Shobogenzo<\/em><\/i>\u00a0(1).<\/p>\nIn this post, I will explore D\u014dgen\u2019s working through of this k\u014dan in relationship to\u00a0enlightenment and just sitting. And along the way, I\u2019ll offer some reflections on post-enlightenment practice, the vow to free all beings, and how that vow plays out in D\u014dgen\u2019s and Hakuin\u2019s expressions of Zen.<\/p>\n
And just for fun, I\u2019ll work with a recently published translation of D\u014dgen\u2019s Eihei Koroku <\/em>(2) by Thomas Cleary (3). You will find it free on Amazon, along with some other texts Cleary has self-published, like the Empty Valley,\u00a0<\/em>an important k\u014dan text. I will comment too, mostly on D\u014dgen\u2019s comments, and so have the\u00a0D\u014dgen text italicized. I\u2019ve also added some headings to help organize the text for you, the reader.<\/p>\nThe main case<\/h4>\n
[D\u014dgen said,] The correct method accurately communicated from Buddha to Buddha, master to master, is just sitting.<\/em><\/p>\nMy late teacher Rujing instructed a congregation, \u201cDo you all know the story of Zen master D\u00e0m\u00e9i (4)\u00a0<\/span>calling on Great Master M\u01cez\u01d4 (5)<\/span>? He asked M\u01cez\u01d4<\/span>, \u2018What is Buddha?\u2019\u00a0 M\u01cez\u01d4<\/span> said, \u2018Mind itself is Buddha.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\nHe thereupon bowed and left, and went up to the summit of D\u00e0m\u00e9i\u00a0<\/span>mountain, where he ate pine pollen and wore lotus leaves, spending the rest of his life sitting meditating day and night, nearly thirty years. He was not known to kings or ministers, and did not go to invitations of patrons or donors. This is an excellent example of the way of Buddhas.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nD\u014dgen begins with a clear and characteristic thesis, \u201cthe correct method \u2026 is just sitting.\u201d And to show that it has been transmitted from \u201cBuddha to Buddha, master to master\u201d he quotes his own master, Rujing, who\u00a0serves as\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s backdrop, adding just one thought to his telling of this well-known\u00a0k\u014dan: \u201cThis is an excellent example of the way of Buddhas.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are double-mirrors in this Buddha mind \u2013 D\u014dgen shares a k\u014dan about a teacher-student transmission of the Buddha mind, by quoting his teacher minding the k\u014dan and affirming it as a telling example.<\/p>\n
In any case,\u00a0D\u00e0m\u00e9i heard \u201cMind itself is Buddha,\u201d had great realization (6), and then went to the mountains to do zazen night and day for thirty years.\u00a0D\u014dgen and\u00a0Rujing too, according to\u00a0D\u014dgen, raise this as an example of how to proceed with practice after enlightenment.\u00a0D\u00e0m\u00e9i eventually did lead both Juzhi, famous for holding up his finger, and Jianzhi, who transmitted Zen to Korea, to enlightenment. But it is his thirty-years zazen in the mountains that\u00a0D\u014dgen and\u00a0Rujing call out for praise.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMore on this point below.<\/p>\n
D\u014dgen\u2019s comment<\/h4>\n
It may be deduced that sitting meditation is post-enlightenment practice. Enlightenment is just sitting meditation, that\u2019s all. This mountain is the first to have a communal hall; this is the first it has been heard of in Japan. The first one has been seen, the first one has been entered, the first one has been sat in. This is lucky for people who study the path of Buddha.<\/em><\/p>\nI was originally drawn to reflect on this dharma discourse of\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s because of this reference to \u201cpost-enlightenment practice,\u201d something that I associate more strongly with Hakuin Zen than\u00a0D\u014dgen Zen. After rolling the whole discourse around, though, I find it extraordinarily rich and representative of several important themes for\u00a0D\u014dgen and for us.<\/p>\n
Even D\u014dgen\u2019s first sentences\u00a0cover a lot of ground, the last three of which might seem at first to be unrelated to the first two. D\u014dgen begins with the entanglement of enlightenment, \u201cthis mind is Buddha,\u201d and zazen by asserting that zazen is a fitting practice after enlightenment. What about before enlightenment? Is zazen a practice for beginners and those who haven\u2019t yet experienced enlightenment and then zazen continues to be the<\/em> practice after enlightenment? Or is\u00a0D\u014dgen saying here that zazen, or perhaps true<\/em> zazen, is only<\/em> a post-enlightenment practice, that one isn\u2019t really doing zazen prior to enlightenment.<\/p>\nIt seems to me that\u00a0D\u014dgen means just what he says. \u201c\u2026Sitting meditation is post-enlightenment practice.\u201d For\u00a0D\u014dgen, zazen is the Buddha mandala, the Buddha land presented here and now through our enlightened psycho-physical zazen pose, where the refining of enlightenment and the presentation of enlightenment are like the front and back of the hand.<\/p>\n
Curiously, from an assertion about the importance of post-enlightenment zazen, D\u014dgen moves on to boast about establishing the first \u201ccommunal hall\u201d or \u201cmonks\u2019 hall\u201d (Japanese, s\u014dd\u014d) in Japan and notes how fortunate people are now to have such a hall. What\u2019s the connection? D\u00e0m\u00e9i, after all, was not practicing in a monks\u2019 hall, but in the mountains, eating pine pollen and wearing lotus leaves. But that doesn\u2019t seem to be the point that\u00a0D\u014dgen wants to highlight.<\/p>\n
It is important to appreciate that the monks\u2019 hall is the place that monks would sleep, eat, wash, use the toilet, and<\/em> sit zazen.\u00a0One way to make sense of the flow of the argument here is to see the monks\u2019 hall as an extension of the zazen pose, an extension of the Buddha mandala that is enlightenment. The sentences then unfold\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s point through multiple dimensions \u2013 the person and the environment, time and space. That extension also includes the clothes worn, particularly the kesa, although that is not included by\u00a0D\u014dgen in this discourse. The specific, prescribed form and function of monks\u2019 hall become part and parcel of\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s zazen as enlightenment, a full-bodied dharma presentation.<\/p>\nIn my view, D\u014dgen, in the first movement of this discourse, uses a traditional\u00a0k\u014dan involving well-known Zen heros,\u00a0D\u00e0m\u00e9i and\u00a0<\/span>M\u01cez\u01d4, and the vague endorsement of his teacher, Rujing, to support his notion of the importance of zazen and then extends the argument to include the spatial construction of the Buddha realm. One might ask, \u201cIs zazen enlightenment if not undertaken in a proper monks\u2019 hall?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWithout hesitation, most of us would answer that question, \u201cYes.\u201d How\u00a0D\u014dgen would respond cannot be known, but I suspect he might say, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
We know, for example, that\u00a0D\u014dgen started giving formal dharma hall discourses only when he had a proper dharma hall, stopped giving them during his move to Eiheiji when such a dharma hall was unavailable, and then started again when the proper hall was completed.<\/p>\n
D\u014dgen, despite how he is often presented today as teaching that our life as-it-is is the fundamental issue at hand (genjokoan<\/em>), he may well have had quite a different perspective, something akin to a synthesis of Zen and esoteric Buddhism, requiring specific physical structures both in the body and buildings (7).<\/p>\nSubsequent\u00a0k\u014dan development<\/h4>\n
A monk subsequently said to \u201cWhat principle did you realize when you met master M\u01cez\u01d4<\/span>, that you dwell on this mountain?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nD\u00e0m\u00e9i said, \u201cM\u01cez\u01d4<\/span> told me, \u2018Mind is Buddha.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nThe monk said, \u201cM\u01cez\u01d4\u2019s Buddhism is different these days.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nD\u00e0m\u00e9i said, \u201cHow is it different?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nThe monk said, \u201cThese days he says, \u2018Not mind, not Buddha.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nD\u00e0m\u00e9i said, \u201cThis old fellow confuses people no end.\u00a0 Let it be, for him, \u2018not mind, not Buddha,\u2019 for me, simply, \u2018mind is Buddha.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nThe monk went back and recounted this to M\u01cez\u01d4<\/span>. M\u01cez\u01d4<\/span> said, \u201cThe plum is ripe.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nD\u014dgen\u2019s subsequent\u00a0k\u014dan comment<\/h4>\n
So someone who has understood mind itself is Buddha gives up human society, goes deep into mountain valleys, and just sits meditating day and night. The brethren on this mountain should simply focus solely on sitting meditation. Don\u2019t waste time; human life is impermanent. What are you waiting for?\u00a0 I pray, I pray.<\/em><\/p>\nDo you want to understand the principle of \u2018mind itself is Buddha\u2019? (silence)<\/em><\/p>\n\u2018Mind itself is Buddha\u2019 is very hard to understand. \u2018Mind\u2019 is walls, tiles, and pebbles. \u2018Buddha\u2019 is a mud ball, an earth clod. M\u01cez\u01d4\u00a0<\/span>speaking up was dragging mud and dripping water; D\u00e0m\u00e9i waking up was haunting the weeds and woods. Where is the identity of mind and Buddha? Huh!<\/em><\/p>\nLet\u2019s first look at the second portion of this last section, the clincher \u2013 \u201c\u2018Mind itself is Buddha\u2019 is very hard to understand \u2026\u00a0Where is the identity of mind and Buddha? Huh!\u201d<\/p>\n
Here old\u00a0D\u014dgen pushes his audience to awaken, not to hide behind the fame of\u00a0D\u00e0m\u00e9i and\u00a0M\u01cez\u01d4, as they too are splattered with mud and soaking wet.\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s admonition is for us to discover our essential identity, Buddha as mud and earth, song of the bird, hum of the car. The so-called true self.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSo in terms of urging personal enlightenment,\u00a0D\u014dgen wraps up this discourse like any Zen master would. Such an admonition, of course, only makes sense if for D\u014dgen enlightenment is personal experience. In other words, that enlightenment isn\u2019t the zazen of all people, all the time. True zazen, post-enlightenment zazen, is what D\u014dgen sees in\u00a0D\u00e0m\u00e9i and what he prescribes for us in the post-enlightenment period of practice. Especially when that zazen occurs in a proper monks\u2019 hall.<\/p>\n
How I got\u00a0D\u014dgen wrong<\/h4>\n
Let\u2019s now look at the first paragraph of\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s comments on this last section. He begins by affirming that \u201c\u2026someone who has understood mind itself is Buddha gives up human society, goes deep into mountain valleys, and just sits meditating day and night.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nIn contemporary Zen, we talk about going up the mountain, undertaking some years of formal Zen training, and then coming down the mountain, entering the world to benefit living beings. In this passage, at least,\u00a0D\u014dgen leaves us up the mountain just sitting. What about the vow to carry all living beings across the flood of suffering?<\/p>\n
D\u014dgen does, of course, express his great vehicle bodhisattva heart elsewhere. For example, he wrote two Shobogenzo<\/em> fascicles on arousing the way-seeking mind. And in his poetry, there\u2019s this:<\/p>\nAwake or asleep<\/em>
\n in a grass hut,<\/em>
\n what I pray for is<\/em>
\n to bring others across<\/em>
\n before myself.<\/em><\/p>\nAnd yet, the spirit of \u201ccoming down the mountain\u201d isn\u2019t explicit in this passage, or it could be argued, in\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s later teaching generally. It isn\u2019t built into his system of practice. Sit and sit some more, seems to be the message. And in that post-enlightenment just sitting, the k\u014dan is realized, it is discovered that all living beings are already free.<\/p>\n
However, it would be kinda nice for as many people as possible to know this for themselves. If you stay cloistered in the mountain in your proper monks\u2019 hall, is that the most skillful means to actualize the bodhisattva heart?<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s look at Hakuin for another example. Here\u00a0Norman Waddell writes about Hakuin\u2019s final, definitive enlightenment experience that occurred while reading the \u201cSkillful Means\u201d chapter of the Lotus Sutra<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n\u201c<\/i>In that chapter, the Buddha reveals to his disciple Shariputra the true nature of the Mahayana Bodhisattva, whose own enlightenment is but the first step in his career of assisting others to attain theirs. This is identical to the teaching Sh\u014dju had tried to drive home to Hakuin years before. Like Shariputra, Hakuin had erroneously regarded his original realization as full and perfect enlightenment, and he would have been unable to proceed beyond that realization without the timely assistance of a genuine teacher. <\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAs Hakuin read, the sound of a cricket churring at the foundation stones of the temple reached his ears; at that instant, he crossed the threshold into great enlightenment. The accumulated doubts and uncertainties of forty years suddenly ceased to exist. The reason why the Lotus Sutra was regarded as supreme among all the Buddha\u2019s preachings was revealed to him \u201cwith blinding clarity.\u201d<\/span> He found teardrops \u201ccascading down his face like strings of beads\u2014they poured out like beans from a ruptured sack (8).\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFrom that point on, Hakuin worked tirelessly, his post-enlightenment practice, to help people realize enlightenment. The heart of the bodhisattva life for Hakuin, as catalyzed through his work with Sh\u014dju and finally\u00a0discovered definitively when hearing a cricket and reading about the reason Buddhas come into the world, was to help beings awaken. That involved sitting zazen, of course, but also breaking through the k\u014dans and clarifying enlightenment after enlightenment. And it beared fruit. By the end of Hakuin\u2019s life he had some eighty enlightened successors.<\/p>\n
Quite a contrast to\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s leaving human society and \u201c\u2026just sit meditating day and night.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s how I\u2019ve gotten\u00a0D\u014dgen wrong. I\u2019ve argued, you see, that\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s career can be seen as an effort to rehabilitate the S\u014dt\u014d lineage after it took an unfortunate detour into the quietism of silent lllumination. For D\u014dgen, zazen is the vivid cultivation of verification, the k\u014dan realized (9). Yet, when it comes to\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s presentation in this discourse regarding practice after enlightenment, there are clear traces of quietism in\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s Zen.<\/p>\n
Hakuin, on the other hand, offers a passionate alternative. The vow to free all living beings is taken up and actualized concretely in doing whatever can be done to cultivate verification, practice enlightenment. Post enlightenment practice becomes tireless service to catalyze the enlightenment of others.<\/p>\n
There is, of course, no one right way. I hope that this culling out of a couple of the possibilities might serve you before, after, and during enlightenment.<\/p>\n
____________<\/p>\n
(1) See Daido Loori\u2019s, The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master D\u014dgen\u2019s Three Hundred K\u014dans,<\/em> 278.<\/p>\n(2) This dharma discourse is in Cleary\u2019s\u00a0Eihei Koroku\u00a0<\/em>as Volume 4, number 61. In the Leighton and Okumura translation, D\u014dgen\u2019s Extensive Record<\/em>, it is number 319.<\/p>\n(3) Cleary has the Japanese for names throughout, but I\u2019ve changed them to the more standard Chinese. Except for the Japanese monk, D\u014dgen.<\/p>\n
(4)\u00a0D\u00e0m\u00e9i Fachang\u00a0\u5927\u6885\u6cd5\u5e38\u00a0 (752-839). D\u00e0m\u00e9i means \u201cgreat plum.\u201d Cleary has \u201cbig apricot.\u201d<\/p>\n
(4) M\u01cez\u01d4 Daoyi\u00a0\u99ac\u7956\u9053\u4e00 (709\u2013788). M\u01cez\u01d4 means \u201chorse ancestor.\u201d<\/p>\n
(5) Although not included in this version, in D\u014dgen\u2019s telling of the story in \u201cContinuous Practice,\u201d he has this: \u201cUpon hearing these words, [D\u00e0m\u00e9i] had realization.\u201d<\/p>\n
(6) Mandala: \u201c\u2026\u00a0The practitioner imagines the entire universe as purified and transformed into the transcendent ma\u1e47\u1e0dala\u2014 often identifying himself or herself with the form of the main deity at the center.\u201d\u00a0The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism.<\/em><\/p>\n(7) See\u00a0Icons and Iconoclasm in Japanese Buddhism: Kukai and Dogen on the Art of Enlightenment,\u00a0<\/em>by\u00a0Pamela D. Winfield for more on this.<\/p>\n(8)\u00a0Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin<\/em><\/p>\n(9) See, for example,\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s reworking of Hongzhi\u2019s \u201cneedle point of zazen\u201d poem in the third section of \u201cZazenshin.\u201d<\/p>\n
____________<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cThis mind is Buddha\u201d is one of the most evocative teachings of our Zen school. It is a \u201cteaching,\u201d not a philosophical assertion or a faith statement, but rather a description of enlightening experience.\u00a0D\u014dgen cites \u201cThis mind is Buddha\u201d teaching in several fascicles in the Shobogenzo, eight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[130,11,14,129,75],"class_list":["post-3916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodhisattva-vow","tag-dogen","tag-enlightenment","tag-hakuin","tag-zazen"],"yoast_head":"\n
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