UnMind 53. Principles of Zazen Duet 1: Source of the Way

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Though not far away,
you have to enter the gate
found on your cushion.

We have touched on some of the seminal teachings of Zen from the transmission of buddhadharma in India, its migration to China via the mission of Bodhidharma, and three of the teaching poems of Ch’an Buddhism selected for chanting in Soto Zen liturgy. No survey of Soto Zen would be complete without including Japan, and its foremost exponent and founder, Eihei Dogen, Zenji. In spite of his dying at the relatively young age of 53, Master Dogen’s prodigious output is intimidating. After being ordained in the Rinzai tradition, and traveling to China in his mid-twenties, where he had great insight under his teacher, Tendo Nyojo, or Rujing, he returned to Japan to introduce this zazen-centered practice.

His first written tract, Fukanzazengi — Principles of Seated Meditation, or Universal Guide to Zazen, as the translation below would have it, by Yokoi and Victoria — was apparently produced for the benefit of his students, and at their request. This is the version with which I am most familiar, having set it to music as part of my compendium of musical treatments I call SutraSuite™. In these guidelines, the great master seamlessly weaves practical instructions and profound philosophical teachings together. A sampling of this treatise will be the subject of this segment, with mercifully brief comment.

But we should remember that, as with the other “monsters of Zen” in this series, the most we can expect is a peek in the tent, brushing the tip of the iceberg, of this great literary legacy. For those who seek more, the international library of sources available on the internet provides an embarrassment of riches, more material than any one person can probably read and absorb in a lifetime. Of particular interest is a downloadable PDF of six comparative translations arranged in a grid by our own Jiryu Frederic Lecut, which you can find online at terebess.hu.

But we urge you to examine the true teaching on your cushion, in zazen, as Master Dogen would advise. Meanwhile, we can hope that this monologue will inspire greater effort in your endeavor.

Dogen hits the ground running with the first stanza:

Now when you trace the source of the Way you find that it is universal and absolute. It is unnecessary to distinguish between “practice” and “enlightenment.”

Dogen assumes that whoever is listening is already tracing “the source of the Way.” We once produced a t-shirt with “practicenlightenment” — one word, no hyphen — emblazoned on it. The way is everywhere to be found, and practicing Zen is, itself, enlightened behavior. That is, we are enlightened to the fact of something missing in our lives, and have, in our enlightened self-interest, begun pursuing buddhadharma to find it. That is our prosaic understanding of the “no enlightenment school,” as Okumura Roshi has described it. Not yet Buddha’s awakening, but the necessary prerequisite.

The supreme teaching is free, so why study the means to attain it?
The Way is, needless to say, very far from delusion.
Why then be concerned about the means of eliminating the latter?
The Way is completely present where you are, so of what use is practice or enlightenment?

These three statements, with their accompanying questions, relate Dogen’s correctives to prevailing memes regarding the Great Matter: studying to attain the supreme teaching, eliminating delusion, and practice that ignores the “Way before your eyes” are all futile endeavor. The last line is also translated as questioning the utility of pursuing enlightenment elsewhere, as on the traditional pilgrimage.

However, if there is the slightest difference in the beginning between you and the Way,
the result will be a greater separation than between heaven and earth.
If the slightest dualistic thinking arises, you will lose your Buddha-mind.

With Dogen, there is always a “but,” or a “however.” In spite of the fact that this is freely available to all, far from delusion, and completely present wherever you are in spacetime, if you see it as a separate, outer thing to be pursued, this is the Buddhist fall-from-grace. The Way is the “road to nonduality.”

For example, some people are proud of their understanding,
and think that they are richly endowed with the Buddha’s wisdom.
They think that they have attained the Way, illuminated their minds,
and gained the power to touch the heavens.
They imagine that they are wandering about in the realm of enlightenment.
But in fact they have almost lost the absolute Way, which is beyond enlightenment itself.

In what sounds like a criticism of others, but which is meant to be taken by the audience as one of those “if the shoe fits” or “if you see yourself in this picture” cautionary tales, Dogen warns against getting the big head, owing to some small peek-in-the-tent of buddhadharma that you may have encountered. Note that he asserts with Okumura Roshi that the Buddha Way is beyond, not about, enlightenment.

You should pay attention to the fact that even the Buddha Shakyamuni
had to practice zazen for six years.
It is also said that Bodhidharma had to do zazen at Shao-lin temple for nine years in order to transmit the Buddha-mind.
Since these ancient sages were so diligent, how can present-day trainees do without the practice of zazen?

Even the founders of Zen Buddhism in India and China themselves not only were proponents of zazen, but had to practice it themselves. This “had to” must be understood in the context of “in order to.” No one has to practice zazen, unless they want to penetrate to the depths of buddhadharma, to wake up. Or to transmit the Buddha-mind, which does not imply transmission to others. This transmission is from mind — lower-case “m” — to Mind, upper-case. If this transpires, then one may be enabled to help others effectuate the same transmission. Dogen is encouraging his students to practice, practice, practice.

You should stop pursuing words and letters and learn to withdraw and reflect on yourself.
When you do so, your body and mind will naturally fall away, and your original Buddha-nature will appear.

A bit of a knock on the Rinzai school, which was predominant in Japan in Dogen’s time. Koan study was referred to as “kanna Zen,” wrapped up in intellectual word-games. But to study the Buddha Way is to study the self, as famously phrased in Genjokoan, from Master Dogen’s first fascicle of his Shobogenzo collection. Body and mind falling away — shinjin datsuraku, from his transformational encounter with his Ch’an teacher, Rujing, is one of the most challenging phrases from Zen history. That your recovery of your original Buddha-nature is dependent upon this existential insight makes it even more necessary that we understand its implications. I like to think that if we simply sit still enough, for long enough, this will occur, as a natural process of profound sensory adaptation. This may be a modern definition of samadhi. The insight into our fundamental nature that accompanies this process may be the meaning of kensho. In any case, Dogen reminds us there is no time to waste:

If you wish to realize the Buddha’s Wisdom, you should begin training immediately.

“Immediately” I take to mean both in time and space, and that training is not only zazen. So we should immediately begin directing our attention to the reality of our surrounding circumstances. As to zazen:

Now, in doing zazen it is desirable to have a quiet room.
You should be temperate in eating and drinking, forsaking all delusive relationships.
Setting everything aside, think of neither good nor evil, right nor wrong.
Thus, having stopped the various functions of your mind, give up even the idea of becoming a Buddha.
This holds true not only for zazen but for all your daily actions.

Sounds like you could do zazen anywhere, but a quiet room is optimal, especially in these noisy times. The Middle Way applies to physical aspects such as diet, but what is meant by delusive relationships? Are there any that are not, at base, delusive? The tendencies of the judgmental, monkey mind are to be set aside, at least while we are on the cushion. The natural tendency to conceive of an outcome, such as “becoming a Buddha,” must also be jettisoned. Even off the cushion, we are to beware such seductions. This is the territory where Buddha’s enlightenment becomes “nothing special.”

Usually a thick square mat is put on the floor where you sit and a round cushion on top of that… With your eyes kept continuously open, breathe quietly through your nostrils… Finally, having regulated your body and mind in this way, take a deep breath, sway your body to left and right, then sit firmly as a rock.

These are the beginning, middle and end lines of a section in which Master Dogen outlines essentially the same instructions for zazen that we continue to use today, approaching a millennium later. The same simple equipment, the zabuton and zafu. Note the specific “continuously open” eyes, which we refer to as fixed gaze, which contemporary mindfulness meditation does not follow, urging meditators to keep their eyes closed. Which begs the question, How mindful can it be, if we exclude vision? Then:

Think of nonthinking. How is this done? By thinking beyond thinking and [not] thinking.
This is the very basis of zazen.

Carl Bielefeldt, in his exemplary study of “Dogen’s Manuals of Meditation,” a line-by-line comparison of the original Chinese Fukanzazengi with both of Dogen’s extant versions, makes the point that the Master does not give us any mental techniques, but that all his instructions are oriented to the physical. Here, however, we may have the exception to the rule. Non-thinking, assumed to be Dogen’s original coinage, points to a state of awareness that is not thinking, as such, but also not necessarily not thinking. Somewhere in-between, the Middle Way of mentality. As the “very basis of zazen,” it would compete with the posture, our usual association. But here, mind and body merge, in nonduality. The stillness of the posture, including the fixed gaze as a detail, manifests a one-to-one correlation with the stillness of the mind. “Mind and body cannot separate,” as Matsuoka Roshi often said.

That’s a wrap for this segment. Next week we will continue with and complete our exploration of Master Dogen’s Fukanzazengi. If memory serves, it was written in ordinary Japanese, which was unusual.