Zenshin Tim Buckley Dies: One Heartbeat, Ten Thousand Buddhas

April 17, 2015 By Dosho Port

Zenshin Tim Buckley, a Zen priest affiliated with the San Francisco Zen Center system and the teacher at Great River Zendo near West Bath, Maine, died yesterday.

Zenshin was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer last August and since then has been nobly undertaking his departure in an upright and inspiring manner.

The last time Tetsugan and I visited Zenshin, he was lying comfortably in bed. He seemed so soft. “How are you?” I asked.

“Fading by degrees,” he said with a grin.

Zenshin practiced with Suzuki Roshi at San Francisco Zen Center and at Tassajara in the late 1960’s. He also trained with Harry Roberts, a Native American teacher. Zenshin completed a BA at Harvard and earned a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago. He taught at the University of Massachusetts and wrote ground-breaking works on the anthropology of menstruation and on the Yurok Indian way.

Zenshin had a full life as a spouse, father, academician, and sailor before returning to formal Zen practice. Zenshin was eventually priest ordained and received dharma transmission from Yozen Peter Schneider.

Tetsugan and I met Zenshin a few years ago when we first visited Maine and were considering a move here. We immediately found him to be a warm, wise, and supportive friend, who welcomed us to Maine with big open arms.

Just a month after we arrived in Maine, Zenshin received his diagnosis and so our plans to work together were cut short. Still, Zenshin served on the board of directors for Great Tides Zen and Tetsugan served on the Great River Zendo board.

Tetsugan and I enjoyed some wonderful times with Zenshin and his wife, Jorunn, visiting their camp, swapping old Zen stories, and just hanging out.

At a talk that Tetsugan and I gave in Portland before our move, Zenshin showed up with a van full of his students from West Bath. The topic of the talk was the koan about the woman who was separated from her spirit (“Who Is The True One?). During the dharma dialogue, Zenshin raised the issue of resolution – can resolution to separation be permanent?

I turned the question to him, and Zenshin said, “We can experience one heartbeat. And the next heartbeat…one heartbeat, ten thousand buddhas, no conflict, no gap.”

Yesterday afternoon, we joined with Zen priests John Bailes and Joan Amaral, and Zenshin’s student, Susan, to wash him, dress him in his priest robes, and begin the three-day zazen vigil with his body. We’ll be participating in the vigil as much as we can.

Details are being worked out for the cremation Sunday or Monday, and for the funeral in about forty-nine days.

Zenshin will be missed.

Menzan and Dainin on Zazenshin

January 27, 2010 By Dosho Port

After the first talk in Anchorage last week, a practitioner approached me and said he’d sat with Katagiri Roshi at Southern Dharma in about 1988 and that he had a picture that he’d send me (and he did – above). It’s a deep pleasure for me to run into people who knew Katagiri way back when. And btw, if anybody out there has some old pictures of the old boy that you’d like to share, I’d be delighted to archive them here.

Here’s a poem on Zazenshin by Menzan Zuiho that Katagiri Roshi translated. Menzan (1683-1769) was an influential Soto Zen monk and scholar during the reforms of the Edo period. Menzan’s interest was in returning to the original spirit of Dogen. A commentary on each of the works of Dogen’s Shobogenzo is attributed to him, although some scholars argue that one of his disciples is responsible for the work.

Zazen goes beyond holy and profane.
Shin is an instrument to cure sickness.
Here it means to kill the sickness of Zen.
This sickness is chronic and obstinate.
The immediate manifestation
of dropping off body and mind
removes sickness inside and outside.
This is vigorous and sound wisdom.
Right and wrong views are originally empty.
The sickness of Dharma can be diligently
cleansed and removed.
A bird flies like a bird, a fish swims like a fish.
Seeing and hearing are much clearer.
Sound and form are as-it-isness.
The intent of Buddha and the intent
of becoming Buddha are going beyond.
Three times and ten directions are hard to separate.

And here is Roshi’s brief commentary to the poem:

The teaching of just sitting is uplifted by Dogen and all the Buddhas. By plunging into the process of just sitting from moment to moment you can get out of this perpetual wandering. Once attached to the dualistic mind there is no way out. Just switch your attention back to this center, embracing the total picture of just sitting itself including thinking, not thinking and nonthinking without meddling. Then you can directly perceive the nature of the world of perpetual wandering. This awareness is not a mental experience created by your consciousness. Body and mind directly realize it. Sometimes the realization is strong and sometimes it is more subtle and smooth. Some day you can taste it.

Dōgen’s Instruction for Householder Zen Training

February 20, 2023 By Dosho Port

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Introduction

Because this Dōgen dharma discourse (hōgo) in Eihei kōroku V8.14 was written for householders, includes examples of awakened householders, and offers instructions for householders, I’ve long been curious about it. After all, 99% or so of those engaged in Zen practice now are householders, yet much of the Zen narrative has monastics as the central figures and the instruction also seems directed to monastics.

So I recently dug into this Dōgen teaching for householders, translating my own version. You’ll find the translation attached in the pdf – here – following these introductory comments.

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The Eihei kōroku and this dharma discourse

The hōgo that I’m talking about can be found in Dogen’s Extensive Record (Eihei kōroku), Volume 8, which also includes twenty informal talks Dōgen gave to students in his room and fourteen hōgo that were written out and addressed to various students. So they are intimate instructions. The hōgo in the spotlight in this essay and translation occurs as the fourteenth such dharma discourse in Volume 8.

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.”

Although a date is not given, it is speculated that it was delivered before 1243 when Dōgen left Kōshōji near present day Kyōto for what became Eiheiji, located deep in the mountains. If, indeed, this hōgo was offered by Dōgen to Hatano and friends before the move to Eiheiji, it serves to highlight the effectiveness of the discourse. It may have contributed to Hatano’s aspiration to save Dōgen from a difficult situation in the big city with a large land grant and funds for a new monastery in the mountains.

Incidentally, this hōgo is one of the longest passages of any kind in Eihei kōroku, coming in at ~1300 words in my translation.

The main themes

In my view, the fact that this hōgo was written out by Dōgen himself (rather than a talk that an attendant listened to and then recorded after-the-fact, as is the case for much of Eihei kōroku) and that the audience to whom it was delivered was his main donor and their friends, adds considerably to the reliability that the message contained in this hōgo is Dōgen’s.

His main themes for householder practice include:

the importance of finding a true teacher
the dangers of a false teacher
the importance of working closely with and serving the teacher
taking up a keyword and breaking through
then integrating that breakthrough

In making these points, Dōgen seems to have constructed the text carefully and in the form of a spiral. That is, he repeats his themes while systematically moving his instruction progressively forward.

Before translating this hōgo, I had been aware that in Section 5 Dōgen recommends a kōan for householders, saying, “…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.”

A big surprise for me was in how Dōgen amplifies this theme in Section 8, saying, “First, awaken ‘withered tree, dead ash.’ Next, use a bamboo staff and all day long, month after month, knock it all into one.” My translation highlights the method aspect here more clearly than other translators who, as far as I know, have not had first person experience working with kōan with a teacher.

For me, as someone who has been through the Harada-Yasutani kōan shitsunai – and I suspect for anyone who’s done similar work – it is vividly clear that Dōgen is moving from a general recommendation for kōan in Section 5 to a specific keyword (話頭, huàtóu) here, “withered tree, dead ash.” Dōgen then continues by recommending what we now call post-satori training with, “Next, use a bamboo staff and all day long, month after month, knock it all into one.”

In terms of main themes, another surprise is that in this pithy summary of the Zen path for householders, Dōgen says nothing about zazen. He also says nothing about the practice that the Post Meiji Sōtō Orthodoxy claims that he advocated – shikantaza. Doesn’t that seem odd? If you had a chance to give a talk to a group of wealthy and powerful folks who might just be willing to build you a new monastery, wouldn’t you give them the straight scoop about what you thought was most important about the buddhadharma?

Likewise, when Dōgen does give specific instruction for zazen in his several versions of the “Fukanzazengi” (“Universal Recommendations for Zazen”) and “Zazenshin” (“Needle Point of Zazen”) he also does not use the word shikantaza a single time. If you were giving zazen some new spin, wouldn’t you name it in the texts dedicated to zazen?

In these ways and others, this hōgo does not harmonize well with what is said to be Dōgen’s teaching in our times, much of which is poisonous pablum spewed about by well-meaning but poorly-informed Sōtō practitioners and teachers about the heart of Dōgen Zen. One dynamic that might be at play is mistaking Dōgen’s novel, creative style of expression for a novel, creative meaning that runs contrary to the Zen tradition. However, in all of Dōgen’s works, he clearly and repeatedly aligns his message with that of all the buddhas and ancestors.

A pedagogical puzzle

You will find, unsurprisingly for Dōgen, that this hōgo is quite dense, like really rich dark chocolate, but that it also moves straight to the heart of the great matter. Indeed, Dōgen’s shining confidence that householders can plumb the depths of the buddhadharma illuminates the entire discourse – if they’re not lazy, that is.

In Section 4, for example, Dōgen runs through six examples of past householders who practiced diligently and woke up. It reminds me of Torei’s whirlwind tour of his Rinzai lineage in The Inexhaustible Lamp of the Zen School, “Chapter 1: Concerning the Lineage of Our School.” Like Torei, Dōgen’s references are almost in shorthand. It’s like Dōgen and Torei are calling out family stories to those who have heard them many times, “Remember the time Uncle Joe’s canoe tipped over on Lake One?” And everybody chuckles.

If the practitioners Dōgen was addressing could follow this, they were indeed deeply steeped in the Zen narrative. Yet, even a Zen priest I know who I consider to be really steeped could identify only three of the six examples (yours truly identified two of six). It is possible, though, that Hatano and friends had previous training with the Daruma-shu who had a monastery in Echizen, near Hatano’s family holdings. The Daruma-shu preceded Dōgen’s movement in Japan and were already using the Zen narrative in the late 1100’s. However, I’ve seen no evidence that Hatano had such connections.

In my view, it seems very unlikely that in ~1240, Japan, Dōgen’s householder listeners would have much of an inkling of what he was talking about, especially in this example. Which raises the puzzle about Dōgen’s pedagogy: Given that he cites past householders who awakened deeply in the Way with the clear intention of inspiring his householder listeners to undertake Zen training, why did he speak in an abbreviated manner so that they could hardly follow along?

It could be that there was more to the hōgo presentation than we have recorded. For example, Dōgen could have stopped and unpacked the references, going into detail for his listeners – but there is no evidence of this either.

What seems most likely to me is that Dōgen expected his listeners to do the work to meet him where he was at, rather than the contemporary style of the listeners expecting the teacher to do the work to meet them where they’re at. Dōgen seems to choose establishing a correct relationship with householder students over his interest in being fully understood. This fits with Dōgen’s stance within the text. His advice for his householder students is to meet a true teacher and then “…stay close and serve them for three-five years.”

This hōgo and other Dōgen texts

It is notable that Dōgen’s much more well-known Genjokoan (Actualizing the Fundamental Point) was also written for a householder. Another similarity with Genjokoan and this hōgo is that both conclude with a kōan that embodies Dōgen’s meaning and powerfully inspires practice awakening.

However, in the case of Genjokoan, one of Dōgen’s first writings very early in his teaching career, the last words are positive and inspirational: “Since the wind’s nature is ever present, the wind of the Buddha’s family enables us to realize the gold of the great Earth and to transform the long river into cream.”

This hōgo comes after about a decade of teaching. Now we find Dōgen with a stern (and perhaps even crabby) ending, “Who will obtain the understanding of true emptiness and pull the fish from the water if they are lazy again and again?”

There are other differences as well. In Genjokoan, Dōgen demonstrates the clarity and depth of the awakened perspective, but offers little about method. The present hōgo is also steeped in the awakened perspective, of course, but has much to say about method. In that way, it is much more like Dōgen’s Gakudō yōjinshū (“Points to Watch in Buddhist Training”), which was written as a guidebook for monastics.

I encourage you to read through this text slowly, working through the entire hōgo a few times before going back and checking the notes. Read from the belly of the breath body. Allow the breath to be smooth and subtle. Read to read and let understanding come of its own accord, not forcing it to arrive by straining the frontal lobe.

Click here for the pdf with the translation.

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 ofKeep 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.

You Might Need More Than One Dog: The Problems with Kōan Work Today

August 2, 2022 By Dosho Port

This post might surprise the long-time Wild Fox Zen reader. When I rant and fume about the current state of practicing awakening in the Zen world, you see, I’m usually primarily chiding those who claim affiliation with Sōtō Zen and the so-called “just-sitting” method. At the same time, I often hold up kōan work as the more effective practice for kenshō and post-kenshō training.

In the interest of being a more balanced reviler, in this post I’ll address issues in kōan teaching, and (mostly) blame the teachers for it. Yup, like Dōgen Zenji said,

“This current situation is entirely the fault of the teachers, not of the students. Why? Because they guide their students along the branches of the tree, dispensing with its roots. Before they fully understand the Way themselves, they devote themselves solely to their own egotistic minds, luring others into the world of delusion. How regrettable is it that these teachers are unaware of their own delusion. How can their students be expected to know the difference between right and wrong?” (1)

As I was saying, I’ll identify a few problems in kōan training, highlight what I regard as the biggest bugger, offer an example from my teaching practice, and speculate about the causes of these issues, especially that biggest bugger. Along the way, I’ll wonder if it is appropriate for householders to take up kōan introspection.

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First, though, this:

In my view, the kōan method, including the refinements credited to Dàhuì and later to Hakuin and his successors, represents the most powerful innovation in the field of waking up and practicing deeply since the time of Buddha Shakyamuni. Nothing I say below should be interpreted as arising from any place other than concern that those of us who are tasked with caring for this method and transmitting it to the next generation do so in such a way that its profundity and potency will be handed on.

What is kenshō?

The word “kenshō” is used a lot in what follows and elsewhere in Zen teaching, so I will start with a brief discussion of what it isn’t and what it is. “Kenshō” is not an insight into the transparency of the delusional self, nor the observation of pervasive impermanence, nor an insight into no-self or emptiness. If the sense of subject and object remain, it isn’t kenshō.

These insights are all nice moments, of course, and may faintly verify the Way, but they utterly lack the power of a clear kenshō.

In addition, kenshō is definitively not the belief that all zazen is the goal-less gateless gate – such is not realized without kenshō. Even if you so believe it to be true and have been selling such fake gold on the internet for decades, repeating yourself over and over and over, well, that doesn’t make it so.

With kenshō there is a shocking sense of freshness that arises simultaneously with a sense of how it’s always been this way. It is the collapse of I/thou, a radical, abrupt, and nondual embodiment. It is accompanied by a joy and energy that hasn’t been felt before.

So, although people frequently have spiritual experiences and important insights, humans don’t seem to kenshō all that often. And the difference between “insights” and “kenshō” isn’t a matter of degree, because kenshō is qualitatively different from the insights I’ve listed above.

If the personal experiences and spiritual insights or adamant beliefs that people frequently have were the same as kenshō, why would Buddha have left home, done years of austeries, and finally sat down under the Bodhi tree? Why would Eihei Dōgen Zenji and Nanpo Jōmyō Zenji have risked it all to go to China? Why would many generations of Zen practitioners trained as if their hair were on fire?

How long will it take for a sincere student to kenshō?

It’s often said in Zen kōan lore that most students will have a clear enough kenshō after about three years. However, in my view, three years is really hopeful. In any case, it’s better to practice mu timelessly. The initial kenshō, afterall, is just the beginning of the process and more definitive awakenings are also a crucial part of ongoing training.

Following the initial kenshō and the lineage-specific checking questions, the student will then begin the long process of integrating and deepening their initial kenshō. As Henry Shukman Rōshi put it, “The subsequent kōans should be remarkably and wonderfully clear, and a great surprise for a student to find that the kōans meet them in what they have awakened to.”

It is the teacher’s responsibility, then, to help the student find and work the edges of kenshōing.

The problems with kōan work today

Most of my criticism over the years here at Wild Fox Zen has been about the just-sitting belief system. However, this being the human world, and me being a verified crabby old man, I’ve got some criticism for the way the kōan is often employed in the contemporary Zen world, too.

For example, some kōan lineages have gotten so California-dreamy, Jungian, artsy, and out-of-touch with the simple Hakuinian model of kenshō and subsequent training, that I’m concerned that their new approaches minimize the possibility for students to clearly realize and actualize the great matter at hand. It seems that our tendency to level downward has enhanced the accessibility of kōan practice and, at the same time, resulted in more people having less profound transformations.

Part of that enhanced accessibility has come at the cost of making kōan practice into an easy-going way. You might think that Westerners were naturally more awake than the ancients, so that we kenshō much more easily. If that’s what you think, I encourage you to illuminate and drop your prejudice and think again!

Dōgen Zenji said, “Those who seek the Way should not look for easy training.” (2)

One student who had practiced with another kōan teacher recently told me, for example, that for them, passing mu (their breakthrough kōan) was not a significant experience. Well, simply put, it oughta be. Indeed, in the teachings it says, “A familiar place is hard to forget.”

In addition, I’ve heard it said that the kōan curriculum is just another way to study basic Buddhism. Oh, dear! Study of the buddhadharma has it’s place, for sure, but kōan work is about breakthrough and post-breakthrough training – fully bringing to life what has been realized and studied – not an intellectual endeavor. Please! If study alone was the way through suffering, all the over-educated Zennies in the land would be totally purified and spend the day whistling the tune to “Sitting on the dock of the bay….” And that does not seem to be the case.

I’ve also heard it said that kōan work is an exercise in miming. Oh, dear Buddha! For this view, I can only hold up the two fingers (either hand will do) – and I would not be signally “Peace out,” but “that’s still two.” And if someone brings their miming act to dokusan, they might hear, “Stop the Zen antics!”

Finally, in another kōan lineage, I’m told that they’ve abandoned assigning the mu kōan, because it’s just too hard. They move students right into one of the kōan collections without the student having kenshōed, apparently oblivious to the fact that they’re undermining the essential process of the Hakuinian model, showing wanton disregard for the received tradition with the accompanying arrogance that “we” know better.

And yet all of these are not the most widespread problem

What is?

Here it is: students are not held on their first kōan until they have a clear kenshō so that they can then move through the subsequent training deepening and applying said breakthrough. Some kōan teachers argue that a clear kenshō isn’t required, because the successive kōans will magically (a word I’ve actually heard used) do the work of either provoking awakening “down the road” or maybe a student’s practice will gradually deepen as they pass through the successive kōans.

But how are you going to know? By peering into your crystal ball? I haven’t seen either of these unfold reliably. In my view, without a clear kenshō, kōan work is likely to be about more Zen cosplay. Indeed, ideally, as Dōgen Zenji said (and I’d apply it to work with the first kōan), “Such a mu is a sun with stone-melting power.” (3)

Nevertheless, as Meido Moore Rōshi says,

“The first opening need not necessarily be very deep. But it clearly has to be kenshō. And whether the recognition is shallow or deep, the student has to have sufficient confidence in it to then continue practicing with it as a basis. The first kōan is called the barrier of the ancestors for a reason. And I don’t want someone just to be intimate with the barrier, I want them to pass through it. We don’t all do that with flying colors, true … but again… it’s there, or it’s not.”

Passing through the barrier is also NOT necessarily accompanied with a lot of “woo-woo” special effects. Kenshō, again, is a radical, abrupt, nondual embodiment. Although kenshō is often accompanied by special effects, they are not the functional heart of clear seeing. Culling out the verifying elements of the initial kenshō becomes the first task of the checking process. It really isn’t until after that process is complete that the kenshō will be confirmed. That process isn’t so much about an experience, actually, but about how the student can embody and bring it into the nitty-gritty details of daily life.

Now, I’ve pointed out previously, both here and elsewhere, that this checking process is one of the great virtues of the kōan system, so I repeat myself, but it is very important that when engaged with full integrity the checking process helps the student practice awakening (aka, Great Compassion) with a depth and clarity that is lacking in all just-sitting approaches (as far as I know).

Oh, but I’ve drifted back to reviling just-sitting approaches!

An example of how kōan work can go wrong

After teaching just-sitting Zen for about twenty years, I was authorized to offer kōan introspection in the Harada-Yasutani tradition. One of the students that soon called on me had trained with a Zen teacher, now deceased, from the White Plum Asanga. The prospective student reported that over their fifteen years of training they had completed their lineage’s kōan curriculum, save the Five Ranks and Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts. They were interested in completing the curriculum and asked if I’d work with them.

I didn’t sense from their energy and physical presentation the clarity and joy that I associate with kenshō, so it seemed especially prudent to begin the process of working together by probing the depth of this student’s kenshō. And indeed, the student couldn’t respond with clarity to even the first checking question for mu.

In conversation, the student shared that they didn’t remember kenshōing – and again, if a person has kenshōed, let me tell you, they remember! The student reported that “something” had happened in dokusan with their teacher and that the teacher then quickly confirmed mu and moved on. The student wasn’t sure what had happened, but figured that the teacher knew best and so didn’t question.

In moving into the successive kōans, they reported that their experience of dokusan was to repeat the kōan they were assigned, then make some free-dance-like gestures, and they’d be moved on to the next case.

Why do teachers pass students on their first kōans without a clear kenshō?

Let’s be clear, it is generally not in the student’s best interest. Indeed, it might deprive the student of one of the most powerful, joyful, and meaningful experiences this human life has to offer – and deny them of a strong basis for the ongoing work of Great Compassion.

Why would a kōan teacher then pass the student before they’ve had a clear kenshō? One explanation is that the Zen teacher themself was passed through the kōan curriculum as in the above example, without a clear kenshō. Given that after just fifty years (or so) of Zen in West, some kōan lineages are into their sixth and seventh generations, and given that some teachers have many successors, it seems quite likely that this is at play at least some of the time. That is, this pace is generally just too fast for authentically engaging the deep work.

Another reason that Zen teachers pass students on their breakthrough kōans without a significant kenshō is that most students now are householders, and some Zen teachers exaggerate the possibilities for profound breakthroughs within monasticism and minimize the possibilities within the householder lifestyle. Unexpectedly, I’ve found this to be true especially for teachers with little monastic practice, due in part, I suppose, to the prevalence of monastic practitioners kenshōing in the Zen narrative and particularly in the kōan literature. So even though some teachers have had a clear kenshō themselves, they don’t think it’s possible for their householder students.

And, they have a point.

Given the way most Zen students practice within the Zen center model, it is unlikely that they will have a clear kenshō. If a student has not aroused the Bodhi Mind and Great Doubt, sits much less than an hour or two a day, participates in few retreats, meets with their teacher (if they even work with one) only occasionally, and doesn’t engage in other practices aside from half-hearted mindfulness in daily life (or in short, just not practicing as if their hair were on fire), it is unlikely that they will generate the stability and intensity required for kenshō.

It’s like expecting to get rich by buying a Mega Million ticket. It could happen … but you are hundreds of times more likely to get struck by lightning.

Why, then, assign kōan? Another practice, like working with the breath or the Ten Line Kannon might be more appropriate for most people doing householder practice like this. As Tetsugan Sensei often says, “What’s the hurry? Give students the necessary time to establish the basics or kōan work is a waste of time.”

Nevertheless, the general assertion that householders cannot breakthrough in a powerful and clear way is false. There are many examples both in the old days and in our contemporary Zen world. See my We Are All This Luminous Mind: The Possibility and Importance of Awakening for contemporary examples. For historical examples and a critique of the gender-bias in stories about awakening see The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women and this excellent interview of one of the books editors, Zenshin Florence Caplow, by Shōren Heather at SparkZen.

Finally, to quote Meido Moore Rōshi again, “Monastic or householder, it really isn’t relevant here. Householders, too, can cook and breakthrough. Why make excuses for them?”

Our Vine of Obstacles Zen is intentionally designed for householders to breakthrough, and for post-breakthrough training within the context of householder life. We offer practices specifically designed for the pre-kenshō period, and some that align with the traditional body practices available within the Soto tool kit. However, many of these practices really work best in monastic life and/or during in-person sesshin. So, we also emphasize practices which the online modalities are particularly good at facilitating.

The final reason

that kōan teachers pass students on the initial kōan without a clear kenshō, and perhaps the most pernicious, is in order to meet the teacher’s needs to be liked, to have successful students (and successors), and/or to build a large(r) organization.

To this point, an old Dharma friend often said, “If you teach Zen and need a friend, get a dog.”

This applies, in my view, to any needs a kōan teacher might try to meet through their students.

So, dear kōan teachers, you might need more than one dog.

(1) Eihei Dōgen, Guidelines for Studying the Way (Japanese, Gakudo yojinshu), #5.

(2) Eihei Dōgen, Guidelines for Studying the Way (Japanese, Gakudo yojinshu), #6.

(3) Eihei Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō “Busshō”, trans Abe and Waddell. Modified.

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.

Broken To Smithereens: More On The Keyword Instruction Of Dàhuì

June 4, 2020 By Dosho Port

In this final post of the series on the keyword method of Dàhuì, I begin with a connection to Shakyamuni, move to more detail on Dàhuì’s teaching, cite a parallel with Dōgen, include a modest proposal to modify the kōan curriculum to more directly address contemporary issues, and close with Old Man Bob. Here goes:

“Through the round of many births I roamed without reward, without rest, seeking the house-builder. Painful is birth again & again. House-builder, you’re seen! You will not build a house again. All your rafters broken, the ridge pole dismantled, immersed in dismantling, the mind has attained to the end of craving.” (1)

So the Buddha of the Pali Cannon described his definitive awakening and the great possibility for everyone for this very life. Devout, diligent practitioners for the last 2,600 years have aspired to taste the same mind as Buddha, breaking the ridge pole, the mind of dualism, of I-and-thou, of life-death. Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s translation has this nice post-awakening riff as well: “immersed in dismantling,” suggesting the ongoing cultivation of verification in our present Sōtō Zen lingo.

Since the Buddha immersed himself in dismantling, many innovative skillful means have been developed, responding to the time, place, people, and culture. Many of these skillful means have had this same end-point in mind – breaking the life-death mind. None of these skillful means have more influence on awakening practice today than the keyword method of Zen Master Dàhuì Pǔjué (1089–1163). In this post, I’ll unpack his admonition to break the rafters and dismantle the ridge pole.

First, though, I should say that this is the tenth of ten posts in this series, so I’ll now share the usual series introduction and disclaimer:

In the recent translation of The Letters of Chan Master Dàhuì Pǔjué, translators Jeffrey L. Broughton and Elise Yoko Watanabe offer nine themes, motifs, that emerge in the letters about how to do keyword practice (話頭 huàtóu, Japanese, watō). I’ve been sharing them on the Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training for students working with keywords (e.g., mu), and I’ll also be sharing them here for others who might be interested. Close study of an ancient text can help both students and teachers notice details of the method and refresh their practice spirit. If you are working with a keyword with another teacher, consult with them, of course, and rely on their guidance.

Theme 9: You must smash to smithereens the mind of life-death

Broughton and Watanabe: “The smashing of the mind of life-death (2) is the sine qua non of practice in Letters of Dàhuì. Sometimes Letters of Dàhuì phrases this theme as the smashing of uncertainty [aka, doubt] about the keyword:”

Letter #12.1: “If you want true stillness, what’s necessary is the smashing of the mind of life-death. Even without doing diligent practice—if the mind of life-death is smashed—stillness will come of its own accord. The stillness skillful means [i.e., the practice of sitting] spoken of by the earlier noble ones is solely for this. It’s just that, during this latter time, the party of mistaken teachers doesn’t understand the former noble ones’ [exhortations to sit] were skillful-means talk.” (3)

Comment

In the passage from “Letter 12,” quoted above, and throughout the Letters, Dàhuì embraces a modern educational strategy – focus on the outcome, test the processes of traditional pedagogical strategies that you believe will lead students to the desired outcome, and innovate as necessary. In such a view, even zazen is a skillful means, not the end itself. And despite the rhetoric of the Post-Meiji Sōtō Orthodoxy, there is considerable evidence that Dōgen also held the same view as Dàhuì, although you might be relieved to hear that is beyond the scope of this post. (4)

What is the desired outcome for those emulating the Buddha? The Buddha devoted himself to awakening, ongoing dismantling, and serving others in their awakening journey. What is awakening? For Dàhuì, breaking the mind of life-death. From shattering of the ridge pole and continuing through ongoing diligent practice, true stillness naturally flows. There is no inside/outside, and so the vast mind, verified by the ten thousand things, can rest in suchness. In this, Dàhuì has turned the buddhadharma upside-down. Instead of teaching that stillness leads to awakening, or that stillness is awakening, he taught that awakening leads to true stillness.

Dōgen also had something to say about emulating the Buddha and breaking the baskets and cages:

“The embodied buddha does not make a buddha; when ‘the baskets and cages’ are broken, a seated buddha does not interfere with making a buddha. At just such a time, from one thousand, from ten thousand ages past, we originally have the power ‘to enter into Buddha and enter into Måra.’ Stepping forward and back, its measure fully ‘fills the ditches and clogs the moats.'” (5)

“Enter into Buddha and enter into Måra,” expresses the heart of advanced Zen training – not only awakening, but (re)entering the wild world of death and desire (aka, Måra), to benefit living beings. The translator of this last passage, by the way, Carl Bielefeldt, notes that Dōgen here seems to be quoting and reapplying a statement of Dàhuì. In “The Arsenal of the Chan School of Chan Master Dàhuì Pǔjué” (Zongmen wuku), Dàhuì praises someone’s awakening by saying, “You can enter into Buddha,” yet he also sees their limits, “but you cannot enter into Mâra.”

Dōgen, using the words of old Dàhuì, is talking about that time that we can enter into both awakening and delusion. It’s hard to imagine a better time for that than right now.

Modifying the kōan curriculum to emphasize the baskets and cages of the current world

It is well known that many of the Zen master luminaries of mid 20th century Japan had broken the baskets and cages, passing through many thorns and barriers of their lineages, and yet came out of their training system with nationalism and sexism, at least, pretty firmly entrenched. That’s a problem.

In our present day, nationalism, human centrism, sexism, and classism still plague the world, and are still not specifically addressed in the kōan curriculum, except in the most general ways. For Americans, I’d add “American exceptionalism” to the list. For white Americans, I’d add white privilege too. And there are, I’m sure, local flavors around the world that could be addressed as well.

Is there a way to help people break through the mind of life-death and then attend to the ugly manifestations of dualism as identified above? Can it be done without making the kōan curriculum an exercise in left-leaning thought control?

I think so. And so the work continues.

(1) Shakyamuni Buddha, Dhammapada, “Jaravagga: Aging,” translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

(2) “Smashing the mind of samsara” (生死心破) could also be translated as “breaking life-death mind”

(3) The Letters of Chan Master Dàhuì Pǔjué, “Introduction: Recurring Motifs in Huatou Practice,” trans. Jeffrey L. Broughton and Elise Yoko Watanabe. Modified.

(4) For more on this point in terms of Dōgen Zen, see What’s the “Just” in Just Sitting All About?

(5) Eihei Dōgen, Shobogenzo Zazenshin, trans., Carl Bielefeldt.

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.

How I Got Dōgen Wrong: Enlightenment, Just Sitting, and the Bodhisattva Heart

December 15, 2017 By Dosho Port

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“This mind is Buddha” is one of the most evocative teachings of our Zen school. It is a “teaching,” not a philosophical assertion or a faith statement, but rather a description of enlightening experience. Dōgen cites “This mind is Buddha” teaching in several fascicles in the Shobogenzo, eight dharma discourses in the Eiheikoroku, and also in his Shinji Shobogenzo (1).

In this post, I will explore Dōgen’s working through of this kōan in relationship to enlightenment and just sitting. And along the way, I’ll offer some reflections on post-enlightenment practice, the vow to free all beings, and how that vow plays out in Dōgen’s and Hakuin’s expressions of Zen.

And just for fun, I’ll work with a recently published translation of Dōgen’s Eihei Koroku (2) by Thomas Cleary (3). You will find it free on Amazon, along with some other texts Cleary has self-published, like the Empty Valley, an important kōan text. I will comment too, mostly on Dōgen’s comments, and so have the Dōgen text italicized. I’ve also added some headings to help organize the text for you, the reader.

The main case

[Dōgen said,] The correct method accurately communicated from Buddha to Buddha, master to master, is just sitting.

My late teacher Rujing instructed a congregation, “Do you all know the story of Zen master Dàméi (4) calling on Great Master Mǎzǔ (5)? He asked Mǎzǔ, ‘What is Buddha?’ Mǎzǔ said, ‘Mind itself is Buddha.’

He thereupon bowed and left, and went up to the summit of Dàméi mountain, where he ate pine pollen and wore lotus leaves, spending the rest of his life sitting meditating day and night, nearly thirty years. He was not known to kings or ministers, and did not go to invitations of patrons or donors. This is an excellent example of the way of Buddhas.”

Dōgen begins with a clear and characteristic thesis, “the correct method … is just sitting.” And to show that it has been transmitted from “Buddha to Buddha, master to master” he quotes his own master, Rujing, who serves as Dōgen’s backdrop, adding just one thought to his telling of this well-known kōan: “This is an excellent example of the way of Buddhas.”

There are double-mirrors in this Buddha mind – Dōgen shares a kōan about a teacher-student transmission of the Buddha mind, by quoting his teacher minding the kōan and affirming it as a telling example.

In any case, Dàméi heard “Mind itself is Buddha,” had great realization (6), and then went to the mountains to do zazen night and day for thirty years. Dōgen and Rujing too, according to Dōgen, raise this as an example of how to proceed with practice after enlightenment. Dàméi eventually did lead both Juzhi, famous for holding up his finger, and Jianzhi, who transmitted Zen to Korea, to enlightenment. But it is his thirty-years zazen in the mountains that Dōgen and Rujing call out for praise.

Dōgen’s comment

It may be deduced that sitting meditation is post-enlightenment practice. Enlightenment is just sitting meditation, that’s all. This mountain is the first to have a communal hall; this is the first it has been heard of in Japan. The first one has been seen, the first one has been entered, the first one has been sat in. This is lucky for people who study the path of Buddha.

I was originally drawn to reflect on this dharma discourse of Dōgen’s because of this reference to “post-enlightenment practice,” something that I associate more strongly with Hakuin Zen than Dōgen Zen. After rolling the whole discourse around, though, I find it extraordinarily rich and representative of several important themes for Dōgen and for us.

Even Dōgen’s first sentences cover a lot of ground, the last three of which might seem at first to be unrelated to the first two. Dōgen begins with the entanglement of enlightenment, “this mind is Buddha,” and zazen by asserting that zazen is a fitting practice after enlightenment. What about before enlightenment? Is zazen a practice for beginners and those who haven’t yet experienced enlightenment and then zazen continues to be the practice after enlightenment? Or is Dōgen saying here that zazen, or perhaps true zazen, is only a post-enlightenment practice, that one isn’t really doing zazen prior to enlightenment.

It seems to me that Dōgen means just what he says. “…Sitting meditation is post-enlightenment practice.” For Dōgen, zazen is the Buddha mandala, the Buddha land presented here and now through our enlightened psycho-physical zazen pose, where the refining of enlightenment and the presentation of enlightenment are like the front and back of the hand.

Curiously, from an assertion about the importance of post-enlightenment zazen, Dōgen moves on to boast about establishing the first “communal hall” or “monks’ hall” (Japanese, sōdō) in Japan and notes how fortunate people are now to have such a hall. What’s the connection? Dàméi, after all, was not practicing in a monks’ hall, but in the mountains, eating pine pollen and wearing lotus leaves. But that doesn’t seem to be the point that Dōgen wants to highlight.

It is important to appreciate that the monks’ hall is the place that monks would sleep, eat, wash, use the toilet, and sit zazen. One way to make sense of the flow of the argument here is to see the monks’ hall as an extension of the zazen pose, an extension of the Buddha mandala that is enlightenment. The sentences then unfold Dōgen’s point through multiple dimensions – the person and the environment, time and space. That extension also includes the clothes worn, particularly the kesa, although that is not included by Dōgen in this discourse. The specific, prescribed form and function of monks’ hall become part and parcel of Dōgen’s zazen as enlightenment, a full-bodied dharma presentation.

In my view, Dōgen, in the first movement of this discourse, uses a traditional kōan involving well-known Zen heros, Dàméi and Mǎzǔ, and the vague endorsement of his teacher, Rujing, to support his notion of the importance of zazen and then extends the argument to include the spatial construction of the Buddha realm. One might ask, “Is zazen enlightenment if not undertaken in a proper monks’ hall?”

Without hesitation, most of us would answer that question, “Yes.” How Dōgen would respond cannot be known, but I suspect he might say, “No.”

We know, for example, that Dōgen started giving formal dharma hall discourses only when he had a proper dharma hall, stopped giving them during his move to Eiheiji when such a dharma hall was unavailable, and then started again when the proper hall was completed.

Dōgen, despite how he is often presented today as teaching that our life as-it-is is the fundamental issue at hand (genjokoan), he may well have had quite a different perspective, something akin to a synthesis of Zen and esoteric Buddhism, requiring specific physical structures both in the body and buildings (7).

Subsequent kōan development

A monk subsequently said to “What principle did you realize when you met master Mǎzǔ, that you dwell on this mountain?”

Dàméi said, “Mǎzǔ told me, ‘Mind is Buddha.’”

The monk said, “Mǎzǔ’s Buddhism is different these days.”

Dàméi said, “How is it different?”

The monk said, “These days he says, ‘Not mind, not Buddha.’”

Dàméi said, “This old fellow confuses people no end. Let it be, for him, ‘not mind, not Buddha,’ for me, simply, ‘mind is Buddha.’”

The monk went back and recounted this to Mǎzǔ. Mǎzǔ said, “The plum is ripe.”

Dōgen’s subsequent kōan comment

So someone who has understood mind itself is Buddha gives up human society, goes deep into mountain valleys, and just sits meditating day and night. The brethren on this mountain should simply focus solely on sitting meditation. Don’t waste time; human life is impermanent. What are you waiting for? I pray, I pray.

Do you want to understand the principle of ‘mind itself is Buddha’? (silence)

‘Mind itself is Buddha’ is very hard to understand. ‘Mind’ is walls, tiles, and pebbles. ‘Buddha’ is a mud ball, an earth clod. Mǎzǔ speaking up was dragging mud and dripping water; Dàméi waking up was haunting the weeds and woods. Where is the identity of mind and Buddha? Huh!

Let’s first look at the second portion of this last section, the clincher – “‘Mind itself is Buddha’ is very hard to understand … Where is the identity of mind and Buddha? Huh!”

Here old Dōgen pushes his audience to awaken, not to hide behind the fame of Dàméi and Mǎzǔ, as they too are splattered with mud and soaking wet. Dōgen’s admonition is for us to discover our essential identity, Buddha as mud and earth, song of the bird, hum of the car. The so-called true self.

So in terms of urging personal enlightenment, Dōgen wraps up this discourse like any Zen master would. Such an admonition, of course, only makes sense if for Dōgen enlightenment is personal experience. In other words, that enlightenment isn’t the zazen of all people, all the time. True zazen, post-enlightenment zazen, is what Dōgen sees in Dàméi and what he prescribes for us in the post-enlightenment period of practice. Especially when that zazen occurs in a proper monks’ hall.

How I got Dōgen wrong

Let’s now look at the first paragraph of Dōgen’s comments on this last section. He begins by affirming that “…someone who has understood mind itself is Buddha gives up human society, goes deep into mountain valleys, and just sits meditating day and night.”

In contemporary Zen, we talk about going up the mountain, undertaking some years of formal Zen training, and then coming down the mountain, entering the world to benefit living beings. In this passage, at least, Dōgen leaves us up the mountain just sitting. What about the vow to carry all living beings across the flood of suffering?

Dōgen does, of course, express his great vehicle bodhisattva heart elsewhere. For example, he wrote two Shobogenzo fascicles on arousing the way-seeking mind. And in his poetry, there’s this:

Awake or asleep
in a grass hut,
what I pray for is
to bring others across
before myself.

And yet, the spirit of “coming down the mountain” isn’t explicit in this passage, or it could be argued, in Dōgen’s later teaching generally. It isn’t built into his system of practice. Sit and sit some more, seems to be the message. And in that post-enlightenment just sitting, the kōan is realized, it is discovered that all living beings are already free.

However, it would be kinda nice for as many people as possible to know this for themselves. If you stay cloistered in the mountain in your proper monks’ hall, is that the most skillful means to actualize the bodhisattva heart?

Let’s look at Hakuin for another example. Here Norman Waddell writes about Hakuin’s final, definitive enlightenment experience that occurred while reading the “Skillful Means” chapter of the Lotus Sutra:

“In that chapter, the Buddha reveals to his disciple Shariputra the true nature of the Mahayana Bodhisattva, whose own enlightenment is but the first step in his career of assisting others to attain theirs. This is identical to the teaching Shōju had tried to drive home to Hakuin years before. Like Shariputra, Hakuin had erroneously regarded his original realization as full and perfect enlightenment, and he would have been unable to proceed beyond that realization without the timely assistance of a genuine teacher.

“As Hakuin read, the sound of a cricket churring at the foundation stones of the temple reached his ears; at that instant, he crossed the threshold into great enlightenment. The accumulated doubts and uncertainties of forty years suddenly ceased to exist. The reason why the Lotus Sutra was regarded as supreme among all the Buddha’s preachings was revealed to him “with blinding clarity.” He found teardrops “cascading down his face like strings of beads—they poured out like beans from a ruptured sack (8).”

From that point on, Hakuin worked tirelessly, his post-enlightenment practice, to help people realize enlightenment. The heart of the bodhisattva life for Hakuin, as catalyzed through his work with Shōju and finally discovered definitively when hearing a cricket and reading about the reason Buddhas come into the world, was to help beings awaken. That involved sitting zazen, of course, but also breaking through the kōans and clarifying enlightenment after enlightenment. And it beared fruit. By the end of Hakuin’s life he had some eighty enlightened successors.

Quite a contrast to Dōgen’s leaving human society and “…just sit meditating day and night.”

And that’s how I’ve gotten Dōgen wrong. I’ve argued, you see, that Dōgen’s career can be seen as an effort to rehabilitate the Sōtō lineage after it took an unfortunate detour into the quietism of silent lllumination. For Dōgen, zazen is the vivid cultivation of verification, the kōan realized (9). Yet, when it comes to Dōgen’s presentation in this discourse regarding practice after enlightenment, there are clear traces of quietism in Dōgen’s Zen.

Hakuin, on the other hand, offers a passionate alternative. The vow to free all living beings is taken up and actualized concretely in doing whatever can be done to cultivate verification, practice enlightenment. Post enlightenment practice becomes tireless service to catalyze the enlightenment of others.

There is, of course, no one right way. I hope that this culling out of a couple of the possibilities might serve you before, after, and during enlightenment.

____________

(1) See Daido Loori’s, The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dōgen’s Three Hundred Kōans, 278.

(2) This dharma discourse is in Cleary’s Eihei Koroku as Volume 4, number 61. In the Leighton and Okumura translation, Dōgen’s Extensive Record, it is number 319.

(3) Cleary has the Japanese for names throughout, but I’ve changed them to the more standard Chinese. Except for the Japanese monk, Dōgen.

(4) Dàméi Fachang 大梅法常 (752-839). Dàméi means “great plum.” Cleary has “big apricot.”

(4) Mǎzǔ Daoyi 馬祖道一 (709–788). Mǎzǔ means “horse ancestor.”

(5) Although not included in this version, in Dōgen’s telling of the story in “Continuous Practice,” he has this: “Upon hearing these words, [Dàméi] had realization.”

(6) Mandala: “… The practitioner imagines the entire universe as purified and transformed into the transcendent maṇḍala— often identifying himself or herself with the form of the main deity at the center.” The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism.

(7) See Icons and Iconoclasm in Japanese Buddhism: Kukai and Dogen on the Art of Enlightenment, by Pamela D. Winfield for more on this.

(8) Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin

(9) See, for example, Dōgen’s reworking of Hongzhi’s “needle point of zazen” poem in the third section of “Zazenshin.”

____________

Who Am I? What Is Death? What Happens After Death?

November 8, 2017 By Dosho Port

Above is Zenshin Tim Buckley, a friend and fellow traveller on this Zen way, who died on April 16, 2015. You can read more about Zenshin here.

We’re not here today, though, to memorialize Zenshin but to ask, “Who is it that dies?”

You can read the run up to this post, “Birth Death and Intimate Self Knowledge,” here and listen to a talk about it here. In this post, I’ll unpack a kōan from the No Gate Barrier (Wúménguān 禪宗無門關) collection, “CASE 47: Dōushuài’s Three Barriers” (my translation). In plain English, the three barriers are, Who am I? What is death? And what happens after death? All essential human questions.

Case:

The happy old monk Dōushuài, set up three barriers to ask students.

“Parting the grasses, participating in the mystery, only seeking to meet [essential] nature. Right now, honored one, where will you know this self nature?

“Just when birthdeath is shed, when vision falls away, what will you do?

“Birthdeath shed, then [you] know [your] destination. The four elements separate, where will you go?”

First a word about Dōushuài (1023-1104). He was a teacher in the Huánglóng branch of Línjì. The scholar, Steve Heine, associates this branch and the Cáodòng lineage (Japanese, Sōtō) with the entangling-vine approach to kōan introspection rather than the key-phrase method of the Línjì branch associated with Dahui. It was this Huánglóng branch that Dōgen inherited from his first teacher and esteemed sufficiently to include on his blood vein (kechimyaku). It is still transmitted today in Sōtō Zen.

Wúmén introduces Dōushuài in an unusual way with an adjective before “old monk” (Japanese, ōshō), a rare thing in the kōan collections. Dōushuài is a “happy” old monk, no less. We like him already. Dōushuài’s “happy” old monkness is not apart from resolving these three questions and having the chance to pose them for others.

Who Am I?

First,“parting the grasses, participating in the mystery, only seeking to meet [essential] nature. Right now, honored one, where will you know this self nature?”

“Grasses” in “Parting the grasses” refers to the wild world of delusion. And “parting” is a practice instruction for how to work with delusion – touching and letting go.

“Participating in the mystery,” could also be “participating the darkness.” Again, a practice instruction. With grasses extending to and darkening the sky, take a step.

Why? “Only seeking to meet [essential] nature.”

If you want to find freedom in this question, you’ll probably want to organize your life around your practice, rather than fit in your practice in when your life allows. Only seeking essential nature. It isn’t something for some other time but for “right now.” Show some self respect, “honored one.”

Aitken Roshi’s translation has the last phrase as “Where is your nature?” but this leaves out a sinograph or two. I read it as “Where will you know this self nature?” The kōan is a narrow gate and penetratingly specific.

What is death?

“Just when birthdeath is shed, when vision falls away, what will you do?

For “Just when birthdeath is shed,” Aitken Roshi has “When you have realized your self-nature.” His approach explains what is meant by “birthdeath shed.” I prefer to stay close to the sinographs here – just drop birthdeath. “Shed” (or “drop”) is 脱, the same character Dōgen used in “shed bodymind.” No need to paste a belief system – heaven/hell, rebirth, you name it – on top of it. All that is clinging to and swirling in birthdeath. So the practice instruction – just shed birthdeath and what death is (“what you will do when you die?”) will be crystal clear.

What happens after death?

“Birthdeath shed, then [you] know [your] destination. The four elements separate, where will you go?”

Likewise, when birthdeath is shed and you’ve realized intimate self-knowledge, when the cells of “your” body (i.e., earth, water, air, and fire) begin to decompose, you’ll know where you go. No need for idle speculation. This is why Zen has been handed on through the generations.

Enter the dark mystery completely and birthdeath will be completely dropped. Who you are, what death is, what happens after death are all clear.

When it’s already raining, no need to water the lawn.

Wúmén’s Comment:

If you can arrive at three turning words, then [you] can take responsibility everywhere, meet karma and approach the [school of the] ancestors. Before this happens, a coarse meal will easily satisfy, [but] when hungry, subtle chewing is a problem.

Wúmén’s voice, as usual, is clear and strong. The last sentence is worth a quiet sit or two. Lost in the swirl of the world, we can wolf down our food – drugs, sex, rock n roll. When we turn to practice, make only seeking self nature the central organizing principle, we begin the subtle chewing of sitting, study, and engagement. The hunger to realize and the need for subtle chewing are the two foci that rub together and heat the room on a cold morning.

Verse:

One nen is the universe seeing the immeasurable kalpa.
The immeasurable kalpa is this matter now –
Now sees the broken one nen.
Seeing the broken now is seeing the essential person.

I’ve left “nen” (念) untranslated because the multiple nuances of the term make it difficult to find one fitting English word. The sinograph is composed of “now” above and “heart/mind” below. It means “thought,” “memory,” “remembering (as in nenbutsu, remembering buddha),” “moment,” and is the sinograph that is translated as “mindfulness.” The closest I can come to capture aspects of all these meanings is “nowfulness” – “One nowfulness is the universe….”

Simply put, this moment, for all its broken glory, is it.

The Record of Going Easy: Who is Arising-Extinguishing?

July 3, 2017 By Dosho Port

Arising-extinguishing is the activity of this life-death. The kōan that I’ll be presenting today asks this question: “Who is arising-extinguishing?”

First, a bit of background about the collection this kōan arises in – The Record of Going Easy, 從容錄, (Chinese: Cóngróng lù, Japanese: Shōyōroku), translated into English as The Book of Serenity and The Book of Equanimity. In my view, The Record of Going Easy expresses the characters fairly and better conveys what the text is about – going easy in the midst of arising-extinguishing.

The one-hundred kōans and companion verses for The Record of Going Easy were written by Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157). Wansong Xingxiu (1166–1246), a descendent in Hongzhi’s Caodong/Sōtō lineage, added a preface, notes to each line of the kōans and a note to each line of Hongzhi’s verses. In addition, Wansong added an extended commentary to the kōans and verses (not translated here but available in Thomas Cleary’s Book of Serenity). It is a massive dharma-literary achievement.

For an excellent discussion of the background for the text, see Steven Heine’s Chan Rhetoric of Uncertainty in the Blue Cliff Record: Sharpening a Sword at the Dragon Gate, pp. 228-235.

The Record of Going Easy was first published in 1224, just a few years before the Gateless Barrier. Dai-un Harada Roshi (October 13, 1871 – December 12, 1961), the Sōtō monk who trained in Rinzai, completed the kōan curriculum, and then adapted it for use with practitioners at Hōshinji, a Sōtō training monastery in Obama, Japan, seems to have first used The Record of Going Easy as a text for modern kōan introspection.

About Hongzhi, Wansong, and One Theme of The Record of Going Easy

Hongzhi was a renowned figure in the hay-day the Caodong/Sōtō lineage, a prolific writer, and frequently quoted by Dōgen, who referred to him as the “old buddha” – a tagline Dōgen used sparingly. Hongzhi’s work is best known now in English through Taigen Leighton’s excellent translation, Cultivating the Empty Field.

Wansong means “Old Man” – a name he gave to himself when living at “Ten Thousand Pines,” one of his hermitages. Wansong’s turbulent times included Mongol invasions, famines, and tough times for regular people and the buddhadharma. Yet, his voice is light, humorous, and earthy. Through translating, I’ve developed a great fondness for him.

Before Wansong died, he wrote this verse:

Eighty-one years – just this one expression:
All people are precious.
Do not act mistakenly.

One of the central themes running through The Record of Going Easy, of which the present case is an example, are the dangers of samadhi, steady states of concentration, specifically about subtle clinging to quiet mind (for starters, see cases 7, 11, 23, 26, and 96). This could be a result of an earlier focus in the Caodong lineage, silent illumination, that came under attack by Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) and others for leading people into quietude but not realization. Indeed, Hongzhi was one of the most well-known proponents of the silent illumination method.

It seems that the propensity toward silent illumination passed from the Chinese Caodong line to the Japanese Sōtō school. Hakuin Ekaku (1686 – 1768) was critical of Sōtō practitioners who have “…submerged themselves in the dead, stagnant water of quiescent, silent illumination Zen.”

But let’s go back to China. After Hongzhi, the criticism that came from Dahui and his successors, led the Caodong lineage into decline. The Record of Going Easy, some sixty-years after Hongzhi’s death, was an effort to rehabilitate the Caodong lineage, distance it from the one-sided emphasis on silence, and shift the narrative to emphasize realizing wisdom.

Dōgen, a contemporary of Wansong, took up the same task with “practice-enlightenment” and reframed silent illumination (a phrase not found in Dōgen’s written works) as shikantaza, “just sitting,” or more often shinjin datsuraku, “body-mind drop off.” Dōgen’s most explicit unpacking of this issue, where he rewrites and invigorates a poem by Hongzhi, is in his “Zazenshin” or “Healing Point of Sitting Zen.”

In the kōan below, when Hongzhi begins his verse with “Hacking and cutting off an old tangle of vines,” referring to the zazen process of cutting through the complexities of discursive consciousness aimed at silence, Wansong notes, “Branches and tendrils are reborn.” I see him here with a waggish grin – “Dude, you can suppress grass (delusion) by smothering it with a big rock, cutting off the mind road (hiding in silence), but sooner or later the grass will have its way.”

Luóshān arising-extinguishing

This kōan’s title comes from the monk raising the question rather than the norm – the teacher responding. The teacher here is Yántóu (828–887), one of the great lights in the Golden Age of Ch’an. Although his lineage ran through Shitou and Yaoshan, a branch of what eventually became a branch of the Caodong/Sōtō line, and continued through Luóshān, his dramatic presentations, like the shout in this kōan, are reminiscent of the Linchi/Rinzai line.

Like Wansong, Yántóu lived in turbulent days, through persecutions and failed states. Once his temple was raided by bandits and all the monks evacuated – but Yántóu simply took his seat. One of the bandits ran him through, and Yántóu’s death roar could be heard for ten miles.

Wansong’s introduction first offers the promise of awakened dharma practice – “One word of truth arrives and turns the ordinary into the sacred.” Wansong here uplifts the transformative possibility of wholehearted training, emphasizing realizing wisdom, but doesn’t avoid “Holding a stick, calling the dog,” a comment he makes about another teacher in “Case 41: Luòpǔ With One Foot in the Grave.”

Then he directs us to the fundamental point – “What is the one point?”

If you can respond clearly and strongly to this question, your dharma work is done. For the moment.

Luóshān, who eventually became a successor of Yántóu, was gifted with a burning question that he’d asked at least one other teacher, Shishuang (807-888), “How is it when arising-extinguishing is incessant?”

Shishuang, whose teaching resembled the later silent illuminationists, responded “Cease all activity, do nothing whatever, be like a thought that lasts ten thousand years, be so cold and lifeless the spirits of the dead will come sighing around you, be a bolt of fine white silk, be dead ashes inside a censer in a forgotten old graveyard.”

Perhaps Luóshān’s mind had settled to a deep point of clarity – just arising-extinguishing – but he felt stuck in that state, so he was looking for a turning word to thoroughly open his heart. Hongzhi, in his verse, acknowledged Luóshān’s zazen process, returning to the source through hacking, cutting, and smashing the mind road. And, yet, there’s still a spiritual masquerade, hiding in the mist.

Yántóu first got Luóshān’s attention with a shout like the thunder, the sound mythically attributed to dragons. The ancient Chinese believed that dragons changed not just their skin, but their bones – a metaphor for the transformation of dharma practice. Thus, Hongzhi praises Luóshān’s upcoming transformation with this: “Dragons ride the thunder and change their bones.”

So Yántóu first thunders and then offers Luóshān a key question: “Who is arising-extinguishing?”

It is the same “who?” that sees, hears, smells, tastes, touches, and thinks.

Who is it?

Wild Fox Zen Translation, Record of Going Easy, “Case 43: Luóshān Arising-Extinguishing”

Presented to the assembly, saying:

Even one touch will turn one granule of cinnabar into gold. One word of truth arrives and turns the ordinary into the sacred. If [you] know that gold and iron are not two, that ordinary and sacred have the same source, one point for sure – you’ll have no use for them! Yet say, what is the one point?

Raised:

Luóshān asked Yántóu, “How is it when arising-extinguishing is incessant?”
Rubbing the back with gold erases the clay person.
Tóu cried out and said,
Stars fall, clouds disperse.
“Who is arising-extinguishing?”
Due to grievance, not knowing.

Verse:

Hacking and cutting off an old tangle of vines,
Branches and tendrils are reborn.
Smashing the fox den,
Even more spit – stubborn saliva.
A leopard drapes their shoulders with fog, changing their culture.
Declining to shed its fur.
Dragons ride the thunder and change their bones.
Departing, transforming the body’s casing.
Tut!
One shout, ten-thousand pivot, three imperial eras – all deafened.
Arising-extinguishing – what matter is this?
To be hospitable is to not neglect one’s partner.

———

Guidelines for Studying the Way – Why?

August 4, 2014 By Dosho Port

“…The code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”

– Barbossa comment on the “Pirates Code” in Pirates of the Caribbean

This fall Great Tides Zen will offer the first practice period here in Portland, ME, and for our study focus we’ll dig into Dogen’s “Guidelines for Studying the Way” (Gakudo Yojinshu). This follows the curriculum I’ve been developing for the Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training, where the “Guidelines” is the first course I walk through with students (more about that here).

One practitioner with lots of experience in Dogen studies comments, “Fukanzazengi (“Universal Recommendation for Zazen”) is totally in the middle way and I revere it wholeheartedly, not only for its meaning but also for its sound. For example: KON SAN MAZU BOKU RAKU SURO KOTO O. Like a drum. BOM BOM BOMBOM BOMBOM BOMBOM BOMBOM BOMBOM BOM. [“Guidelines”] is not on the same level. You can keep it. To put it in the same category as Fukanzazengi as ‘introductions’ is a kind of insult to Fukanzazengi (emphasis added).“

Well!

Setting aside the issue of its sound, BOM BOM and all, and also, I suppose, the assertion that Fukanzazengi could be insulted by another Dogen text (might make a good cartoon, though), let’s look a little at the issue of the meaning of “Guidelines for Studying the Way.”

First, some background may be in order.

Both “Universal Recommendations” and “Guidelines for Studying the Way” began in the early years of Dogen’s teaching career and there’s evidence that he reworked them as time went on. In the case of the “Guidelines,” Dogen began compiling the sections for the text known now as “Guidelines for Studying the Way” in the early months of 1234, just as a group of practitioners was beginning to grow around him. He completed the ten sections of the text sometime later but we don’t know exactly when because the last four sections bear no date. It is generally assumed that he wrote the whole text in about 1234 but from the quality and tone of the writing in the last three sections, particularly, it seems possible that these might have been written some years later.

In the case of the short “Universal Recommendations,” Dogen continued to edit the text and a few versions of it have survived (see Dogen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation by Bielefeldt). In the case of the “Guidelines,” it seems that Dogen simply added a new section from time to time, a new guideline, providing us with a different kind of perspective into his development as a teacher.

Yokoi and Victoria mention in their introduction to “Guidelines,” “Whereas in [‘Universal Recommendations’] the primary emphasis is on a practical explanation of how to do zazen, in this later work, Dogen gives a more thorough explanation of the spirit in which not only zazen but all of one’s actions are to be done.”

“Guidelines” was published in 1357 by Donki, the sixth abbot of Eiheiji. Shohaku Okumura says, “This was the first printing of a Soto Zen text and shows how much the [“Guidelines”] was appreciated among Dogen Zenji’s disciples.”

Yet, the commentator mentioned above compares Fukanzazengi to “Guidelines for Studying the Way” and finds our text wanting.

And I agree.

I’d go further and say that much the same argument could be made for about 80 or so other pieces by Dogen – Genjokoan, Bussho, Zazenshin to name three – namely, that the quality of the argument and the power of the discourse in “Guidelines for Studying the Way” is rather … well, uneven. For one thing, in most of the 80 texts including the three mentioned, we hear a strikingly modern Dogen voice. There is very little of the medieval voice that we hear strongly in “Guidelines.”

So why use the “Guidelines” as an introduction to Zen study?

Just because it is so humanly uneven and even shows some development in old Dogen’s Zen. It puts us back on our heels, pulls the old boy down off his pedestal, and encourages us to sit up and take notice, enter the text and struggle with it to cull out the gems – and there are many gems, indeed.

Thus, I’ll take an uneven text any day as an introductory source text – something to wrestle with rather than revere. Such a text encourages us to sift and sort the essential dharma from our cultural and/or personal biases. Further, we learn a bit about who the medieval guy Dogen was – and more importantly about who we are now – by what in the text we want to uphold, what we want to push away, and what leaves us cold.

Let me give just a couple quick examples of what I’m talking about and end with a quick note on translation.

First, regarding the issue of how to work with discriminating mind. Throughout much of the early sections of “Guidelines,” Dogen admonishes us to just shut up – to cut off the root of discriminating mind. Suddenly in “Guidelines 10,” what Katagiri Roshi translates (jikige joto) as “Direct Assimilating and Actualizing It,” we’re encouraged to allow consciousness to play freely.

Shut up or play freely – which is it?

On the second issue, how to work with a teacher, Dogen’s guideline is much the same – shut up and do what you’re told. Then again in “Guidelines 10,” there is a softening, an opening, and an encouragement for the student to play freely in the field of dharma. “Do not try to change your body and mind,” says the more mature teacher.

Finally, a point about translations. It’s always a good idea to use more than one, so that we can see the text from different perspectives. Sometimes, though, different translations will find quite different meaning in a passage. Without in-depth knowledge of medieval Japanese, how do we know which one is more accurate?

One particularly knotty problem comes up in “Guidelines 9.” Tanahashi has “Immersed in the way, clearly understand right on the spot.” Okumura has “Being obstructed by the Way, you clarify the Way right here.”

Immersed or obstructed – which is it?

One astute Vine of Obstacles student suggests a resolution – an English phrase that captures both immersed and obstructed – “Caught up in the Way, clarify the Way right here.”

Dharma study then isn’t about being perfect – that goes for the text and ourselves. Instead, we play freely and creatively in the text, like we play freely with earnest vivid sitting, presenting the koan of the moment. Like we play freely and creatively in this very life.

Like Katagiri Roshi said, “We are it so we have to digest it and then we can actualize what we are. It does not come from outside. Jikige joto is direct assimilating and actualizing it.