2022-02-14T07:39:35-06:00

Last updated on: February 14, 2022 at 7:39 am   By

What this post is about

Recently, a friend shared a passage from the Shunryū Suzuki Rōshi archive that includes some of Suzuki Rōshi’s momentary thoughts more than fifty years ago about kenshō, householder practice, Sōtō Zen, and Rinzai Zen.

I’ve been writing both here at Wild Fox Zen and at Patreon about One School Zen and have been wondering about how we got here – in our contemporary global Zen, Sōtō and Rinzai lineages seem far apart and each flavor of Zen has some “ideas” about the other. One source for this, of course, is the early Zen pioneers that came from Japan. And Suzuki Rōshi is one of the most influential of those ancestors.

So although this post isn’t really part of the current series that explores the Sōtō ancestors before and after Dōgen, it does have a related theme – if Zen is One School, why don’t more people see it that way?

In this post, I’ll first share Suzuki Rōshi’s comments and then make a few observations as the result of my efforts to understand what he said more clearly.

Suzuki Rōshi (July 22, 1971 at Tassajara)

“As you are laypeople, most of the time you have no time to forget about your dualistic life, so dualistic practice goes first. So, for laypeople some practice like Rinzai Zen is maybe better for someone. Rinzai practice is very dualistic, so that will give you some strength to encourage non-dualistic side more and to fight with dualistic ideas until you can forget all about the dualistic way of life even for a moment.

“That is so-called kenshō. But even though you have kenshō, you do not have a Buddhist life completely. You just get a glance of your buddha nature, which is not egoistic. You just experience literally [laughs] a nonegoistic life. But it doesn’t last, because you are so busy and you are deeply involved in usual way of life. That is layman or laywoman practice.

“How, then, the Sōtō way helps lay[people] is to let you follow nondualistic way of life, like Tassajara. Many laypeople participate in our practice, which is not dualistic and which puts more emphasis on nondualistic practice. So, if you follow Sōtō way, even though you do not feel you have entered the non-dualistic experience, more and more your life will be non-dualistic because our way of practice, the way we set up our practice, is according to non-dualistic way of Buddha. That is why we in the Sōtō School put more emphasis on how to eat, how to drink, how to walk, how to work, how to recite sutras. So those rituals set up by Soto teachers are based on a non-dualistic idea.

“So, following a non-dualistic way of life in a Buddhist school, more and more, you will be familiar with non-dualistic life. The Sōtō way, as you may have noticed, is not so dualistic, and we do not encourage students so strictly by working or shouting [laughs]. We don’t use the stick so much. I have one, but I don’t use it as much as a Rinzai master maybe uses it, because our practice is based on the non-dualistic way.

A few observations

The first thing that stands out is Suzuki Rōshi’s interest in working with householders and his acknowledgement that Sōtō monasticism isn’t ideally portable. His prescription seems to be that householders should experience the nondualistic practice of a Sōtō monastery and then “more and more your life will be non-dualistic.”

However, I’m left wondering if for Suzuki Rōshi it was just the old osmosis thing or if there were any specific guideposts. Otherwise, it comes off as rather “faithee” and not about verification (aka, proof), as was emphasized by the old founder, Dōgen. And if it’s gradual, “more and more,” then that’s pretty dualistic, no?

The second standout is how far we’ve come in the last fifty years in appreciating the various schools of Buddhism, let alone other lineage streams within the Zen school. I can’t imagine any contemporary teacher claiming that their branch of Zen is more nondualistic than another branch – and keep a straight face, because, well, come on, that’s again a pretty dualistic thing to put out there! There tends to be a lot of difference within groups designated as “Sōtō” or “Rinzai.”

Third, I’ve read this Suzuki Rōshi passage many times, but I’m still not sure what Suzuki Rōshi’s his main point is. What he says sounds good and I’m left with a good feeling, but in fact, the more I read it, the less clear I am about what he’s saying.

The only specific elements of what Suzuki Rōshi calls dualistic Rinzai practices are working, shouting, and beating. In terms of monastic work practice, if that’s what Suzuki Rōshi is referring to, I don’t see any big difference between Japanese Sōtō or Rinzai in that regard. Monastics in both branches (ideally) work with inspiring one-pointed wholeheartedness.

As for occasionally getting shouted at or beaten, well, how does that help householders? Maybe because these methods can (in the right circumstances) catalyze kenshō. Suzuki Rōshi recognizes (somewhat disparagingly while minimizing the impact) that kenshō can be a toehold in the Buddha’s world. “But even though you have kenshō,” he said, “you do not have a Buddhist life completely.”

Certainly, every pro-kenshō Zen teacher I know would agree. Kenshō, as is often repeated, is the beginning of training, not the end. What the kōan lineages offer, therefore, is a post-kenshō process for opening and applying awakening that is generally lacking in just-sitting Sōtō Zen. Suzuki Rōshi seems to acknowledge the limitation of just-sitting Zen in the above passage.

In my experience, though, I’d like to add that kenshō is often one of the most meaningful and powerful experiences a person can have in this lifetime. Therefore, it baffles me that some contemporary Sōtō Zen teachers (I’m not thinking of Suzuki Rōshi here) minimize the significance of awakening. It’s as if they haven’t experienced kenshō themselves and throw out cautions about something they don’t know. It also seems to me that ranting on against kenshō is like telling a young person not to fall in love, warning that if you do fall in love, then there will be work to do in the relationship. That very post-falling-in-love work is the most fulfilling – and difficult – part of love.

See We Are All This Luminous Mind: The Possibility and Importance of Awakening for more of my view on awakening and the experiences of contemporary householders who’ve had the experience.

As I was saying, there is plenty of shouting and beating in Japanese Sōtō. Dōgen himself recognized that these techniques could help turn the mysterious pivot: “Turning the pivot with a snap of the fingers, a staff, a needle, or a mallet; demonstrating proof by raising a whisk, a fist, a staff, or shouting loudly – this is not done by pondering distinctions and making divisions.”

Suzuki Rōshi also acknowledges that there is beating in Sōtō, so is he saying that a certain amount of beating is nondualistic, but then you reach a point where it becomes dualistic? That is what he says, but I trust that it is not what he really means. Suzuki Rōshi must have known that it is the heartmind that is apparently divided or not and that dualism does not reside in any certain practice or attitude “out there” (because that’s the core of dualism).

So when Suzuki Rōshi says, “Rinzai practice is very dualistic,” what the heck is he talking about? Something that he doesn’t mention directly is kōan work, although in the passage about teasing out dualistic thinking, he says that in Rinzai Zen students “…fight with dualistic ideas until you can forget all about the dualistic way of life even for a moment.”

That quite nicely expresses an aspect of kōan work for many, especially with their first kōan. However, this isn’t the recommended method of kōan work, but a shadow practice that many students take up despite the instruction, as if they can’t help themselves. It may be something that needs to be passed through.

On the other hand, it is true that when working with a kōan and meeting with a teacher, the student either passes through a kōan or they do not – so there’s that sense of dualism, I suppose. But in just-sitting Sōtō there is also doing that is correct or incorrect – tying the ōryōki knot, for example. So if “correct” or “incorrect” is what made something dualistic, just-sitting Zen would have nothing on kōan Zen.

Maybe the old teacher was thinking about kōan zazen specifically and he thinks that such zazen is about sitting and thinking about a kōan and trying to figure it out. Maybe … but that’s not at all what kōan work is about, so in this case, he’d be wrong – setting up an imaginary dualistic practice and then calling it dualistic.

In any case, Suzuki Rōshi’s attitude toward kōan practice was not one-dimensional. He also said, “We don’t know how much our understanding is limited. That is why you have to study kōans. Kōans will open up your mind” (August 24, 1967).

What did Suzuki Rōshi have to say about kenshō, Sōtō Zen, Rinzai Zen, and householder practice?

I’m sorry, it isn’t crystal clear.

In any case, July 22, 1971, was probably a really hot day at Tassajara, and I bet that most of his students were happy just to sit in the zendo and enjoy a nice talk by their dear old Rōshi. He did, after all, have just a bit more than four months to live of this one great life.

Dōshō Port began practicing Zen in 1977 and now co-teaches with his wife, Tetsugan Zummach Sensei, with the Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training, an internet-based Zen community. Dōshō received dharma transmission from Dainin Katagiri Rōshi and inka shōmei from James Myōun Ford Rōshi in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. Dōshō’s translation and commentary on The Record of Empty Hall: One Hundred Classic Koans, is now available (Shambhala). He is also the author of Keep Me In Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri. Click here to support the teaching practice of Tetsugan Sensei and  Dōshō Rōshi.

2022-02-20T19:40:42-06:00

Last updated on: February 20, 2022 at 7:40 pm   By

Kenshō and makyō are the flavor of the week in these parts, so this post aims at addressing some issues about kenshō and makyō, especially if they’re the same or different.

The theme first came up in a manuscript I’ve been reviewing (Rick McDaniels’ forthcoming The Story of Zen), then in conversation with the my ever wonderful wife and teaching partner, Tetsugan, and now I see a discussion of kenshō and makyō on a Zen Facebook group that I keep an eye on. Looking at my calendar, coming up soon is a meeting with a student who had a powerful makyō in a recent sesshin and believed it to be an awakening.

What are Kenshō and Makyō?

First, though, we better define our terms. Kenshō (見性) means seeing [true] nature or essence. Synonyms include “enlightenment,” “awakening,” and “verification.” Wúmén, in his comment to the mu kōan, refers to it as “mysterious, subtle comprehension” (妙悟要). (1) It is an abrupt embodiment of nonduality. I’ve written often about kenshō, so will emphasize makyō here. For more, though, see this post: Hakuin’s Advice for How to Attain Kenshō.

The two characters for makyō (魔境) mean demon/magic and boundary/place/condition. For a simple translation, I like “magic land,” although there is a category of these experiences for which “demon land” seems more fitting. Makyō experiences are common, so much so that almost every meditator who practices intensively will experience them. They vary widely and include various visual, auditory, and somatic altered sense experiences or hallucinations (as in “a perception in the absence of external stimulus that has qualities of real perception”). See this old post by the ever youthful James Myōūn Ford Rōshi for a nice riff on makyō.

Kapleau Rōshi, in an excellent section on makyō in Zen: Dawn in the West, expands the category, “Makyō also come disguised as psychological states:  resentment, envy, or euphoria.” (2) He points out that they occur most commonly in the middle of seven-day sesshin, after there is some concentration, but in the boundary before stable concentration occurs. He says, “When after three full days of sitting, the upper levels of the mind have been quieted and stilled, all manner of images and sensations, the residue of past experiences, bubble up into consciousness, not unlike dreams.”

The makyō I’ve experienced include the sense that my hands in the zazen mudra were huge (a persistent one early on), faces in the wall I sat facing (a particularly beautiful Avalokiteshvara), and the piercing song of a bird coming from the far side of a lake perhaps three miles away. And also many dreams, especially during sesshin, where there’s a sense of the ancient. One, for example, of sitting in a jade-colored circular zendo, surrounded by senior monks, and Katagiri Rōshi slowly walking by.

Likewise, Rick McDaniel notes, “It is not unusual for people engaged in prolonged meditation to have visions. During the sesshin in which he experience his ‘little bit of light,’ Robert Aitken [Rōshi] had a vision of himself seated on the stone floor of an ancient temple with tall monks circumambulating him and chanting sutras.” (3)

One of my favorite magic land tales comes, again, from Kapleau Rōshi. When he was training at Hōshinji, the head monk approached him and said, “During sesshin you were acting out a very strange makyō, one I’ve never seen before. In the middle of a round of sitting you would suddenly reach out with one arm as if to grab something and draw it toward you, and then do the same with the other arm…. Do you remember that makyō?”

Kapleau Rōshi responded, “Yes, I do. I was going through the aisles of a large American supermarket, helping myself to steaks, eggs, cheese and other things not served here in the monastery.”

Shakyamuni Buddha, though, the guy reputed to have had the greatest enlightenment, also seems to have had the greatest makyō. In his enlightenment story, alluring dancing lovers approached, he was threatened by massive armies, and then there was Mara, seemingly orchestrating this whole hallucinatory array.

What To Do About Magic Land Experiences

First, it is important to identify them as such, and call them by their true name – not “heaven,” “hell,” or heaven forbid, “awakening.” For this, you may well need a clear-eyed teacher. Indeed, one of the most important functions for a teacher with students wholeheartedly engaged in the cultivating-verification project, is clarity about kenshō and makyō, and skillful means to support students in compassionately greeting these magic land visitations, and for sending them on their way.

A word of warning: the longer we cling to magic land experiences, the more difficult it becomes to get over them and move on with our life and practice. The spiritual fascination that arises from magic land can be toxic and disabling.

Kapleau Rōshi said, “More than anything else you need faith – faith in yourself, in your practice, and in your teacher. If you are working on a kōan, involve yourself in it so completely that ‘you’ disappear and only the kōan remains. Do this and the makyō will dissolve like ice under hot water.”

Is Kenshō Makyō?

Given that the experience of the two are so different, it might seem to be a strange question. However, in much of contemporary Sōtō Zen, this appears to be the common view. Although it seems so now, I don’t remember Katagiri Rōshi ever saying that kenshō was makyō. It simply isn’t what I learned from thirteen years of apprenticeship under his guidance. For example, when I went to him to share an experience I now understand as an early, initial kenshō, he smiled broadly and said, “Great!” And he went on to talk about applying the experience to daily life. In the same vein, in Returning to Silence, Katagiri Rōshi wrote, “The experience of enlightenment is important for us, but it is not enough. Again and again that enlightenment must become more profound, until it penetrates our skin, muscle, and bone.” (4)

All experiences, of course, are of one and the same nature. Kenshō and makyō are equally empty. Attainment and nonattainment, too, are equally empty. Katagiri Rōshi’s comment on this is good to keep in mind: “The sound of chanting and the sound of farting are of one and the same nature. However, they also each have their own virtuous qualities.”

A virtuous quality of magic land is in how it reveals that the world is vast and wide and so dependent on our fleeting perspectives. One virtuous quality of kenshō is that when we experientially verify the truth of the nondual buddhadharma, we have a toe-hold in cultivating verification in a much different way than before kenshō. In other words, we can now practice enlightenment rather than delusion.

What about getting attached to kenshō? It is an important issue. And the kōan introspection system is specifically designed to compel us to release our grip on any set position, including attachment to kenshō. This is an enormously important difference between just-sitting Zen and kōan-introspection Zen. I say this with respect for just-sitting Zen, a system that I trained in for thirteen years and received authorization to teach. Now, from the perspective of an authorized kōan introspection teacher, I recommend that if you are interested in kenshō (or wonder if you’ve already experienced kenshō), find a kōan introspection teacher. Just-sitting teachers, generally speaking, do not have the optimal set of tools in their tool kits to help you practice/cultivate your taste of enlightenment/verification, especially outside of the monastic milieu.

So awakening and magic land are of the same and one nature and they are different. If someone thinks they are only the same, I doubt that they’ve experienced kenshō. Indeed, we learn from the story of Shakyamuni Buddha, and then through all the Zen ancestors (except, perhaps some of the Sōtō ancestors in twentieth century Japan), that makyō is an obstacle, sometimes wonderful, sometimes horrific, seldom neutral, that needs to be passed through on the road to awakening, but these experiences are not the same thing as awakening.

This view is also supported by classical perspectives on the buddhadharma, where the difference between “yogic direct perception” (yogipratyakṣa, 定觀知, aka, kenshō) which “…is devoid of conceptual construction, … because it is nonconceptual and thus ‘vivid’ or ‘distinct’,” and hallucinations was emphasized, for example, in the Yogacara:

“Why is meditatively induced perception true and reliable? How does a meditator’s yogic perception differ from the hallucinations of the deranged, since both of them presume they have a vivid cognition of an object? The reason, Dharmakīrti maintains, is that the objects of yogic knowledge are “true” or “real,” whereas hallucinations are “false” or “unreal” objects. The only true objects of yogic knowledge offered by Dharmakīrti are the Four Noble Truths: that is, the perception of these truths is true and reliable because they enable one to reach the goal of enlightenment, not because they involve a perception of an ultimate substance.” (5)

Kenshō experiences are just like this – an affirmation of suffering, cause, cessation, and path. And likewise, imv, equating kenshō with makyō undermines the Four Noble Truths.

Conclusion

Those who say kenshō is makyō would presumably rewrite Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment story. Instead of sitting through a fantastic series of magic lands, and then at dawn, looking up, seeing the morning star and saying, “I, together with the great earth and living beings, simultaneously attain the way,” would have him say, “Dude. I am separate from everything and, shit, it’s all delusion that doesn’t attain the way. It’s all makyō, man. Wanna go to the bar?” 

If you think kenshō is makyō, you might consider the possibility that this thought itself is makyō.

(1) Wúmén, No Gate Gate (Wúménguān), “Case 1.” Trs., by the author. 

(2) Philip Kapleau, Zen: Dawn in the West, p. 96-99. All Kapleau Rōshi quotes are from this section.

(3) Richard McDaniel, The Story of Zen, unpublished manuscript.

(4) Dainin Katagiri, Returning to Silence, p. 108. This is the only book published in Katagiri Rōshi’s lifetime and so the only manuscript he went through and approved. The other books attributed to him are excellent, but, imv, should be read with some caution as to whether the views are his or the editors.

(5) See Robert E. Buswell Jr., Donald S.Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, entry for “yogipratyakṣa.”

Dōshō Port began practicing Zen in 1977 and now co-teaches with his wife, Tetsugan Zummach Sensei, with the Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training, an internet-based Zen community. Dōshō received dharma transmission from Dainin Katagiri Rōshi and inka shōmei from James Myōun Ford Rōshi in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. Dōshō’s translation and commentary on The Record of Empty Hall: One Hundred Classic Koans, is now available (Shambhala). He is also the author of Keep Me In Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri. Click here to support the teaching practice of Dōshō Rōshi at Patreon.

 

2022-02-20T20:09:04-06:00

Last updated on: February 20, 2022 at 8:09 pm   By

Dosho_s Kindle for Mac 2 - The Religious Art of Zen Master Hakuin 2The road passes among cresting mountains,

Winding through thickets and vines;
The border of the Wu state ends at the river edge,
Soaring beyond, the serried peaks of Yueh.
(painting, “Eaglehead Peak,” and poem by Hakuin)

I find Hakuin’s teaching so powerful because of his uncluttered clarity, a direct expression of the heart of Mahayana Buddhism. I’d paraphrase it like this: in order to carry living beings across the flood, realize kenshō. Clarify kenshō until it’s limpid. Help others.

That’s also one level of meaning in the above poem.

In our day, one prevailing teaching in Zen is about “non gaining mind” and that to aspire to realize kenshō is a mistake. Meanwhile, as we learn from studying the Abhidharma or our own minds, intention is an omnipresent mental factor. So much of what is taught about non gaining puts students in a paralyzing double-bind.

This was not Hakuin’s approach. Refreshingly, he strongly advocates for realizing kenshō. In this post, I’ll follow up on the first of the above three steps, how to attain kenshō, using mostly Hakuin’s words, but note too that what he’s saying is in alignment with much of the greater Zen tradition, before and after his time, including my own experience and a bunch of other contemporary Zen students and teachers who have kenshōed. What’s different for Hakuin is his emphasis on post-kenshō training. More about that in subsequent posts.

If you are interested in kenshō, you would do well to attend closely to Hakuin’s advice. For those of you studying Complete Poison Blossoms in a Thicket of Thorn (CPB) along with these blog posts, see especially:

7. Informal Talk on the Seventh Night of the Seventh Lunar Month
8. Ascending the Teaching Seat (Jōdō) on the Ninth Day [of the Ninth Month]
and Supplement Two: “Gudō’s Lingering Radiance” (the last several paragraphs)

Pre steps to kenshō

To begin, there are a number of small steps that a practitioner ordinarily must take before kenshōing. These steps involve entering the practice, developing a teacher-student relationship, and learning basic skills in meditation. Then, like Hakuin said, “If you would cleanse yourself of the calamity and suffering of birth and death, you must arouse a strong faith that is fierce and courageous in the extreme” (CBP #4).

Specifically, an intense faith that the big problems of this life, the fundamental issues, are resolvable, that they have been resolved by the Buddha and many people through the ages in multiple lines of lineage coming through to today, that it is possible for you yourself too to resolve as well, and that the path of resolution is through taking refuge in buddha, dharma, and sangha and arousing the way-seeking mind.

In our Zen way, this seeking is actualized through turning the light of awareness around and meeting the self.  Hakuin said, “If you can encounter this One Person, at that instant you ascend into marvelous awakening…. If you manage to run into this fellow, s/he will be a far greater treasure than any you have known, more precious than even the most fabulous sword. When you encounter them, heaven and earth lose all their color, the brightness of the sun and moon are swallowed up” (CPB #8).

This is no small thing. And how an ordinary, suspicious, cynical, ornery person like most of us can come to this place is a mystery. Usually, the circumstances that lead to throwing ourselves intensively into practice seem like grace, a sublime coincidence, and involve some mix of encountering dharma literature and/or meeting a teacher just at the right time, just when we are in a particularly desperate place. I think of the young James Myoun Ford Roshi working in a bookstore in Oakland, CA. One day he mailed a paper letter (this was way, way back in time) with his Zen questions to Robert Aitken. The same day, if memory serves, John Tarrant came in the store to buy a book and they got to talking….

Stumbling into fierce faith and great determination, though, aren’t sufficient. Hakuin asks, “How to find such an elusive creature [as this One Person]” (CPB #8)?

Another essential element is to then arouse a questioning mind, the way seeking mind, also known as great doubt. “What is this life?” “How does one meet up with the [Buddha] of one’s own mind?” “Who is the One Person?” In contemporary kōan introspection, a student will usually be guided to take up the “mu kōan” at this point or perhaps, “Who hears?”

And then the most important ingredient

Once a student takes up a question, then they must “…seek singlemindedly throughout the twenty-four hours of the day, both waking and sleeping” (CPB #7).

The spirit of singleminded (aka, wholehearted) practice runs contrary to much of our culture, including the meditation subculture now developing, where what’s emphasized is leading a balanced life – breathing, smiling, and using meditation to be more effective and enjoying over-the-top lives. Nothing wrong with any of that, except that if you are interested in awakening and helping others to awakening, such a spirit just won’t do.

What will do? Wholehearted practice.

Wholehearted practice is not about getting some special state of mind. Wholehearted practice requires that we keep the vow to benefit all beings warm in our breast pocket as we throw ourselves completing into the now. As Ikkyu put it:

raging in the now hungry for it
crows rattle the air no dust

Hakuin excavates the process further: “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. When you have exhausted all your resources and are at a total and utter loss, the fellow will unexpectedly appear. When you run into [the One Person] without warning, and only then, you will experience a joy of unprecedented depth and intensity. You will soar like the phoenix when it breaks free of the golden net, like the crane that is liberated from its pen” (CPB #8).

In “Gudō’s Lingering Radiance,” Hakuin describes the process for student and teacher like this: “This kōan [,the sound of one hand,] is like an iron stake. It drives [you] into a corner. [You] must gnaw away at it from all sides. Hold it up and examine it from every angle. No matter how much [you] suffer, no matter how tired [you] become, even if [you] seem to be on the brink of death, [you] will get no help from me at all. [You must] exhaust all your skills, run out of words and rational means.”

How much time does it take?

James Myoun Ford Roshi recently wrote, “I’ve observed movement of the heart, actual changes in how one encounters life that can be associated with Zen meditation – if one sits at a minimum about half an hour a day, most days.”

He goes on to add occasional retreats, checking in with a spiritual director (aka, a Zen teacher), dharma study, and koan introspection.

In my view, James’ suggested minimum is right for a “movement of the heart, actual changes in how one encounters life.” They are sufficient to enter the Zen path, but not enough for most people to kenshō as clear as the palm of your hand, the standard Hakuin uses six times in CPB. In my experience, for most people, a clear kenshō usually takes considerably more than that. I recommend an hour a day of zazen and at least 20 days of sesshin a year. Maybe I’m just a slow learner and work with slow learners (no offense intended).

But I also I think of the old Zen sound bite, “Little shout, little echo; big shout, big echo.”

You might ask, “For how long? How long must I shout?”

There is no guarantee. Some people kenshō quickly, some even during their first sesshin. Some take several years. I’ve known one person who devoted himself to mu for forty years. He stayed with it through many changes in life, including about a decade in monastic practice and years of psychotherapy, until he finally kenshōed as clear as the palm of his hand.

Caution: Hakuin said, “That is not the moment to relax your efforts. The more you attain, the greater you must strive. The deeper you enter, the greater must be your devotion to your practice. Such is the meaning of ‘the koan that is never completed’ [miryō kōan]” (CPB #147).

But there is something important that is missing in setting minimum standards or expectations like this in terms of how much time is necessary. It is also about how a practitioner practices on the cushion and off. A focussed, wholehearted sitting of thirty minutes is much more to the point than an hour of “withered sitting,” a phrase Hakuin uses disparagingly eleven times in CBP.

Remember, wholehearted practice arises from the altruistic aspiration to awaken in order to help others awaken. Its impact is extreme. Preferences for things like sleep and food fall away. Barriers like hating pain and longing for pleasure, drop off, much more than we imagined possible when we began.

When a question really begins to cook in us, throwing ourselves into it is not a matter of being macho or of discipline, dogma, or technique. It is about living through the heart’s innermost request. And a sincere eagerness to do whatever it takes arises spontaneously from this heart.

It also doesn’t depend on lifestyle. Whether you are living at home or in a monastery, intensive practice is possible. Some lifestyles may be more supportive of wholehearted practice than others, but when the true heart is stirred and barriers arise, we call out from the depths of this heart, “Barrier welcome!”

Dōshō Port began practicing Zen in 1977 and now co-teaches with his wife, Tetsugan Zummach Sensei, with the Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training, an internet-based Zen community. Dōshō received dharma transmission from Dainin Katagiri Rōshi and inka shōmei from James Myōun Ford Rōshi in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. Dōshō’s translation and commentary on The Record of Empty Hall: One Hundred Classic Koans, is now available (Shambhala). He is also the author of Keep Me In Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri. Click here to support the teaching practice of Dōshō Rōshi at Patreon.

2022-11-19T09:39:56-06:00

Last updated on: November 19, 2022 at 9:39 am   By

Painting, "Bridge," by Hakuin
Painting, “Bridge,” by Hakuin

In my last post, Who Is This Hakuin Guy?, I gave some background for Hakuin Ekaku (白隠 慧鶴, 1686 – 1768) and the record of his teachings, the recently published Complete Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn: The Zen Records of Hakuin Ekaku, translated by Norman Waddell. Like most radical reformulators of the buddhadharma (e.g., Nagarjuna, Bodhidharma, Huineng, Dōgen, etc.), Hakuin saw himself as holding true to the essence of the Zen way, rearticulating that essence, and innovating a method for its attainment. In this post, I want to give an overview of what Hakuin taught, especially about kenshō,  hopefully holding it up as a mirror for our times.

By the way, kenshō (見性) means “seeing [true] nature or essence.”

Hakuin freely and refreshingly stresses the importance of kenshō. In his long verse, “78. Instructions to the Assembly at the Opening of a Lecture Meeting on the Lotus Sutra,” the primary source for this post, Hakuin begins with these two lines:

“Anyone who seeks to master the Buddha’s Way/Must begin by attaining a kenshō of total clarity.”

The importance of kenshō

James Myōun Ford Roshi puts it this way: “As I see it first and foremost Zen is about awakening.”

It’s fair to say that not all Zen folks agree about that primacy of kenshō. For example, in a recent exchange of views, another Zen priest and teacher from one of the large Sōtō centers described the attitude of his institution as “rabidly anti-kenshō.”

Now, synonyms for kenshō include awakening, enlightenment, and satori. And the “buddh” in Buddhism means “awake,” so we Buddhists might call ourselves “Awake-ists.” If only it rolled off the tongue….

In any case, and whatever it’s called, I find it really surprising that a Buddhist group would be rabidly anti it.

As is often the case, support for contemporary predilections of Sōtō practitioners is found in the words of the thirteenth century founder of the Sōtō lineage in Japan, Dōgen. Sure enough, he had an issue with the word “kenshō.” “Seeing into mind and seeing into essence,” he wrote in his “Mountain and Rivers Sutra,” “is the activity of people outside the way.”

What Dōgen seemed to be saying here is that if you think you have some experience that reveals “mind” or “essence” as a thing, you are off to see the wizard, skipping along the yellow brick road of delusion. Of course, our Zen way is about intimacy and identity action, or as he expressed it kōanically, “Green mountains are always walking.”

Fair enough.

Now, I’d like to note that when it comes to words, Dōgen was quite a nitpicker. He also didn’t like the word “Zen,” but we still use that word widely, so why not “kenshō?” I’m wondering if those that are rabidly anti-kenshō are against the word, as Dōgen was, or against what it represents – awakening – which Dōgen wasn’t.

For me, experiences of awakening have been central to my Zen process. And so I find Hakuin’s emphasis so clear, and, yes, supportive of my predilections. In my view, the word that we use to describe the experience is not so important. How about respectfully hearing Dōgen’s concern about the possible misuse of the word “kenshō” and then moving on?

Which is what I’d like to do in this post. Although, clearly, after forty years of Dōgen study, I’m finding that challenging! Still, I’ll keep working on it during this year of Wild Fox Zen blog Hakuin focus.

Back to Hakuin

His first line opening his lecture on the Lotus Sutra Hakuin says, “Anyone who seeks to master the Buddha’s Way,” has a couple significant points. First, this Way is wide open – “Anyone.” You don’t have to be a Zen marine, really smart, or really healthy in every way. The important first point is this: “Anyone.”

Second, Hakuin implicitly recognizes that there are a variety of motivations for practice, including health, well-being, favorable rebirth, and personal effectiveness. In other passages in the Complete Poison Blossoms, Hakuin affirms and works with these and many other motivations. But here Hakuin is talking to is those who want to master the Buddha Way, the process of awakening.

If you are so motivated to master the Buddha Way, then Hakuin argues that you “…must begin by attaining a kenshō of total clarity.” How could you be a master of awakening if you’ve not experienced an awakening? But it’s not just any awakening that Hakuin recommends but a “kenshō of total clarity.”

Kenshō experiences, abrupt embodiments of nonduality, come with a wide-variety of characteristics, including special effects that can confuse and distract us from the heart of the matter – the intimate knowledge of self-and-other – and obscure the clarity that we-and-the-world itself are at once lacking in any abiding substance, and we-and-the-world are one within the great play of interaction, interdependence, and interpenetration.

Finally, also implicit in this passage is Hakuin’s predilection that kenshō is the beginning of the Buddha Way, not the end. To “… think experiencing kenshō is enough,” he writes, is “… a great fraud.”

It’s also important to note that kenshō is a part of our human inheritance and is really quite common, therefore, it makes sense to position kenshō in the beginning of the life of practice. That said, however, not everyone who diligently practices experiences kenshō, at least not in the time frame that they prefer. This also is an important topic that I’m going to kick down the road to future posts.

In future posts, I’ll also address Hakuin’s view of how to realize kenshō. For now, I’ll just note that one of the great virtues of working with a kōan teacher, is that after kenshō, there is a brilliant system for culling, clarifying, and cultivating verification.

Post kenshō practice

Hakuin continues,

“When it is as clear as a fruit lying in your hand/Crack the secret ciphers of the Eastern Mountain”

So, “a fruit lying in your hand,” gives us a sense of how clear “clear” is. It’s really obvious. “How could I have missed that I have a mango in my hand? Amazing!”

Waddell notes that “Secret ciphers or ‘passwords’ (angō-rei) originally referred to secret passwords used by soldiers in wartime; here it means potent kōans, generally.”

And it’s quite nice that, in English, “cipher” also means “zero.” And so we have here a found kōan – “quickly, crack zero!”

“Eastern Mountain” is a specific reference that Hakuin seems to mean more generally, to paraphrase Waddell, as Zen utterances of marvellous efficacy. Hakuin lists eight kōans, secret ciphers, that are fitting for post-kenshō practice, including “Huang-lung planting vegetables by the zazen seat.” I’ll return to this kōan soon.

Then after you’ve passed through these post-kensho kōan, Hakuin encourages us to take up a couple sutras as secret ciphers, specifically the Lotus and Vimalakirti sutras. This is really creative! “I have always lamented Zen’s ignorance of the sutras,” writes Hakuin, “Monks plodding ahead aimlessly like blind donkeys.”

Hakuin continues, “Unless you grasp their meaning, even with kenshō/You will fall unawares into the abyss of emptiness.” And on the other hand, “And if you read the scriptures without having kenshō/You’re only a parrot imitating someone else’s speech.”

Again, realizing emptiness, another way of languaging kenshō, is just the first step. If we get stuck there, “squatting inside attainment,” we will be sick through and through. “Bodhisattvas of superior capacity,” Hakuin writes, “dwell in the dusty realm of differentiation, constantly carrying out their practice amid an infinite variety of distinctions.”

Vowing to share kenshō with others

And now we come to the heart of Hakuin’s contribution to our Zen way.

“I want you [people] to keep the ancients’ practice in mind,” says Hakuin in his Lotus Sutra introduction, “While spurring the vow-wheel on to save living beings.”

Hakuin came this realization at age forty-two while reading the Lotus Sutra’s chapter on “Skillful Means.” As Waddell notes it in Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin, “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 [their] career of assisting others to attain theirs.” 

Cracking the secret ciphers of the ancients, and then repaying our great debt of gratitude by aiding others are equal, mutually reinforcing aspects of post-kenshō training. One of Hakuin’s outstanding contributions to our practice is the visceral way he connects the heart of the way, the altruistic vow to save all beings, beginning with our first steps on the path, resolving to realize kenshō, realizing kenshō, and then working through difficult-to-pass kōans in order to share awakening with others. Thus the Bodhisattva Vows, beginning with “Beings are numberless; I vow to free them,” are made incredibly concrete.

Dōshō Port began practicing Zen in 1977 and now co-teaches with his wife, Tetsugan Zummach Sensei, with the Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training, an internet-based Zen community. Dōshō received dharma transmission from Dainin Katagiri Rōshi and inka shōmei from James Myōun Ford Rōshi in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. Dōshō’s translation and commentary on The Record of Empty Hall: One Hundred Classic Koans, is now available (Shambhala). He is also the author of Keep Me In Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri. Click here to support the teaching practice of Tetsugan Sensei and  Dōshō Rōshi.

 

2015-06-26T06:09:35-06:00

Last updated on: June 26, 2015 at 6:09 am   By

Old album_6 Eko HashimotoThe friendly-looking monk in the photo is Hashimoto Eko Roshi (1890-1965).

In about 1948, the young Katagiri Roshi heard Hashimoto Roshi say, “Sit down, become Buddha.”

Katagiri, then a new monk at Eiheiji, previously a failure in kamikaze school (he couldn’t get the training glider to fly straight toward the target) and a champion marathon runner, soon participated in his first Rohatsu sesshin. He determined to sit in full lotus no matter what, and even when he passed out and was dragged out of the zendo and thrown into the snow, he came to, and came back into the zendo, pulling his legs into full lotus.

Many years later, Katagiri Roshi reported how “Sit down, become Buddha,” had penetrated his heart and motivated him to throw himself into zazen wholeheartedly. Like really wholeheartedly, sitting down, becoming Buddha.

Hashimoto Roshi was one of the most important 20th Century Soto Zen teachers, and part of the Dogen revival movement that included Sawaki Kodo Roshi (branching into the Uchiyama and Deshimaru lines) and Kishizaza Ian Roshi (Suzuki Roshi’s dharma teacher).

Hashimoto Roshi was also a clear voice in the zazen-as-a-koan-free zone interpretation of Dogen’s teaching.

One of the themes that I’ve been working through in this blog for the last few years is that both just-sitting and koan introspection Zen are really about the same fundamental point and that the differences between the two approaches are often overstated for Japanese sectarian purposes that can now be released as Zen enters the global arena. I’ve argued, for example, that for Dogen, koan introspection and just-sitting were one and the same practice, that the version of just-sitting advocated by the narrative of the post-Meiji Soto orthodoxy often lacks wisdom teeth, and that verifying the truth of the buddhadharma for oneself (aka, kensho or satori) is vitally important.

In this post, I look at the sayings of three central figures in the post-Meiji Soto orthodoxy, Hashimoto Roshi, Sawaki Roshi, and Bokusan Roshi. I’ll suggest that these old teachers used koan and advocated for kensho while saying that they didn’t. In other words, the difference between their just-sitting approach and koan introspection was largely semantic and a question of emphasis.

First, Hashimoto Roshi’s statement, “Sit down, become Buddha,” is a fine example of a koan and Katagiri Roshi’s approach to it, embodying it fully, is a fine (and, yes, zealous) example of how to be the koan.

Some American apologists for the post-Meiji Soto orthodoxy insist that teachers like Katagiri Roshi and Hashimoto Roshi didn’t use koans in their teaching or claim, “Of course, there are koans in Soto Zen, but just not in zazen.”

“Sit down, become Buddha,” however, was intended for zazen. Hashimoto Roshi strongly encouraged the monks at Eiheiji to “sit down” in zazen and “become Buddha” on the cushion. Katagiri Roshi followed his instruction and focussed his zazen to this very practice of enlightenment.

I wonder what Hashimoto Roshi thought a koan was if “Sit down, become Buddha” wasn’t one for him. It’s curious how a great teacher like Hashimoto Roshi might have started out with the premise, “We don’t do koans,” but then taught a koan for the practice of just sitting – exactly what Dogen did, by the way (e.g., used koan to teach just sitting).

Second, Sawaki Kodo Roshi (1880-1965) in his recent Commentary of the Song of Awakening, writes, “When zazen is strong, suddenly at one stroke you realize the zen of the Buddha. That is to say, you grasp that you are Buddha.”

This example compliments the “Sit down, become Buddha” koan of Hashimoto Roshi and the similarity between what both of these masters’ sayings and Matsu’s koan “This very mind is Buddha” (Gateless Barrier, Case 30) is striking. Sawaki Roshi’s utterance, however, more clearly emphasizes a particular quality of zazen, strong sitting, that brings forth the identity of practitioner and Buddha: “You grasp that you are Buddha.”

In the koan-introspection tradition, the experience Sawaki Roshi encourages might be regarded as kensho, and could provide the basis for successive koan training while also illuminating what just-sitting is really about.

My third example of relatively recent Soto masters using a koan while saying they didn’t comes from Nishiari Bokusan Roshi (1821-1910). In his commentary on Dogen’s Genjokoan he says this:

“When the old teachers presented their essential teaching, they each had one phrase that none of their predecessors had chosen, and on which they based their teaching. With this phrase they penetrated a whole lifetime. Teachers in the past did not have two phrases. Therefore, that one phrase expressed their Dharmakaya [i.e., “truth body’]. For example, the “One Bright Jewel” of Xuansha, the “Cypress Tree” of Zhaozou, and “This very mind is Buddha” of Mazu are all words of iron never spoken by anyone before. With one phrase they thrust forward the suchness of the cosmos, and set in motion the same wheel of dharma as the Buddha. The same thing can be said of Dogen. He sees straight through the world of the ten directions as Genjokoan, which are his words of iron. When this phrase is cracked, the ninety-five fascicles appear here and there as branches of it. For that reason, the lifetime teaching of Dogen is all in the one phrase, Genjokoan.”

When one phrase is cracked, the truth body of Dogen and all the fascicles of the Shobogenzo are cracked. Crack one, crack all. Cut one, cut all. The resonance with what he’s saying here and the koan reformer Dahui’s punchline method, taking up a keyword like the mu koan and breaking through (kensho-ing), is unmistakable.  Punchlines would also be “One Bright Jewel,” any of Bokusan’s other examples, or, according to Bokusan, Dogen’s Genjokoan. Clearly, Bokusan draws an exact comparison between the koans of the great masters and Dogen’s Genjokoan.

A proponent of the post-Meiji Soto Orthodoxy, though, might again protest, “Yeah, but Bokusan certainly doesn’t say to sit with Genjokoan in zazen.”

Perhaps not, but Bokusan does give very mu-like koan instructions for working Genjokoan, “Then what in the world is ‘Genjokoan‘? First of all, you should get it right down in your hara. This cannot be done solely by thinking.”

Sounds an awful lot like the instructions for sitting zazen with mu.

And yet, in the same work, Bokusan derides koan introspection:

“When you do zazen, you should become zazen thoroughly. There is no need to bring in the koans. If you work on koans during zazen, the koan becomes the master and zazen becomes the attendant. Thus zazen is no longer zazen. To abide at ease in steadfast non-thinking is the bull’s-eye of zazen. Other schools aside, the dharma descendants of Dogen Zenji should study Dogen Zenji’s Buddha dharma.”

To think that in koan introspection, the koan is the master and zazen is the attendant, is a profound misunderstanding of koan introspection.

Hashimoto Roshi, Sawaki Roshi, and Bokusan Roshi, great teachers though they were, may not have realized that what they were teaching and koan introspection were one and the same, nor that there descriptions of really sitting or really genjokoan-ing could also be called “kensho-ing.” The main difference between their teachings cited here and the koan introspection narrative lies in how in koan introspection a process is offered for unfolding an initial realization. That just-sitting Zen, and none of these teachers, as far as I know, offers such thing, in my view, is not something to boast about.

Nevertheless, in terms of koan and kensho, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I’d say, it’s a duck.

Katagiri Roshi thought that now was the time, and that the West might be the place, to return to the Zen of the 6th Ancestor, before the split into the Rinzai and Soto lineages. I agree. Let’s move beyond sectarian posturing in our global dharma dialogue, celebrate our commonalities, and support each other in this great work.

2023-03-20T08:05:05-06:00

Last updated on: March 20, 2023 at 8:05 am   By
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Below you will find a dharma talk by an incredible (and largely unknown) Zen master, Miàodào Dǐngguāng (1095-1170), one of only three women Zen masters listed in Outline of the Linked Flames, a transmission of illumination collection published in 1183.
Miàodào had been a student of the Cáodòng (J. Sōtō) master Zhenxie Qingliao (1088-1151; Tall Reeds Purity Field; J. Choro Seiryō), but after twenty years of training had not awakened. She switched teachers and began working with the Línjì master Dàhuì Zōnggǎo (1089–1163) and soon awakened by means of the “not mind, not buddha, not a thing” keyword.
Miàodào was Dàhuì’s first student who kenshō-ed and due to the success of his keyword method with her, he began using it with everyone – and thirteen monks awakened the following year.
So Miàodào played a key – and largely unsung – role in the development of the keyword method. Dàhuì, however, was very supportive, frequently telling her awakening story, and using her example as proof that women as well as men could awaken. In addition, Miàodào became Dàhuì’s first successor. He continued to support her and her students as they trained together by sharing written and oral teachings with them.
Much more about Miàodào is available in an article by the wonderful Miriam Levering, “Miao-tao and Her Teacher Ta-hui.”

Click here to support my Zen teaching practice at Patreon of which translations and writings like this are one facet. You will also find an advertisement free version of this post there.

As a Zen master, Miàodào was extraordinary – as you will see for yourself below. The style of her dharma expression reminds me of Dōgen. However, Miàodào predated the old dog by almost a century, so I should say that Dōgen reminds me of Miàodào. In the passage below, you will find several phrases that Dōgen used, like “churn the Yangtze River into curds and transform the great earth into gold….”
There’s also a dharma hall discourse in Dogen’s Extensive Record (#266) that has a very similar and playful structure to the first portion of this Miàodào dharma talk, so much so that I wonder if Dōgen was familiar with Miàodào’s teaching (he certainly knew the Outline of the Linked Flames) and even if he might have imitated her.
Hey, Dōgen, how about some citations!?
Those pesky citations, however, are a modern thing and Dōgen was a master at the unattributed copy/paste, so the lack of citations for Miàodào are not unusual. That Dōgen may have been influenced by Miàodào speaks to how he may have admired her expression.
So, without further sidetracks and off-gassing, here’s Miàodào:
“If what we are talking about is a meeting between the original endowment of two people, then there is no need to ascend this high seat. But dharma s do not arise singly; their arising depends on causes and conditions. And since today the balance scal [of authority] is in my hand, I respond to whatever changes occur in the moment, grasping tight and letting loose, rolling up and rolling out, doing this with great freedom.
“There are times when on top of the solitary peak I command the essential place: This way won’t do; the opposite, not this way, also won’t do.
“There are times when in a crowded street I make a passageway: this way will do, not this way will also do.
“Then I can churn the Yangtze River into curds and transform the great earth into gold, pluck a blade of grass and make it into the sixteen-foot golden body [of Shakyamuni], take the sixteen-foot golden body and make it into a blade of grass.
“When I hold on firmly, then the three mysteries [of Linji], sword and armor, the five ranks of correct and one-sided [of Dongshan], setting the whisk upright and taking up the cudgel, being silent for a long time, and [making quick responses like] stone-struck sparks or lightning flashes – all these are not necessary.
“How even more unnecessary are words that like hooked sentences and barbed phrases disclose the point of a statement [words that are refined and beautiful like] a gathering of flowers and elegant brocades – they are only of benefit to an impractical, useless theoretical discourse.
“Therefore, it is said: ‘If one could thoroughly investigate all explanations of the mystery, it would be [as useless as] a fine hair extended across the great void [in a feeble attempt to cover it]. If one were to exhaust all the deepest principles of the world, it would be [as useless as] hurling one drop into the great ocean.’
“Moreover each person is complete in every way, each thing is perfect, and [that which is totally complete and perfect] covers the earth and reaches to heaven. Eyes are horizontal and noses are vertical. Spring courses amoung the ten thousand plants; the moon is reflected on a thousan waves. There is no lack and no excess.
“What is there to think about? What is there to deliberate about? Even if I sing such a tune, I still can’t avoid falling into irrelevancies and confusing statements.
“So I will lose no time in arriving with you at the very best, most appropriate, most opportune moment.”
She set her staff upright and said: “Do you still understand? A thousand-foot whale spouts, and vast waves fly; one clap of thunder and the storm arises.”

Dōshō Port began practicing Zen in 1977 and now co-teaches with his wife, Tetsugan Zummach Sensei, with Vine of Obstacles Zen, an online training group. Dōshō received dharma transmission from Dainin Katagiri Rōshi and inka shōmei from James Myōun Ford Rōshi in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. He is also the author of Keep Me In Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri. Dōshō’s translation and commentary on The Record of Empty Hall: One Hundred Classic Koans, was published in 2021 (Shambhala). His third book, Going Through the Mystery’s One Hundred Questions, is now available. Click here to support the teaching practice of Dōshō Rōshi.
2023-05-17T13:21:35-06:00

Last updated on: May 17, 2023 at 1:21 pm   By
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In the fall, I met with Rick McDaniel for an interview for his new book, Further Zen Conversations. Rick has published a bunch of really good books about Zen in recent years (click here for more). He’s such a skilled interviewer that I encouraged him to start a podcast (but that’s not his thing). 
His reason for wanting to talk with me this time was what we’re doing with the Vine of Obstacles Zen, but to get warmed up, I opened up about my views on what I call the “Zen Center Model” – in short, how it does not generally fulfill it’s promise of offering awakening to householders and so there is a great need for alternatives. 
There are monasteries in the US like Korinji that offer serious training, of course. However, what we’re doing with the Vine of Obstacles Zen is focussed on offering serious Zen training for householders. I’ll soon be offering more about that here – another excerpt from later in this interview with Rick. 
Below, however, you’ll find a slightly different version, a bit spicier, of the excerpt that appears in Further Zen Conversations, Chapter 7: Looking Forward. This is the “less polished” version and I’ve expanded on a few points too. In what follows, Rick’s voice is in the narrator role and my voice is in quotes. 

Click here to support my Zen teaching practice at Patreon of which translations and writings like this are one facet. You will also find an advertisement free version of this post there.

Chapter Excerpt

The pioneers who brought Zen to North America were familiar with essentially two models, the temple and the monastery. Monasteries were training institutions for people seeking formation as monks and nuns. Temples served the spiritual needs of “householders.” The most common form of Zen institution in North America today is neither of these; it is the Zen Center, a uniquely Western construct, a place for lay practice – whether Soto, Rinzai, or Sanbo Zen – with or without a focus on awakening and the integration of awakening in one’s life.
Once again Dosho puts the matter in a historical perspective.
“As far as I know, in all the cultures in Asia before the 20th century there was a two-track system where the monastics – men and women living in monasteries – were the specialists, some sub-group of those were really focused on awakening in this lifetime. And then householders, who maybe attended temple services, were generally considered either not interested or not able put the kind of time and energy into waking up that was necessary. Their contribution was to support the specialists and receive merit for doing so.
“Then with the 20th century, a number of things were happening worldwide, some of them specific to Buddhism, but one is the collapse of monasticism for various reasons. And at the same time, fortunately, lots of householders became interested in contemplative traditions including Zen. And then this new iteration on an old thing developed – the idea of ‘neither monk nor householder,’ which went back twelve hundred years to Saicho, but hadn’t ever really fully taken off.
“When people like Suzuki Roshi and Katagiri Roshi came to California in the mid-20th century, what they started with at Sokoji was a traditional kind of Japanese temple. And then all these hippies started coming in who actually wanted to sit. And Suzuki Roshi was, like, ‘Yeah. This is it. These are the people who are actually neither monk nor householders.’ And so they created this new model for rigorously training lay people. 
“The model caught on. Every place it spread did it a little bit differently, but they all basically did the same thing – serious Zen training for householders. There were few antecedents for this in Asia. Meanwhile, growth of monastic practice in the West has been much slower. Today, after 60 years or so of Zen in the West, there are fewer than ten monasteries and most are experiencing declining participation.”
But back to the ‘60’s. Young Americans were taking up what had been essentially a monastic practice, but doing so as what in Buddhist parlance is called “householders.” It was a way, in Dosho’s view, “to resolve the contradiction between the promise of awakening and the difficulty of it. So the early Zen pioneers came up with this new model, the Zen Center model for householders – primarily – who wanted to wake up and who were interested in and able to devote a lot of time and energy to the project. That was the Zen Center model. San Francisco, Rochester, ZCLA, Minnesota – Katagiri Roshi’s Minnesota Zen Center – all monastic or quasi-monastic. So, you know, through the late ’70s and ’80s, when I was at the Minnesota Zen Center before Katagiri Roshi died, we were doing something like three or four hours a day of practice plus having jobs. Plus ten hours on Saturdays. Plus monthly sesshin. And this was not unusual. This was the standard for Zen Centers at the time.
“Of course there were some problems with the model. Marriages. Kids. Careers. So it really pushed what was possible for householders, sometimes too far. In most groups today there’s a general kind of gentling due to cultural influences and new cultural values about balance and success in the contemporary economy. So Zen Centers have become less like training centers and more like churches where people come once or twice a week for an hour or two, and that’s often all the practice they do. They are still called “Zen Centers,” premised on the capacity for awakening, and often with a backstory that includes the great awakenings of many of our great ancestors, but almost no Zen Center in the country – there are exceptions – now offers a realistic program where great awakening can happen. Most Zen Centers simply do not offer a program with sufficient intensity for householders to experience the kind of absorption necessary for a kensho as clear as the palm of one’s hand, as Hakuin liked to put it.
“Take my old training center, the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, for example. When Katagiri Roshi was alive, we had about 45 days of sesshin each year, plus two 100-day nonresidential practice periods with practice starting at 4:30am, Monday-Friday, plus two or three months of ango at Hokyoji, the country place we were developing as a monastery. Now, according to their calendar for 2022, I count nine days of sesshin and a few one-day retreats. 
“Generally speaking, it’s going to take many Zen students at least 100 days of sesshin for a first kensho and then another 400 or so (a low estimate for the “best horses”) to really integrating that awakening. This assumes weekly sanzen/dokusan with a clear-eyed teacher. There are other ways of doing intensive practice, of course, and sesshin days are just one convenient indicator.
 
“Still, at the Minnesota Zen Center now, even if you participated in all their days of sesshin, you’d be looking at fifty years before you could get that kind of time in. Meanwhile, the by-line on their web page says that they’re ‘celebrating 50 years of awakening together.’ And they are not alone in offering this low level of intensity while continuing the narrative about awakening. Indeed, from what I’m seeing, this is now the norm. By the way, to their credit, the Minnesota Zen Center recently raised almost $600,000 for building renovations, including to their zendo – so this model is being financially support.” (1)
Speaking more generally about the Soto tradition, one of the traditions to which he belongs, he tells me: “What they’re often doing is serving as community centers for progressive people that want to come and do a little meditation, and occasionally to hear a talk about something that they can use in their lives. If there’s a children’s program that the kids can attend while they’re doing their weekly Zen thing, all the better. There’s nothing wrong all with that, of course. But it’s not Zen training, and there’s nothing in the history of Zen that indicates that kind of limited practice can actually lead anywhere, except maybe to being a nicer person and a better life next time. Zen in the West has become mostly about well-being rather than the Bodhisattva vow to get to the ground of being to benefit all beings.
“As I’ve said, most centers now are church-like progressive community centers. You know, there was this idea 50 years ago that Zen was going to convert the West. No! The West has converted Zen. And it’s made Zen – with some exceptions – into a progressive belief system, a condiment for progressive living. Meanwhile, it requires an enormous commitment of time and energy from both the teachers and committed members to support this model. Is the outpouring of so much energy worth the results that are generated? I don’t think so. 
“In addition, the Soto Zen Buddhist Association (SZBA) now is focussed on training priests in progressive political causes. I’m a progressive, so don’t disagree with the politics, generally, but with such a nearly exclusive focus, the SZBA has abandoned their duty of care to support Zen priests offering the buddhadharma and instead have become a support for people in Zen priest robes doing progressive Buddhist community organizing. After twenty-years membership and financial support, I resigned from the organization in September.”
“Well, they do teach meditation,” I suggest.
“A lot of Zen Centers now teach a fuzzy form of mindfulness. They’re teaching a version of meditation that’s only distinguishable from secular mindfulness in its lack of clear outcomes.”
“Are there not other schools which still emphasize awakening and the post-awakening process? The Rinzai people, the Sanbo Zen people.”
“To some extent. And they are all facing the same pressures. Levelling downwards and accommodating individual preferences rather than strong group practice. That is Western culture. To find the easiest way through. And then there’s the commodification of the dharma. So you have kenshos being verified that often are only feint intimations or not even that. I’ve met with people that are deep into the koan systems in various traditions, one who had completed a 500 koan system, and for many of them it’s all intimation but not what would be called a classical kensho.”
There needs to be, in his view, a re-visioning of methods to present Zen in the West.
(1) The preceding three paragraphs will not be included in the version of this interview that will appear in Rick’s book.

Dōshō Port began practicing Zen in 1977 and now co-teaches with his wife, Tetsugan Zummach Sensei, with the Vine of Obstacles Zen, an online training group. Dōshō received dharma transmission from Dainin Katagiri Rōshi and inka shōmei from James Myōun Ford Rōshi in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. He is also the author of Keep Me In Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri. Dōshō’s translation and commentary on The Record of Empty Hall: One Hundred Classic Koans, was published in 2021 (Shambhala). His third book, Going Through the Mystery’s One Hundred Questions, is now available. Click here to support the teaching practice of Dōshō Rōshi.

2023-01-31T12:04:30-06:00

Last updated on: January 31, 2023 at 12:04 pm   By
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I’ve previously posted my translations of excerpts from a revealing Dōgen dharma discourse (J. hogō), Eihei koroku V8.14, with brief commentaries. This hogō focuses on the importance and the role of the Zen teacher, specifically in the context of householder practice. 
Going zigzag on the straight path as I tend to do, I’ve already post several sections from this hogō that are near the middle and at the end. In this post, I go back to the beginning. And after more playing around with this, I see that it will work best to divide the hogō into nine sections. I’ve already posted #5, #8, and #9. 
With this post, I begin again with #1 and offer a translation with some of my thoughts. I will get to the remaining five sections soon and I’ll share them as soon as they are ready to serve. 
It seems to me, fortunately, that each section happens to work pretty well as a stand alone piece and hope you find that too. 

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Translation

Ministers and generals who study the Way, first inquire of a teacher. Depending on whether the teacher is false or true, the student’s self understanding will be twisted or straight. Therefore, one practitioner turned away from the place of selecting government officials, and went to the place for selecting Buddhas. Thus, an empty mind passed the imperial exam. Inquire directly from superior teachers, directly obtain their understanding. Don’t serve as the companion for the ten thousand dharmas. Before one heard the three calls, they had broken through subtle karmic impressions. An authentic teacher influences the expression of the power of compassion.

Comments

The one thing that stands out immediately from this hogō excerpt is its density. Not unusual for Dōgen, of course, but there’s no sign of a shift in pedagogical strategies for householders! In just 78 characters, less than 100 words in translation, Dōgen includes three Zen references and one technical dharma term. 
“Ministers and generals,” as I pointed out earlier in the series, probably refers to Dōgen’s main patron, Hatano Yoshishige (d. 1258) and his associates. Yoshishige later provided the land for Dōgen’s monastery, Eiheiji. In any case, Dōgen here is clearly addressing householders.
Given the density of Dōgen’s presentation, I wonder if these ministers and generals were following what he was saying. It could be that upper class folks were very well educated or already quite steeped in the dharma … or that Dōgen was marching to a different drummer than a modern teacher, and expecting his listeners to come to where he was at rather than primarily offering up something at their level. 
In any case, the first Zen reference is this: “Therefore, one practitioner turned away from the place of selecting government officials, and went to the place for selecting Buddhas. Thus, an empty mind passed the imperial exam.”
 
Dōgen here is probably thinking about Dānxiá, a ninth generation successor of Shítóu Xīqiān. As a young man and avid scholar, Dānxiá was on his way to take the civil service exam when he had a dream of white light filling his room. A fortune teller told him this was an omen of resolving emptiness. He then met a monk who referred him to Mǎzǔ who then referred him on to Shítóu. There are many instances of practitioners going back and forth from Mǎzǔ to Shítóu and from Shítóu to Mǎzǔ. 
The sentence about the empty mind passing the exam is an example of Dōgen’s subtle and dry sense of humor. 
The second reference the Zen narrative comes in the next sentence. Dōgen picks up where he left off with Mǎzǔ, but now Mǎzǔ tells the householder, Layman Páng, “Don’t serve as the companion for the ten thousand dharmas,” in other words, don’t linger in witness consciousness. 
The third Zen references is “Before one heard the three calls….” This refers to the following kōan: “The National Teacher called his attendant three times. Three times the attendant answered. The National teacher said, ‘Requesting you to speak, I thought I was letting you down. Turns out, the fact is that you were letting me down.’” 
This theme – the teacher and/or the student letting the teacher and/or student down – is one that comes up regularly in classical Zen and Dōgen’s teaching … and also in contemporary teacher-student relationships. In the Harada-Yasutani kōan shitsunai, we address this issue in the No Gate Barrier, Case 17: The National Teacher’s Three Calls and other places too.
The technical dharma term occurs in Dōgen’s one-phrase interpretation of the three-calls kōan: “they had broken through subtle karmic impressions.” “They” here refers to the attendant that had already broken through before the teacher’s call. “Subtle karmic impressions,” 一点, “refers to the extremely subtle remaining karmic impressions that which impede the practices of bodhisattvas” (see Digital Dictionary of Buddhism). It is the one speck that remains after a transformative kensho that is addressed through the calling of the Way. 
Dōgen’s concluding sentence, “An authentic teacher influences the expression of the power of compassion,” highlights the importance of finding an authentic teacher so that the subtle power of the compassionate teachers presence can perfume the student’s practice. 
Coming up next: contrasting false and true teachers in #2, and then in #3, the difficulty of finding and recognizing a true teacher. Stay tuned!

Dōshō Port began practicing Zen in 1977 and now co-teaches with his wife, Tetsugan Zummach Sensei, with the Vine of Obstacles Zen, an online training group. Dōshō received dharma transmission from Dainin Katagiri Rōshi and inka shōmei from James Myōun Ford Rōshi in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. He is also the author of Keep Me In Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri. Dōshō’s translation and commentary on The Record of Empty Hall: One Hundred Classic Koans, was published in 2021 (Shambhala). His third book, Going Through the Mystery’s One Hundred Questions, is now available. Click here to support the teaching practice of Dōshō Rōshi.

2023-01-17T10:56:35-06:00

Last updated on: January 17, 2023 at 10:56 am   By
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Harada Tangen Roshi

Context

This post is a follow-up to Cultivating Verification: A New Shushogi for Now. Near the top of page 3, just before Dōgen praises the kōan “Zhaozhou’s Mu,” he says, “When you meet a teacher, first ask for a kōan, just keep it in mind, and study it diligently.”
This sentence was selected from Dogen’s Extensive Record, Volume 8, Dharma Discourse 14 (EK V8.14), trans. Taigen Leighton and Shohaku Okumura. The alternate translation offered below includes a bit more of the passage, so I’ve underlined the sentence shared above in my version below. 
I’ve long been curious about this passage and recently dug into the original, translating my own version. In this post, I’ll make a few observations about this teaching of Dōgen, including a point about how the perspective of the translator (strongly) influences the translation – a point that’s certainly been made before, but I think is particularly clear in this case. 

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First, though, a bit about the eighth volume of Dogen’s Extensive Record or Eihei koroku, or simply The Record, as I’ll refer to it here. Volume 8 includes twenty informal talks Dōgen gave to students in his room and fourteen dharma discourses (hōgo 法語) addressed to a variety of individual students. The passage that’s in the spotlight here occurs deep in the fourteenth such dharma discourse – so near the end of the volume. Leighton and Okumura note this hōgo was probably “… written for Dōgen’s main patron, Hatano Yoshishige (d. 1258), who was an official on a level comparable to ‘ministers and generals.’ Yoshishige, a nobleman with land in Echizen, later provided the land for Dōgen’s monastery, Eiheiji.” 
Note that this was a hōgo for a householder audience, including his main patron and probably associates of his main patron. If, indeed, it was offered by Dōgen to Yoshishige and friends before the move to Eiheiji, it highlights the effectiveness of the discourse. It may have led Yoshishige to saving Dōgen from a difficult situation in the big city with a large land grant and funds for a monastery in the mountains.
Also note that it was written out by Dōgen himself, rather than a talk that his attendant listened to and then recorded after-the-fact, as is the case for much of The Record. Both the audience to whom it was intended and how the discourse was recorded – by Dōgen himself – should add, I would think, to the reliability of the passage.
This hōgo is one of the longest passages of any kind in The Record, coming in at ~1500 words in translation. The main themes include the dangers of selecting a bad teacher, the importance of finding a good teacher, and then advice for how to proceed once one has found a good teacher.
I’ll be returning to this hōgo and offering other snippets of translations here in the future. 

Translation 

“Honored bodhisattvas, when you meet a dharma master, first ask for a single kōan case, then you must straightforwardly pay attention, diligently keep it in mind, and practice vigorously. The mountain exhausted, the ocean dried up, you will penetrate perfectly with nothing lacking. Standing in the snow [like Huike], attaining the dharma, and negotiating the Way for eight years without being lazy. Pounding rice [like Huineng], transmitting the robe, doing diligent, vigorous practice for eight months.”

Thoughts on the Translation

First, Dōgen’s advice, find a teacher, take up a kōan, and work with it diligently in order to break through or exhaust delusion, is fully consistent with the teaching of almost every other thirteenth century Zen master, regardless of lineage. In fact, I know of no counter examples and say “almost” to acknowledge that there are many that I’m not familiar with.
What might be surprising is that this message is being delivered by Dōgen. You see, we’re told by the Post Meiji Sōtō Orthodox folks that Dōgen’s message was not in alignment with the mainstream of Chinese Chan, especially in that he was not an advocate of kōan work or kenshō. That’s all you need is just this one paragraph to see that this is clearly false. It’s kinda hard to cherry-pick your way around a passage like this one.
In addition, nowadays it is said that the Sōtō style is gentle and gradual, while basking in original awakening. A vigorous passage like the above, though, reveals those prejudices for what they are – an  inaccurate attempt to recreate Dōgen’s teaching to satisfy the perceived needs and perspectives of nineteenth and twentieth Japanese householders, but they do not accurately reflect Dōgen’s teaching. Nor are they in tune with what’s needed now. 
One dynamic that might be in play here is that Dōgen’s novel expression is confused for a novel meaning. However, in all of Dōgen’s works, he clearly and repeatedly aligns his message with that of all the buddhas and ancestors. In this passage and others in EK V8.14, he uses general terms for “teacher” and does not say “find a Zen master.” In this passage, it’s something like “dharma master” (知識).The Digital Dictionary of Buddhism says these characters refer to “…an eminent monk, a Buddhist teacher, an exemplary practitioner with whom one is intimate.”
Second, Dōgen not only connects kōan work with the root of the Zen transmission in China with the selfless and wholehearted practice of Huike and Huineng, but he also centers their awakening experiences and their post-kenshō training – those eight years and eight months mentioned above. There is a little historical issue here in that the full development of the kōan method, and keyword Dōgen recommends, was uttered long after Huike’s and Huineng’s time. Still, Dōgen equates breaking through the keyword with the heart of these two essential Zen ancestors. So here Dōgen employs the mythical source of the tradition to make his points.
Third and finally, a point about translation. As I mentioned above, the perspective of the translator influences the translation. For a case in point, let’s look at just the last sentence, “Pounding rice [like Huineng], transmitting the robe, doing diligent, vigorous practice for eight months.” 
For this sentence, Leighton and Okumura have “The eight-month effort of [Dajian Huineng] pounding rice had the power for [receiving] transmission of the robe.” 
Although more could be said, I’d like to compare just one phrase within this sentence. My rendition is “doing diligent, vigorous practice” and they have “had the power.” The Chinese characters are 功夫有力 and form two binomials. The first, 功夫, pronounced “gōngfū” in Chinese and “kufū” in Japanese, is a common expression in Zen texts – and an essential method – including in the great Dahui’s teaching. I usually translate “kufū” as diligent practice or diligent effort. 
The second binomial, 有力, means to possess power.  So rather than the very vigorous phrase, “Pounding rice [like Huineng], transmitting the robe, doing diligent, vigorous practice…,” Leighton and Okumura offer, “…pounding rice had the power for [receiving] transmission of the robe.” It seems that they leave out kufū/diligent effort and in so doing tamp down the vivid and vital vigor of Dōgen’s expression. 
Now, I’m not imputing intend. Buddha knows that I’ve certainly dropped characters in my own work. Another possibility is that they felt that including both “diligent effort” and “possessing power” was redundant. But given that Dōgen wrote all four characters, and given the importance of both “diligent effort” and “possessing power,” I’m called to highlight that for you here. The point being, if a translator sees Dōgen’s teaching as gentle and gradual, then it takes very little for a translation to lean that way.
In any case, like the man said, find a good teacher, receive a kōan, do your utmost to break through, and then integrate the breakthrough within the vertiginous vicissitudes of daily life. 
There will be more on this last point with the next translation – coming soon.

Dōshō Port began practicing Zen in 1977 and now co-teaches with his wife, Tetsugan Zummach Sensei, with the Vine of Obstacles Zen, an online training group. Dōshō received dharma transmission from Dainin Katagiri Rōshi and inka shōmei from James Myōun Ford Rōshi in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. He is also the author of Keep Me In Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri. Dōshō’s translation and commentary on The Record of Empty Hall: One Hundred Classic Koans, was published in 2021 (Shambhala). His third book, Going Through the Mystery’s One Hundred Questions, is now available. Click here to support the teaching practice of Dōshō Rōshi.

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