ve been able to continue bumbling along.

These days in the American Zen scene, the whole “wisdom/prajna/kenshō” criteria for being a teacher has receded in importance, especially, it seems to me, in the just-sitting Sōtō lineages. Often, in these lineages, long-practice and affiliation (finding someone who will do the ceremony) seem more important, with the former sometimes being much less important than the latter. So “consumer beware!” The wisdom you are being offered by a Zen teacher might be more of the ordinary variety.

What seems to have been Hakuin’s view?

Hakuin is very clear and repeats himself often. First, realize kenshō as clear as the palm of your hand. Then clarify and refine this kenshō by working through the old, hard-to-pass-through kōans and the sutras in order to have the dharma-clarity and way-power to benefit others. Hakuin emphasizes many times that in his view our “…own enlightenment is but the first step in [our] career of assisting others to attain theirs.”

And, finally, some advice from Hakuin that I wished I received and actually followed (for a change):

“Students who have not yet penetrated to the source should not be troubled if their entrance into enlightenment is slow in coming, but they should worry if their practice is not pure and genuine. Students who have already penetrated to attainment should not be troubled if people fail to revere them, but they should be concerned about the difficulty of achieving practice that is pure and genuine” (Complete Poison Blossoms in a Thicket of Thorn, 187. To Layman Ishii).

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