The myriad differences
Resolved by sitting,
All doors opened.
In this still place,
I follow my nature,
Be what it may. – Reizan
Resolved by sitting,
All doors opened.
In this still place,
I follow my nature,
Be what it may. – Reizan
Let’s Try This Again
Two years ago I wrote an analysis of Dogen’s Zenki (tr. The Whole Works) chapter of his seminal masterpiece Shobogenzo (tr. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye) with the intention of writing further analyses down the road. Then some things called “a job” and “marriage” and “home ownership” happened, and boy, does that take time away from still pretending like you can do nothing but write articles all the time. However, since today is my last day of summer break before going back to teaching for the 2018-2019 school year, I thought I would give it a crack at writing an analysis of some of Dogen’s lighter fare before I have to be surrounded by teenagers for three months.
Before We Even Analyze…
The last analysis I wrote had a section on the differences between how we understand the nature of philosophy in the West versus the East, mostly from the academic standpoint. This time, I want to make it clear that the translations we use are also important. Shobogenzo is a classical text that was lost to the public for centuries – it was circulated in internal Buddhist circles by and for those who thought they had put in the necessary rigor of practice to understand the text. Only in the late 19th century, as the text was rediscovered and “Religious Studies” and “Oriental Studies” were becoming rigorous academic disciplines, was there even an attempt by lay people to understand, analyze, and communicate the text.
Does this all sound boring to you yet? If so, good, you’re a sane person who likes doing normal person things, unlike me. However, if you’re like me and are interested in studying Buddhism, this kind of information is important to keep in the back of your brain – if you’re a person in a city that does not happen to have a large Buddhist presence, you are going to come to know the philosophy and teachings of Buddhism, it will be primarily through the texts. And if you want a decent understanding, you better get your hands on decent text.
The Shobogenzo, depending on what translation you are reading, can seem like a mish-mash of philosophical jibber jabber or some of the most profound spiritual/intellectual teachings from the other end of the Pacific Ocean. So, instead of making you wonder where the hell I am getting this all from, here are a list of the most accessible translations you can find of Dogen’s master text:
1. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo – Kazuaki Tanahashi (the big book you may see in most Soto Zen monasteries and zen centers in the States)
2. Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo Series – Gudo Nishijima & Chodo Cross (one of the more definitive translations out there)
3. Shobogenzo: The Treasure House of the Eye of the True Teaching: A Trainee’s Translation of Great Master Dogen’s Spiritual Masterpiece – Rev. Hubert Nearman, O.B.C. (a free translation in PDF format by the Shasta Abbey – just in case you don’t want to pay for it)
4. Shobogenzo: Zen Essays by Dogen – Thomas Cleary (a translation of thirteen of the more seminal chapters of Dogen’s work – if you want an hope of studying the Shobogenzo during a bus ride to and from work, this is the book you buy).
Be my guest and take your pick – any four of these translations holds the spirit of the text as best as they can given the strains of translating Classical Japanese into English. And in analyses such as our own, it’s important to know we are using a reliable translation, or at least one reliable enough to be used in a college textbook. With all that said, we will be using translations by Thomas Cleary from Shobogenzo: Zen Essays by Dogen and Yuho Yokoi from the Zen Sourcebook traditionally used in college classrooms. In any future analyses, these are most likely the two guys whose translations I will be using. Plus, Fukanzazengi is not the only chapter we are using for this article today, but also Dogen’s Makahannyaharamitsu (Great Transcendent Wisdom) chapter from Shobogenzo as well. Since both chapters are so succint, but somewhat tie into each other, it will help shed more light on Dogen’s take on the importance of meditation to Buddhist practice. Now, without further ado…
Dogen’s Five-Star Yelp Review on Meditation
That’s not the actual translation of the term Fukanzazengi, but it could be. What it actually means is A Universal Recommendation for Zazen. Zazen is the term used most often in Japanese Zen Buddhist communities to describe the act of sitting meditation. It literally means “sitting meditation.” But there is a difference between meditating the way you may in a yoga class or in a Taoist circle somewhere on a college campus, and the way you do seating meditation in a zen center. For Dogen, zazen was more than just meditation. It was the act of enlightenment itself shining through the individual practitioner. Dogen, and Buddhists in general, adhere to the principle of non-duality, and therefore interconnectedness.
These two ideas culminate in the concept of interdependent co-origination. This term, to sum it up here as best as possible means that all arise, and are no separate from, each other. You arise from your parent, and your child arises from you, the same way a table may rise after carving a tree, and in the end, maybe your child will one day set a drink on that table the tree has become. Not only is everything connected, but their mutual creation and existence are inherently intertwined and a major part of the fabric of the universe. By realizing this, we learn to accept that things are also not put into neat categories or separated from each other as easily as we may believe. “Ordinary People” and “Buddhas” are not two different things. In fact, they are the same thing. This nonduality, this interconnectedness regarding the conceptual frameworks in how we see ourselves and others is at the heart of zazen.
Ordinary People = Enlightened People
Enlightened People = Ordinary People
That’s Buddhist math, for you. Now, you may ask, where is zazen in that equation? Well, zazen itself is the equal sign. As Dogen himself said in Fukanzazengi:
Zen is not “step-by-step” meditation. Rather it is simply the easy and pleasant practice of a Buddha, the realization of the Buddha’s Wisdom. The Truth appears, there being no delusion. If you understand this, you are completely free, like a dragon that has obtained water or a tiger that reclines on a mountain. The supreme Law will then appear of itself, and you will be free of weariness of confusion.
In the eyes of Dogen, to practice meditation is inherently the quality of an awakened being. If you had not been able to see your own Buddha nature in the first place, you would not have even started doing zazen in the first place. There is nothing to attain to or work towards because, due to the sheer fact of you existing in that very moment within the state of zazen, means you have attained the supposedly unattainable. As the last Bodhisattva vow states in Zen Buddhism: The Buddha way is inconceivable; I vow to attain it. The fact you are meditating while there are others that may seem much wiser and more put together than you does not mean you are somehow deficient. Earlier in Fukanzazengi, Dogen has this to say to that very thought possibly arising in your mind:
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? You should stop pursuing words and letters and learn to withdraw and reflect on yourself.
The practice of the art of zazen does not mean we are deficient in our buddha-nature, but that we are learning how to fully embody it and realize it is there. Because it is by our own nature we forget we are enlightened and awakened beings in the first place. That is how we fall into delusion and craving. We believe there is something missing from us that needs to be filled either with expensive and fancy gadgets, with people, or even with drugs and alcohol. But that’s not true at all. You are already 100% Buddha because you are already 100% yourself. However, as Dogen pointed out, just like for Siddhartha and Bodhidharma, it’s going to take work to realize the 100% authentic truth we all are.
Dogen Thinks Wisdom is Dope
Wisdom is a big deal in all religious traditions – it is seen as that which is greater than any other type of intelligence, emotional or rational. Wisdom allows us to see things as they are, intuit as to the nature of the world and the actions of individuals, and may even give us a small glimpse into the infinitude of the divine if we are able to grasp the deeper knowledge of both texts and faithfulness. In certain religious and philosophical terms then, wisdom is in-and-of-itself the ideal. A quality or essence we can only grasp by learning not only the truth of human nature but that which we were attempting to grasp in the first place. But, as with all things cryptic and mystical, wisdom is not what we may at first believe it to be. This is where we get to the Socratic Paradox (yell that in your heads for added affect). While Socrates himself may have never said the words, what we gather from the writings of Plato is that, after constant searching, questioning, and debating, those who employ the Socratic method of philosophical inquiry are bound to come to the ultimate conclusion that I know that all I know is that I do not know anything.
Dogen just so happens to agree with the Socratic Paradox in his Makahannyaharamitsu chapter:
The time when the Independent Seer practices profound transcendent wisdom is the whole body’s clear vision that the five clusters are all empty. The five clusters are physical form, sensations, perceptions, conditionings, and consciousness. They are five layers of wisdom. Clear vision is wisdom. In expounding and manifesting this fundamental message, we would say form is empty, emptiness is form, form is form, emptiness is emptiness. It is the hundred grasses, it is myriad forms.
As for the present monk’s thinking to himself, where all phenomena are respected, wisdom which still has no origination or extinction is paying obeisance. Precisely at the time of their obeisance, accordingly wisdom with available faculties has become manifest: that is what is referred to as precepts, meditation, wisdom, and so on, up to the liberation of living beings. This is called nothing. The facilities of nothing are available in this way. This is transcendent wisdom which is most profound, extremely subtle, and hard to fathom.
When the monk or Buddhist practitioner realizes that wisdom is something to be obtained towards and pays respect and deference to it in the form of the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha), then wisdom manifests itself. Wisdom is known in its conceptual and intellectual foundation as a thing. Through enough practice and insight into our original nature – that “100% authentic truth” I mentioned earlier – we start to realize wisdom has no inherent nature. In the same way in which we have no inherent nature. The five clusters/layers described in the passage – physical form, sensations, perceptions, conditionings, and consciousness – they are what we believe to comprise our true self. But we are not what we taste, touch, and feel. The “100% authentic truth” goes beyond the sensations we have that are all too willing to deceive us.
Clear vision is the only true faculty of wisdom Dogen knows we can aptly apply to it in our lifetimes. Especially through Buddhist practice. As Dogen essentially says later in the chapter, “The only way you even know wisdom is a thing is because you have the precepts, meditation, and metaphors of wisdom we talk about here in Zen Buddhism.” But wisdom does not exist because those things exist – wisdom is already there! Just as buddha nature is our ordinary nature, wisdom is inherently there in all aspects of the practice. Buddhist practice – and by extension wisdom in all of its varied forms – is the actualization of what you have always had inside you but doubted was there because either you or someone or something else told you it was not there in the first place. And to realize it, we need to learn to see it in every other aspect of our lives and the world – the hundred grasses/myriad forms Dogen points out.
One is All, All is One
Dogen starts to wrap up Fukanzazengi with one of the few succint statements of his eternally present nondualistic thinking patterns:
Zazen is a practice beyond the subjective and objective worlds, beyond discriminating thinking. Therefore, no distinction should be made between the clever and the stupid. To practice the way singleheartedly is, in itself, enlightenment. There is no gap between practice and enlightenment or zazen and daily life.
If we think we know a lot, and start to examine those aspects of life we are not that knowledgeable about, we end up learning in the end we did not know as much as we think we did. Therefore, who is truly clever and truly stupid? If wisdom is something we can manifest through the different types of practice and discipline, then why are we looking outside ourselves for wisdom when it was there all along, in our day-to-day lives? Practicing the constant internal investigation that zazen is gives us the tools necessary to go beyond our opinions and notions of right and wrong, what is and what is not, and start to see the world with clear vision for the first time. Only when we have such clear vision, the essence of wisdom inherently within our “100% authentic truth,” can we start to see there is no division at all.
Zazen isn’t just meditation, it’s the here and now. It’s our unobstructed buddha-nature expressing itself effortlessly in every precious moment of this life.
Don’t know; just go straight. – Zen Master Seung Sahn
Zen Millennial 