UnMind 63. Keizan Quartet 1: Pure Meditation I

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Pure meditation —
how “pure” can it really be?
Just sit and find out.

Before moving into more contemporary teachings, such as Hakuin Zenji, an 18th-century Rinzai master much admired by Soto Zen for his embrace of zazen, and a few selections from my root teacher, Matsuoka Roshi, we will examine one of the teachings of Keizan Jokin, who succeeded Dogen in the fourth generation after his death in 1253. Keizan was born 15 years later, and is sometimes referred to as the Great Patriarch, Dogen the Highest Patriarch; or as the Mother and Father of Soto Zen in Japan, respectively. Keizan is known for popularizing Dogen’s Zen, and establishing many monasteries and practice centers in Japan.

I have chosen to comment upon Keizan Zenji’s “Instructions on How to Do Pure Meditation,” since the method of zazen was Master Dogen’s focus, and Keizan is credited with founding the modern practice of Dogen Zen in Japan. Matsuoka Roshi and his successors in America are carrying forward this mission and tradition. If you are familiar with, or review my podcast on Dogen’s Fukanzazengi, or the “Principles of Seated Meditation,” you may find some interesting contrasts here. They are distinctly different. Keizan’s instructions begin with some of the effects you may expect from zazen, rather than refuting conventional wisdom of the times, as did Dogen, with his statements and questions. The very first line reads:

Pure meditation opens us so that we may directly realize the Foundation of our minds and dwell content within our own Buddha Nature.

That “Foundation” is capitalized is a clue that it is a special term in the original, which is said to have been written in Chinese. The translator’s choice may only suggest what Master Keizan may have meant. It seems odd that Keizan would have written in Chinese after Master Dogen had written in Japanese a few generations earlier, but we will leave that to the scholars to sort out. The main point here is that by virtue of the unique method of zazen, sitting still enough for long enough, we may directly access the central truths of Buddhism. Master Keizan follows with:

This is called “displaying our Original Face.” It is also called “revealing the landscape of our Original Nature.” Body and mind both drop off, with no clinging to sitting up or lying down. Hence, there are no discriminatory thoughts of “this is good” or “this is bad.” You readily go beyond thoughts of “this is worldly” or “this is saintly.” You penetrate into, and go on beyond, the multitude of notions and theories about delusion versus enlightenment. You leave far behind the boundary between “ordinary beings” and “Buddhas.” Therefore, you cease to pant after the myriad phenomena and let go of all attachments to them.

So we hear echoes of Dogen from many of his familiar teachings, summarized as an introduction to zazen for Keizan’s audience, which we assume to be young monks and nuns who have attended one of the various practice places he established, and perhaps the uninitiated public. Uchiyama Roishi’s use of the term “landscape” we find here, perhaps in its first coinage. Later, in an effusive expansion on these themes, we hear the “moon in a dewdrop” made personal:

Whilst sitting in pure meditation, cut yourself free of Heaven and Earth: your whole being is as a solitary drop of dew.

Cutting oneself “free of Heaven and Earth” we assume to mean being free from any conception of their character, or the imagined separation of Samsara and Nirvana. The use of “pure” here should be taken to mean nondual, rather than indicating purity of some moral nature. Zen has been called “amoral” owing to its adherence to the Middle Way of Buddha’s teachings, but that is not the same as “immoral.” It is said that there is no “stench of holiness” around Zen.

After further attempts to capture a snapshot of the inconceivable insight that arises in zazen, Keizan refers to past masters’ wordsmithing:

The Great Master who was our Third Ancestor called It “Mind,” meaning “Original Nature.” The venerable Nagarjuna, as an expedient, called It “Body,” meaning “True Self.” The former points to the aspect of Buddha Nature, whilst the latter expresses the embodiment of the Buddhas.

The use of the term “whilst” gives away the fact that this translation is probably somewhat dated. Conflating “Mind,” capital “M,” with “Original Nature” attributed to Sengcan, and “Body” with “True Self,” all initial caps, gives a different slant to the meaning of body and mind dropping off. When our mind is seen as our original nature, and our body, simultaneously, as our true self, that very insight comprises the dropping off, which otherwise seems to propose an event that contradicts the reality of body-mind. The body that we perceive, and the mind that we construct, give way to reveal the unlimited nature of both. Simultaneously, the apparent body-mind of others is seen through as well. Keizan illuminates the timeless quality of this revelation:

This Original Nature is none other than Buddha. The radiance of the True Self arises from the ancient past and is dazzling in Its brilliance today.

Again, capitalizing It indicates the special pointing to our essential reality, or True Self, which otherwise cannot be captured in words, and includes “other.” This “It” is the inmo of Japanese, the ineffable, the “not-two” of Sengcan’s “Trust in Mind” poem. The “brilliance” recalls Buddha’s admonition that his students’ minds had not yet begun to shine. The master clarifies further:

Our minds, from the first, have no dual nature and our bodies differ in appearance. There is just mind and just body; do not speak of them as being different or as being alike. Mind shifts and perfects body; body manifests and its appearance diverges.

Cautioning against overthinking this, falling into comparative thinking, even trying to parse the sameness and differences we can conceive of regarding the so-called body-mind dualism, sometimes referred to as “Descartes’ Error.” The notion that a shifting in the mind “perfects” body seems contrary to Buddhism’s basic tenet of imperfection, but that is just the point, I think — such perfection can exist only in the mind. The fact that the appearance of the body is constantly diverging as we age is the manifestation of the other basic tenet of impermanence. This is obvious to anyone who owns a mirror. Someone recently told me that in a nunnery she knew of, there are no mirrors. This does not suggest that the nuns are vampires, just that their sense of self has nothing to do with vanity.

Then Keizan takes a turn into the larger implications of this personal transformation:

A single wave moves ever so little, and myriad waves come following after. No sooner have mind and perceptual consciousness arisen than myriads of phenomena compete to come in… Hence, the mind is like the ocean’s water, the body like its billowing waves. Just as there is no trace of a wave outside the ocean’s water, so there is not a single drop of water outside of, or apart from, the billowing waves. Water and wave have no separate existence; movement and rest are no different. Hence, it is said that the True Person of “birth and death, coming and going,” the Indestructible Body of the four elements and the five skandhas, is the One who now sits in meditation, who straightaway enters the ocean of Buddha Nature and accordingly manifests the embodiment of the Buddhas.

So here we have the familiar analogy to the ocean and its waves. “True Person” indicating the high regard in which the realization transcending the constructed self is held, and probably indicates a traditional phrase in Chinese.

The phrase “birth and death, coming and going,” is in quotes, but unattributed. I assume this quote is from an Indian or Chinese source familiar to Master Keizan and his students of the time. Birth and death are commonly referred to as coming and going, the inflection points in life through which buddhas appear and disappear in this world.

The “Indestructible Body,” also capitalized, is only indestructible in the form of its elemental components: earth, wind, water, and fire; and the skandhas of form, feeling, thought, impulse and consciousness. That the former would be considered indestructible seems reasonable — they are still present even after death; but that the skandhas are not destroyed is more difficult to accept. Perhaps the master means that, while the particular physical constituents of sentient being — the five aggregates and the six senses — disintegrate with death, they are present in all forms of conscious life, and so continue unabated in the form of the ocean and its many other waves. The important point is that the “One,” capitalized, who sits in meditation in the present moment, and is the sum total of the aggregated elements, et cetera, enters the ocean and bodily manifests the Buddha. Being the declaration of a Zen master, this does not indicate a mental concept, but a direct, visceral experience. It suggests that through zazen, we actually become conscious of the ocean in some transcendent form of awareness.

We will continue our examination of Keizan’s pure meditation in the next segment. Those who wish to research further can find this translation online.