62. Eihei Koroku
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Extensive record
of Master Dogen’s Zen mind
and still not enough
In the introduction to Dogen’s Extensive Record, Eihei Koroku, my copy a gift from Shohaku Okurmura, who collaborated in translating with the American Zen Priest Taigen Dan Leighton, Leighton reminds us that “…Dogen’s intent is not to present doctrines of philosophical positions, but to encourage deepening religious practice.” By which, of course Master Dogen means primarily zazen, but also to study these teachings from Buddhism thoroughly in practice, reflecting upon the more obscure or arcane lessons from Buddha on down through the Chinese masters in light of our own experience on the cushion. With the caveat that we are not to assume that a cursory or superficial examination of that experience is dependable. We have to sit still enough, for long enough, for any insight to transpire. How still is still enough? And how long is long enough? Only you can know for sure. If there is any doubt about this in your mind, it is not enough. Doubt itself has to sharpen into Great Doubt, it is said.
Shortly afterwards, in the same section, “Using Eihei Koroku as a Practice Tool,” after pointing out that practically 100% of Dogen’s teachings are oriented to the practice of zazen, he quotes Bob Dylan as reflecting the same spirit of inquiry in song: “A question in your nerves is lit, yet you know that there is no answer fit to satisfy, ensure you not to quit, to keep it in your mind and not forget, that it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to.” Quintessentially American, the creativity in Dylan is more than matched by that of Dogen, in inspiring this essentially scientific, and yet poetic, approach to Zen.
Owing to the exhaustive and extensive, encyclopedic nature of this collection of Dogen’s teachings, 645 pages not including appendices, with most of the recorded live teachings being brief enough to fit more than one to a page, it is not possible to deal with in any comprehensive fashion here. Instead, I will offer the tiniest tip of the iceberg, quoting Dharma Hall Discourse number 431. This is not exactly an arbitrary choice on my part, as it is about where I am in the full re-reading of the text, cover-to-cover. This one is fairly typical in its length, as well as Master Dogen’s spontaneous approach to expounding upon well-known (at that time) historical events and classical teachings from Chinese Buddhism. It also touches on what I feel is one of the most compelling events in the history of Zen Buddhism, the first meeting and exchange of the Sixth Ancestor in China, commonly referred to as Huineng, with his teacher, the Fifth Ancestor Daman Hongren. It also resonates, in my opinion, with a contemporary issue of considerable concern, friction and frustration, that of immigration. [Brackets are by the translators.]
Southern Buddha Nature
431. Dharma Hall Discourse
I can remember, lay practitioner Lu [later the sixth ancestor, Dajian Huineng] visited the fifth ancestor [Daman Hongren].
The [fifth] ancestor asked, “Where are you from?”
Lu replied, “I am from Lingnan in the south.”
The ancestor asked, “What is it you are seeking?”
Lu said, “I seek to become a buddha.”
The ancestor said, “People from the south have no Buddha nature.”
Lu said, “People have south or north; the Buddha nature does not have south or north.”
The ancestor realized that this person was a vessel [of Dharma], and allowed him to enter the hall for lay postulants.Although the fifth ancestor and sixth ancestor spoke like this, I, their descendant Eiheiji, have a bit more to say. Great assembly, would you like to understand this clearly? Although [Lu] picked up a single blade of grass, he had not yet offered five flowers.
The footnotes, which are another asset of this volume, are quite extensive in themselves, filling in the blanks for those readers who are not especially scholarly, such as myself. Here they explain that “Lingnan is a large section of Canton, in south China. People from Lingnan were considered provincial and ignorant.” This is where I find the resonance with the contemporary contempt, expressed in certain circles, for our neighbors to the south, in Mexico and beyond. But buddha-nature, much like human nature, cannot be consigned to only those who are like us. It’s either all or nothing, no exceptions.
Note that he starts by saying “I can remember,” which he does frequently. I think this may be equivalent to the traditional “Thus have I heard” introducing teachings attributed to Shakyamuni Buddha, as a way of authenticating them. Here, Dogen’s memory must be of an anecdote he has studied in writing, or one that his teachers had quoted. Nowadays of course we have the more labor-intensive requirement to thoroughly and accurately attribute any quote to its proximate source, usually in print format, but more and more from online search engines and live or recorded audio-video sources, such as this podcast. The Internet has at one and the same time made this infinitely more doable, and infinitely more complex. We literally have whole libraries at our fingertips, as opposed to scrolls of rice paper.
Also in Fukanzazengi, Master Dogen urges us to “…give up even the idea of becoming a buddha” when we begin zazen, after “stopping the function of your mind” to engage in judgmental discourse. Huineng’s declaration that this is indeed his purpose would thus normally be taken as the unenlightened view of the novice, but he had had some definitively profound experience leading up to this meeting, when overhearing a monk reciting the Diamond Cutter Sutra, a line defining the true nature of Mind had hit him like a ton of bricks. He had made his way to Hongren’s monastery to clarify the Great Matter, without having had any training in, or study of, buddha-dharma. He was said to be illiterate, at least in the context of his times, and was a relatively young man, somewhere in his mid-twenties. This also happens to be the age that our founder, Matsuoka Roshi, came to America, and my age when I met him in the 1960s in Chicago.
Hongren’s teasing statement that southerners have no buddha-nature is similar to what my fellow Zen students in Chicago said, when I announced that I was moving to Atlanta, in part to bring Zen to the South. They retorted, “Southerners do not do Zen!” I responded, “That’s the point!” So now we are the Southern School of Sudden enlightenment, as Huineng’s sect was later known. Actually, of course, the binary of sudden and gradual cannot be separated anymore than hot and cold, light and dark. We are suddenly awakened in the moment, or moment-after-moment, but it took the whole of history of the universe to get here. Lung-ya’s “Those who in the past were not enlightened will now be enlightened.”
Note that Hongren allowed Huineng to “enter the hall for lay postulants.” This tells us that by that time, lay practice was recognized, and perhaps “separate but equal” to that for monastics. Just as Master Dogen had respected the hierarchy in the Chinese monastery of his teacher Rujing, with himself as an outlander at the bottom of the totem pole, apparently the distinction between bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, versus lay men and women, had survived from Buddha’s India down to the 600s of the common era.
The “five flowers,” as another footnote informs us, “…may refer to the five houses of Ch’an that derived from Huineng’s influence. But Dogen’s statement implies the need to see multiplicity as well as the oneness of Buddha nature.” Again, contemporary perspectives on ideology reflected in ancient wisdom. The current term of art would be “diversity” rather than multiplicity, perhaps, but the implication is the same. The oneness is seen in the “single blade of grass,” an image that is frequently used in Zen literature to indicate the wholeness in the particular, the many reflected in the one. As Dogen says in Fukanzazengi, “The buddha-way is leaping clear of the many and the one…” The reality is that both things are true at the same time. Simultaneity takes precedence over linearity.
Dogen closes with his boilerplate signoff, including a claim to be descended from the old guys whom he remembers having this run-in, and follows with a clarification that is only clarifying if you already have a clue as to what he is talking about. This amounts to the tip of the tip of the iceberg — that part that may be brushed off by the wing of an eagle flying by once a year — to steal from an old metaphor for immeasurability. I hope it has been enough to dig deeper into this early genius of Zen, the founder of our Soto practice, in Japan’s medieval time. You could do worse than to at least read the Shobogenzo if you want more than cursory glimpse of Japan’s greatest thinker — one who taught the art of nonthinking.
Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston
Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”
UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to donate@STorder.org. Gassho.
Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell
