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<\/a><\/p>\nClick here<\/a> to support my Zen teaching practice via Patreon.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n This post is the third in a series of three on study practice in this lineage of Zen. The first post, The Vital Importance of Studying Buddhadharma: Why and How,<\/a> was the why and how of study. In the second post, Four Little Fishies in the Big Zen Sea and How They Do Study<\/a>, I identified some of the study fish in the Zen social media sea (mostly) and fumed about how they miss or misuse dharma study.<\/p>\n For this final offering, I\u2019ll cite some of what the great teachers in our tradition had to say about dharma study, especially D\u014dgen Zenji and Hakuin Zenji. Essentially, this time, I\u2019ll stand by and letting them do the name calling (mostly).<\/p>\n First, then, let\u2019s look at D\u014dgen Zenji\u2019s teaching from his Sh\u014db\u014dgenz\u014d <\/em>\u201cBukky\u014d\u201d (\u4ecf\u7d4c, \u201cBuddha Sutras\u201d). <\/em>I encourage you\u00a0to study<\/em> with this passage \u2013 breath, relax the body (and especially the frontal lobe), center in the belly, take your time (pssst, really there\u2019s nowhere to go), let the passage read you, and return to it tomorrow:<\/p>\n \u201cAll types of unreliable, stinky skin bags have said for a couple of hundred years, \u2018Don\u2019t keep the phrases of ancestral teachers in mind. Furthermore, don\u2019t carefully read or use the teachings of sutras. Instead, just keep your body and mind like a decayed tree or dead ash. Be like a broken wooden dipper or a barrel with no bottom.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cThose who speak in this way are a band outside the way or heavenly demons. They seek to rely on what cannot be relied on, and as a result they have idly turned the ancestors\u2019 buddhadharma into a mad and perverse teaching. What a pity! How sad! Even a broken wooden dipper and a barrel with no bottom are ancient sutras of buddha ancestors.\u201d (1)<\/p>\n If you are offended at D\u014dgen Zenji\u2019s language, let me remind you that for him, \u201cstinky skin bags\u201d is only a moderate rebuke, while something like \u201cdreg slurping dogs\u201d is more of a full-on rebuke. Nevertheless, here D\u014dgen Zenji wholeheartedly (but moderately) rebukes those who don\u2019t work with key phrases from the ancestral teachers, who don\u2019t study the sutras, and who don\u2019t put the teaching of the sutras to work, but instead uselessly sit on their dead, stinky, skin bag, assholes. Such people, he says, live outside the buddha\u2019s house, reframing the buddhadharma into something \u201cmad and perverse.\u201d Many such stinky skin bags pose as dharma bad asses \u2013 it\u2019s the same today as it was in the old Zenji\u2019s time. Pitiful!<\/p>\n Study, by the way, is especially important for converts to the buddhadharma who live in non Buddhist<\/a> cultures, because without study, such folks as us are more likely to merely rehearse their formations in their practice as if those formations were the true self. Absurd!<\/p>\n D\u014dgen Zenji emphasizes that such types (i.e., those who don\u2019t take up key phrases from the ancestors, study the sutras, and put the teaching into practice) are unreliable \u2013 yes, mad and perverse too, but let\u2019s focus on \u201cunreliable.\u201d Unreliable for what? Pointing to the moon.<\/p>\n However, this bunch do<\/em> reliably make dharma practice about their own damn selves.<\/p>\n Then in the last sentence in the passage quoted above, \u201cEven a broken wooden dipper and a barrel with no bottom are ancient sutras of buddha ancestors,\u201d D\u014dgen Zenji characteristically explodes the distinction with his dynamic, nondual vision. Even useless assholes \u2013 broken utensils and bottomless conveyances \u2013 are exactly the ancient sutras that the buddhas study and teach.<\/p>\n So given that we\u2019ve got plenty of material, we better get to it.<\/p>\n One more observation, though, before I move on to Hakuin Zenji\u2019s teaching: from what I\u2019ve seen in the contemporary dharma scene, often it is precisely those who claim D\u014dgen\u2019s lineage who best fit his description of unreliable, stinky skin bags. Many today are stuck in the pit of quietism, \u201csilent sitting,\u201d and confuse that dank pit with the abode of the buddhas and ancestors. They wouldn\u2019t know a key phrase from the ancestors if it bit them in their dead asses. Those who don\u2019t study wouldn\u2019t see the moon if it was sitting on their chests (as Ivana Trump once quipped about you know who).<\/p>\n Ain\u2019t that a kicker?!<\/p>\n It is so sad to see the brilliantly luminous teaching of D\u014dgen Zenji so widely and wantonly misrepresented. Therefore, students and consumers of contemporary Zen teaching, beware!<\/p>\n For Hakuin Zenji\u2019s approach to dharma study, let\u2019s look at the last fifth of a verse that he presented at a teaching on the Lotus Sutra<\/em> in 1746. The entire verse is a powerful summary of the whole Zen path, beginning with these two lines: \u201cAnyone who seeks to master the Buddha Way\/Must begin by attaining a kensh\u014d of total clarity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBegin\u201d is the keyword there. But for our purposes, we\u2019ll focus just on the portion of the verse about studying the buddhadharma:<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026I have always lamented Zen [practitioner]\u2019s ignorance of the sutras, Hakuin Zenji\u2019s writing is so accessible that it requires less unpacking than old D\u014dgen\u2019s. Nevertheless, I\u2019ll highlight a few points. Notably, Hakuin makes a distinction between pre-kensh\u014d and post-kensh\u014d practice. He emphasizes the importance of study post-kensh\u014d as a training ground to constantly refine and deepen the initial awakening. This point cannot be emphasized strongly enough.<\/span><\/p>\n For pre-kensh\u014d, the old Zenji discourages reading the sutras, presumably because spending one\u2019s time in such a way, rather than wholeheartedly embodying the keyword, is not likely to generate the kind of clear resolve and heat that\u2019s necessary for breakthrough. It\u2019ll likely be about more analytic self involvement while one merely parrots the dharma, using it to reinforce the identity center.<\/span><\/p>\n This view of study in the pre-kensho period is embraced by many past teachers, as well as one of my own late-teachers, Harada Tangen R\u014dshi, who said,<\/p>\n \u201cTruth is not mere explanation\u2014it\u2019s what is happening always and forever, what is happening right now. For that you have to let go of self-grasping, and let go of the desire to look this way and that way, outside yourself, the desire to arrive at the answers rather than to <\/span>be<\/span><\/i> the answer. <\/span>Far better than reading volumes of books is to understand fully just one line, just one single word. Like counting the breath, following the breath, shikantaza, your original face before your parents were born. What is the sound of one hand clapping? Just this, just Mu<\/em>\u2014the brave will find enlightenment in one instant. Open your palms wide, release your hold. You won\u2019t be satisfied by words, they will always seem foreign, far away, separate. You must receive<\/span> truth fully, wholly\u2014become it.\u201d (3)<\/span><\/p>\n Yet, I\u2019d quibble just a bit with these old masters about study before kensh\u014d, especially as I mentioned above regarding convert Buddhists. Without the basic dharma perspective, especially regarding four seals and the great vows, a person may be taking up a practice completely out of context and covertly misusing it. Instead of being disrupted by the buddhadharma such that one receives the \u201c\u2026truth fully, wholly\u2014b<\/span>ecome it,\u201d such a one might just project their progressive, Western worldview onto their practice, thereby missing the key liberative point.<\/p>\n And although the Rinzai master, Nantenb\u014d R\u014dshi, was harsh about the uselessness of intellectual understanding, he also valued thorough-going fluency with the buddhadharma. As I mentioned in the last post, for example, he was so concerned about the Rinzai Zen of his time, that in 1893, about a century after the death of Hakuin Zenji\u2019s major disciples, at an assembly of r\u014dshis at My\u014dshinji, he \u201c\u2026boldly proposed a ruling that would have compelled all recognized r\u014dshi to undertake an examination ascertaining the level of their realization.\u201d<\/p>\n That examination included,<\/p>\n When Nantenb\u014d R\u014dshi shared this at My\u014dshiji and asked for comments, all of the r\u014dshis just sat silently, rejecting the proposal without uttering a word.<\/p>\n To pass an exam like that, well, that would have required true buddhadharma study as I\u2019ve been talking about it here, not the kind of study that merely stuffs up your head with phoney knowledge. It is also notable that although the Zen tradition is often criticized in the West for a lack of emphasis on the precepts, in Nantenb\u014d\u2019s ill-fated exam, at least, three of twelve categories would have required r\u014dshis to express their understanding of the precepts.<\/p>\n As for studying the buddhadharma in our time, I give the last words to Torei Zenji: \u201cFor this reason, the practice of the four universal vows first makes liberation of others the number one pledge, along with clarifying your own nature, cutting off the root of afflictions, studying all teachings<\/span>, and carrying out the activities of bodhisattvas, so compassion and wisdom are completely fulfilled. This is called the way of Buddhas.\u201d (5)<\/p>\n (1) Dogen, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen\u2019s Shobo Genzo, <\/em>53 \u201cBuddha Sutras,\u201d trans. Kaz Tanahashi.<\/p>\n (2) Hakuin Ekaku, The Complete Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorns<\/em>, #78. Instructions to the Assembly at the Opening of a Lecture Meeting on the Lotus Sutra<\/em>, trans. Waddell.<\/p>\n (3) Unpublished, but forthcoming from Shambhala in Throw Yourself into the House of Buddha,\u00a0<\/em>edited by K\u014dgen Czarnik.<\/p>\n (4) Michel Mohr, \u201cMonastic Tradition and Lay Practice from the Perspective of Nantenb\u014d: A Response of the Japanese Zen Buddhism<\/a> to Modernity,\u201d 76-77, modified.<\/p>\n (5) The Undying Lamp of Zen, Torei Enji, trans. Thomas Cleary, 22. Underlining added.<\/p>\n Click here to support my Zen teaching practice via Patreon. Introduction This post is the third in a series of three on study practice in this lineage of Zen. The first post, The Vital Importance of Studying Buddhadharma: Why and How, was the why and how of study. In the second post, Four Little Fishies […]<\/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":[366,11,129,403,400],"class_list":["post-9596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dharma-study","tag-dogen","tag-hakuin","tag-nantenbo","tag-torei"],"yoast_head":"\nIntroduction<\/h2>\n
Stinky Skin Bags<\/h3>\n
<\/a>Parrots and Blind Donkeys<\/h3>\n
\nMonks plodding ahead aimlessly like blind donkeys.
\nEven after kensh\u014d, unless you know Buddha\u2019s words,
\nYou\u2019re like a carriage only fitted out with one wheel.
\nAnd if you read the scriptures without having kensh\u014d,
\nYou\u2019re only a parrot imitating someone else\u2019s speech.
\nI want you to keep the ancients\u2019 practice in mind
\nWhile spurring the vow-wheel on to save living beings\u2026.\u201d (2)<\/p>\n\n
The last words on Zen study<\/h2>\n
\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n