Abbot's Teaching
A Chapter from The Original Frontier
by Michael Zenkai Taiun Elliston Sensei
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The Three Treasures (Triloka)
Sangha, Dharma, Buddha
When one first encounters the Buddhist Community (sangha) in a formal setting, one enters the foothills of the original frontier (see illustration). This is the point at which one engages sangha-practice, which begins to reveal one’s sangha-nature as well as that of others. While the sangha level may initially be the most socially inviting level of practice, it is also often the most challenging.
Foothills are gentler in slope than the sides of the mountain, but are often covered in underbrush, brambles, and briar-patches, not to mention pitfalls, swamps, and various hostile critters. Here is where one’s patience is tested in relationships with other members of the community. Predictable jealousies and competitions, conflicts, personality issues, and all manner of disagreements and entanglements ensue, often embarrassingly petty, and contradictory to the ideals of Zen.
The second level of practice, Buddhist Teaching (dharma), is difficult in a different way. The slopes are steeper than the foothills, but on the other hand, they are clear and simple. One can proceed only by finding finger- and toeholds, one after the other, progressing up the slope. You might have some help from a teacher or other sangha-members climbing with you, teaching you the ropes—but you must climb the whole mountain yourself. One’s patience is tested on a different plane, a more individual and incremental one.
The third level of practice, Original Nature (buddha), cannot be considered difficult in the conventional sense. The level of difficulty is of a different order of magnitude, of a different kind. Here, we enter high plateaus and crevasses covered in snow and ice, and confront the rarified atmosphere where even breathing can be problematic, and weather turns extreme. Contradiction and ambiguity become real; the terrain of the familiar disappears. One is likely to experience disorientation, so-called hallucination. This is the trans-personal level of experience, beyond even “experience.”
I present these three levels as a model of practice-experience of the Three Treasures, the approach to which is like climbing a mountain. Like climbing a mountain, no one can climb only partway and have someone else climb the rest of the mountain. Each and everyone has to climb the whole mountain. And once the peak is attained, there is the descent—which is often more treacherous than the ascent.
The Three Treasures are central to, and honored throughout, the history of Buddhism. They are observed today in various chants and scriptures used in daily liturgy and devotional ceremonies. There is no genuine Zen Buddhist practice outside these Three Jewels. A simple version of the Three Refuges chant—taking refuge in the Three Treasures—which you may want to chant from time to time:
I take refuge in Buddha, the fully awakened one
I take refuge in Dharma, the compassionate teachings
I take refuge in Sangha, the harmonious community
Sangha
We all belong to various ersatz communities, such as our colleagues at work; our family; our neighborhood; elective associations; and as fans of sports teams and entertainment stars. These groups may not always be harmonious, and would therefore not qualify as a Buddhist sangha. They may be intentional, another attribute of sangha, but the intent is not the same as that of a Buddhist community.
The original Order established by Buddha, the various communities led by Zen Ancestors throughout history, and the sanghas that practice Zen today, are special kinds of communities, with the unique intent of fostering harmonious Zen practice and growth in budhhadharma. For this reason, fostering disharmony in the sangha is one of Buddhism’s most serious infractions of the social contract.
Dharma
To some degree all people are engaged in studying the Dharma, though they may not know it, and may be doing a very poor job of it. A baby, when learning to sit up and later to stand, is studying dharma in the form of gravity. It is a very constant teacher. When the baby finally can stand on its own, it has come into harmony, however temporary, with physical dharma, the laws of the physical universe.
There is also mental, emotional, societal/cultural, and as many other levels of dharma study as one may wish to identify. In Fukanzazengi, quoted above, Master Dogen mentions that:
“Although there are innumerable ways of understanding Buddhism, you should do zazen alone.“
Actually, according to Master Dogen, buddhadharma is ubiquitous—“universal and absolute.” However, when we say Dharma, we mean the particular teaching that Buddha and his successors expounded in an unbroken lineage for 2500 years down to the present day, as well as the concrete reality that it is pointing to. The most direct gate to this dharma is zazen practice.
We all think we are completely familiar with this everyday, concrete reality. So we don’t get all the excitement about what Zen is about. But, as Sensei often said, we know and feel there is “something missing” in our lives, in our understanding. We are not, like Buddha, fully awakened. So we come to Zen.
Buddhadharma is not a human intellectual theory or hypothesis overlaid on, or tangentially related to, our direct experience. It is a complete and thorough clarification of real experience. This is why and how it is compassionate, and why it cannot be taught in words, but must be experienced directly.
Buddha
All beings are manifesting buddha-nature, but, again, they may not know it. And most would probably not know what you were talking about if you told them.
In the design profession, we make the point that a prospect or client already has a design, which they are paying for, in one way or another. It may not be a very good design, but it is there. We offer services to improve the design of their product or operation.
In a parallel way, people are already manifesting buddha-nature, dharma-nature, and sangha-nature, but in an inchoate and unaware way. Zen practice is to become self-aware, then self-forgetting, then aware of the suffering of others. This is the climbing of the mountain, and the descent back into everyday life. This is the topography of the original frontier. But the map is not the territory. We need to go further in person.
Those persons going further are traditionally of four kinds: the Stream-Enterer, the Once-Returner, the Never-Returner, and the Arhat. Let us visit the first of the four.