Reflection on inconstancy is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we reflect upon the desires of the triple world. 無常觀是法明門、觀三界慾故 With this gate, we move into a section of the text concerned with the thirty seven elements of bodhi (Jp. sanjūshichi-bon-bodai-bunpō 三十七道品), which includes Gates 18 through 55. These elements are sometimes called trainings toward awakening, but in Dogen's fascicle Sanjūshichi-bon-bodai-bunpō, they're characterized as thirty seven elements of the truth. Translators Nishijima and Cross note that the list is usually considered a "Hinayana" teaching: In Japan, and especially among Mahayana Buddhist masters, it was very rare for Buddhist monks to discuss these teachings. But Master Dōgen has his own views on Mahayana and Hinayana. According to him, there exists only the Buddhism that Gautama Buddha taught. He thought that any distinctions between Mahayana and Hinayana are reflections of the different ages and cultures in which the two schools of Buddhism were taught, and he refused to discriminate between the two Buddhist streams. In this chapter Master Dōgen explains the thirty-seven elements of the truth with no division into Hinayana or Mahayana, but based upon the practice of zazen. (1) The list begins with statements about the four dharma seals (Jp. shihōin 四法印): inconstancy or impermanence, suffering, no-self and nirvana. It’s said that if a teaching contains these four seals, it’s a real Buddhist teaching. They function like a signature stamp or a trademark. Of course, like many other sets of teachings in Buddhism, four seals are not actually separate—they arise and function together—but for the purpose of sharing dharma, we have to give them names and boundaries. The list of the four seals varies depending on context and tradition; the version we’ll discuss here is made up of the three marks of existence plus nirvana. The three marks are very old elements in the Buddhist tradition. We find them in the Dhammapada: 277. “All conditioned things are impermanent” — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification. 278. “All conditioned things are unsatisfactory” — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification. 279. “All things are not-self” — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification. Because we’re limited human beings, we have confusion and misunderstanding about these three marks, and we live in samsara. However, when we deeply experience and understand the nature of existence, we are also aware of nirvana, the cessation of suffering. Our gate statement for this week takes up the first of the seals: inconstancy, or impermanence. Buddha taught that all conditioned things—things that arise because of a combination of karmic causes and conditions—are constantly arising and falling away, constantly changing in gross and subtle ways. This includes not only objects we encounter in the world of form, like shoes, mountains, cell phones and fence posts, but also our bodies and minds, our thoughts and emotions, and our relationships. Shoes wear out, mountains erode or explode as volcanoes, cell phones become outdated or broken, and we ourselves age and die. The elements or skandhas that make up things of the world are impermanent, and the causes and conditions that bring them together are also impermanent. Clinging to the way things are in any particular moment and convincing ourselves that they will never change is a set-up for suffering. Intellectually, we may understand that everything is changing. These days, we can see particles moving under a microscope and we believe our eyes. Science tells us that atoms and molecules are in constant motion, and we can accept that—but we can’t stop there. The more profound understanding is that the world we encounter was deeply impermanent even before it arose. The causes and conditions that led to its arising are themselves impermanent, so how could the outcome of those causes and conditions not also be so? Causes and conditions are not simple to see. We have to deeply experience impermanence in a non-intellectual way, without concepts and theories, in order to truly understand it. The gate statement also refers to the triple world, and it’s just as important a topic here as impermanence. The three worlds are those of desire, form and beyond-form; together they make up the totality of the celestial realms. In the world of desire, we transmigrate around and around on the wheel of samsara, moving ceaselessly between the realms of hell, animals, humans, hungry ghosts, fighting spirits and gods. The world of form consists of the four higher celestial realms in which the desires of the body have fallen away, and the world of beyond-form includes the four highest celestial realms in which there is only the enjoyment of meditative states. In the Sangai Yuishin fascicle of the Shobogenzo, Dogen talks about a verse from the Avatamsaka Sutra that says these three worlds make up the entire unsurpassable universe—and also are all creations of our own minds. Our gate statement says that considering impermanence leads us also to consider the desires of this triple world. The world of desire is dominated by our sensory experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, in which we chase after things we want and run from things we don’t want. We worry that things we have will disappear, or that things we’d rather avoid will show up in our lives. That scurrying around is what keeps the wheel of samsara turning. The world of form is inhabited by beings who are temporarily able to suppress hatred and ill-will, and who have abandoned the desires that arise from sensory experience. The world of beyond-form has beings with no physical form or location, but some retain some ability to engage in perception. According to early Buddhist teachings, moving upward through these three worlds is the result of meditative attainment, and yet, Buddha saw that even existence in the highest planes was subject to impermanence and was not in itself the end of suffering. Beings in any realm could be reborn into any other realm, so suffering of existence went on. He saw that the only way to the cessation of suffering was the cessation of rebirth. Thus in the world of desire, our craving and aversion intersect with impermanence to keep us tied to the wheel of samsara, but even if we manage to loosen those bonds and move to the worlds of form or beyond-form, the very fact of our existence means we can’t leave suffering behind. This is the first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths: existence is characterized by suffering. Impermanence is at the heart of our ancestors’ teachings about emptiness. If all things are impermanent, then they can have no fixed and permanent essence; they are empty of self-nature. Emptiness doesn’t mean that things and people don’t exist; it means that because they are deeply impermanent, there’s nothing about them we can hold onto. In order to function in the world, we have to give names and attributes to things we encounter, but we also have to remember that these are provisional means that allow us to do our bodhisattva work in the world of desire. Any boundaries we set up around things are our own, because the true nature of all things is complete emptiness and liberation. Dogen took a close look at the nature of impermanence in the Genjokoan fascicle of the Shobogenzo. That inquiry was key to his resolving his disagreement with one of the teachings of Tendai Buddhism, the tradition in which he originally practiced. The relationship between impermanence and desire mentioned in the gate statement seems obvious, particularly as it relates to the arising of suffering: we grasp for things we like, those things are always coming and going and changing, and when they change or disappear we become unhappy. Yet Dogen wondered: if everything is impermanent, how can there be an absolute and unvarying Buddha-nature, as the Tendai tradition taught? Buddha-nature was supposed to be something unchangeable that you got at the end of a linear practice. Was it really something detached from everyday experience, a potentiality that you manifested somehow after years of effort? How could this be? If all conditioned things are constantly changing because the causes and conditions that lead to their arising are constantly changing, and if nothing is separate from causes and conditions, there can be nothing that arises and then remains fixed and immutable forever, including Buddha-nature. Dogen’s own experience of impermanence led him to see that there were two ways to understand it. One was the point of view of being an observer of things changing all around yourself. You feel sad when you’re clinging to something and it’s lost, and then you want to be released from those feelings. Another point of view was being completely immersed in the total dynamic functioning of the universe without artificial separation, understanding that you’re an element in that functioning which is as impermanent and changeable as everything around it. If you get this second point of view, you don’t get caught up in the sentimentality of impermanence because there is no self to own those feelings. but you also don’t deny them. When you completely enter into feelings of grief and loss. that can lead to insight into the real nature of impermanence. The reality is that humans cling and suffer. That can’t be ignored or separated from the truth of this moment. Clinging and suffering are not outside of the Buddha Way because the Buddha Way is unsurpassable—there’s nowhere it doesn’t reach. Thus Dogen isn’t telling us to cut off or push away our feelings of regret or sorrow at the transiency of the world. He’s pointing out that there is no separation between regret and no-regret. Regret is simply the outcome of the arising and falling away of impermanent phenomena. We don’t have to get caught up in it and use it to perpetuate delusion, but we also shouldn’t ignore it either, since it exists and serves as a gate of dharma illumination that helps us to understand desire and the nature of suffering. It’s an interesting view of our human relationship with impermanence. Our suffering is right in the midst of Nirvana, which is right in the midst of the Buddha Way. In one of his discussions of waka poems, Okumura Roshi says: Seeing impermanence and feeling grief is not necessarily negative in Buddhism, especially in Dogen’s teachings even though we feel sad. It is a good chance to arouse bodhi-mind and aspire to practice what the Buddha taught. As Shakyamuni Buddha said in the Sutra on the Buddha’s Bequeathed Teaching, within the practice, the Buddha’s indestructible Dharma Body is actualized. The very desire to which we as humans fall prey, the very clinging in the vain hope that things won’t change, the very emotions we experience when the things we love or believe we need are fading away—those are themselves the complete manifestation of the Buddha Way. In completely living our lives, we hold two paradoxical truths: we try to liberate ourselves from suffering by seeing through our delusion that the world is unchanging and loosening the grip of craving and aversion that leads to pain. At the same time, our deluded human experience of grief, loss and fear is itself what Okumura Roshi has called the eternal life of Buddha. Practice in the midst of impermanence is what gives rise to the Buddha’s indestructible dharma body. In his book on the Mountains and Waters Sutra, Okumura Roshi says: Impermanence is one half of reality. The other side is that everything is always abiding peacefully in its Dharma position, where nothing arises and nothing changes. Everything is there at this moment. (1) Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) Cross, Chodo, and Nishijima, Gudo. Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, Volume 4. United States, Booksurge Publishing, 2006. p. 3. (2) Okumura, Shohaku. The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s “Sansuikyo”. United States, Wisdom Publications, 2018. p. 173
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Abandonment is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we turn away from the five desires. 是法明門、厭離五欲故。 This week we take up the last of the four brahma viharas or divine abodes. We’ve considered benevolence, compassion, sympathetic joy, and this time it’s abandonment (Skt. upekka), frequently translated as equanimity. You may have heard of something in the Buddhist tradition called the Eight Worldly Winds or Eight Worldly Conditions. These are:
This is the stuff that swirls around us in our lives and pulls us off center or off course. It’s interesting that they’re in pairs of opposites; there is definitely a “good” and “bad” here. We chase after one and avoid the other; it’s basic craving and aversion which, as we know, leads to suffering. Equanimity is being calm and balanced and stable in the midst of the swirling of these eight worldly winds. The English word is made up of “equal” plus “animus,” which is mind or spirit. We encounter various things with equal spirit, looking carefully, not looking away, not immediately deciding to connect with this and throw out that. The gate statement says that abandonment is a gate because we turn away from the five desires, also known as the five hindrances (Skt. pancha nivarana). These are known to be obstacles to tranquility of mind. They are:
At Gate 36 we’re going to be returning to these five desires or hindrances and we’ll go into additional detail then. For the moment, let’s connect the five desires with the eight worldly winds and abandonment or equanimity. The gate statement says that we turn away from sensory desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt. That allows us not to be thrown off in the midst of loss and gain, good-repute and ill-repute, praise and censure, sorrow and happiness. That in turn creates the conditions for equanimity, or the ability to abandon picking and choosing and needing to take a side. All this is a more complex way of saying that if we’re not paying attention to these things arising in our minds and understanding them really well, they get in the way of our zazen and the rest of our lives. Before we realize it, we get hijacked into taking sides, and chasing after and running away from things. As Dogen says, Flowers fall with our attachment, and weeds spring up with our aversion. We want the flowers, and as soon as we see them, our grasping comes up. We don’t want the weeds, and as soon as we see them, our aversion comes up, We can become consumed with that and lose our balance. Once we’ve lost our balance, we don’t see clearly and it’s difficult to be skillful bodhisattvas in the world. It’s really hard to do anything useful for others when we’re caught up in our own greed, grasping and craving. Now, equanimity is not about being passive and apathetic. It would be easy to think that not giving in to desires means that we should just become inert and never make a choice, but it doesn’t really mean we just say, well, everything’s OK and there’s nothing I need to do. It helps us see where can actually be useful and what we just need to let go of, because there are things we want to change and things we can actually change. Having equanimity is about being stable in the face of everything coming at us in good times and difficult times. It’s not about detaching or withdrawing from the world, maintaining our personal peace by ignoring what’s happening. Buddha is not saying we should be indifferent or unconcerned about others. He’s saying that abandoning the hindrances allows us not to get swept away by the eight worldly winds. The only thing we’re indifferent to is the demands of the ego or the small self. In the face of loss and gain, we accept that things come and go. Sometimes we want something we don’t have, and sometimes we have something we don’t want. Sometimes we have something we want and we’re afraid to lose it, and sometimes we’re afraid of something coming into our lives that we’d rather avoid. That’s what this worldy wind is about. When we lose a job or get a new job, break up a relationship or start a new one, make a lot of money or lose all our money -- can we fully enter into what’s going on, fully see and accept what’s happening, and not get blown over by it? In the face of good-repute and ill-repute, or changes in what others think of us, we can do our best to maintain good relationships, but in the end even if we do our best to be skillful, there are those who are just going to disagree with us or even disparage us. In the midst of that, can we stick to our principles and do what we think is right and wholesome? I’m sure you’ve heard this story about Hakuin: A beautiful girl in the village was pregnant. Her angry parents demanded to know who was the father. At first resistant to confess, the anxious and embarrassed girl finally pointed to Hakuin, the Zen master whom everyone previously revered for living such a pure life. When the outraged parents confronted Hakuin with their daughter’s accusation, he simply replied “Is that so?” When the child was born, the parents brought it to the Hakuin, who now was viewed as a pariah by the whole village. They demanded that he take care of the child since it was his responsibility. “Is that so?” Hakuin said calmly as he accepted the child. For many months he took very good care of the child until the daughter could no longer withstand the lie she had told. She confessed that the real father was a young man in the village whom she had tried to protect. The parents immediately went to Hakuin to see if he would return the baby. With profuse apologies they explained what had happened. “Is that so?” Hakuin said as he handed them the child. In the midst of good repute and ill repute, or honor and dishonor, he remained stable and simply cared for the child. In the face of praise and censure or criticism, can we avoid becoming proud or shriveling up and hiding? In the face of sorrow, can we pick up and keep going while taking care of the grieving process? In the face of happiness, can we completely enter in the joy of that while not becoming consumed by it? Within the four brahma viharas, equanimity is not only its own point but helps to refine the other three. Steadiness combined with benevolence, compassion and sympathetic joy helps us wish all beings well and enter equally into their suffering and joy, regardless of our personal likes and dislikes or the condition that we ourselves are in Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes: When you encounter suffering that you can’t stop no matter how hard you try, you need equanimity to avoid creating additional suffering and to channel your energies to areas where you can be of help. In this way, equanimity isn’t cold hearted or indifferent. It simply makes your goodwill more focused and effective. Our interactions and relationships with others don’t swing wildly in one direction or the others depending on how we feel that day or latest thing the other person has done or said. When we remain steady and stable, we create less suffering for ourselves and better causes and conditions for those around us. Regardless of how much goodwill or compassion you’ve cultivated, there are bound to be people whose past actions are unskillful and who cannot or will not change their ways in the present. Equanimity helps make sure we can benefit all beings. Upekkha has been described as freedom from all points of self-reference. It’s also been described as learning to put aside your preferences so that you can watch what’s actually there. Equanimity helps us take a step back and see that not everything is about us, our wants and likes and ideas. As soon as everything is about me, I’m subject to every whim, delusion and misperception that comes out of the small self. It’s an unstable and fatiguing place to be, and not a good basis for decisionmaking. Dogen wrote a waka about equanimity, which Okumura Roshi has translated: Natsu fuyu mo Omoi ni wakanu Koshi no yama Furu shi-ra-yu-ki mo Naru i-ka-zu-chi mo Whether summer or winter, the mountain of Koshi is free from discriminative thinking. It sees equally falling of white snowflakes or roaring of thunder. Not discriminating between summer and winter, accepting all of the different conditions of four seasons, means we encounter summer storms and winter snow with equal spirit. It’s just the next thing that’s happening, and it’s not necessary to decide whether it’s good or bad. We may still need to clear away the fallen trees or shovel the snow—in other words, we may still need to take some action—but we can do that without grumbling. It’s just the next thing that needs to be done. Okumura Roshi says that this waka reminds him of what Dōgen wrote in the Tenzokyokun (The Instructions for the Tenzo) regarding magnanimous mind: As for what is called magnanimous mind, this mind is like the great mountains or like the great ocean; it is not biased or contentious mind. Carrying half a pound, do not take it lightly; lifting forty pounds should not seem heavy. Although drawn by the voices of spring, do not allow your heart to fall. The four seasons cooperate in a single scene; regard light and heavy with a single eye. On this single occasion you must write the word ‘great.’ You must know the word ‘great.’ You must learn the word ‘great.’” This “great” is a pointer back to ”magnanimous.” He’s exhorting us to deeply study what these words mean. Okumura Roshi is giving us a clue here about how we can cultivate equanimity or abandonment. We enter into magnanimous mind and we see and accept 100% of this one unified reality. Imagine a time when you were caught up in one of the hindrances. Maybe you were worried about the outcome of something, feeling unmotivated and that everything was pointless, or feeling bitterness that your input about something was not asked or was disregarded. At times like this, hard to see beyond two immediate stories: there’s what you want and then there’s how things are going. One is good and one is not good, and everything gets evaluated in terms of that dichotomy. You accept one and reject the other, and that’s it. There’s actually a bigger world out there in the world of magnanimous mind. We accept all possibilities and options without judging and labeling from a self-centered perspective. and we can see all sides of the situation and all the elements involved. If you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle and you pick up a piece and try it and it doesn’t fit, you don’t say, “Well, that’s a bad piece” or “I really hate that piece.” You say, “Well, it doesn’t fit there.” You’re able to take action, but it’s not based on what that piece means to you personally; it’s based on what’s needed in that situation. Equanimity allows us to hold both ends of the dichotomy equally and at the same time: loss and gain, honor and dishonor. In the middle of two things, or in the middle of seeming chaos, we can stand up, look around, and see clearly what’s happening and what we need to do. We can see that these two things are not actually separate. In addition to the desire for one element or another, there is frequently an additional desire: to avoid ambiguity. Sometimes we have a hard time with uncertainty. Deciding on one thing or another can give us a feeling of being in control or having something solid to hang onto. It can also make it difficult to change our thinking when we’re presented with new information. That’s when we can find ourselves entrenched, and if the “other side” is equally dug in, that’s a problem. Equanimity allows for keeping an open mind. Just as the mountain has a firm foundation, we need to build a firm foundation in our practice. Giving way to restlessness and doubt makes it hard to practice, and we need that stable practice foundation in order to go forward. We don’t just wake up in the morning and say, Today I’m going to have equanimity and magnanimous mind. They come from deeply understanding the nature of impermanence and no self and how causes and conditions work. Deep understanding requires regular committed zazen practice. Zazen is a fine place to cultivate equanimity. There’s a reason we have phrases like “sit like a mountain.” It’s sitting that’s solid, stable, and unmoving. The mountain has strength and dignity, but is completely natural. Equanimity also has to be natural, not something you put on. It’s not about suppressing thoughts or feelings so you appear calm. It’s about seeing through those thoughts, feelings and hindrances so they don’t cloud your understanding and judgement. Questions for reflection and discussion
Joy is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we abandon all unpleasant things. 喜是法明門、一切不喜事故. This week we take up the third of the four brama viharas, sympathetic joy (Skt. mudita). This is the joy we feel with others when something goes well for them. (Compassion was feeling others’ suffering with them.) How much better it would be for us if we could be happy with others in their joy rather than feeling envious: how come him or her and not me? Why not increase our own happiness by partaking in the joy of others? The classical image of sympathetic joy is the joy of a parent when the child grows, develops and prospers. Parents feel very connected to their children, so they’re pleased for them when they learn to walk and talk, do well in school, get a date for the prom, or get a good job. So how do we cultivate or create the conditions for this sympathetic joy? We need look no farther than Dogen’s famous teaching that to study the self is to forget the self. If we practice and loosen the grip of this idea that there is a fixed and unchanging self nature that persists through time and that we need to defend, we are naturally able to feel others’ joy. It’s interesting how all the brahma viharas we’ve talked about over the last few weeks are not about ourselves. Benevolence is about wishing others well. Compassion is feeling others’ suffering with them. Sympathetic joy is feeling others’ happiness with them. All of these things which are the result of our getting ourselves out of the way are supposed to lead us to a heavenly realm. If we simply keep running after what we want, we create suffering. If we let go of self and focus on others, we receive everything we need and end up in heaven! There’s another relationship between compassion and sympathetic joy. Sympathetic joy keeps compassion from becoming condescention: I’m helping you because I have something you need. I’m helping you out of your suffering and so you can achieve some better state. Instead, I share your suffering with you and on that basis I do what I can to relieve that suffering, and I share your joy when things have gotten better. It’s a subtle difference. What if we could gain happiness for ourselves by noticing and entering into the joy we find around us every day? We don’t need to thrust ourselves into someone else’s conversation or activity, or ask them for anything. When we see a family or a couple who are happy just to be together, well, good for them! When someone wins a contest, gets a good grade or finishes a project, good for them! This isn’t a selfish joy; I’m not acquiring happiness at the expense of someone else or because someone else has let me in on it. I don’t have to have a personal relationship with what’s happening. I can simply recognize that the universe is doing what the universe does, and joy arises naturally. The happiness of others can my happiness. Why not? Where is the actual barrier? What’s keeping me from sharing in that joy? Why shouldn’t I smile when I see child playing with puppy or young person giving up a seat on bus for an older person? It’s not like there’s a limited about of joy in the world and I’m stealing it from someone else. The brahma viharas also called the four immeasurables, after all. It’s like lighting a candle from another candle. It’s not like there’s a limited amount of flame, and now we’re cutting it in half to light another candle. If anything, there’s now twice as much! Now, this is not an exercise in avoiding suffering, covering it over with hearts and flowers and marshmallow creme. It’s not about being inauthentic or hypocritical. Sympathetic joy can lighten spirits, but doesn’t erase suffering. As Buddha said, life is characterized by suffering. The way to deal with it is to see where it comes from and our relationship with it, then try to reshape that relationship. Sympathetic joy is also not advocating that we become frivolous and superficial and try to surround ourselves only with YouTube videos of funny cats. Looking for and taking in the happiness around us is not a means of avoidance, and it won’t become that if we’re not letting go of wisdom. Wisdom is about seeing the whole catastrophe, joy and suffering, and not looking away from either one. Forgetting the self makes it less possible to get stuck in avoidance because we’re not in this for ourselves. We’re not cultivating sympathetic joy so that we can get some personal reward. Daniel Zelinski is a philosophy professor at Missouri State and he has written: Dogen’s ideally nonattached individual is a humble agent in the world whose perceived sense of a pervasive interconnected unity of all things through Buddha-nature instills a sympathetic connection to others within him or her, which in turn results in his or her projects and actions expressing both respect and compassion. (1) Cultivating sympathetic joy is both a means of forgetting the self and a manifestation of forgetting the self. They reinforce each other. The envy and jealousy and resentment I mentioned a moment ago is based in the delusion that somehow we aren’t enough as we are, that somehow this self is insufficient or something is lacking. If we are buddha-nature, there’s nothing we need to acquire and we don’t need to be insecure about ourselves. We just need to learn how to see through our delusions, get out of our own way and move through the world skillfully with wisdom and compassion. That’s what the bodhisattva does. Can you imagine Manjusri and Avalokitesvara being envious of each other every time someone made an offering or built a shrine? No, because they know that something good happening for one of them doesn’t take anything away from the other. As human beings, we don’t like to acknowledge envy. It’s not good that he got that promotion -- not because I’m envious, of course, but because he doesn’t have the right skills. We’re going to find a way to justify our resistance. I was once asked to officiate at an important ceremony. When my friend found out, her response was, You're doing it? Well, of course, the reason I wasn’t asked was because the organizers must have already known that I wasn’t available that day. Ouch! However, this reaction wasn’t meant to hurt me, and clearly wasn’t about me at all. Jack Kornfield says: The near enemy of sympathetic joy (the joy in the happiness of others) is comparison, which looks to see if we have more of, the same as, or less than another... (2) It is (or should be) fairly easy to enter into sympathetic joy with our friends and family and people we like. What about people we don’t like so much? Can we be happy for someone who has something good going on in her life when we don’t like what’s happening? We’re not talking about condoning bad behavior, or cheering on someone who’s getting some reward for causing harm. We’re talking about struggling when something good and wholesome is happening for someone we don’t like. Here’s something written by a member of a prison sangha in Maryland. I’ve been constantly been told by other inmates to treat the staff like they are the enemy. This us vs. them never sat right with me and when you look at the Buddhist teachings you will see that there is really is no us vs. them. I found that when I’ve treated people (whoever they are) with kindness, I have been usually treated the same in return. When a corrections officer or another inmate treats me cruelly I remind myself that they are suffering and trying to attain happiness just the same as everyone else. So, they act out and it really has nothing to do with you, but their own drama. Putting our ego on hold can be challenging, but it can be done. I have found it helpful to simply take a step back and take a few silent breaths. Remember, we are trying to attain enlightenment for the benefit for all. (3) Goodness, where are you ever going to be that’s more of a challenge to sympathetic joy than in prison? Here’s the thing: we might as well enter into sympathetic joy, because not doing it isn’t going to change the situation. You’re not going to get revenge on somebody by withholding joy. Carrying resentment rather than sympathetic joy is the ego trying not to die. If I let go of my resentment I might disappear; I need to maintain this fiction that I’m better than you or more deserving than you, or at least separate from you. Otherwise, I might cease to be. Instead, we can aspire to be like Manjusri and Avalokitesvara, or some other selfless beings we may know. We can try not to overlook the various sources of joy that we can enter into every day. If we’re really trying to live like bodhisattvas and help all beings, than we need to be encouraging people. Even someone who’s really deluded can probably take even a small skillful action or make even a small change toward wholesomeness. The bodhisattva response to that success is not “Well, it’s about time you shaped up! I told you you should stop doing this or start doing that. It’s all well and good that you’ve taken this small step, but you’ve still got a long way to go, so don’t slack off!” It’s not kind, and not helpful, and not entering into sympathetic joy. Instead, look for the opportunity to recognize and celebrate wholesome action. It doesn’t mean you’re letting this person off the hook for other harmful stuff. It does mean you’re building a trust relationship and not perpetuating the delusion of separation. A rising tide floats all boats. His success is my success. At minimum, there’s just that tiny bit less suffering in the world for everyone. It’s said that cultivating sympathetic joy is the hardest of all the brahma viharas. It’s just so easy to say, I deserve happiness more than he does or she does. However, we have to remember: we don’t know about all of our own causes and conditions, let alone someone else’s. We’ve done both wholesome and unwholesome things; so has that person. Karma says that there are actions that lead to pleasure and actions that lead to pain. We don’t need to worry about who deserves what; the universe will sort that out, and not in a personal way. If we’re awarding sympathetic joy, or compassion, based on people’s purity, what are we doing? First, who are we to judge? How can we know all the streams of causes and conditions at work here? Second, if there is no one outside of Buddha’s way, there is no one who falls outside of our practice of the brahma viharas and there is no one from whom we’re really separate. Instead, we cultivate an attitude of wishing everyone well, suffering with those who suffer and feeling joy with those who feel joy. If we do that, where is boundary between self and other? It’s a really powerful way to experience that nonseparation. Here’s the other thing about karma: what we do now sets up the causes and conditions for what arises in the next moment. Do we go into that moment filled with resentment and envy, or do we go into it wishing people well? And what comes out of that choice? What happens if I’m constantly judging and envying what others have, and then something good happens to me? Will others have sympathetic joy for me, or just their own resentment? What dynamic have I set in motion there? When we talked about compassion, we talked about feeling the suffering of others without being overwhelmed by it. Sympathetic joy provides some balance and optimism. Yes, there’s suffering, but there is also joy. It keeps us from being consumed by pain and grief. If we collapse under the weight of compassion, it’s hard to do anything to actually help. We need the balance of entering into the happiness of others as well as their suffering. Nyanaponika Thera was a German Theravadan monk who died about 25 years ago. He wrote this about sympathetic joy: It is the divine smile on the face of the Enlightened One, a smile that persists in spite of his deep knowledge of the world’s suffering, a smile that gives solace and hope, fearlessness and confidence: “Wide open are the doors to deliverance,” thus it speaks. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) Queen, C. (2003). Action Dharma: New Studies in Engaged Buddhism. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. p. 60. (2) Kornfield, J. (2009). A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life. United States: Random House Publishing Group. (3) O’Connor, T. (2012). Buddhas Behind Bars. United States: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Compassion is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not kill or harm living beings. 悲是法明門、不殺害衆生故. This week we continue our discussion of the part of the text that deals with the four brahma viharas or divine abodes. Last week we talked about benevolence (or loving-kindness or metta). This week it’s compassion or karuna, and we still have sympathetic joy (mudita) and abandonment (upekka) ahead of us. Again, cultivating these qualities was said to lead to the arising of the mind of brahmas or loving gods, or to allow one to live with the gods. In the kanji for compassion 悲是, the first character has to do with grief, sorrow, sadness (hi). Of course, the roots of the English word “compassion” mean to feel with (someone). When we have compassion, we’re feeling someone’s suffering along with him or her. Our interactions with that person and the actions we take arise from our recognition of shared suffering. Compassion is the recognition of the first of the four noble truths: life is characterized by suffering. A sanghe member once asked me whether benevolence and compassion were the same, and I said no. Benevolence is about wishing all beings to be well and happy while compassion is wishing all beings to be free from suffering—recognizing the suffering of beings and doing what we can to relieve it, or at least not perpetuate it. The difference is subtle and they are related, but there are two different aspects here. The opposite of compassion is anger. When someone makes a mistake because of his own suffering, we can take it personally and become angry and lash out, or we can recognize the suffering and try to help stop that chain or cycle of pain perpetuating pain. That’s the difference between anger and compassion. When I first read this gate I immediately thought of this teaching from the Tibetan tradition: Just as I wish to be free from suffering and experience only happiness, so do all other beings. In this respect, I am no different from any other being; we are all equal. Compassion is understanding that all beings can experience suffering just as we can, so we don’t do harm to them. It’s when we see others as others, who are somehow disconnected from us and not our responsibility, that we make mistakes. We can put ourselves in their place because in a way we are already in their place: no one is outside the Buddha Way. As we saw last time, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra is a good source for teachings about the brahma viharas. Buddha is teaching about the pure actions of a bodhisattva, and the sutra makes the point over and over again that Buddha views all beings as he does his son Rahula. We as bodhisattvas are also to see all beings as we would see our own children. This is not easy; people question the Buddha about whether he can really do this. This or that person did this or that bad thing; can you really see him as your son? Yes, it’s true, I really do. The point is not to blame, shun or get angry at the person, but to fix the problem so suffering doesn’t perpetuate. Buddha says it’s like seeing that your okesa has a hole in it and simply repairing it. There’s a tear in the dharma fabric somewhere and something is out of alignment. Suffering arises because something is out of whack—our expectations, perceptions, craving and aversion, or whatever. Our job as bodhisattvas is simply to mend the tear so beings don’t keep falling through the hole. Buddha sees beings falling into hell with their suffering, and because of compassion he tries to do something so it doesn’t keep happening. In the sutra, he says: Should I see but one person falling into Avichi Hell, I would, for the sake of that person, stay in the world for a kalpa or less than a kalpa. I have great compassion for all beings. How could I cheat one whom I regard as my son and let him fall into hell? Seeing a person falling into hell, I cause repairs [to be made] and bestow the precepts for good deeds. Buddha could have seen people making mistakes and falling into hell realms and just written them off or become angry. Instead, he provides teachings, guidance and precepts the way a parent would care for a child. A parent might make a rule that the child not to go outside of the yard and into the street; when the child is older, she understands on her own that the street is busy and dangerous and has no desire to go there, but for now she needs help. This is how we’re also encouraged to approach the world: seeing the suffering of beings and what that suffering leads to. When we wake up, we can see enough to keep some of our suffering from arising, but for now we and others need help. This is compassion, and we can see that it arises from Right View from the Eightfold Path. Right View is a clear and deep understanding of the nature of suffering, how it arises and what we can do about it. If we don’t understand suffering, we can’t act compassionately. Now we can see how wisdom and compassion are connected. We have to have wisdom to see what’s actually going on and to know how to act skillfully to mend the tear. It’s not enough just to feel sorry for someone; I feel sorry for you still means I don’t see your suffering as my own (and I’m glad it didn’t happen to me). Also, Dogen’s teacher Tendo Nyojo tells us how zazen and compassion are connected: The zazen of buddhas and ancestors places primary importance on Great Compassion and the vow to save all living beings. … In buddhas’ and ancestors’ zazen, they wish to gather all Buddha Dharma from the time they first arouse bodhi-mind. Buddhas and ancestors do not forget or abandon living beings in their zazen; they offer a heart of compassion even to an insect. Buddhas and ancestors vow to save all living beings and dedicate all the merit of their practice to all living beings. The vow to save all beings means to liberate all beings from suffering. This is Great Compassion, and the kernel of the whole thing. The most important, basic kind of compassion is the first of the Four Bodhisattva vows: liberating all beings from suffering. This is what our practice is all about. Buddhas and ancestors do not forget or abandon living beings in their zazen. Again we are reminded that we’re not sitting for our own benefit alone. We’re not sitting so that we can reduce our stress and feel peaceful or have a peak experience; we’re sitting in order to liberate all beings. Zazen is not about closing ourselves off from the world in order to focus or concentrate; it’s about letting the whole world and all beings in. We don’t forget or abandon living beings in zazen. If compassion is the whole point of our practice and we’re putting all of our attention there, then it’s not possible to harm beings, because anger and ill-will is the opposite of compassion. When we see how central Great Compassion is in our practice and tradition, then no wonder Kannon is such an important bodhisattva. Kannon is the embodiment of our aspiration to free all beings from suffering. One of the manifestations of Kannon has a thousand hands and eyes, and Dogen wrote a whole fascicle about it. He says that Kannon’s whole being is hands and eyes—in other words, compassion fills the universe. There is no “I see suffering with my thousand eyes so I’m using my thousand hands to help.” Compassion is already completely there. Kannon’s whole being and our whole being is compassion. Eyes are seeing everywhere and hands are helping everywhere wherever there are suffering beings to be liberated. There are a lot of stories in the medieval Buddhist tale literature about Kannon manifesting in various forms to save people in their hour of need: curing illness, saving them from danger, helping the poor, helping them have children, or liberating themselves or their parents from hell realms. Kannon stories are among the most popular in the tale literature. Why? Because we all suffer and would like to be saved. You may know that Avalokitesvara in India was male, and somehow by the time he makes his way to China and becomes Kuan Yin and to Japan as Kannon, he becomes female. The male version was said to represent compassion in a general way, but the female version is compassion in action. Compassion isn’t just a feeling. It’s something we do. No wonder, then, that in the tale literature, Kannon actively comes to the aid of people who need help. As we move through the world, we do our best not to cause injury or harm, but compassion isn’t about just being nice, never doing or saying anything that shakes anyone up. Sometimes the compassionate thing to do is to bruise someone’s ego. If I’m drinking on the job, the compassionate thing is for my supervisor or somebody to say, “Look, get it together. You can’t go on like this.” If I let my ego get involved, I might feel foolish or insulted, but that doesn’t make this an uncompassionate act. What about all the rest of the people around me who are affected by what I do? Dealing with me is the compassionate thing for them. Preventing harm to beings can mean making the tough call and it might be that not everyone likes it. Compassion is not all hearts and flowers and sugary stuff. It’s not one big Hallmark card. Seeing all the suffering of the world and vowing to liberate beings is not an easy thing. People sometimes ask, how can I take on all the suffering of the world when I can’t even deal with my own? If we take it on like Kannon, there is no such thing as compassion fatigue. Compassion doesn’t come at a personal cost to ourselves if our egos aren’t poking their heads in. My friend and fellow dharma teacher Dr. Tomon Marr is a palliative care physician. She wrote a piece called “Can Compassion Fatigue?” in the Journal of Palliative Care. (She also gave a dharma talk on the topic here.) She makes the point that to say compassion can fatigue assumes that there’s a limited well of compassion in each of us. Once it’s used up, either we must replenish the well, or move along without it, devoid of our compassion or with impaired compassion. Instead, if we’re just wholeheartedly focused on this moment without worrying about where else we should be or what else we should be doing, we can show compassion without burning out. Our self-care strategies can actually work against us if we’re getting through the day in order to get to our real life or our leisure time, where self-care supposedly happens. She’s speaking here specifically of compassion fatigue. We certainly need physical rest, downtime, and activities other than work. However, rather than relying on going somewhere other than here and now to recover from compassion fatigue, we have to understand what compassion really is. Real compassion doesn’t cost us anything. Perhaps what gets in the way is the idea that we should be able to finish the work. Beings are numberless and I vow to free them, but it’s not possible. It’s a never-ending uphill slog. Just because can’t do everything doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything. As Okumura Roshi has frequently reminded us, our practice will always be incomplete. We do our best not to harm beings. We recognize that one of the marks of existence is suffering. We all have that in common: we all want to be free from suffering and not come to harm. The opposite of harming beings is seeing that all beings are suffering and doing what we can to lessen that suffering. We take bodhisattva vows that include liberating all beings. Compassion becomes a dharma gate when non-harming is the natural outgrowth of our wisdom rather than something we have to acquire or put on. For now, we may need to remind ourselves to look for the compassionate response to what’s happening in our lives, but the more we practice the more it arises naturally because there’s no gap. Our challenge is: how do we get out of the way of our own compassion—because there’s an unlimited well already there. We just have to find it. Questions for reflection and discussion
Benevolence is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] good roots prevail in all the situations of life. 慈是法明門、一切生處善根攝勝故 This week we move into discussion of the four brama viharas, or the four divine abodes. You may not recognize them in this text if you’re used to them as loving-kindness (Skt. metta), compassion (Skt. karuna), sympathetic joy (Skt. mudita), and equanimity (Skt. upekkha). It’s interesting that the brahma viharas come right after mindfulness of heavens in this text. Brahma vihara literally means “divine abode,” and cultivating these qualities was said to lead to the arising of the mind of brahmas or loving gods, or to allow one to live with the gods. One cultivates brahma viharas in order to overcome ill-will and sensual desire, and to facilitate training in deep concentration (samadhi). The brahma viharas are very, very old. They predate Buddhism, and three of the four show up in the Hindu Upanishads. They also appear in the Jain tradition. Brahma viharas are also called apramāṇa, the four immeasurables that develop the spacious or unlimited mind of the gods. However, Buddha took these teachings and reinterpreted them. He said he was not practicing these things in order to be reborn in a heavenly realm with the gods; he was practicing while walking the Eightfold Path in order to manifest awakening and live with gods right here and now. Other than in the list of the 108 gates, the brahma viharas don’t really show up in Dogen’s writings. They do show up in Japanese Buddhism as shi muryo shin 四無量心, literally the four immeasurable minds. “Immeasurable” or “limitless” is muryo, the same kanji as those found in the third of the four bodhisattva vows: homon muryo seigan gaku 法門無量誓願學 (Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them). (1) The Mahaparinirvana Sutra is a good source for teachings about the brahma viharas. In it, Buddha is teaching about the pure actions of a bodhisattva mahasattva. The person with whom he’s speaking makes the point that you can’t really separate these four minds and that there is really only one. Buddha says that indeed they are completely interconnected, but in order to teach beings he has to talk about four aspects of reality; this is skillful means. This week we start with benevolence or loving-kindness. The kanji in the gate statement is 慈 ji. In English, benevolence literally means "well-wishing." Okumura Roshi translates ji as the mind that offers joy to others. This is a kanji associated with love or affection, and it shows up in the Japanese words for charity and philanthropy. Jizen 慈善 is charity; ji is love and zen is goodness. Jizenshin 慈善心 is benevolence: love + goodness + heart/mind. In the sutra, Buddha says loving-kindness reverses anger and greed, but that this will take some time. For a long time past, over innumerable kalpas, one has amassed delusions and not practised what is good. For this reason, one is unable to subdue the mind in a day. Then he goes on to use some interesting metaphors: When a pea is dried up, one might try to thrust an awl through it, but one cannot. Delusions are like that. Also, the dog of a house does not fear people, and the deer of the forest fears man and runs away. Anger is difficult to do away with, like the dog that guards a house; but the heart of loving-kindness easily flees, like the deer in the forest. It is therefore hard to subdue this mind. When we draw a picture on stone, it always remains thus. But drawn on water, it disappears immediately and its strength does not remain there. Anger is hard to do away with, like a drawing that has been done in stone. A good deed easily disappears, like a picture drawn in water. That is why it is not easy to subdue this mind. A great ball of fire sustains light for a long while; the brightness of a flash of lightning cannot endure long. It is the same here. Anger is a fire-ball; loving-kindness is like lightning. That is why this mind is hard to subdue. Even when we aspire to benevolence, we have trouble sustaining it. We get it intellectually, we know what we want to do, but holy mackerel—we keep falling off the wagon. You may be aware of loving-kindness meditations from the Theravada tradition, like meditation on loving-kindness that starts with yourself and moves to family/friends, acquaintances, strangers, and finally people you don’t like. In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Buddha says we haven’t reached great or limitless loving-kindness until we experience it equally for everyone. It’s easy to experience it for yourself and your loved ones, harder for strangers and impossible for people you hate! In the sutra, Buddha says we are really practicing loving-kindness when we don’t see wrongs and anger doesn’t arise. We stop seeing what others do as personal affronts to ourselves or attacks on our egos, and if we don’t take stuff personally, we don’t get angry. Sometimes it’s as basic and commonplace as “She didn’t mean to step on my foot.” Sometimes it’s “Yes, he spoke unskillfully to me in a way that was painful, but clearly he was caught up in his own stuff and wasn’t really responding to the situation in this moment, so it wasn’t really about me.” Then we have the opportunity to not rise up on our hind legs, fill ourselves with righteous indignation, and say something hurtful right back because our egos have been bruised. This doesn’t mean we condone unskillful, harmful behavior. It means we don’t respond out of our personally motivated anger. We do what we can to resolve the problem, sometimes forcefully if necessary, but not because we’re protecting our egos or getting revenge. We do this in a loving and benevolent way, wishing everyone well. In the sutra, the Buddha says: If one does not feel anger even towards a single being and prays to give bliss to such a being, this is loving-kindness. I’m guessing this may be related to another line that says, If any person asks about the root of any aspect of good, say that it is lovingkindness. All the wholesomeness in the world is based on benevolence. Whatever good is happening is because of wishing others well and wanting them to be able to liberate themselves from suffering. Wishing others well is not hoping their cravings for diamond rings and cherry pie are fulfilled. It’s wishing they have wisdom, compassion and insight so they can cut through delusion and wholesome circumstances can arise. This is where our own individual practice intersects with benevolence. In the sutra, the Buddha says, A person who performs good is [one of] true thinking. In other words. benevolence arises from insight into the true nature of reality. If we really see how things work, if we really see dependent arising, impermanence, the nature of self and how suffering arises, benevolence happens naturally. This is the kind of benevolence that is both skillful and not done for any kind of personal reward. We wish others well because it doesn’t make sense not to. Buddha goes on to say, Loving-kindness is the Buddha-Nature of all beings. Such a Buddha-Nature has long been overshadowed by defilements. That is why all beings are unable to see. The Buddha-Nature is loving-kindness. Loving-kindness is the Tathagata. Though Dogen doesn’t write specifically about the brahma viharas as a group, he does have something to say about each of them. In the Gakudo Yojinshu (Points to Watch in Studying the Way), he says, The buddhas take pity on all living beings and help them through compassion. Everything they do is neither for themselves nor for others. This is the usual way of the buddha-dharma. That’s interesting, isn’t it? There’s no label to be applied to this kind of benevolence. It’s not benevolence for personal gain, but it’s also not intended as something done for others; those are both ideas. It’s just a normal day in the life of the bodhisattva. I’m sure you have seen that even small worms or animals raise their young. Parents experience physical and mental hardships, and yet they persevere. After their young have grown up, fathers and mothers receive no reward. And yet, they have compassion toward their young. Even small creatures have this attitude. This is very similar to the Buddha’s compassion towards all living beings. Benevolence is our natural approach to our lives if we can just get out of our own way, and that’s why we have to practice. Until it arises naturally, benevolence is just our idea. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still do good actions, but our practice at that point is incomplete. When there’s no “me” trying to be “benevolent,” then I can enter into this week’s gate and benevolence completely manifests in everything I do. In the Shushogi, Dogen says: The stupid believe that they will lose something if they give help to others, but this is completely untrue for benevolence helps everyone, including oneself, being a law of the universe. We’re not actively looking for some reward, but we can’t help but be benefitted. Why? Because benevolence is one of the four immeasurables, which means there’s no limit. Nothing is outside of the Buddha Way including us, so creating wholesome conditions for others also increases our own wellbeing. A rising tide floats all boats, or, as the gate statement says, good roots prevail in all the situations of life. There’s no limit to who receives our goodwill, so no one is left out, including us. We don’t lose anything by being benevolent; we can only benefit. What is there to lose by wishing others well? It’s in not wishing others well that we lose because we’re going against a law of the universe. We’re out of alignment with reality and we’re causing dissonance and suffering. And yet, that can be so hard. What does it mean when someone is doing something really bad and yet we still wish him well? Aren’t we letting him off the hook and saying it’s OK? No. We’re envisioning for him a circumstance in which he wakes up, mends his ways, and stops hurting himself and others. That takes a really, really expansive and clear viewpoint. Suffering happens because people are ignorant. They’re doing stuff in an attempt to get rid of their own pain and discomfort, and nine times out of ten they’re making things worse. Here’s the point of view of a lady who’s been involved in dog rescue: The most important point of all is benevolence. Most people do the best they can. Yes, people do things that disappoint us. Yes, others will do things that we consider to be mistakes. Yes, some people do horrible things to dogs, not to mention to other people. But the more we can feel benevolence for other people, as much as we do for our dogs, the better off we will all be. Over the decades that I have been in the dog world, I have seen so much anger about the behavior of others, and so much guilt from wonderful people about decisions they have made with the best of intentions. If only we could gather up all that negative energy we could power the world on it. But in my humble opinion, it’s not what the world needs right now, and it’s not what each individual within it needs. Malevolence, the opposite of benevolence, won’t help. It’s a waste of time and energy. It’s easy to be kind to dogs and have goodwill for dogs. It’s not easy to have goodwill toward people who abuse dogs or children or vulnerable women or anyone. Can we do it? Buddha and Dogen say yes, we can, and we have to. We have to because we are bodhisattvas and we don’t have a choice. This is our immeasurable, limitless life. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) Ryo 量, quantity, measure or amount, is the same kanji found in oryoki 應量器, a bowl or vessel that holds the right amount. Mindfulness of the heavens is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it gives rise to a wide and big mind. 念天是法明門、發廣大心故 This week we come to the sixth and final item in the set of six types of mindfulness. There’s a reason that mindfulness of heaven (sometimes translated mindfulness of the gods) is the last on the list: it’s only if you have faith in the Three Treasures, exercise generosity and keep the precepts that you can be reborn in a heaven realm. This week’s gate statement is the culmination of the previous five. In a traditional view, we’re being encouraged to keep our eyes on the prize, to maintain awareness that if we do the right things, a good result will follow. If we live upright and wholesome lives, we’ll be reborn in a better place filled with peace and happiness, or we’ll leap free from the wheel of birth and death and enter Nirvana. In the Hindu version of this teaching, we will be one with Brahman and escape the control of demons. It will be useful here to review a bit of Buddhist cosmology—a bit only, because all of the planes and dimensions very quickly become quite complex. It’s helpful to think of realms or worlds as the beings that make them up rather than as particular places. A realm is determined by the perceptions and responses of its beings and sustained by their karma. If somehow all the karma of the beings of a particular realm exhausts itself and they cease to be, then their realm disappears as well. You may be familiar with the rokudo 六道, or six realms of samsara: devas or gods, humans, animals, asuras (fighting gods), hungry ghosts and hell dwellers. How beings transmigrate through these realms is dependent on causes and conditions, namely the first five of the mindfulnesses we’ve been discussing. Buddhist cosmology also includes thirty one planes of existence that are classified into three realms, or trailoka: the formless realm (Ārūpyadhātu), the form realm (Rūpadhātu), and the desire or pleasure realm (Kamadhātu). Moral conduct and engagement with giving can land one in the desire realm, while landing in the form or formless realm depends on the development of meditative concentration. Beings in the formless realm have attained a particular state known as the Four Formless Absorptions, They don’t have any shape or location and are made up entirely of mind, and without any physical form, they are unable to hear the dharma. The realm of form, on the other hand, is made up of beings that have physical form, though that form is subtle and not visible to beings in the realm of desire. These beings are not pulled about by pleasure and pain. Those in the desire or pleasure realm are still bound by their karma and subject to the suffering that comes with desire and clinging that arises from the senses. The rokudo falls within this realm. Within the rokudo, the highest realm is that of devas or gods existing in something we might call higher heavens. Those beings have long lives, various powers, and enjoy aesthetic pleasures. If you’ve led a wholesome life, you may land in one of these realms based on your positive karma—but eventually that karma will exhaust itself and then it’s off to a lower realm. The lower heavens include the asuras, or fighting gods. (Why are they fighting? Because they forgot themselves, got drunk, and were thrown down from their original heavenly home, and now they’re fighting to regain their lost kingdom, forever unable to break through the forces of those who guard it.) Then come the earthly realms, which include humans, hungry ghosts and animals. In the human realms, beings are capable of moral choice and have some say in their own destiny. Because it’s a place of both pleasure and pain, it makes practice uniquely possible: the development of wisdom and compassion that enables liberation. Thus birth in the human realm is a considered a precious opportunity. While hungry ghosts and animals are within the earthly realm, their perceptions and experience of it are quite different from those of humans. Hungry ghosts wander forever in search of sensual fulfillment, occupying for the most part deserts and wastelands. Animals of whatever class, kind or size that are able to feel suffering make up the animal realm. Finally there are the hell realms, characterized by the most extreme suffering based in fear and helplessness. Unwholesome karma is what lands one here until that karma has completele unfolded; then, in a parallel with the heavens, it’s off to one of the higher realms on the basis of earlier, more positive karma that had not yet come to fruition. There are myriad hell realms, each centered on a particular kind of torment. You don’t have to believe in a literal rebirth in order to take something useful from this cosmological set-up. We transmigrate around the rokudo moment by moment depending on our mindstates and responses to what’s happening. I have a successful day at work and I feel like a deva. Then I make a mistake and take some criticism, and I’m an asura. I arrive at the dharma center and feel fortunate to have access to the Three Treasures, and then can’t decide where to stop for lunch on the way home. I’m driven by my need for sleep, and then feel disressed when I look at my calendar and to-do list and know that I’ll be burning the midnight oil this week. If we pay attention, we can see that no realm is really unfamiliar to us. It’s important to see that while devas are in a heavenly realm, they’re still caught in samsara. They eventually use up their various merit and succumb to aging, illness, and death, and must eventually take rebirth in other realms, which may be pleasant or otherwise according to the quality and strength of their past karma. They come into existence based on their past karma and they’re as much subject to the natural laws of cause and effect as any other being in the universe. Devas are not always especially knowledgable or spiritually mature. In fact, they can be quite intoxicated by sensual indulgences, and none are considered worthy of veneration or worship. A deva is not a “god” so much as any being enjoying longer life and a more generally comfortable and happy existence than humans. They have no real concern or contact with the human world, so these are not beings to which one prays for intercession, for instance. Nonetheless. devas and heavens remind us of two things. One is that acting skillfully and compassionately in the world leads to wholesome consenquences. The other is that being intoxicated or caught up in sense pleasures, even in heaven, still leads to suffering because these things aren’t permanent. In the next moment, we’re reborn in a hell realm when our toys are taken away. In the Mahanama Sutta, the Buddha starts by teaching about mindfulness of Buddha, dharma and sangha, then tells Mahanama to reflect on his own virtue and generosity, covering the first five mindfulnesses. Next Buddha tells him to cultivate conviction, virtue, learning, generosity, and discernment. These are five mental factors that have to become dominant in the mind for awakening to occur; they appear over and over in the early texts. These are the characteristics that got devas reborn in heaven realms. Buddha says Mahanama should recall that those characteristics present in the devas are also present in him: At any time when a disciple of the noble ones is recollecting the conviction, virtue, learning, generosity, and discernment found both in himself and the devas, his mind is not overcome with passion, not overcome with aversion, not overcome with delusion. His mind heads straight, based on the [qualities of the] devas. And when the mind is headed straight, the disciple of the noble ones gains a sense of the goal, gains a sense of the Dhamma, gains joy connected with the Dhamma. In one who is joyful, rapture arises. In one who is rapturous, the body grows calm. In one whose body is calmed, experiences ease. In one at ease, the mind becomes concentrated. (1) Certain helpful, wholesome qualities got the devas into heaven, and we can cultivate those same qualities so they are present in us. This leads to liberation from the three poisonous minds of greed, anger and ignorance. After each of the forms of mindfulness, the Buddha indicates how we should work with it. In the case of devas, he says: Mahanama, you should develop this recollection of the devas while you are walking, while you are standing, while you are sitting, while you are lying down, while you are busy at work, while you are resting in your home crowded with children. Walking, standing, sitting, lying down, known as the four postures, is another way to say "all the time." Buddha said our zazen flows through all four postures and through the transitions between the postures. In other words, we are to practice in every waking moment. Now let’s look at wide and big mind, the second half of this week’s gate statement. Magnanimous mind (daishin) is another term for this, and it’s one of the sanshin (three minds) for which our temple is named. The other two are kishin (joyful mind) and roshin (nurturing or parental mind). In the Tenzo Kyokun, Dogen says: As for what is called magnanimous mind, this mind is like the great mountains or like the great ocean; it is not biased or contentious mind. Carrying half a pound, do not take it lightly; lifting forty pounds should not seem heavy. Although drawn by the voices of spring, do not allow your heart to fall. The four seasons cooperate in a single scene; regard light and heavy with a single eye. On this single occasion you must write the word "great." You must know the word "great." You must learn the word ‘great.” (2) Magnanimous mind is about non-discrimination. There are lots of metaphors in our tradition about non-discrimination, such as a monk’s mouth is like an oven, or the ocean accepts all rivers. Non-discrimination is not engaging in judging, labeling, accepting and rejecting, but seeing and acknowledging everything clearly. Magnanimous mind is deeply understanding that there is nothing outside of our lives or the Buddha way. It’s seeing all of reality just as it is. As soon as we start rejecting parts of our lives or ourselves, we’re putting constrains and limitations on something that’s actually limitless. Now we can start to see the connection between cultivating the qualities of heavenly beings and giving rise to magnanimous mind through developing conviction, virtue, learning, generosity, and discernment.
If we have faith in the Three Treasures, live an ethical life, study the dharma, practice generosity and use good judgement that comes from our insight into the true nature of reality, we will give rise to magnanimous mind—the mind of nondiscrimination and inclusivity. Now these are the things that got the devas into heaven, and we could decide that that’s what we want too as a result of our practice—and that’s when we have to remind ourselves of the real nature of devas, who are considered inferior to buddhas. They aren’t omniscient; their knowledge is inferior to fully enlightened buddhas, and they especially lack awareness of beings in worlds higher than their own. They also aren’t omnipotent; their powers tend to be limited to their own worlds, and they rarely intervene in human affairs. They aren’t morally perfect, while they may lack human passions and desires, some of them are capable of ignorance, arrogance and pride. It is, indeed, their imperfections in the mental and moral realms that cause them to be reborn in these worlds. Heavenly realms are not an escape from samsara. Devas are still transmigrating around the rokudo. Our practice is to surpass even the devas in seeing nonduality and taking action on that basis rather than on the basis of a heavenly reward. Okumura Roshi writes, The first level of morality is to do wholesome actions expecting to be reborn in heaven, or having fear of being reborn in hell because of doing something bad. Both result in remaining within the six realms of samsara. The second level is to expect to attain enlightenment, be free from samsara and reach nirvana by doing what is good or compassionate and avoiding evil. These two levels are still dualistic, and we should go beyond these two—samsara and nirvana should be one. That’s what the spirit of the precepts is trying to do—to get us to go beyond the duality between samsara and nirvana. We try to do good things, but not because we expect to be reborn in heaven or to gain some good thing, not because we are afraid to be reborn in hell, and not because we wish to reach nirvana. The good deed is just for the sake of actualizing reality, and it’s the same as our practice of the zazen of just sitting. (3) Samsara and nirvana are both right here. and there’s no special place to get to and nowhere else to go, because nothing is outside of reality or the Buddha Way. If that’s disappointing, consider that we don’t have to wait until the end of our lives to get to a heavenly realm. Just like all the other realms in the wheel of samsara, heaven is right here —there’s no waiting. Once we stop picking and choosing as a means of shoring up the small self, we reach heaven right in this moment. For the devas, their heavenly realm is still part of samsara just as it is for us, so heaven isn’t an ultimate goal for either of us. There’s no long term advantage in aspiring to become a deva. We’re just trading one realm of samsara for another. Instead, this dharma gate is advising us to keep the devas in mind both for the helpful qualities they’ve cultivated and for their dharma position as beings that have not been liberated from samsara. We can emulate them in cultvating magnanimous mind, but we do that right here in this day to day world. We don’t wait until we get to heaven someday. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) The version of the Mahanama Sutta to which this discussion makes reference is found here. (2) From Okumura Roshi’s article for the Dogen Institute, Four Seasons of Accord. (3) from Okumura Roshi's forthcoming book on the precepts, to be published by the Dogen Institute. Mindfulness of precepts is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we fulfill all vows. 念戒是法明門、一切願具足故. According to this week’s gate statement, keeping precepts is how we carry out our bodhisattva vows. First let’s understand what precepts are about and then let’s look at how precepts and vows are related. A precept is a guideline for ethical behavior, some kind of instruction about the actions we should take. In our tradition, the ten major precepts are: (1) do not kill, (2) do not steal, (3) do not engage in improper sexual conduct, (4) do not lie, (5) do not deal in intoxicants, (6) do not criticize others, (7) do not praise self and slander others, (8)do not be stingy with the dharma or property ,(9) do not give way to anger, (10) do not disparage the Three Treasures. There are hundreds of precepts in the Theravada tradition, however. The Mahayana understanding is that precepts existed before Buddha’s awakening and didn’t originate with his teaching, but that’s not a historical perspective. In the human realm, once the early sangha was established and people made mistakes, Buddha said, “You shouldn’t do such a thing again.” The examples range from broad admonitions against killing people and taking their belongings to very specific rules about what colors your blanket has to be and prohibitions against monks having a women unrelated to them washing or sewing their clothes, or against having a new bowl until the old one has been mended five times. Buddha’s disciple Upali memorized all these admonitions and the stories of how they happened, and recited them when all the monks gathered after Buddha died. This is the source of the Vinaya precepts. There were no regulations or precepts until monks made mistakes; even though they tried to practice and study the dharma, they were human, after all. The basic idea of the bodhisattva precepts we receive is different. These precepts are not a collection of prohibitions about mistakes. Instead they simply describe reality; they’re ten ethical aspects of the dharma. In that way, they pre-date the Buddha, who said that he didn’t invent the dharma; he awoke to it. These precepts came into being at the time of Buddha’s awakening. Dogen Zenji says in the very beginning of his Kyojukaimon (Comments on Teaching and Conferring the Precepts), “Receiving the precepts transcends the borders of past, present and future.” The basis of bodhisattva precepts is the reality of all beings to which the Buddha awakened, which is characterized by impermanence, egolessness, and interdependence. Because everything is impermanent, including the self, we can’t cling to anything, and if we deeply understand this, we’re released from attachment to self, possessions, etc. Stealing doesn’t make sense because there’s nothing that’s really permanently ours. If there is no self that persists through time, it doesn’t make sense to indulge our personal anger because there’s no self we need to defend. Because everything is interconnected and arises from something else, we can only exist in relationship with other things and people. That means that if we harm other beings, we harm ourselves. Now we can begin to see the relationship between keeping precepts and carrying out vows. The bodhisattva vows we chant after every dharma talk remind us that we vow to free all beings, end all delusions, enter all dharma gates and realize (make real) the Buddha way. Precepts might seem restrictive if we think they’re all about what we’re not supposed to do. Actually, precepts bring about freedom and liberation. When we keep precepts, we don’t keep churning up our harmful karma, and we don’t keep adding to our own suffering and the suffering of others. We’re not slaves to our thirsting desires, cravings and aversions. We can say that keeping precepts liberates all beings. If nothing else, they’re liberated from our unskillful actions. However, because of interdependence, our own liberation is also the liberation of others because we’re all in this together within this one unified reality. If I’m creating safe, wholesome and peaceful circumstances in the world by observing precepts, I’m creating the conditions for other beings also to settle and cultivate wisdom and ethics and concentration. If, instead, I’m doing whatever I want based on craving and aversion and the three poisonous minds, no one is going to feel safe around me. No one is going to settle down and see clearly what’s happening. Folks are just going to get more caught up in anxiety and unskillful responses to my behavior. We can begin to free all beings by bearing the precepts in mind. Likewise, precepts help us recognize and dissolve our own delusion because they describe reality as it is rather than as we create it in our minds. If we pay attention to our use of intoxicants, whether that’s drugs and alcohol, food, shopping, other people or whatever, we begin to clear the clouds. If we don’t give way to anger and instead can remain clearheaded, we can see what’s really happening and how we’re being triggered by clinging to delusions about the self. This is of course where our zazen comes in. Zazen and precepts are not separate—they’re complementary in our practice. We need the precepts in order to settle down in zazen and cultivate awakening and insight. If we’re running around being pulled by our karma and our delusions, we’re not creating the conditions for becoming quiet and seeing clearly. Okumura Roshi has written, “Our zazen and the precepts are one. In our zazen practice, we put our entire being on the ground of true reality of all beings instead of the picture of the world that is a creation of our minds. By striving to keep the precepts in our daily lives, we strive to live being guided by our zazen.” (1) Precepts describe reality, and zazen is also about seeing reality. We can begin to end our inexhaustible delusions by bearing the precepts in mind. Next, precepts help us recognize all the dharma gates we encounter as we move through the world. Once we take the focus off of ourselves and remember that we’re part of an interconnected system, we can notice all the opportunities we have to practice. We can turn every one of the precepts around, from a prohibition to positive action, and right there we can see all the gates we can enter. When the precepts are turned around in this way, they’re sometimes called the clear mind precepts.
It’s good to refrain from doing the things the precepts warn us against, but we can go beyond that and actively enter into the dharma gates they offer us. We can begin to find, recognize and enter myriad dharma gates by bearing the precepts in mind. Finally, precepts lead us to make the Buddha way real, right here and now, moment after moment. Okumura Roshi writes, “In order to nurture the seeds to actualize Buddha, we should strive not to kill. In the same way, the other nine major precepts all show the virtue of the true reality of all beings.” So, how do we bear the precepts in mind? Maybe it’s simply an internal agreement between ourselves and Buddha that we aspire to keep the precepts and help others all we can. Maybe it’s with the public declaration of jukai and wearing a rakusu. When we put on as robe, we’re wearing the Tathagatha’s teaching, and it’s pretty hard to forget. Robes hold us up as well as serving as reminders and inspirations to others. When I was training in Japan, we were required to wear koromo and rakusu when we went out on temple business because, according to the head of the temple, when people see monks they can’t do anything bad! We can liberate others by serving as a reminder not to break precepts. When we take the precepts, we publicly declare our intention to live as bodhisattvas, keep the precepts and free all beings. In a way, it’s kind of a big deal and requires some discernment. We reccognize that our practice isn’t just for ourselves. We’ve taken vows to free all beings, end all delusions, enter all dharma gates and realize the Buddha way, and now we’re accountable for how we carry them out. Zen is a practice—it’s something we do, so it’s all about our actions and activities. What do we do to carry out our vows? There’s the eightfold path (2) and there’s keeping precepts. Of course these are related as well: there’s the sila division of the eightfold path that includes right speech, right action and right livelihood. For example, right speech is about refraining from the four evils: lying, idle or frivolous speech, harsh or abusive speech and divisive speech or backbiting or malicious gossip. The precepts include not lying, speaking ill of others or praising self and blaming others. Right action happens naturally when we see reality as it is. We understand suffering, interdependence, the true nature of self and how these three things are related. There is nothing to learn and no decision to be made. What I do affects others and what they do affects me; there’s no getting around it. We all have a responsibility to take right action because the consequences are bigger than ourselves. The precepts are all about taking right action. When we really understand how the universe works, we don’t kill or steal or misuse sexuality or intoxicants. We don’t have to stop ourselves from doing this stuff; it just won’t help or fix anything, so we don’t want to do it. This is why the bodhisattva precepts existed before Buddha: no one has to tell us not to kill—killing just doesn’t arise. The last item in the sila division is right livelihood. The workplace is one of the most important practice containers. We spend a lot of time there, and it’s one place we’re likely to be challenged to keep vows and precepts. There’s the work itself that we’re being paid to do—does it move the world toward wholesomeness or unwholesomeness? Is it built on killing, lying, stealing, abusing others or creating ill will? Then there’s our own actions in the workplace. Are we breaking precepts on our own, no matter what the work is? As is true with just about everything else in Buddhism, precepts, vows and the eightfold path arise together and can’t really be pulled apart. They’re just multiple aspects of the same thing. When we first encounter the bodhisattva vows, our reaction is usually “I can’t do that!” so we’re afraid to practice. We may think it’s no use. As Okumura Roshi frequently tells us, vow and repentence are two sides of one practice because our practice will always be incomplete. We just have to keep going and doing our best, and the way we do that is by keeping precepts moment by moment. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) All quotes from Okumura Roshi this week are from his article “The Bodhisattva Precepts in Soto Zen Buddhism,” Dharma Eye vol. 13, 1–3 (2004). (2) We'll take a closer look at the eightfold path beginning with gate 75. Mindfulness of generosity is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not expect reward. 念施是法明門、不望果報故. Maybe you are thinking, oh no, she’s about to launch into a sermon, telling me to be nice and share my toys and then I’ll feel happy, or that I should feel grateful for all the good things in my life and want to give something back. Yeah, yeah, generosity, hearts and flowers, blecch. Boring. We do hear a lot about generosity in this practice, particularly when it’s time for dharma centers to send out the annual fund appeal. Most of the letters start with “In our practice, dana means giving,” and go on to say that this is your chance to show gratitude by giving generously to the center! There is a lot of gee-whiz generalized discussion of generosity in spiritual communities, but it’s actually a fairly complex topic that’s interwoven with a number of other teachings in our tradition. Dogen, Kodo Sawaki, Kosho Uchiyama, and Shohaku Okumura all have had something to say about it. Generosity flies in the face of some of our most basic delusion, which makes it a challenge. Let’s consider what generosity really is and then what difference it makes when we bear it in mind. When we think of generosity, we think about giving something, like money or things, to someone else. We consider someone to be generous when he puts the needs or desires of others ahead of his attachment to his possessions. However, there’s a lot more going on here: we also have to receive without attachment, and we have to understand how generosity arises. Dana was a part of society in ancient India before the Buddha. It generally had to do with charity, either to the poor directly or by building public projects that benefitted everyone. One of the earliest Hindu texts says, “Giving to the poor is true charity; all other giving expects some return.” (1) Thus this is a very old teaching. Of course, it’s good to help others who need our help and try to ease their suffering: feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, lending your book to a classmate who’s left hers at home. These are the daily physical acts of generosity that we do, but the larger, absolute view is that there is no giving and receiving. It feels like I have some object and I can give it to you if you need it, but actually in this one unified reality there is no separation between giver, receiver and gift. There’s nothing I can grasp and own because I’m just a temporary caretaker for “my” stuff, so it’s not possible for me to lose anything by offering it to you. Sawaki Roshi’s expression was “Gaining is delusion, losing is enlightenment.” This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have any possessions, or we should give away everything we have. (Zen practice does not encourage martyrdom; that’s just another form of ego attachment.) It means that the idea that there is something we can gain that we don’t already have is delusion. Losing the idea that there is something to be given or received, or gained or lost, is enlightenment. In the Shobogenzo Shishobo, Dogen says, “Offering is not being greedy.” (2) Offering doesn't necessarily mean giving things away. Not drawing a line between my stuff and your stuff and trying to keep all my stuff for myself and get even more than I already have—that’s offering, or generosity. Dogen goes on to say, "It is like offering treasures we are about to discard to those we do not know." Okumura Roshi tells the story of putting his kids’ old broken rocking horse out by the trash and noticing that within ten minutes someone else had taken it home. He thought it wasn’t worth giving away, but it was valuable to someone whose children didn’t have one. Dogen says all our giving should be done with this kind of non-attachment. We can see that there’s really a lot going on here. Generosity is related to:
If the opposite of generosity is greed, one of the three poisonous minds, then cultivating generosity would seem to be an important practice in dealing with our most basic delusions. It helps us go from being inflexible and self-involved to being more accepting and outward-looking. After all, being generous isn’t just about offering materials. We can also offer openheartedness and acceptance of others. We all know how good it feels and what a relief it is when others accept us for who we are and we can be authentic. That’s a real gift! Over and over we encounter teachings from Buddhas and ancestors about how we sit in zazen, begin to see how the world actually works, gain some understanding of interdependence, and on that basis our selfishness gives way to compassion and the desire to help others. As Dogen says, practice and awakening are not two. Generosity comes from our practice. It’s not enough for me to tell you to be generous. Nonattachment and concern for others arise because we see interdependence for ourselves and it becomes one of the bases for choosing how to act in the world. Greed does not arise because it no longer makes sense. It’s based on false information. Generosity arises from our practice the same way compassion does, the same way right action does, and the same way anything we skillfully offer in the world does. We might think of generosity as a feeling or an impulse, but it’s a practice, something we actually do that benefits both ourselves and others. We don’t wait until we feel generous because of some circumstance that comes to our attention. We constantly cultivate opportunities for generosity as part of our practice. Dogen has some things to say about generosity and about dana paramita, the perfection of giving. Last week we briefly reviewed the six paramitas or perfections:
Dogen further says in the Shishobo that dana is the first of the paramitas because it’s the most powerful in changing the minds of living beings. “The mind of a sentient being is difficult to change. We begin to transform the mind of beings by offering material things, and we resolve to continue to transform them until they attain the Way. From the beginning we should make use of offering.” Similarly, Uchiyama Roshi said, “For breaking the ego’s grip, nothing is more effective than giving something up.” (4) Here is where precepts come in—they ask us to give up things like praising self, stealing what we want, misusing intoxicants, etc. though we may enjoy them! When we give up the chance to break precepts, what we’re offering to others is safety and security and peace. Giving up the opportunity to feed our egos by calling attention to ourselves or fishing for complements is a generous act and others appreciate it. We offer that renunciation to all beings. We have to actively find ways to practice generosity because our habituated thinking leads us to default to self-centeredness. Practice and understanding are complementary here, as is true in so many other areas: actively practicing generosity cultivates selflessness, and understanding the emptiness of the self leads to generosity. When Dogen says that generosity can change the minds of living beings, that includes ourselves as well. Practicing generosity deepens our own understanding as well as helping others, and that help is not just the material items or information or whatever you’re giving; receiving is a practice as well. We grew up hearing it’s better to give than to receive, but both really require equal attention in practice. Receiving can be hard, but we have to receive in order to allow others the opportunity to give. When I serve as tenzo and people thank me for cooking, I also thank them for eating. I would not have had the chance to engage in food practice, cooking and offering the meal for practitioners, without their participation. Likewise, the traditional almsround not only collects resources for the temple but allows donors the chance to earn merit. Receiving those alms is also a practice of giving. Sometimes we don’t want to receive because we’re worried about the real meaning of “gaining is delusion, losing is enlightenment.” If someone offers me this and I take it, am I not giving in to attachment? That’s when we ask ourselves, what’s my motivation? Is my ego or self-image involved? Am I reluctant to accept help and look weak? We can remind ourselves that receiving is also generosity in that it allows giver to offer something. In giving and receiving skillfully we’re demonstrating to others how to do it, and inspiring them. When things stop being the objects of our thinking or consciousness—in other words, when we get beyond separation—we can give and receive and use those things to help all beings without the hindrances of ego, attachment or delusion. It’s clean, and not sticky or muddy. Now, what if what we’re attached to is not what we’re giving away but the reward that may come from our giving? As soon as we give up dealing with things from the perspective of what they mean for me and my own agenda, that’s generosity. We give for a lot of reasons; all generosity is good, but sometimes it’s not entirely selfless. We give to feel good about ourselves. We give so others will like or admire us. We give today so others will give to us tomorrow. We usually associate generosity with loving kindness and compassion, but it also has to have an element of wisdom. We have to see how the world actually works and that we are supporting and supported by all beings already. The reality of interconnectedness means that giving is constantly happening anyway. We also have to wisely discern whether or not our gift is helpful to the recipient. Are we giving because we want to, or because it will actually help? Are we giving what we would want, or what recipients really need? Will that gift enable further suffering, like money for drugs or alcohol? Are we giving so the recipient will just go away? It all takes wisdom as well as compassion. Is the reward we get from giving worth the suffering it may bring so the receiver? Ask yourself and try to answer honestly: where or to whom in my life do I give with absolutely no expectation of reward? It may be very hard to think of such a circumstance, which is OK—few human acts are completely without self interest. Choose the circumstance with the least amount of expected reward and then consider why that particular situation is that way. Now, how can you cultivate that same spirit at other times? It’s good to pay attention to what’s going on in the body and mind when we give so that we don’t forget to practice and maintain mindfulness of generosity. Is there some expectation of how this transaction “should” go? What stories am I telling myself? Is there some hesitation or holding back from this giving opportunity? Some feeling of contraction or depletion or weakness? Of giving too much or not enough? Traditionally there are three kinds of things we can give: 1) Material support, like food and clothing: Traditionally this meant giving to monks as well as to those in society who need help. If we have the resources, we can try to find ways to help folks with their basic needs through activities like charity knitting, or helping in a soup kitchen or crisis nursery. 2) Fearlessness: Because we’re making various kinds of efforts to see through our delusions and not to harm others, we free them from fear. Because of the precepts, we’re not a threat to their lives, property or well-being. As it says in the Heart Sutra, the bodhisattva relies on wisdom, the mind is without hindrance, and without hindrance there is no fear. It’s fear that gets in the way of our generosity. I may have an aspiration or impulse to give, but then what if I’m diminished? In this one unified reality, there is nothing to offer or accept, and nothing actually changes hands. That means we don’t have to “own” something to offer it to the universe. We can offer the snow on a mountaintop, the flowers in a prairie or a lovely sunset. The way we offer them is to enter into the actual, authentic relationship we have with them rather than the made-up one that is about being separate and having an agenda. As soon as we do that, there is no expectation of reward. What reward can we possibly earn from offering a waterfall or a sand dune to the universe? No personal reward is possible. 3) Giving the dharma as teachings: It’s said that the highest gift of all is the gift of dharma, which we can offer by teaching, if we’re qualified, or by facilitating the teaching of others. As we saw last week, by showing up in the temple and lending your spirit, you’re helping to give the gift of dharma, generously opening the door for the rest of the sangha here today and for those that will be arriving in the future. All three of these offerings give us the opportunity to experience the generosity that expects no reward. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) From the Kural, line 221. (2) See Okumura Roshi’s series of articles on the Shishobo in Dharma Eye. They begin with Vol.13; “offering” is the topic through Vol. 16. (3) See Kosho Uchiyama’s Opening the Hand of Thought, particularly the section on Magnanimous Mind, and his comments on zazen working concretely in our lives in the final chapter. (4) Ibid, p. 155. Mindfulness of Sangha is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] attainment of the truth is steadfast. 念是法明門、得道堅牢故。 We’ve arrived at the third of the three treasures, so let’s consider first what sangha is, and then what it means to be mindful of or remember sangha. The Sanskrit word sangha means a group of people who are unified by something—in our case, the dharma. Laying this out across the three kinds of three treasures from Dogen’s Kyojukaimon;
After his awakening, the Buddha went looking for someone to whom he could teach the dharma, someone who would actually understand it. He first goes in search of the five monks with whom he had practiced just before he left the group and sat down under the bodhi tree. The Buddha established a sangha so people could practice without the distractions and responsibilities of householder life in the world, and so that the teachings would be preserved and provide support for all practitioners. Members of the ordained sangha were traditionally responsible for translating and spreading the teachings. Because they were practicing in an upright, knowledgeable, proper way, they were worthy of receiving gifts, hospitality, offerings and respect from the laity. The nature of that upright way was defined by 227 main rules of conduct, the pratimoksha. Today in the Mahayana tradition we use “sangha” to refer to all practitioners, as in “the Western Buddhist sangha.” In the Theravada tradition, sangha refers only to the ordained sangha or to people who have a certain level of attainment. These are not the same thing—there can be ordained people who don’t have much understanding and laypeople who do. In Zen, the word we use for sangha is sōrin 叢林, which indicates a group of different kinds of trees. In the forest, all kinds of plants and trees grow together with different shapes, colors, lifespan, seeds, fruits and flowers. They are interdependent and living one life together. Sangha is made up of all different kinds of people practicing together peacefully and harmoniously, using their various gifts, skills and experiences for the benefit of everyone. Now that we know what sangha is, what about mindfulness of sangha? As we’ve seen, mindfulness in our tradition is about something that is remembered—in essence, not forgetting to practice. It’s about bearing something in mind—in this case, sangha—and not forgetting what sangha really is. Mindfulness of sangha means remembering that we are not alone. There are two sides to that. One is that we have support because we can rely on dharma friends when we need to, and the other is that what we do affects others. When we are deeply aware that we are not alone, we and others can remain steadfast in our practice. We’re reliable, solid and committed to awakening. North Americans sometimes don’t want to find a sangha when they begin their practice; it feels much safer to just stay home and read dharma books and maybe watch a video on how to sit. We don’t want someone else telling us what to do. Usually, in my experience, one of two things happens: people give up because it’s hard to practice alone, or they realizes they need to find a sangha in some form. When we join a sangha, our initial exploration stops being a philosophical exercise and starts being a real practice. Dharma is right here and now in people’s practice, not somewhere “out there.” It becomes very apparent that we are not alone, whether we initially believe it or not. During my first trip to Japan as a layperson with a rakusu, I thought sitting zazen in a Japanese temple would be really special. I would be sitting in a “real” temple, where people had been sitting for centuries, surrounded by cinematic scenery. Surely something extraordinary would happen—this would be “real” zazen! Following my fantasy-filled zazen period, I went to a service, which of course was all in Japanese. I didn’t understand any of it, but the bells were the same and my body knew what to do. I could have been practicing with my home sangha. I really felt that Japanese and Western practitioners were all practicing steadfastly together despite the different languages and places. The whole idea of being special was extra, because we were really all one sangha. When we join a sangha, at first we come to practice for our own support. Someone lights the candle, rings the bells and offers a talk, and we come to benefit from those things. Then we go home! After awhile, we start to become aware of the issues and questions facing the sangha. We start looking behind the scenes. Wait, there’s an annual budget. There are various kinds of volunteer rotations, and questions about how to maintain the facilties. Some people are managing retreats or teaching zazen to beginners or coming up with zendo guidelines. There’s a whole community of things going on here that includes me but is bigger than just me and what I’m doing. I’d only been practicing for about six months when I was recruited as a board member for the dharma center I was attending. What an eye-opening! There was so much more going on than just Sunday zazen and dharma talks! One of my early mentors used to say to me and others when we came to practice that it was good we were there to “lend our spirit.” Yeah, yeah, I thought, hearts and flowers stuff. It wasn’t until some time later that I started to understand that actually, that’s really important. Seido Roshi, the head of the temple where I trained in Japan, said: I don’t think there were so many practitioners at Koshoji [Dōgen’s temple]; it was a small group. Dōgen Zenji mentioned that we should not call a sōrin big or small depending on how many monks are practicing there. It’s not a matter of number. Daisōrin 大叢林 ( “great sōrin“) means that there is even a small number of people who have the real authentic spirit of the Way. This spirit is the most important thing. (1) This all really came home to me when I was running the Milwaukee Zen Center. Attendance at evening zazen was notoriously low. People said, “I’d come if more people were there.” So wait, everyone is at home waiting for someone else to make the first move? I had to point out that if you come, others will come and practice with you. Someone has to break that cycle of hesitation so that everyone can practice in a steadfast way. As members of the sangha, we have some responsibility simply to show up occasionally. We don’t have to ring bells, make tea or clean the zendo, though those things are really beneficial action for ourselves and others. This is not about doing volunteer work. We just have to be present to support the network of practice. We all know that the energy is quite different in a zendo full of people sitting or chanting than in a zendo with only a few. As much as Dogen Zenji said that it doesn’t matter whether there are a lot of monks or only a few, the reality is that if you arrive in a zendo day after day and it’s just you and the teacher and maybe a jikido, it can feel sort of forlorn and lonely. It’s a little harder to take refuge in a sangha that’s kind of invisible. Of course, it’s a two-way street. We have some responsibility to the sangha, but also it provides the container for our own practice. I would argue it supports our development in several ways.
We’ve talked about the manifesting and maintaining aspects of the sangha treasure; we also need to talk about the absolute aspect: all beings functioning together in peace and harmony. We’ve seen previously that the absolute three treasures can’t be separated. In this case, the absolute sangha treasure is the harmony of the awakened nature of all beings and the way they function according to the laws of this one unified reality. We can see that the sangha or the universe is one body and also many beings, one big self and also many small selves. Just as the body is made up of cells, the absolute sangha is made up of all beings, and yet it’s still one entity. If we don’t have a deep understanding that there is no fixed and permanent self nature that persists through time, and if we don’t have a deep understanding of dependent arising (that everything arises because of causes and conditions), then we think we can do whatever we want. We can take as many resources and as much space as we want because we don’t see that we’re affecting others. If one cell in the body does that, starts co-opting resources for itself and growing out of control, we call that cancer, and the whole body can die. Sila (ethics/morality) are closely tied to sangha practice. When we see the truth to which Buddha awakened, ethical behavior arises naturally and we don’t create disruption in the universe. The result is non-violence, non-harming, self-restraint, and harmony in the sangha. Sila is not something imposed from outside, but a sort of ethical compass within ourselves. We pose no threat to another person’s life, property, family, rights, or well-being. We simply do wholesome actions, avoid unwholesome actions, and try to benefit other beings. If we can embody the precepts as individual bodhisattvas, chances are we will build and maintain a wholesome sangha. Then we can take that practice out into the world and try to help create other wholesome organizations, which is not easy. The absolute aspect of the sangha treasure might seem like something abstract, but the reality is that it’s all about our moment by moment conduct in this life. All sentient and insentient beings are awakened and they function according to the dharma, and it’s our job to see that and not get in the way, and then as bodhisattvas, to help others not to get in the way. Buddhism is full of teachings about cultivating virtues that lead to skillful, ethical action, for example, the six paramitas, or perfections. (We’ll take a much closer look at these at Gates 87 - 92.)
Cultivating these things gives us a basis for seeing all beings as our sangha and seeing the interconnectedness of how they function. Can we see all beings as awakened? Can we see how they are interdependent, and if we do something there, there’s an effect across space and time? If we forget about sangha, we forget about truth. We can’t separate sangha from the truth of the reality of all beings. If we do, we make a mistake and create suffering and dissonance in the larger organism. In the Vimalakirti Sutra, Manjusri asks about the nature of Vimalakirti’s sickness. He says: From ignorance we hold attachment, and my sickness is thus caused. Since all beings are sick, I am sick. If they are no more sick then my sickness would cease. And why? A bodhisattva eters a life of birth and death for the sake of all beings; where there are birth and death, there is always sickness. If all beings were free from sickness, then there would be no more sickness with a bodhisattva. Just as when the only son of a wealthy merchant becomes sick, then his parents from their anxiety become sick also, and when he is restored to health, then they also recover their health; even so, a bodhisattva loves all beings as parents love an only sone. As long as all beings are sick he is sick, when they recover their health, he also recovers his health. Again you have asked about the cause of my sickness. The sickness of a bodhisattva is caused only by his great compassion. (1) If we can cultivate the wisdom to see that all sentient and insentient beings are our sangha, we have the compassion to acknowledge their suffering and try to help. That means remaining steadfast in our practice: steadfast when we encounter incivility, short sightedness, divisiveness, false speech, misconduct, and a host of other sicknesses in our universal sangha. The sangha is a group that is unified by something, and no matter whether we understand it or like it or not, we are all one absolute sangha treasure. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes (1) “Living in the Sodo,” article by Seido Suzuki at Ancient Way. (2) Vimalakirti Sutra quoted in Eternal Legacy: Wisdom Beyond Words by Sangharakshita For further reading:
Mindfulness of Dharma is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] reflection of the Dharma is pure. 念法是法明門、觀法淨故。 Let’s consider first what dharma is, and then what it means to be mindful of or remember dharma. The root of the Sanskrit word dharma has a meaning like “something that is established” or “something that is firm,” the connotation being of something that supports or bears up. Dharma as a term predates the Buddha in India; in Hinduism, dharma is the religious and moral law governing individual conduct. There’s a broad dharma that applies to everyone and includes virtues like truthfulness, non-injury, and generosity, and there is also a specific dharma to be followed according to one’s class, status, and station in life. The word dharma has two other important meanings: the Buddha’s teaching and the reality of all beings. In Buddhism, the plural “dharmas” means all the interconnected elements of this phenomenal world, as in all the myriad dharmas. These two aspects of dharma make up the Buddha’s dharma body or dharmakaya. It means the Buddha is still here even though his physical body died 2500 years ago. As we saw last week, there are three kinds of three treasures: manifesting, maintaining and absolute. This is the dharma as one of the absolute three treasures; it has no boundary and can’t be separated from buddha and sangha or from anything else. The dharma existed before Shakyamuni—he didn’t create it but he’s not separate from it. The historical or real-world manifestation of the dharma is the teachings of Shakyamuni, what he saw and helped his followers to understand. This is the dharma as one of the manifesting three treasures. There is also the dharma as the sutras, Buddha’s teachings that were written down and that we can still find in books today. This is the dharma as one of the maintaining three treasures.
Last week we saw what Dogen had to say about the three kinds of Buddha treasure in the Kyojukaimon. This week, the dharma treasure:
After six years of various ascetic practices with various teachers, Shakyamuni sat down under the bodhi tree and experienced awakening at the age of thirty-five. Then he had a talk with himself. What do I do now? The dharma is difficult for anyone else to understand! Well, there will be some who are not completely hopeless and will be able to accept and understand it, so I shouldn’t keep this to myself, but should teach others so they can benefit as well. He goes and finds five monks with whom he’d been doing ascetic practice before, thinking they might be able to get it. They don’t welcome him back, because they know he’s given up those harsh practices and been eating some food and resting, and they think he’s taking it easy. However, they notice that he’s become calm and steady, and eventually they agree to listen to him. He teaches them about the four noble truths and the eightfold fold path, and this is the first turning of the dharma wheel, the first manifestation of dharma as Buddha’s teaching. (1) After teaching these five monks, Shakyamuni traveled and taught for the rest of his life, and showed others how to practice. Sutras and sutra books are the maintaining dharma treasure, something we can physically encounter in this world today. Buddha’s teachings were not written down until after he died; before that, they were only transmitted orally. His disciples were concerned about the gradual changes in the contents of the teaching, and they gathered in a council to collect, organize, and correct the oral record of the Buddha’s teachings. A number of disciples participated in putting the records together, checking each other and verifying what they heard as Buddha’s teaching. Today the canon includes some sutras that are particularly important for in the Soto Zen tradition, like the Vimalakirti Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, and the Prajna Paramita literature, including the Heart Sutra. We can read these things in books that we can pick up and hold, and these days we can also hear recordings or see talks about them or read them online. We can continue to encounter them ourselves today as the maintaining dharma treasure. Now that we know what dharma is, what about this mindfulness of dharma? Mindfulness in our tradition is about something that is remembered. As we saw last week, mindfulness is not about focusing on one thing to the exclusion of all else, or about engaging in contemplation of a deity. It’s about bearing something in mind—in this case, dharma—and not forgetting what dharma really is (and perhaps what dharmas really are). Mindfulness of dharma or dharmas means we have to pay attention to our relationship with the phenominal world. If our relationship is clear and not muddy or cloudy, then the reflection of the dharma is pure. If we create a gap between ourselves and all beings and then toss all kinds of misperception and delusion into that gap, the reflection is distorted. Now on the one hand, if dharma is the true reality of all beings, or the way the universe works beyond whatever we may think about it, it’s not possible for us to reflect dharma in an impure way. We do something with body, speech and mind that creates causes and conditions for something else to arise, and it arises because that’s the working of the universe. That’s beyond our limited position as a human being. On the other hand, it would be good to reflect dharma in a way that moves ourselves and all beings away from unwholesomeness and toward wholesomeness. If we’re not paying attention to our relationship with the phenomenal world and the way it works, we’re acting based on our concepts or ideas about things work. In other words, we’re taking action based on stories we’ve made up, not on actual reality. That’s a recipe for creating and perpetuating suffering, because what we’re doing is not a true reflection of the nature of reality and the way the world actually works. Some time ago, one of our sangha members introduced me to the idea of aspirational recycling. She pointed out that when we really, really want something to be recyclable, or we think it really should be recyclable, we may put it in the bin even though it’s not actually recyclable. What do we think is going to happen to that object? Will our wishing make it recyclable? No, someone else at the recycling facility will have to find it and take it out of the stream and do something else with it. It’s a great metaphor for our lives and practice. Putting a nonrecyclable object in the bin is not mindfulness of dharma. It’s action that has no relation to what’s actually going on in the phenomenal world. It’s action taken based on something we wish was true. I wish the good things in my life will never change, so I cling to them even though, because of impermanence, they will certainly disappear. I wish this or that pretty thing was mine, so I help myself even though I’m breaking a precept about not stealing. I wish I had a solid and permanent self because I’m afraid of annihilation, so I become defensive and ego driven even though Buddha taught that there is no self I can grasp. In each case, I’m completely forgetting Buddha’s teaching, forgetting the nature of reality, and not paying attention to whether my relationship with the phenomenal world is wholesome or unwholesome, creating suffering or ameliorating suffering. So what can I do to clean up my relationship? In zazen, we have the opportunity to notice our responses to the sensory phenomena that give us information about the world. Zazen is not the time to do analysis about this, just to pay attention and see what happens. When I was running the Milwaukee Zen Center, in the summer I had all the windows open on the first floor, where the zendo was. Every evening just as zazen was starting, the shrieking would start from next door—parents playing outside with their kids after they got home from work and before the sun went down and the kids had to go to bed. I’d spend the whole period wishing those kids would go inside and be quiet, and at the same time I was genuinely thinking it was great that the parents were taking time with their kids. The important activity wasn’t taking place next door in the yard; it was in my own mind, my own perception of what was happening and my own response. Rather than just sound coming and going in my awareness, I watched both positive and negative feelings arise: there was unpleasant noise, but a nice family. I wrote a whole story about how this happens every night, maybe I should close the windows, wondering whether others are being disturbed, and guessing how much longer the shrieking would go on. Paying attention to my relationship with the workings of the universe means I can try to respond skillfully rather than falling into habituated thinking, and perhaps getting angry or impatient that “my” zazen was being disturbed instead of seeing that sound was just sound. Rather than radiating suffering caused by my delusion, I can maintain equanimity because there’s no real cause for upset. The original nature of everything is tranquility, and the disturbance happens when we poke our heads in and add our own material. To reflect the dharma in a pure way is to be in alignment with reality. Suffering is about dis-integration: we’re not integrated with what’s really going on. Instead we’re living in our own world that we’ve created in our own heads. We need to see that we’ve never actually been separate and in that way reintegrate ourselves. That’s when wholeness and wholesomeness happens and the dharma reflection is pure. When it comes to mindfulness of dharma as our effort not to forget what Buddha taught, of course dharma study is important in our practice. Zazen, work and study are the three core elements of our practice here at Sanshin. Probably you’ve encountered the argument that Zen or the dharma is beyond words and letters and therefore study is useless. Is the dharma beyond words and letters? Absolutely. Do we all completely understand that and live in that place? No, we don’t. We need to use words to go beyond words. To read teachings from someone like Buddha who’s farther along this path than we are gives us the chance to get into his head and share his experience and the reality to which he woke up. We need to approach a dharma text with an open mind and flexibility. We might not agree with what we read and that’s OK, but at that point we also need to see from where our reactions are really coming. If this teaching was true, I’d have to change how I see myself, or my habits, or the world, and that would be scary and uncomfortable. We need to be free from fixed views, and dharma teachings can point out where we’re stuck. Dharma study is one of the ways we traditionally cultivate wisdom from seeing and hearing, then thinking and reflecting. We need to learn at least the basics of the dharma that Buddha taught: the four noble truths, the eightrold path, the three marks of existence, etc. as the basis for further study and discussion, and also as the basis for our lives. Dharma study might initially be an intellectual investigation of the teachings by reading or hearing a talk, but we don’t stop there because next we have to do some reflection. What does this mean for me in my own life? What does it say about my own day to day experience in 21st century North America? We gradually move from learning concepts from “out there” to expressing the dharma naturally in our own ways. We understand what it means in a non-intellectual way, and then teachings become really real for us. This is sometimes not so easy. Impermanence is scary. It’s about death, separation and loss. We get it intellectually, but when someone actually dies, it becomes real. We have to completely digest the dharma or else it’s just someone else’s ideas that we’ve heard about somewhere. Zazen is one of the ways that we study dharma; by sitting down and just inhabiting ourselves, we can have some direct experience of the complete working of reality. This isn’t dharma we memorize from a book, but dharma we find ourselves right in the middle of and just settle into. Thus we need the intellectual structure and conceptual understanding to lay the groundwork—otherwise we may have no direction in our practice. However, if we only have the book learning without actual practice, we can’t really completely enter into the teachings. When we’ve completely taken in and digested the dharma, we can function smoothly as a part of this one unified reality, without being bottlenecks or the things that gum up the works. We’re still ourselves, with all our personality, and we’re also seamless with everything around us, reflecting dharma in a pure way. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes (1) The eight-spoke wheel has come to symbolize the dharma in our tradition because it represents the continuous spreading of the teachings to help people toward awakening. For instance, the eight-spoke wheel is the insignia for Buddhist chaplains in the US military. For further reading:
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About the text The Ippyakuhachi Homyomon, or 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination, appears as the 11th fascicle of the 12 fascicle version of Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo. Dogen didn't compile the list himself; it's mostly a long quote from another text called the Sutra of Collected Past Deeds of the Buddha. Dogen wrote a final paragraph recommending that we investigate these gates thoroughly. Hoko has been talking about the gates one by one since 2016. She provides material here that can be used by weekly dharma discussion groups as well as for individual study. The 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination
[1] Right belief [2] Pure mind [3] Delight [4] Love and cheerfulness The three forms of behavior [5] Right conduct of the actions of the body [6] Pure conduct of the actions of the mouth [7] Pure conduct of the actions of the mind The six kinds of mindfulness [8] Mindfulness of Buddha [9] Mindfulness of Dharma [10] Mindfulness of Sangha [11] Mindfulness of generosity [12] Mindfulness of precepts [13] Mindfulness of the heavens The four Brahmaviharas [14] Benevolence [15] Compassion [16] Joy [17] Abandonment The elements of bodhi [18] Reflection on inconstancy [19] Reflection on suffering [20] Reflection on there being no self [21] Reflection on stillness [22] Repentance [23] Humility [24] Veracity [25] Truth [26] Dharma conduct [27] The Three Devotions [28] Recognition of kindness [29] Repayment of kindness [30] No self-deception [31] To work for living beings [32] To work for the Dharma [33] Awareness of time [34] Inhibition of self-conceit [35] The nonarising of ill-will [36] Being without hindrances [37] Belief and understanding [38] Reflection on impurity [39] Not to quarrel [40] Not being foolish [41] Enjoyment of the meaning of the Dharma [42] Love of Dharma illumination [43] Pursuit of abundant knowledge [44] Right means [45] Knowledge of names and forms [46] The view to expiate causes [47] The mind without enmity and intimacy [48] Hidden expedient means [49] Equality of all elements [50] The sense organs [51] Realization of nonappearance The four abodes of mindfulness [52] The body as an abode of mindfulness [53] Feeling as an abode of mindfulness [54] Mind as an abode of mindfulness [55] The Dharma as an abode of mindfulness [56] The four right exertions [57] The four bases of mystical power The five faculties [58] The faculty of belief [59] The faculty of effort [60] The faculty of mindfulness [61] The faculty of balance [62] The faculty of wisdom The five powers [63] The power of belief [64] The power of effort [65] The power of mindfulness [66] The power of balance [67] The power of wisdom [68] Mindfulness, as a part of the state of truth [69] Examination of Dharma, as a part of the state of truth [70] Effort, as a part of the state of truth [71] Enjoyment, as a part of the state of truth [72] Entrustment as a part of the state of truth [73] The balanced state, as a part of the state of truth [74] Abandonment, as a part of the state of truth The Eightfold Path [75] Right view [76] Right discrimination [77] Right speech [78] Right action [79] Right livelihood [80] Right practice [81] Right mindfulness [82] Right balanced state [83] The bodhi-mind [84] Reliance [85] Right belief [86] Development The six paramitas [87] The dāna pāramitā [88] The precepts pāramitā [89] The forbearance pāramitā. [90] The diligence pāramitā [91] The dhyāna pāramitā [92] The wisdom pāramitā [93] Expedient means [94] The four elements of sociability [95] To teach and guide living beings [96] Acceptance of the right Dharma [97] Accretion of happiness [98] The practice of the balanced state of dhyāna [99] Stillness [100] The wisdom view [101] Entry into the state of unrestricted speech [102] Entry into all conduct [103] Accomplishment of the state of dhāraṇī [104] Attainment of the state of unrestricted speech [105] Endurance of obedient following [106] Attainment of realization of the Dharma of nonappearance [107] The state beyond regressing and straying [108] The wisdom that leads us from one state to another state and, somehow, one more: [109] The state in which water is sprinkled on the head Archives |