Entrustment as a part of the state of truth, is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] conduct is already managed.
除覺分是法明門、所作已辨故（除覺分是れ法明門なり、所作已に辨ずるが故に）。

We’re wrapping up a section of the text that’s describing the 37 constituent factors of bodhi, or awakening, and we’re discussing the last grouping, the seven branches of the balanced truth.  I’m a bit puzzled by the use of “entrustment” here as a translation.  There may be some subtlety in the Sanskrit or the Japanese of which I’m unaware, but the original Sanskrit meaning here is something like calmness, repose, transquility, serenity or  settledness.  The idea in the early teachings was that one clears away or lets go of distraction and mental effort and delusion in order to develop tranquility on both a physical and mental level so that we’re able to be flexible.  This calmness is related to the last factor we looked at, enjoyment.  When we have joy in the dharma, we relax and settle down.  Buoyancy is mentioned again with this factor as it was in last one.

Entrustment may an intepretation of what happens when we relax and settle.  We trust the dharma and the practice and stop chasing after stuff, agitating ourselves and getting entangled with things.  In any case, we refrain from anger and excitement, and we also act in the world with calmness and equanimity.  It’s not just an internal state for our own pleasure.

In this stage of meditation we also achieve a balance between tranquility and insight.  Later on I’ll suggest that that’s not unrelated to the major theme of the Mahayana and to Uchiyama Roshi’s peace and progress: in other words, stillness and activity coming together.

The second half of the gate statement says “conduct is already managed.”  It means to have accomplished what was to be done (in order to get to liberation).  In other words, when we’ve let go of distraction and delusion and reached a level of serenity, we’ve already done what’s necessary to reach Nirvana.  

For this section of the 108 gates, we’ve also been looking at Dogen’s comments on the 37 factors of bodhi.  His comment on this gate says: “Elimination as a limb of the truth” is, when being in oneself, not getting involved with oneself, and when being in the outside world, not getting involved with the outside world. It is me having got it, you not having got it. It is ardently expressing ourselves and going among alien beings.

So it’s “elimination” here rather than “entrustment.”  Here’s how I read what he’s saying: clearing away distraction, mental effort and agitation leads to calmness and settledness, and then we’re not caught up in self-involvement to the exclusion of seeing anything or anyone else.  However, we’re also not being pulled off course by others, and we encounter and work with a diverse collection of people.  We appreciate differences of  practice experience, life experience or worldview, and still clearly express our Buddha nature the whole time regardless of circumstances.

A key point here is that calm doesn’t mean inactive.  Being settled doesn’t mean being uninvolved.  This is familar territory because it’s related to two main teachings we hear all the time.  One is that the theme of the Mahayana is seeing one reality from two sides and expressing two sides in one action.  The other is Uchiyama Roshi’s enduring question about how we balance peace and progress, or maintain our peace of mind while still carrying out our responsibilities in society or the world.

This isn’t a linear process.  We don’t cultivate serenity and then go do our bodhisattva work with equanimity as a means to an end.  Our activity in the world is a complete expression of Buddha nature, which is calm and tranquil from the beginning.  In other words, this is not a teaching about stress reduction aimed at making us feel better for a little while.  It’s a description of reality.  This gate isn’t telling us to let go of our rough edges and settle down so that we’ll be people we like better or that others like better.  It’s likely that our own suffering will dissipate to the degree that we can let go of the delusion that’s at the root of it, but that’s not the main purpose of what this gate is about.

So how do we manage stillness in the midst of activity, or not get stuck in either self-involvement or the distractions of the world?

Dogen gives us some concrete examples in the Eihei Shingi, his regulations for the training temple.  In one part, he says: Monks in zazen do not turn their heads to look and see who is entering or leaving. . . . Going in or out, do not look at the backs of the people doing zazen, but just lower your head and proceed.  Do not walk with long strides, but advance your body together with your feet.  Look at the ground about six feet straight in front of you and take half-steps.  Walking with unhurried calm is exquisite, almost like standing still.  Do not slide your slippers noisily so as rudely to distract the assembly.  Keep your hands together in shashu inside your sleeves.  Do not droop your sleeves down alongside your legs. (1)  

This kind of instruction is quite typical for life in the training temple: manage yourself so you don’t make trouble for others.  In other words, you have to pay attention to your own body and mind.  You can’t get enmeshed only in what others are doing, how they’re sitting, when they arrived or whatever.  At the same time, you can’t ignore the impact you’re having on the rest of the community.  If you’re flapping your slippers and waving your arms around on your way out to the bathroom, you’re creating a distraction.

This line is particularly nice: Walking with unhurried calm is exquisite, almost like standing still.  This is how we ought to be moving around in the temple, and particularly in the zendo.  I used to get called down for running, or for walking too quickly.  It’s bad form in a training temple!

Zazen is a place to cultivate our ability to be both still and active.  We can start by paying attention to our tendancy to judge and label what’s happening in our hearts and minds, particularly in zazen.  If we decide that the point of zazen is to become still or peaceful, then any kind of noise or distraction needs to be rejected or eliminated.  Well, if we’re waiting for the perfect circumstances, we’ll never practice.  Anyone who’s ever been in our zendo knows it’s frequently not a quiet place.  A family lives upstairs, there’s traffic and sirens outside, the refrigerator in the kitchenette is running, people are coughing.  If we needed absolute silence and stillness, no one would ever practice here.  Fortunately, that’s not a requirement!

Okumura Roshi says:  
Our mind(s) often seem(s) busier than usual when we sit in a quiet place.  In fact, our body and mind are busier and noisier in everyday life, but since our environment is also noisy, we don’t notice the commotion inside ourselves.  When we come to a quiet place, however, we hear even the smallest noise.  When we sit in the zendo, we can hear the sound of the clock.  The sounds our bodies make, coming from within us, become more noticable, and it seems that our mind is noisier than usual.  I think that’s a good sign of our practice.  We hear this noise because our mind is beginning to calm down.  Of course, we should let go of the internal noise.  We should neither cling to nor try to escape from the noise.  We should just be awake and let it go.  Let all thoughts, feelings and daydreams simply come and go freely.  Everything is moving; nothing stays forever.  Just let everything be with you. (2)

I want to share a few other things that Okumura Roshi has said related to zazen and see how they’re related to this gate.  Then we’ll look at a some other ways we can practice with it.

Okumura Roshi describes sitting sesshin and having anger come up.  The person who triggered it and the incident are no longer there, but the energy of the anger is.  We sit there trying to figure out what happened, why she said that nasty thing to me, what I’m going to do about it—but we can’t keep that up for 14 periods a day.  Eventually we calm down and see that the anger is ourselves.  It’s not something out there that belongs to the person who made us angry.  The anger is inside us and we’re the ones creating it,

Feelings and thoughts always come from our own consciousness.  They come up in zazen; when we let go, we can let go, and that’s OK.  Zazen is a unique and precious practice.  In the zendo we can let go of everything.  This is really liberation—not only from our daily lives but also from the karmic consciousness created by our twisted karma.  In zazen we are determined not to take action based on the thoughts coming and going; therefore, we don’t create new karma.  This is what it means that in zazen we are liberated  from our karma.  (3)  

Elsewhere, he says:
Whether the mind is busy or calm, we just keep letting go of whatever comes up.  We keep the same posture through all mental conditions without being pulled this way or that, so there is no good or bad zazen.  Zazen is always zazen.

Maintaining the zazen posture through all condition is a very important part of our practice.  Keeping this posture is, as Dogen says in Fukanzazengi, “the Dharma-gate of peace and joy” that is itself realization, the actualization of reality in practice.  Yet if we cling to favorable conditions and try to avoid difficult conditions, we create the cycle of suffering, of samsara, within our zazen practice.  This cycle may begin if we seem to succeed in making our zazen pleasurable.  Although such success initially makes us happy, sooner or later conditions change and our success disappears, making us miserable.  If we keep struggling, our zazen becomes a cycle of “transmigration,” shifting between realms of happiness and misery, and our practice is then no longer Buddha’s practice. (4)

Aha—so if we’re caught up in own experience inside our heads, and if we’re preoccupied with what’s going on “out there,” our practice is then no longer Buddha’s practice.  In other words, it becomes harder to ardently express ourselves (our Buddha nature) and go among alien beings, as the gate statement says.

Ardently expressing our Buddha nature includes both the small self of five skandhas and the universal self that is simply the functioning of reality.  This is expressing two sides in one action.  As in so many other areas of our practice lives, we get to carry two things at the same time: form and emptiness, difference and sameness, stillness and activity.  Sawaki Roshi has a great expression for this.  He says that zazen is to do what we cannot say and practice what we cannot think.  What a great restating of seeing one reality from two sides and expressing two sides in one action!

Zazen is not about getting ourselves to a condition of equanimity and then staying there.  We already know that’s not the bodhisattva way.  We don’t ignore or suppress our karmic circumstances; instead we see them as a manifestation of buddha nature and we use them to liberate beings.

Nishiari Bokusan was a Dogen scholar in the last half of the 19th century.  He says:
If you stay in a place where enlightenment is finalized and going beyond is finalized, that is a dead thing.  As soon as you have insight, you should remove your body from there and be engaged in the practice where each movement has essential clarity. (5)

If we get to some state and think, There, I’ve got it now—even if it’s a really advanced sort of understanding—that’s a dead thing.  Maybe I think this is an achievement that I own and I can enjoy and use and keep for myself, but as soon as I try to grasp it, I’ve lost it.  It’s just my idea of awakening rather than the actual living, dynamic awakening.  As soon as we have some insight, we need to get up and take it out into the world and engage in practice where each movement has essential clarity—where everything we do expresses buddha nature, even how we get down off our seats and walk out of the zendo to the bathroom.  If we think we only need to hold both stillness and activity while we’re in a practice place, we’ve missed the mark.

Nishiari Bokusan goes on to say:
People today often lack this mindful practice, so they become retainers of devils.  When we say that there is no “out there” in the dharmadatu, then we cannot help but return to today.  There is no higher thing that is to be feared, and there is no lower thing that is to be belittled.  When we seek for the self and realize that the self is originally empty and serene, we need to make today’s activities just today’s.

If there’s nothing outside of this moment here and now, then we can’t help but return to today.  Today is all there is; it’s the only place and time where we can act.  In the midst of this moment, there’s nothing higher and lower, nothing that’s awesome and valuable that we need to chase after and nothing unimportant and meaningless that we can dismiss or belittle.

Interestingly, Dogen makes a similar comment in the Eihei Koroku:
When heaven has the way, it is high and clear; when the earth has the way it is substantial and at rest, when people have the way, they are calm and peaceful. (6) 

We’re living and practicing in the middle, in the intersection between high and low, emptiness and form, heaven and earth.  When we carry both without discrimination, we’re calm and peaceful and can respond skillfully to whatever we encounter.  If we can really understand that serenity is part of our original nature because we’re empty of any permanent self-nature, then we don’t need to look beyond here and now for opportunities to practice and ardently express our Buddha nature.

Finally, Nishiari Bokusan says:
If we thrust through everything as empty, there is no attachment.  So we do not get stuck at the present moment, nor are we stuck with the view of emptiness.  So, today is today and we take a steady step with our daily activities.  In this way, we are not stuck with the ascent of the real, and we are not stuck with the descent of the phenomenal.  This is the middle way.  

If we see emptiness, we don’t cling to either form or emptiness.  We can walk the middle way, which is seeing one reality from two sides and expressing two sides in one action.

Hongzhi was one of our Chinese ancestors, and he said:  Arising and perishing, coming and going, in motion and calm, emerging and sinking; right at this time gather up the functional essence of all these many activities.  Letting go and grasping are entirely up to myself.  (7) 

It’s a great description of how we practice standing right in the middle of the intersection of tranquility and movement.  If we’re stuck, there’s something we can do about it, and in fact, we’re the only ones who can do it.  No one else can get us unstuck.  It’s entirely up to us.  That means it’s our responsibility, but it also means we don’t have to wait for anything.  We can stand up in that intersection right now and ardently express our Buddha nature.

Some days it might feel like we’re just too scattered to be exhibiting any kind of settled Buddha nature.  Today there is just no Buddha-equanimity-balance at all!  I’m making a lot of mistakes and really feeling distracted and just kind of bouncing around.  My activity doesn’t feel like it’s connected to stillness in any way, and it’s hard to even believe that emptiness and awakening are anywhere in my heart or mind or experience.

One of the common images in our tradition is the moon being reflected in water.  Dogen says things like “Although golden waves are not calm, the moon lodges in the river.”  (8)   Whether or not the water is disturbed and has waves on the surface, still the moon is reflected.  Of course, it’s a metaphor that says awakening and Buddha nature are still there no matter how fast we’re moving, whether that motion is smooth or choppy.  Dogen wrote his own poem about this, and in more modern times it was set to music and became part of repertoire of our hymn singing practice in the Soto Zen tradition.

Zazen
Nigori naki
kokoro no mizu ni
sumu tsuki wa
kokoro kara koso
nami mo kudakete
hikari to zo naru

[Being illuminated by] the moon dwelling in
the mind-water without cloudiness,
Even the waves are breaking down,
and becoming the light.

He’s telling us that even when the wind of ignorance, delusion and distraction are creating waves on the water, even those waves aren’t separate from the moon, or awakening.  Our zazen isn’t about trying to make the wind and waves stop so that we can ardently express our buddha nature.

Sometimes Okumura Roshi talks about becoming one piece.  When we clearly see both form and emptiness but we can go beyond form and emptiness and let go of separation, we become one piece.  Our stillness in action is like that too.  As soon as we’ve got separation in our hearts and minds, that gets reflected in the way we go among alien beings, as Dogen puts it.  We’re more likely to get thrown around by what we encounter in the world.  Okumura Roshi says:
This [serenity] does not simply mean silent or without noise in the external world. When our mind is torn into two or more pieces, there are always dispute, conflict, or anxiety. Such conditions make our mind unsettled and agitated. More often, when we sit in the quiet zendo, we begin to hear the noise from inside. Our zazen of letting go of thoughts allows us to sit immovably without being pulled by those conditions.

When our minds are in pieces, there’s always dispute, conflict or anxiety, so how can we expect to move through the world, meeting people with various point of view, value systems, interests and expectations?  There’s external noise and there’s internal noise.  There are rough edges in the world we encounter and we’ve got our own rough edges.  We can cut ourselves and others on those rough edges.  That’s what this gate is about: letting go of the stuff that sharpens the rough edges and makes them hard, brittle and sharp.  When we eliminate rough edges, we’ve already managed our conduct, or done what’s necessary to move ourselves and all beings toward liberation from suffering.

Enjoyment, as a part of the state of truth, is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we attain many kinds of balanced state.
喜覺分是法明門、得定故。

The Abhidharma, one of the texts of the Pali canon, describes various kinds of heaven.  There are said to be 28 heaven realms, but once you arrive at one of them, you don’t stay there forever.  You have a long life full of good things and with access to various divine powers, but this isn’t nirvana and eventually you drop back down into a lower realm.  You go into a decline, start becoming dirty and scruffy and smelly, and don’t enjoy being in the heaven realm anymore.  Your suffering in falling from this high place is sixteen times worse than the suffering of the beings in the hell realms.

We can see this as a metaphor for being attached to the enjoyment that comes from pleasurable sensations that arise when our six senses come in contact with objects.  This is as opposed to the enjoyment that comes from wisdom and compassion and being part of the total functioning of the universe, which is what our gate is pointing us to today.

Dogen says existing in a heavenly realm is really a hindrance because we don’t see any need to practice.  Then, when inevitably we lose the things we’re attached to in that heavenly realm, we’re really sunk.  Uchiyama Roshi talked about what happens when modern people exist at the top of organizations and enjoy luxurious lives, but can’t actually take care of themselves or others.  If they’re somehow cast out of that role, they don’t have any power and they’re in for a lot of suffering.  Okumura Roshi brings these things together:
Uchiyama Roshi says that modern people in developed countries who enjoy convenient lives without personal effort are like these heavenly beings.  People at the top especially enjoy their lives.  However, everything is impermanent.  When they lose status, they experience much suffering, just like the heavenly beings of ancient Buddhist cosmology.  Heaven is a manmade idea of what’s “better.”  When we feel more successful than others, we’re in heaven.  When we feel others are more successful, we’re in hell.  To live this way of life based on comparison is to free ourselves from samsara.  Living on the ground of the true reality of life is finding nirvana within this world.  (1)

Clearly the kind of enjoyment that goes with high socioeconomic status and trying to satisfy all of our small-self desires isn’t what this gate is talking about.  In the early teachings, the Sanskrit term that’s translated enjoyment in this gate means rejoicing or taking delight in the dharma.  It’s a mental factor in a group of mental formations, and it arises as a meditator concentrates on an object and moves through the first two stages of awakening.  Anger dissipates, concentration strengthens, and there’s a sense of tranquility.  However, this rapture can be either wholesome or unwholesome.  If rapture arises because of objects that seem to be attractive to the senses, that’s unwholesome.  If it arises because of steady, skillful practice, that’s wholesome.

It was said that there are five kinds of rapture: 

• that of a slight degree; the pleasure that causes the flesh to creep
• momentary rapture; like a flash of lightning
• that which resembles a flood; a kind of overwhelming joy resembling breakers on a seashore
• floating or transporting joy; it enables one to float in air just as a wisp of cotton is carried by the wind. 
• and that which overflows; a suffusing joy like a flood that overflows small tanks and ponds

As for the “many kinds of balanced state” in this gate, that’s about complete meditative absorption or complete awakening.  If you’ve achieved this state of rapture, then you’re prepared to move on to the next stages in your meditation practice.

Fast forward from the early teachings about rapture as a stage of meditation to the 13th century, and Dogen means something else when he teaches about enjoyment, or joy in the dharma.  In Zen we don’t have meditative stages because there is nothing to achieve or acquire in zazen.  Simply doing the four things we do in zazen (take the posture, keep the eyes open, breath deeply through the nose and let go of thought) is itself a complete manifestation of awakening, so there’s nowhere else to go.  However, that doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as delight in the dharma for us.

Dogen commented on each of the gate statements related to the 37 factors of bodhi in one of his Shobogenzo fascicles.  His comment on this gate puts it in the context of the Mahayana, Zen, and Soto Zen:
“Joy as a limb of the truth” is the sincerity of a granny’s mind when blood is dripping. The thousand hands and eyes of Great Compassion!  Leave them as they are, immensely busy. Plum flowers are peeping from the December snow. In the scenery of coming spring a great master is cold. Even so, he is full of life and belly laughter.  (2)

When we hear this paragraph, all kinds of connections should immediately be springing up—there’s some familiar stuff here.  We’ll take each of the sentences by itself, but they’re all connected to each other.

“Joy as a limb of the truth” is the sincerity of a granny’s mind when blood is dripping.

We think immediately of the three minds or sanshin that Dogen describes in the Tenzo Kyokun: 

• roshin or nurturing mind
• kishin or joyful mind
• daishin or magnanimous mind

Uchiyama Roshi writes about these in Opening the Hand of Thought, and Okumura Roshi has talked about them frequently.  It’s what Sanshin Zen Community is named for: a joyful and magnanimous spirit along with a caring heart.  These are the three minds we need to have as we work and practice as part of a sangha; they’re the way we actualize our vow.  It’s how we treat each other, and how we see our role and purpose in the community.  We can look at each one individually, but they’re not actually disconnected; they arise together.

In English, roshin is sometimes parental or grandmotherly mind.  Aha! The sincerity of a granny’s mind when blood is dripping.  When you were little and you cut your finger, Grandma probably stopped what she was doing, not only to provide some comfort but also to wash the cut, put on a bandage and give you a cookie.  This is a practical kind of compassion.  Elsewhere Dogen teaches that this parental or grandmotherly mind is how we consider the three treasures.  We take care of them as though they were our only children.  We don’t just say,”Oh yes, the Three Treasures, how lovely,” we actively care for the Buddha, dharma and sangha, and we’re happy to do it because feelings of connection and gratitude arise naturally.

In context of Tenzo Kyokun, it’s how we prepare food for sangha.  We plan it thoughtfully and watch over it carefully while it’s cooking, but while we’re doing that we’re also paying attention to everything else that’s happening in the kitchen.  It’s the same mind we have in zazen.  We do the only four things we do, and at the same time we don’t cling to them and lock out the rest of the universe.  When you cut your finger, Grandma helps you sincerely and wholeheartedly but she keeps it all in perspective.  This roshin is a manifestation of joy in the dharma.

The thousand hands and eyes of Great Compassion!  
Leave them as they are, immensely busy.

Here Dogen is invoking Kannon or Avalokitesvara in the form of Mahākaruṇā (lit. great compassion).  One of the forms he takes has a thousand arms.  There’s a wisdom eye in the palm of each hand on each of these arms in order to see all suffering of world and do something to help.  This manifestation is called Senju Kannon.  Dogen wrote fascicle about a famous koan in which one monk asks another what Senju Kannon does with all those hands and eyes.  The discussion in that fascicle touches on how we as karmic beings can function like Senju Kannon.  “A thousand” really means an infinite number, so Senju Kannon is everywhere as part of the natural function of this one unified reality.

Liberating beings is part of the functioning of what Uchiyama Roshi calls the life force (the functioning of the universe).  Seeing the true nature of all beings is unobstructed, taking care of all beings is unobstructed, and the joy that arises from that is unobstructed.  Leaving those very busy thousand hands and eyes as they are is to let them do what they do without hindrance, and for Dogen, this is the whole point of the joyful mind.  He says we need to be grateful for the chance not only to do our own practice but to offer that practice to others by taking care of everything we encounter.  Joy means going about our activities with a light heart, not being resentful or martyred or seeing our work as a burden.  Every one of those tasks is a chance to manifest awakening.

We could play a bit of a game with ourselves and challenge ourselves: how much of the time can I remember to do each thing as a realization of dharma in the world?  This is a mindfulness practice, not forgetting where real joy comes from.

Plum flowers are peeping from the December snow.

Plum flowers or baika are one of Dogen’s favorite images; he wrote a whole fascicle about them.  Plum flowers bloom very early in the spring in Japan.  They’re a sign that winter is ending.  We had an old plum tree in front of the sodo at Toshiji; it was the first thing that bloomed.  Even before the December snow had melted, somehow plum flowers were already there.  The merit of plum blossoms is that they survive the severe cold of winter and send out their fragrance even in the midst of the snow.  

In Dogen’s teaching, plum flowers represent the correctly transmitted dharma.  There are stories about him that has to do with lineage and dreams about plum flowers.  In the first one, Dogen is on his pilgrimage to China and visits a certain temple, where the abbot shows him his own transmission documents, received from his teacher authorizing him to teach and function as clergy.  This is really unusual, because you’re not supposed to show these things even to close disciples or people you live with without a really good reason.  Dogen got to see those  documents because the abbot had just had a dream in which an eminent monk appeared before him, held out a branch of plum flowers, and said: if a strange person comes who has disembarked from a boat, do not withhold these flowers.

Five days later, Dogen arrived on a boat from Japan and came to see him.  Since transmission documents were written on a brocade with a plum flower blossom design, the abbot decided that his dream had been a prophecy, and that Dogen must be the one the eminent monk mentioned.  He showed Dogen his documents, and later Dogen himself had a dream in which the same ancestor came to him with a branch of plum flowers.  Shortly afterward, he met his teacher, Tendo Nyojo.

Dogen equated plum flowers with the Udumbara flower that Buddha held up when Mahakashyapa smiled in the first instance of dharma transmission.  Once Dogen met his teacher and heard his dharma teachings, he realized that the ordinary plum blossoms he saw all the time were complete manifestations of thusness just like the Udumbara flower.  In other words, this self is Buddha and awakening is already here, just like plum flowers already peeping from the December snow.

His comment on enjoyment goes on: In the scenery of coming spring a great master is cold. Even so, he is full of life and belly laughter.  In the midst of hardship, enjoyment or delight in the dharma is also there.  The great master doesn’t allow discomfort or picking and choosing or suffering to obscure the nature of reality for him, and thus it doesn’t obstruct the arising of laughter or the total functioning of the life of the universal self.  In one of his other teachings Dogen asks,  If this greatest cold does not penetrate into our bones, how will the fragrance of the plum blossoms pervade the entire universe?  If we cut off our experience of greatest cold, we also cut off the fragrance of the plum blossoms.  If we cut off delusion and samsara, we also cut off awakening and nirvana, because they arise together.  

Magnanimous mind accepts all conditions and still finds joy, and is still right in the middle of life unfolding, as Uchiyama Roshi says.  We encounter and receive everything without craving and aversion, and realize that it’s all our own life.

Now putting Dogen’s comment back together:
 “Joy as a limb of the truth” is the sincerity of a granny’s mind when blood is dripping. The thousand hands and eyes of Great Compassion!  Leave them as they are, immensely busy. Plum flowers are peeping from the December snow. In the scenery of coming spring a great master is cold. Even so, he is full of life and belly laughter.  

Joy in the dharma arises when we see the three marks of existence (impermanence, interconnection and no-self) and take care of all beings on that basis.  We aren’t hindered in carrying out bodhisattva work by karmic circumstances, our limited human form, or our likes and dislikes because along with all that we’re wise enough to know that emptiness, awakening and joy don’t depend on the absence of those things.  In his comment, Dogen is including all three minds.  Joyful mind is completely interconnected with parental mind and magnanimous mind.

Uchiyama Roshi says: Joyful mind is the mind that lives in accord with the true value of life.  Joyful mind comes up as a dynamic feeling of truly being alive.  Joyful mind does not mean a feeling of excitement at the fulfillment of some desire.  Rather. joyful mind is discovering one’s worth and passion for life through the action of parental mind toward everything we encounter.  When we see each encounter as our life, and function with the spirit that each and every encounter is our child to be looked after and taken care of, we will discover true ardor and passion and joy in being alive. . . .  Any bodhisattva aspiring to live the Way of Buddha will without exception possess these three minds of magnanimity, joy and parental care.  (3)

We can see that there’s been a shift from the meaning of rapture in the early teachings.  Now joy in the dharma has moved from an individual physical sensation that goes with a certain state in meditation to something that isn’t about the individual small self, and something that arises naturally when the universe is functioning without hindrances and obstacles.  Uchiyama Roshi says that joyful mind is discovering the true meaning of our lives through our parental attitude, and he says that what Dogen is really asking when he teaches about joyful mind is: what direction are our lives taking?  What are we doing with our lives, and what should we be doing?

To cultivate joyful mind, we have to first understand the significance of bodhisattva work, and then we have to pour everything we have into it.  That doesn’t leave any time and energy for having an idea about what a great spiritual reward we’re going to get out of the work.  We’re not taking care of beings in order to get to our own awakening.  We’re taking care of beings because awakening is already there and we have the opportunity to realize it.

There’s a short-form meal verse that says:  As we take food and drink I vow with all beings to rejoice in zazen, being filled with delight in the dharma.  Maybe we’re not always rejoicing when we sit down to zazen--Dang!  Back on this cushion again!—but in zazen everything is unobstructed, so joyful mind naturally arises.  Rejoicing in zazen isn’t about our personal feeling--Oh, I just love zazen!  We’re not vowing to convince ourselves to have a positive attitude toward zazen.  We’re vowing to get out of the way so delight in the dharma can arise.  We’re vowing to sit in the middle of profound nonseparation.  I vow to rejoice in zazen, being filled with delight in the dharma.

It’s interesting how often food and joy are linked together in our lives, and also in our practice.  Here’s what Okumura Roshi has to say about this meal verse:
When we eat, we should be happy.  This happiness is the enjoyment of dharma.  We consider the taste of food to be the taste of dharma.  When we recieve or eat a meal, we shouldn’t grasp the taste.  Usually when we eat, we encounter our food with our desires.  These desires are the cause of delusion or samsara.  The Buddha and Dogen Zenji teach us to become free from the desires caused by objects.  This is Dogen’s teaching of shinjin datsuraku (dropping off body and mind).  Our joy when we receive food is not the fulfillment of our desire.  It is the joy of dharma and zazen. . . . When we can see this reality . . . not only eating but everything we do becomes our spiritual practice.  (4)

Dogen says a joyful spirit is one of gratefulness and buoyancy.  If we’re feeling the opposite, sort of dragged down and heavy and put-upon, we can ask ourselves where we’ve gotten stuck.  What have we gotten ourselves attached to that isn’t happening?  It’s the most basic kind of suffering: things “should” be different than they are.  It really gets in the way of joy.  When we fall from the the top of the pyramid, it’s not a requirement than we abandon enjoyment or joyful mind.  Enjoyment and awakening are not separate, as the gate statement says.  If awakening is already here, then enjoyment is also already here.  We don’t need to go looking for enjoyment; it comes with whatever we’re encountering.  This doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate our favorite music or friends or hobbies.  We don’t have to give up chocolate ice cream in order to be good practitioners, but can we enjoy peppermint or peach just as much?  Can we understand that all of those flavors are the taste of dharma and take joy in them?

Uchiyama Roshi has the last word this time:
The true Self includes the entire world in which it lives.  Therefore, there is nothing that is not a part of it.  Everything encountered is life.  To devote ourselves to everything we encounter and throw our life force into doing just that is quite different from simply exhausting our energies playing with toys.  Here is where our passion for life as Joyful Mind manifests the significance of being alive.  (5)

Notes:
(1) Uchiyama Roshi, K. (2014). Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo. United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 116.
(2) Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, tr. Nishijima and Cross, vol 4. (2006). United Kingdom: Booksurge Publishing, p. 12.
(3) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 135.  
(4) Okumura, S. (2012). Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 96.
(5) Uchiyama, K. (2005). How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment. United States: Shambhala, p. 96

Effort, as a part of the state of truth, is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we become proficient in realization.
進覺分是法明門、善知覺故（進覺分是れ法明門なり、善く知覺するが故に）。

We  discussed effort back at Gate 59; let’s do a quick review.  Energy or effort is what sustains our practice so that we can work with hindrances and pitfalls and develop some maturity and insight over time.  There’s an element of overcoming laziness and preventing backsliding, and understanding that no one can practice for us.  Teachers and sangha friends can point the way, causes and conditions can all be there, but we have to put in the hard yards.  

What we’re applying effort toward is the four exertions:

• cultivating wholesomeness
• maintaining it when it arises
• keeping unwholesomeness from arising
• making it go away when it’s already here

One of the important points in the earliest teachings is that our effort is not just for our own benefit; it keeps coming back to working for the wellbeing of ourselves and others.  There are a couple of aspects to making effort—there’s expending energy in a conscious striving toward something, trying to reach a goal, learn something, build something or get from here to there.  We expect to have a certain amount of control over what happens, and that’s a kind of individual effort, or effort by a group of individuals.

There’s also the perspective that the universe is expending energy simply because the universe is doing what it does.  I might plant seeds and say I’m growing a crop, but I don’t really have anything to do with it.  Causes and conditions are such that plants are growing day by day on their own.

We should also consider the second element of this gate, becoming proficient in realization.  The basic meaning of the words is to understand well, to have effective knowledge or a clear perception.  At Gate 59 we saw that the relationship between effort and wisdom worked both ways.  Effort helps us cultivate and manifest wisdom, we also need wisdom to discern where to put our efforts.  Otherwise, at best we could be wasting our time, and at worst we could be putting a lot of energy into something harmful even though we mean well.

That brings us back to this gate about effort and wisdom, and this constant attention to where our effort and energy are going is a recurring theme in our dharma family.  Sawaki Roshi, Uchiyama Roshi and Okumura Roshi all keep coming back to it.

Uchiyama Roshi simply says: To seek or follow the Buddha Way means to focus all your effort on the most genuine way to live, and to continually refine your life. (1)  In other words, we don’t forget to practice.  We stay focused on seeing the way Buddha sees and living the way a bodhisattva lives, and we try to let go of distractions and hindrances that pull us toward unwholesome activities and behaviors.  Not only are we helping ourselves with this, we’re putting ourselves in a much better position to be useful to others.

To continually refine our lives is to pay attention to our direction, making sure that we’re putting our limited human resources where we really want them to go and not wasting our time mistaking short-term happiness for long term contentment.  Okumura Roshi says: If diligence is misdirected, the harder we work the farther we deviate from the correct path.  Without the wisdom to see which way to go, our diligence is meaningless effort. (2)  Elsewhere he says that meaningless effort is the same as suffering—chasing things that don’t bring lasting satisfaction.

Sawaki Roshi hits this teaching over and over in The Zen Teachings of Homeless Kodo.  Here are some examples:
- Imagine looking back on our lives after we die.  We’ll see that so many things didn’t matter.
- If we have no money, we’re in trouble.  But it’s good to know there are more important things than money.  If we have no sexual desire, something might be wrong.  But it’s good to know there are more important things than sexual desire.
- Because they’re bored, people kill time by agonizing, falling in love, drinking, reading novels, and watching sports; they do things halfheartedly and incompletely, alienated from their lives, rather than living with determination in a decisive direction.  For them, life is ukiyo, the floating world: a place of floundering and wasting time doing random things.  (3)

He’s constantly asking us where our attention, effort, time and energy are going.

Making effort in practice can seem to be contradiction if we’re familiar with Dogen’s view that practice and  awakening are not separate.  Of course, this was his question too: if buddha nature or awakening are already here, why do we have to work hard and study the dharma and practice?  We’ve all also heard Sawaki Roshi’s teaching that zazen is good for nothing, as Okumura R oshi translates it.

The understanding that our ancestors have is that in one way we make effort to use our karmic circumstances to overcome hindrances to seeing clearly and manifesting prajna, and in another way, the effort being made isn’t our small, personal effort.  It’s the universe carrying out its function, and we happen to be a part of that universe.  In that way, there’s nothing to struggle with or on which to work hard.

Well, it’s one thing to hear that and know it intellectually, but it’s another thing to actually verify it by putting it into practice and living it every day.  Here’s how Uchiyama Roshi explains it:
Because we concretely are universal self there is no particular value in talking about it.  Yet if we don’t make every effort to manifest it, just knowing about it is useless.  To concretize the eternal, that is the task before us.  Even if we have a cup of cool, clean water sitting right in front of us, if we don’t actually drink it, it won’t slake our thirst.  The expression of universal self is a practice that is eternal, but to the extent that we don’t walk it ourselves, it won’t be realized it won’t be our path.  (4)

Here’s Okumura Roshi’s experience of that same point:
When I first studied the Buddha’s teaching I had difficulty accepting it.  It was not so hard to understand it intellectually.  It’s easy to understand as an abstract theory that the cause of suffering is ignorance and desire, or to see examples in other people.  But it’s difficult to see when we ourselves suffer and are ignorant.  It’s also hard to accept that we are deluded.  We believe that we are special, important and valuable.  It’s really not a matter of intellectual understanding, not a set of abstract hypotheses.  If we agree with the Buddha’s teaching, we need to practice it and make an effort to transform our lives.  (5)

All of these folks have reached a personal understanding about the need for concrete effort in practice, but they’re not losing sight of the other side, that effort, energy and activity are already the true nature of reality.  

Let’s take a look at what Dogen has to say about this gate in his fascicle on the 37 factors of awakening.

“Diligence as a limb of the truth” is never having plundered a market.  Both in buying oneself and in expending oneself, there is a definite price and there is recognition of worth. Though we seem to suppress ourselves and to promote others, a blow through the whole body does not break us. While we have not yet ceased expending the self on a word of total transformation, we meet a trader who buys the self as a totally transformed mind.  “Donkey business is unfinished, but some horse business comes in.”  (6)

This is all just another way to say yet again that practice and realization or verification are not two; this is one of his favorite teachings.  Now we step back and back to see how he got here.

“Diligence as a limb of the truth” is never having plundered a market.  Plundering a market is reference to Case 5 of the Blue Cliff Record, a collection of kōans originally compiled in China in 1125 CE.  Fortunately, we don’t need to examine the whole case here.  The line in question is “Where the King’s rule is a little more strict, it’s not permitted to plunder the open markets.”  It’s talking about a marketplace where a merchant tries to sell his goods at a certain price, but a customer wants to buy the goods at a much cheaper price.  Even though the merchant doesn’t want to sell at the lower price, somehow this customer convinces the merchant to do it.  What the text is getting at is: how do we know or decide what something is worth?  How much money, or how much effort?

If we’ve never plundered a market where the currency is effort, we’ve never tried to get away with something for nothing, or get by on less diligence with an attitude of oh well, good enough.  To do that is to be less than wholehearted in our practice.  It’s interesting how this image gives the feeling that we’re inclined to cheat or be a bit dishonest when we look at our own effort; we’re not always selfless bodhisattvas.

Dogen refers to this marketplace image again in Ikka Myoju, or One Bright Jewel:  No one would throw a tile away at a marketplace.  This quote comes from volume. 16 of the Dentoroku or Record of the Transmission of the Lamp, the awakening stories of the first 41 ancestors of our lineage.  In the story of Xuefeng Yicun, he says, “Recently having abandoned a brick, I got a piece of jade in return.”  In other words, he got something precious, a piece of jade, in exchange for something cheap, a brick or tile.  In this case, the precious jade is Buddha nature and the cheap tile is karmic consciousness.  However, Dogen is saying that kind of exchange can’t happen—“No one would throw away a tile at the marketplace”—because the tile and the jade are the same.  Our karmic nature and buddha nature are the same.  Even so, we usually want to practice in order to get rid of our delusion and get something called awakening.  That’s misplaced effort, and when we catch outselves doing that, we have to ask where our energy is going.

Okumura Roshi says: We are not in the marketplace, so there’s no way to trade or exchange things by throwing away something we don’t want and getting something we do want. Yet often in our practice we have the attitude of a merchant; we want to get rid of our delusion and receive wisdom or enlightenment in return. This is exactly throwing away the tile and picking up the jewel. 

“Diligence as a limb of the truth” is never having plundered a market.  Both in buying oneself and in expending oneself, there is a definite price and there is recognition of worth.  We have to understand the nature of the marketplace and the nature of the transaction.  Sometimes we’re taking something in and sometimes we’re offering something outward.  When we’re taking something in, is it based on greed and getting all we can without much cost to ourselves?  When we’re offering something to others, are we looking for a particular level of payment or reward or recognition?  What value are we putting on our time and energy, and what value are we putting on our practice and on the bodhisattva life?

There’s no shortcut in practice, no way to get something for nothing, partly because we have to do our own work, and partly because there’s nothing to get.  If we think so, we’re not seeing the marketplace—our lives—clearly.

Though we seem to suppress ourselves and to promote others, a blow through the whole body does not break us.  Even though we’re making selfless effort on behalf of all beings rather than just ourselves, effort in itself strengthens our practice.  Because of wisdom or prajna, we see that our effort for all beings is not something we do at our own expense.  When we become exhausted by our work in caring for others, these days we call that compassion fatigue.  It’s what happens when we have an idea about who we’re supposed to be when we’re making effort, and how that effort is supposed to be received.  Then we get stuck, locked into a story, and we’re not free to let the universe do its practice through us.

Okumura Roshi says: [The Heart Sutra] points to the essential role of prajna in our efforts to fulfill our vows.  To follow the bodhisattva path, we study and practice prajna paramita, the wisdom that sees impermanence, no-self, emptiness and interdependent origination.  When we clearly see this reality: that we and other things exist together without fixed independent entities, our practice is strengthened.  We understand that to live by vow is not to accept a particular fixed doctrine but is a natural expression of our life force. (7)

It sounds a lot like what Uchiyama Roshi was saying earlier about the Buddha Way being about focusing all our effort on the most genuine way to live. 

While we have not yet ceased expending the self on a word of total transformation, we meet a trader who buys the self as a totally transformed mind.  “A word of total transformation” is a phrase that recurs in this tradition, sometimes called “a turning word.”  It’s something a teacher or master says to trigger awakening in a student or a visitor, causing the student to turn his understanding around and see a different perspective.  Yet, according to Dogen, while we’re still looking for turning words and teachings and making effort in our practice, the Buddha sees that we are already transformed.  Our understanding already includes seeing from the perspective of Buddha and we’ve already been turned.  It might remind you of Dogen’s famous teaching that the self advancing and confirming ten thousand things is called delusion, and the ten thousand things advancing and confirming the self is called enlightenment.

Now he’s going to hit this point one more time in the last sentence: Donkey business is unfinished, but some horse business comes in.  He didn’t make this up; this one also comes from the Dentoroku:  One day a monk asked Reiun, “What is the grand design or overall aim of the Buddhadharma?  Reiun replied, “The horse has arrived before the donkey has left.”

Over the centuries there have been various interpretations of the meaning of the donkey and the horse.  Some say they represent the tasks of everyday life and practice, that they just come one after another without any gap.  Others say the donkey is immaturity while the horse is someone mature or awakened.  The point is that everyone embodies both and is undeveloped in some things and more refined in others.  I think we can argue that Dogen’s point in using the quote here is to say that even while we’re still doing the donkey work of putting effort inwardly into our own study and practice, awakening is already here and we’re already in a position to spread that effort outwardly and carry the dharma into the world to save all beings.

The donkey is something less glamorous and in the marketplace he might not fetch as high a price as the beautiful horse.  It might not be seen as being as valuable and desirable, and yet donkeys are sturdy, strong and hardworking.  We can be tempted to bypass the day to day practice of getting on the cushion and letting go of thought in favor of reading an interesting dharma book, hearing a famous teacher give a talk, or learning to do an impressive ceremony.  We need to spend our time equally with the donkeys and the horses, and yet we need to not fail to see that the horse is already here even though we’re chasing around looking for it.

There’s a classic example of this that I see during sesshin.  The sole project of our style of sesshin is letting go of thought continuously, from the moment the first zazen bell rings to the moment the last period of zazen ends.  The whole container is designed to minimize distraction and help us stay focused on this project.  There are only three activities on the schedule: eating, sleeping and zazen/kinhin, and we’re doing the first two in support of the third.  However, about halfway through the sesshin, it’s not uncommon that when the bell rings to end zazen and start kinhin, everyone stampedes out the zendo door, leaving me walking alone in the zendo.  Everyone’s come up with an excuse to leave the zendo because after all somehow kinhin is “break time.”  Everyone wants to “take a break” from zazen, get out of the zendo, and look at something other than the wall.  

It just shows that folk don’t yet understand what zazen is, what sesshin is about, what they’re here to do.  Often the common room is full of people standing around, staring out the window, or (worse yet) perusing the library.  They’ve just spent 50 minutes making effort to let go of thought; now they’re out there creating stories so they can spend the next 50 minutes letting go of those.  What are they doing?  From what are they escaping?  Boredom?  Why do they need to be entertained?  Recurring thoughts?  Are the thoughts they’re stirring up outside the zendo any easier to let go of?  What’s outside the zendo that’s any better or more helpful to their practice than what’s inside?  Where are they putting their effort— into creating hindrance and distraction, or into doing kinhin and letting go of thought?  How is it possible to “take a break” from zazen if letting go of thought is continuous?  Not letting go of thought during sesshin is simply a waste of time and the opportunity of this practice container.  Did we really sign up for that?

It’s basic craving and aversion, chasing and escaping, the bedrock of our delusion and suffering.  Skipping kinhin to look for somewhere else to put our effort doesn’t make a lot of sense.  We’re pretty sure we see the donkey, but we don’t see the horse that’s right in front of us.  We think it’s out in the common room or out on the lawn or in our sleeping spaces or something, anywhere but in the zendo during kinhin, so we’re misdirecting our effort.

Yes, our bodies can become fatigued from sitting period after period if we’re not used to it, but if our brains are becoming fatigued by zazen such that we need to “take a break” from it, something’s going on.  We’re probably putting energy and effort into judging and labeling our thoughts, pushing them away or suppressing them, but that’s not what we do in zazen.  We do only four things—take the posture, keep the eyes open, breathe deeply through the nose and let go of thought.  We need the wisdom to see the reality of zazen and the reality of the universe, and then we see that we need to make effort even though our vows are endless and there’s always something more to do.  Because our practice, work and study are never completed, we vow to make effort endlessly.  

We make that effort without evaluating, because evaluating is extra.  We can’t put a timeline or a deadline on practice and carrying out vows.  Okumura Roshi gets the last word on this; he says: Our effort is like raindrops; it doesn't create change in one day, or a few days, or a few years.  But if we just keep doing it, when conditions are ripe, it happens. (8)

Notes:
​
(1) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 195.  
(2) Okumura, S. (2012). Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 138.  
(3) Uchiyama Roshi, K. (2014). Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo. United States: Wisdom Publications.  Quotes are from pages 75, 68 and 84 respectively.
​(4) Opening the Hand of Thought, p. xxxv-xxxvi.
​(5)  Living by Vow, p. 24.
​(6) Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, tr. Nishijima and Cross, vol 4. (2006). United Kingdom: Booksurge Publishing, p. 12.
​(7)  Living by Vow, p. 9.
(8) Living by Vow, p. 49.

Examination of Dharma, as a part of the state of truth is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it illuminates all dharmas.
法覺分是法明門、照明一切法故。

Today’s gate, like the previous one, is connected with mindfulness and namarupa.  The early teachings said that when there was mindfulness, examination of dharma was the natural result.  When we’re paying attention to what’s happenning in this body and mind, the natural next step is to investigate what comes up.  If we’re don’t forget to practice and to see with the eyes of Buddha, then we don’t forget that our opinions and perceptions might not be reliable.  We remember that these five skandhas aren’t the whole story, and we keep looking deeper into them rather than just taking it easy and  assuming we know.  

The kernel of “examination of dharma” as it comes to us from the Sanskrit, or what we’re aspiring to, is being able to distinguish between what represents truth and what doesn’t.  We’re trying to discern error from truth.  If we’re faced with namarupa that’s really our own creation, we know that and interact with it accordingly.  

The Kalama Sutta is well known for being a text in which Buddha advises us not to believe things just because he’s telling us, but to see for ourselves whether these things represent truth.  This text is frequently quoted when people want to make the point that they don’t need to listen to teachers or practice with a sangha; the only valid yardstick is their own viewpoint and their own experience, because Buddhism is scientific and logical and not a revealed religion.  Therefore they can do whatever they want.

That’s not at all what the Buddha is teaching in this sutra.  He says we shouldn’t follow a tradition just because it’s a tradition.  We shouldn’t swallow historical accounts or various reports just because the source seems reliable, and likewise, we shouldn’t follow our own preferences just because they make sense to us or feel comfortable to us.  Instead, he advises us, evaluate teachings carefully and skillfully by putting them into practice; then on determining that they represent truth, don’t deviate from the path.  Make a commitment and practice wholeheartedly.

The sutra says: Don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, “This contemplative is our teacher.” When you know for yourselves that, “These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness” — then you should enter & remain in them.   

Buddha says that any view or belief we have needs to be tested by what happens when we practice with it, and it has to be checked against the experience of wise people, whether those are teachers, grandparents or smart friends.  We have to question and examine everything all the time because everything is changing, including our opinions and worldviews.  It takes attention and some degree of skill to test our beliefs appropriately, and it  also takes attention and skill to choose good mentors and friends.

Elsewhere Buddha says that whenever we take an action with the body, speech or mind -- the three places we create karma - we need to reflect as best we can on outcome for ourselves and others.  What we’re distinguishing is:

• unwholesome and wholesome
• blameable and blameless
• inferior and superior 
• evil and good

That takes a huge degree of mindfulness, to be constantly paying attention to namarupa and what’s happening in body and mind.  In early teachings, applying right effort to that kind of ongoing discernment was what got you to the first stage of awakening.  First you establish mindfulness, then you investigate dharmas, then you apply energy or effort.  These three elements together were said to calm the mind and move you through the stages of awakening.

Investigation or examination of the dharma is a huge part of the Buddhist tradition.  Proper investigation is supposed to lead to a certain kind of knowledge or wisdom.  This is what vipassana is all about: coming to insight through investigation of phenomena.  Its partner is shamatha, or concentration.  These two elements are what make up early meditation practice.  One settled down in concentration in order to investigate the dharma and come to some wisdom or insight about the nature of the five skandhas.  From there one moved to deeply understanding the three marks of existence (impermanence, interconnection and no-self).  

One way to think about “examining the dharma” is as verifying the truth of the teachings.  Now this is starting to sound more like what we hear from Dogen and other teachers in the Soto Zen school.  Sometimes we engage in examination of dharma by paying attention to our actions of body, speech and mind: carrying out forms, working with the sangha and talking to people.  Another way is to do shikantaza.  We investigate by maintaining a spirit of inquiry, and that happens naturally when we let go of thought.  It means letting go of preconceptions and habituated thinking.  That’s the only way we can clearly see what’s in front of us.  We’re not sitting in front of the wall using our intellects to figure out what dharmas are about, or trying to understand the universe in a philosophical way, or trying to convince ourselves of various points of the teaching because of blind faith.  We’re examining dharma by removing obstacles and hindrances, refining our practice and our wisdom and compassion by getting blocks out of the way and letting our vision become clear.

If we were doing a legal investigation or a scientific investigation or a research project of some kind, a big part of that would be determining what to pay attention to.  Where are the red herrings and blind alleys?  Where are the unhelpful assumptions?  Which are the reliable sources, and how do we know that?  Who are the people in the best position to help with this project?  We have to be able to accurately discriminate between phenomena and between those phenomena that can show us something about the truth and those that can’t.

We start not by going in search of the biggest and rarest fantastical beast in the kingdom but by looking at what’s going on right here.  If we’re not examining these five skandhas, how are we going to know what to do with a fantastical beast?  We don’t need to look “out there” for a sexy, exotic subject for our study; we begin with getting our own selves in order and understanding our own processes, the four noble truths truths and other basic teachings.  Then we can accurately investigate whatever else comes our way.

Dogen says:
When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving.  But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves.  Similarly, if you examine myriad things with a confused body and mind you might suppose that your mind and nature and permanent.  When you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that nothing at all has unchanging self. (1)

Let’s not project our own confusion onto the dharmas we’re examining.  

Investigating the nature of things, or examining and illuminating all dharmas, is a major project.  It includes all elements of existence, all our mental and physical states, all phenomena, and seeing the impermanence, interconnectedness and no-self -- in other words, emptiness -- in all of them.  We can take anything, sit in front of it and and keep letting go of our thoughts and stories about it and begin to see the reality of it.  I’m feeling stress or joy or contraction -- what ideas do I have about that that I can let go of?  Chances are we’re deciding whether it’s pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, what it means for our experience of this moment, what part it plays in the larger story of ME, and even deciding what to call this sensation and the namarupa that starts to arise immediately.

Not poking our heads in is how we maintain non-separation.  That’s illuminating all dharmas.  Our original Mind or pure Mind is free from mistakes about what’s true and what isn’t.  It’s able to discriminate between wholesome, blameless, superior, good and the opposite.  It can see all things equally without being confused by delusion and three poisons and hindrances; it knows where those pitfalls are and how not to get trapped there.  Thus in examining stress, joy or contraction, it knows:

• the stress isn’t me or mine, the joy isn’t me or mine, the contraction isn’t me or mine
• it’s just a dharma or a phenomenon, without self-nature
• as Dogen says, it’s clear that nothing at all has unchanging self

We haven’t yet considered intellectual study as a means of examining the dharma.  Of course, it can be very helpful to study what Buddhas and ancestors have taught.  It can really keep us from going off the rails and convincing ourselves that our own conclusions are the one true way, and it can provide some basis or foundation for our practice.  Zazen and dharma study are two sides of one thing, just like practice and awakening are not two.  We have to examine dharmas from all sides and it takes more than our lifetime.  It’s one of those endless vows we take as bodhisattvas: dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.  We might as well say: there’s an infinite number of dharmas in here and out there and I vow to examine and illuminate them all.

Nishiari Bokusan was a Dogen scholar in the last half of the 19th century.  He says:  
Practice is not just limited to one form.  Sometimes we need to go onto high peaks; sometimes we need to go into the deep ocean.  It’s no use to say,” Originally, there is no one thing,” or “not obtainable,” jumping before your feet are settled.  On the other hand, it is also foolish to be stuck under the ladder for a lifetime by being bound by cause and effect and not knowing how to get through it.  So in practice we need to go to that place, look back at this place, go to the absolute, look back at the relative and continue taking years and years to examine by asking, “What?  What?” (2)

That’s the basic practice of the Mahayana, seeing one reality from two sides and expressing two sides in one action.

Dogen has a famous phrase:  shusho ichinyo -- practice and verification are one.  To Dogen, verification and awakening are the same thing, so examining and verifying Buddha’s teachings and the nature of reality through practice is the same as awakening.
 
Okumura Roshi says:  Practice and verification or enlightenment or realization is not something we may attain at some time in the future, as a reward for this long and hard practice. Of course, our practice may be hard or difficult for many different reasons; still, if we practice wholeheartedly, verification is there. For Dogen, it only depends upon whether we arouse bodhicitta (aspiration) and practice, or not.

We examine the dharma, and illumination is already there because we’re seeing with the eyes of Buddha.  We can verify what he sees because we see it too.

Turning to Dogen’s comment on this gate in his fascicle about these 37 factors of bodhi, “Deciding among teachings as a limb of the truth” is “If there is a thousandth or a hundredth of a gap, the separation is as great as that between heaven and earth.”  Thus, to arrive at the truth is neither difficult nor easy: all that is necessary is to decide for oneself.

This might sound very familiar,  either because you’re familiar with the original source of what Dogen is quoting or because you’re familiar with where else he quotes it..  The original source is the Shinjinmei, or Faith in Mind.  It was written by Jiànzhì Sēngcàn (Jp. Kanchi Sosan) in China in the 5th century.  Kanchi Sosan is the third Chinese ancestor in our lineage.

That poem says in part:
To arrive at the truth is not difficult: just avoid preference.
Just when there is no hate and love, [all] will be revealed.
[But] if there is a thousandth or a hundredth of a gap, the separation will be as great as that between heaven and earth.

In other words, we need to be in a position to act in this moment, without being indecisive.  In order to do that, we have to avoid being caught up in picking and choosing and chasing after preferences and running away from stuff we don’t like.  Working backwards, how do we avoid getting trapped by preferences?  We cultivate the ability to distinguish what represents truth from what doesn’t.  In other words, we examine the dharma and illuminate all things.

When we see things for what they are, we can have preferences without getting trapped by preferences, but if we make even the smallest mistake, if we forget for even an instant to practice what Buddha taught, we open up a huge gap.  We’ve lost nonseparation and now we’re in relationship with what we like and dislike.  Again we see how the mindfulness of the last gate is still connected to this one.

Dogen quotes this poem again in the beginning of the Fukanzazengi, or Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen.  You’ll recall that his big question had been: if we all have Buddha nature, why do we have to practice?  In the beginning of the Fukanzazengi he asks that question three different ways and then says: And yet, if there is a hairs-breadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth.  If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.

Yes, Buddha nature, enlightenment, illumination and verification are already here, and yet, as soon as we fall into picking and choosing and lose the ability to distinguish error from truth, we create separation and can’t manifest all those things.  It’s the same thing we heard from the Buddha in the Kalama Sutta: don’t follow your preferences just because they’re comfortable.  To decide for oneself is to avoid succumbing to delusion.  Instead of turning over our decisionmaking function to the part of ourselves that’s driven by the three poisons,  we examine the dharma and remain focused on knowing what’s real and what isn’t.

Instead of getting caught up in fantasizing about the future either anticipation or fear or writing new stories out of our memories.  We get clear about our our actual experience of putting the teachings into practice and verifying the dharma.  That’s how we arrive at the truth, as Dogen says.

Notes:
​(1)  Dogen, E. (2011). Dogen's Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries. United States: Counterpoint Press, p. 24
​(2)  Three Commentaries, p. 43

Mindfulness, as a part of the state of truth, is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it is wisdom that accords with real dharmas.
念覺分是法明門、如法智故。

We’re on to the last of the 37 constituent factors of bodhi, or awakening: the seven branches of the balanced truth.  Gate 68 is about mindfulness once again.  We’ve spent plenty of time on mindfulness itself in no fewer than 11 previous gates, so we don’t need to dwell here on what mindfulness is.

The kanji for mindfulness in this gate statement 念覺 come from original Sanskrit terms that mean two things: remembering the various states we pass through in our sitting practice (and remember that early Buddhist practice was more linear than our Soto Zen practice of zazen is that developed later), and keeping proper awareness in meditation.  

In a Soto Zen context, mindfulness is simply remembering to practice, or remembering what the Buddha taught,  remembering to see with the eyes of Buddha rather than getting caught up in greed, anger and ignorance.  The more interesting topic now, I think, is what this has to do with wisdom that accords with real dharmas.  There is a wisdom associated with mindfulness in early teachings that understands the true nature of nama and rupa, or name and form.  Sometimes we put these two together into a compound; sometimes we consider each of these elements separately.  The wisdom that sees both the sameness and the difference is said to lead to awakening, so if we understand how name and form are the same and also different, that’s awakening.

So what is this namarupa, or name and form?  Sometimes it refers to the five skandhas (form, feeling, perception, formation and consciousness).  The first one, form, is material; the other four are mental.  Sometimes namarupa means the objects of our senses.  Name and form are what arise when the senses make contact with something and it becomes the object of our perception.  Because of our karmic conditioning, our physical senses come in contact with something and then immediately we give it a name and distinguish it from other objects.  The distinction is often based on what it means for me: is it good or bad or pleasant or unpleasant for me?  Then of course we’re off to the races, writing stories and drawing pictures about this namarupa.

Uchiyama Roshi says: The activities of our daily lives are almost entirely the result of chasing after ideas this way, causing vivid lifelike images to become fixed in our minds, and then giving more and more weight to these fixed delusions and desires until finally we get carried away by them. (1)  Of course, this is a familiar process for us: we hear about it in our practice all the time.  Then Uchiyama Roshi goes on to say:

In the Shobogenzo Zuimonki, Dogen has the expression tori tonde tori ni nitari—”the flying bird resembles a bird.”  That is, there is no real substance to all of the “things” to which we attach names.  That which has no form (the flying bird) here and now takes a temporary form of a bird (resembles a bird).  Dogen’s expression is his way of phrasing Nagarjuna’s “Seeing the arising of various dharmas [things] destroys the view that nothing exists substantially.  Seeing the decay of various dharmas destroys the view that things exist substantially.  For this reason, although all the dharmas appear to exist, they are like phantoms, like dreams.” (2)

“The flying bird resembles a bird” means we perceive something and call it a flying bird, but that’s just our name for a bit of form and emptiness that we encounter; there’s nothing about it that is intrinsically a flying bird .  Again, Nagarjuna’s argument is that seeing the arising of various dharmas proves that things have substance.  Seeing that various dharmas perish proves that nothing has substance.  Therefore, although things appear to exist permanently, that’s an illusion, and Dogen’s way of talking about this is the phrase “the flying bird resembles a bird.”

Okumura Roshi has taught more than once about a section of the Sutta Nipatta in which the Buddha says that contact between senses and sense objects and the way we give rise to namarupa is the primary cause of “arguments and quarrels, tears and anguish, arrogance and pride, and grudges and insult.”  Then Buddha says that if either subject or object is missing from the equation, contact can’t happen and the process is short-circuited.  That sounds like a solution, but we have to be careful how we interpret this teaching about avoiding contact.  Okumura Roshi says: On hearing this, some people fled society to live in caves, forests or mountains.  This is one way to try to avoid contact.  A second way is to try not think anything and to live without perceptions, concepts or value judgements.  

These ways don’t work very well.  Priests or monks who live in forests or monasteries and try to avoid contact with society don’t work to teach and help others.  Benefitting others is one of the points of Mahayana Buddhism.  Yet when we meet people, situations and conditions, naturally something happens in our minds.  We cannot stop thoughts and emotions from welling up.

How then can we avoid this problem of contact?  This is the essence of our practice and the teaching of Mahayana. 

Sometimes we just do things out of our habituated thinking, or without really thinking at all.  I eat this cake because it’s here, or I impulse-buy yet another bottle of nail polish.  It can be an interesting and useful practice to inquire into our relationships with objects.  This is how they stop being namarupa: in other words, how we avoid contact and everything that arises from that.  Am I buying this or eating this or wearing this because it’s an object of my desire?  Is what’s going to happen as a result of my interaction with this thing wholesome or not for these five skandhas and for others?  Am I being led by desire and delusion or by mindfulness as the wisdom that accords with real dharmas, as the gate statement says?

From that one inquiry about that one relationship with an object we can learn a lot about our lives as a whole.  Everything is connected with me and this piece of cake; the whole network of interconnectedness is there.  I can decide whether to eat it or not based on wisdom that accords with real dharmas.  Our practice is to not be fooled, if you will, by namarupa.  To be fooled by namarupa is to think that there is actually a thing that corresponds to the name we give it.  Not to be fooled by namarupa is to use concepts and intellectual thinking to do our work and study the world and go about our lives and carry out practice, but at the same time to realize nonseparation between self and objects, or self and thoughts.

We don’t need to destroy namarupa or negate it or fight against it.  We just need to be mindful of it and see it clearly.  To be free from something doesn’t mean something doesn’t arise or that we run away from it.  It means we don’t get stuck there, clinging to it and taking action based on it and creating karma.  Okumura Roshi says: When we clearly see namarupa as namarupa, we are released from the bondage between perception and namarupa. (3)  

In zazen, for instance, namarupa ceases to exist.  We’re just sitting there letting go of thought, and things just are what they are.  We stop naming and evaluating and trying to do something with whatever we’re encountering.  It’s not that the object ceases to exist; it’s certainly still there, but it ceases to be namarupa, the object of our thoughts.  It reveals itself just as it is: impermanent, interdependent and having no fixed self nature.

At the beginning of the Genjokoan, Dogen says: When all dharmas are Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, life and death, buddhas and living beings.  “When all dharmas are Buddha Dharma” is the same as when things stop being namarupa, the object of our thoughts, or things with which we have a personal relationship where we want to get something out of that connection.  When things are as they are, “there is delusion and realization, practice, life and death, buddhas and living beings.”  We see these things with the eyes of Buddha: we see their emptiness, suchness or thusness.
 
That’s all well and good, but once we get up off cushion and go into world, there are distinct objects with names and forms that need our attention.  Yes, in zazen namarupa ceases to exist, but we can’t avoid namarupa all the time, so how does mindfulness work as wisdom that accords with all dharmas, or sees the reality of namarupa?

As students of Dogen and practitioners of the Mahayana, we stop creating separation between ourselves and namarupa.  Namarupa are still a part of our lives, but we recognize that we’re already one with them and not separate.  One way to avoid contact with namarupa is to sit zazen, and drop off our naming and judging and labeling of whatever is coming up.  Another is to be out in the world 100% interconnected with the objects we encounter; Okumura Roshi sometimes calls this “becoming one piece.”

This is how we can still use tools, eat food, read books, type on a computer, interact with things to do our bodhisattva work in the world.  These things are not objects of our desire: we can use them and take care of them without attachment.  They cease to be namarupa, but they don’t cease to exist.  They can still completely fulfill their function and dharma position.  When we see with karmic consciousness, we’re the subject and there’s an object out there we’re giving name and form.  When we see with the eyes of Buddha, or the mindfulness that is the wisdom that accords with real dharmas, there is only five skandhas seeing five skandhas.  There’s no separation of subject and object.
  
One way to read the kanji for “accords with the real dharmas” is as adhering to monastic regulations, or forms and protocols.  In other words, if we’re clear about namarupa -- what they are and what they aren’t and how we work with them -- we naturally carry out forms.  That might sound a little weird.  How does understanding namarupa inevitably lead me to gassho and bow to my cushion or put down a zagu and do three prostrations?  Aren’t those things just artificial customs we’ve inherited from a mixture of Eastern cultures?  What do they have to do with awakening?

Ikko Narasaki Roshi was abbot of Zuioji and Shogoji, two important training temples in Japan.  He said that becoming one with each thing we encounter and dealing with it with the whole body and mind is the same as jijuyu zammai or self-fulfilling samadhi.  The forms and protocols show us how to carry out fully jijuyu zammai with our body and mind throughout all the activities of monastic life, including zazen and kinhin as well as washing the face, using the toilet, putting on robes, eating meals, doing prostrations, reciting sutras, sleeping, waking up, and so on. (4)  

He goes on to say that embodying this is itself the correct transmission of the dharma, and that it’s difficult, so the forms and protocols are really important.  We could say this is the physical manifestation of this gate statement: mindfulness that is the wisdom that accords with real dharmas.  

If we see namarupa clearly, we see both form and emptiness.  We see the process that we as humans engage in to create our views and decide what to do.  If we see all that clearly and we see nonseparation, then our deportment, or our behavior with others, naturally embodies things like gratitude, sincerity and harmony.  We act skillfully for the benefit of ourselves and others.

In a training temple, which is where the forms originate and where we internalize them, the forms are both a practical way to organize people and a chance to deepen practice.  If you’re feeding 1200 monks in a temple, you’d better have some systems and protocols for how meals work, or there’s going to be chaos.  Knowing and agreeing on something as simple as who goes through a door first or who stands closest to the altar during a service is a way to keep order,  and also an opportunity to watch how attachment to self arises.  How come he outranks me and stands up there?  Just yesterday I saw him sneaking food from the kitchen!

Of course, in the West we might not use all the forms we’ve inherited from Japan, or we might have to adapt some things to make them practical or understandable in our culture, but practicing with “according with real dharmas” as carrying out the forms and protocols of your community is a useful perspective on this gate statement.  Your community might be the sangha, but it could also be your family, your workplace, your sports team or your culture.

I’ve mentioned previously that Dogen wrote a fascicle of the Shobogenzo about these 37 factors of bodhi, which includes the seven branches of balanced truth and the statement we’re considering here.  It’s not so common for Mahayana teachers like Dogen to talk about these 37 factors of bodhi because they’re more associated with early Theravada practice, but Dogen always said there was just one Buddha’s teaching, even though it might look different depending on time and place or across cultures.  Thus he brings Buddha’s teachings together by considering everything through the lens of zazen or awakening.  He says about this gate statement:
“Mindfulness as a limb of the truth” is outdoor pillars walking in the sky. Thus, it is the mouth being like an acorn and the eyes being like eyebrows and at the same time it is to burn sandalwood in a sandalwood forest, and it is the roar of a lion in a lion’s den. (5) 
​
Here’s what I think he’s getting at.  I think he’s using several images to point to the same thing: namarupa as namarupa, namarupa as emptiness, and going beyond that distinction.  Of course, this is something Dogen talks about all the time, and here it is again.

Outdoor pillars walking in the sky:  In the temple, there are indoor pillars and outdoor pillars.  There are indoor pillars in the hatto, or dharma hall, for instance.  The hatto is a big open space with just a couple of rows of pillars.  There are outdoor pillars holding up the front gate; sometimes there’s more than one front gate if the complex is big enough.  Outdoor pillars are walking, or carrying out their function in their dharma position, in the fresh air.  There’s no real boundary between the air that’s what we’d call the sky and the air closer to the ground.  Outdoor pillars are immersed in the sky, and we can make a distinction between the pillar and the sky and we can also say that they’re not separate.  Sky can also be a symbol of emptiness, which we’ll get back to in a moment

“The mouth being like an acorn and the eyes being like eyebrows” show us two things we would say are not the same.  We don’t usually think that a mouth is like an acorn or that eyes are like eyebrows.  We give these things different names and we see that they have different forms and characteristics.  They function differently and have different dharma positions.

And at the same time it is to burn sandlewood in a sandlewood forest and it is the roar of a lion in the lion’s den.  Now he’s showing us two things that are the same.  We have sandlewood in the midst of sandlewood and we have a lion roaring in the midst of its own den.  The lion’s roar is usually symbol of Buddha’s teaching, or the dharma, so we have thusness in the midst of thusness.  The dharma is preaching the dharma.  The functioning of the universe is the complete manifestation of buddha nature.

Now we have a bunch of things that appear to be distinct—mouth and acorn, eyes and eyebrows—and they do in fact each have a particular form and function.  That’s absolutely real.  We also have a bunch of things that are completely interpenetrated—burning sandlewood in a sandlewood forest and the lion roaring in its den.  This is namarupa as nonseparate and empty.

Then we have the outdoor pillar walking in the sky.  There’s a distinct form we call an outdoor pillar and use in a particular way.  It’s walking in the sky, or in emptiness.  This form is not separate from emptiness; it goes beyond the distinction between form and emptiness.

This is a recurring theme in Dogen’s teachings.  We can’t stop at just form or just emptiness or just “form is emptiness and emptiness is form.”  We have to let go even of characterizing something as form or emptiness or some interpenetrated entity.

Mindfulness—remembering to practice what Buddha taught and to see the way Buddha sees—is the wisdom that lets us understand what we encounter for what it really is.  Even though we have compassion for ourselves as deluded human beings, we don’t get fooled by the stuff our minds create out of the experience of our senses.  That wisdom allows us to be in the world doing our bodhisattva work and still be free from namarupa.

Notes:

(1)  Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 58.  
(2)  Opening the Hand of Thought, p. 181.
​(3) Okumura, S. (2018). The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner's Guide to Dogen's "Sansuikyo". United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 161.
(4) Dogen, E. (1996). Dogen's pure standards for the Zen community: a translation of the Eihei shingi. United States: State University of New York Press, p. ix-x.
(5) Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, tr. Nishijima and Cross, vol 4. (2006). United Kingdom: Booksurge Publishing, p. 12​

We’ve now looked at the gate statements for each of the five faculties of liberation (belief, effort, mindfulness, concentration and wisdom) as part of this section on the 37 constituents of bodhi or awakening,  The next five gates take each of these up again from a different point of view.  Rather than pointing to these as faculties, they point to each of them as a power.  Each of these as a faculty is a tool for dealing with its opposite; each is useful for controlling its own area of practice and daily life, and it becomes a power when unshakable by opposing forces.  Faith is the counter to doubt, effort is the counter to laziness, mindfulness is the counter to heedlessness, concentration is the counter to distraction, and wisdom is the counter to ignorance.  

These five also balance each other.  Faith and wisdom balance each other so we don’t have blind trust in something, and we also don’t get stuck in an “I’ll believe it only when I see it” approach to practice.  Zhiyi, an important teacher in the Chinese Tien-tai school, says:
If wisdom and faith are both present then when one hears that any single instant of thought is itself the right [thought of enlightenment], one’s faith will prevent one from disparaging [this teaching], while one’s wisdom will prevent one from fearing it.  In this case the beginning and the end will both be right. But if one lacks faith, one will think of the saintly realms as so lofty and far-removed that one has no stake in their wisdom, while if one lacks wisdom, one will become exceedingly arrogant, declaring oneself to be equal of the Buddha. Under such circumstances, beginning and end will both be in error.

Effort and concentration balance each other so that we don’t scatter all our time and energy running around frantically, and we also don’t just stop moving altogether, focusing on one thing and never getting up.  Mindfulness doesn’t have one partner of its own; it’s a necessary element for the other two sets to stay in balance.  That’s the connection between the five faculties or powers.

Since we’ve already considered what these faculties are, it’s not necessary to take each one individually again as a power.  Instead let’s consider how they become unshakable—in other words, how they can’t be overturned by their opposites.

Dogen wrote a fascicle of the Shobogenzo about the 37 constituents of bodhi, and we can use that as a roadmap for talking about faculties as powers.  Spoiler here: in general, he tries to demonstrate that the way that these faculties become unshakable powers is when we realize that there is no self that’s cultivating or exercising them, and that they’re not really about us.

[63] The power of belief is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it surpasses the power of demons.
信力是法明門、過魔力故（信力是れ法明門なり、の魔の力に過ぐるが故に）。

The demon being pointed to here is Mara, the embodiment of hindrances to awakening.  Mara’s whole agenda is to keep people tied to the craving and aversion of samsara.  That’s his realm and he’s always doing recruitment and retention.  We first meet Mara in stories about Shakyamuni’s awakening.  In the Padhaana Sutta, Mara approaches Shakyamuni while he’s sitting under the bodhi tree and making his great attempt to understand suffering.  Mara says what seems to be kind things:
O you are thin and you are pale,
And you are in death’s presence too;
A thousand parts are pledged to death,
But life still holds one part of you.
Live, Sir! Life is the better way;
You can gain merit if you live,
Come, live the Holy Life and pour
Libations on the holy fires,
And thus a world of merit gain.
What can you do by struggling now?
The path of struggling too is rough
And difficult and hard to bear.

Oh, poor you.  This is too hard.  You should give it up and just go about your life in the world of the senses.  However, Shakyamuni knows what’s going on.  He says no, I see your legions of demons behind you and I know you’re just trying to tempt me away from awakening, those legions being ten kinds of hindrance, like boredom, cowardice, uncertainty, craving and self-praise.

Shakyamuni says he's not getting up from here “for I have faith and energy, and I have wisdom too.”  As we saw at the last gate, an important aspect of wisdom is understanding the true nature of self, and Dogen says that’s the basis of faith:
Keep in mind that the root of faith in the Dharma is beyond self, beyond other, beyond any forcing of oneself, beyond anything contrived, beyond anything others have hauled up in their minds, beyond any objective rules or standards, and therefore it was transmitted, unseen, from West to East.  What we call ‘faith’ is a faith that is forged with one’s whole being.  It is invariably following where faith goes from the perspective of Buddhahood, which is following our Self where It goes.  Were it not based upon the perspective of Buddhahood, there would be no manifestation of faith.  This is why it is said that we can enter the great ocean of
Buddha Dharma by means of our faith.  In sum, the place where faith manifests is the place where Buddhas and Ancestors appear. (1)

In the Mara story, it wasn’t yet Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree, it was still Shakyamuni.  He manifested his faith by not getting up even when confronted by Mara, and as a result Buddha appeared.  The place where faith manifests is the place where buddhas and ancestors appear.

Faith is a faculty here.  It dispels the hindrances of Mara and allows for awakening.  Dogen goes on to describe what faith looks like as a power, in other words, when it can’t be overturned by doubt: ‘“Belief as a power” is being duped by ourselves and having no place of escape; it is being called by others and having to turn the head; it is “from birth to old age, being just this”;66 it is tumbling over seven times and carrying on regardless; it is falling down eight times and gathering oneself together. Thus, belief is like a crystal. The transmission of Dharma and the transmission of the robe are called “belief.” It is the transmission of buddhas and the transmission of patriarchs.

Dogen says when we have faith, we can’t deceive ourselves, the same way that Mara couldn’t deceive Shakyamuni into giving up his practice.  It is being called by others and having to turn the head; it is “from birth to old age, being just this.”  That’s a natural response; we don’t think about it.  Faith is like that—we stop second-guessing and just practice.  Even though we stumble repeatedly, we keep getting up, and more than that, Dogen says it is tumbling over seven times and carrying on regardless; it is falling down eight times and gathering oneself together,  What can we learn from falling down?  What can we learn from breaking a precept or making a mistake?

Finally Dogen says that transmitting the dharma and the robe are acts of faith.  When he says robe here, let’s include rakusu and wagesa, because precepts have been transmitted and vows taken.  Those are acts of faith in several ways.  The preceptor has faith that the recipient is wholehearted and committed to upholding precepts and living by vow.  The recipient has faith in the three treasures and the practice.  In this way, the practice and the dharma go on into the future and faith becomes established and unshakable.

There’s nothing magical about dharma transmission, and I’m not a woo-woo sort of person, but at the end of mine I felt like I’d been handed something or entrusted with something that I was supposed to keep safe and carry forward.  This is why discernment before ordination seems really important to me.  There has to be unshakable faith on the part of  both teacher and novice—otherwise eventually it all goes off the rails.  I have faith that the novice is well positioned to learn to carry the tradition and make it available to others in mature and skillful ways.  The novice has faith that I can help him or her do that and that I will be there to support and teach and guide, and this dharma and practice will go on.

[64] The power of effort is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not regress or stray.
進力是法明門、不退轉故（進力是れ法明門なり、不退轉なるが故に）。

The simple reading of this is that if our effort is firmly established, then we stop falling back into bad habits like unethical behavior, habituated thinking, and all kinds of delusions and the three poisons.  Dogen reads the power of effort as being about a complete manifestation of unity in multiplicity and not something that’s about our own personal striving.  He says: 
It is resting even when unable to take rest. It is taking rest when taking rest. It is being someone who is terribly unimportant. It is being one who is not unimportant. It is being both important and unimportant. It is the first moon and the second moon. [IOW the world of form and the world of emptiness] Shakyamuni Buddha once said, “I am always zealous in my spiritual endeavors. That is why I was able to realize supreme, fully perfected enlightenment.” What he called his continual zealous endeavors was his doing it totally—from head to tail—through the whole of past, present, and future. His saying, “I am always zealous in my spiritual endeavors” is his way of saying, “I have already realized Buddhahood.” Because it is his already having realized supreme, fully perfected enlightenment, it is his always being zealous in his spiritual endeavors. Were this not so, how could he have possibly been continually zealous in his endeavors? How could he have possibly already realized It?

It’s all just another way of saying zazen is good for nothing.  When we sit, awakening is already completely there.  If awakening wasn’t already there, there would be nothing to manifest.  Effort is unshakable because the universe goes on doing what the universe does, living out the life of the self as Uchiyama Roshi puts it.

Within this one unified reality, myriad beings are carrying out their individual activity.  Within the world of form, people make effort and make mistakes and backslide and fall back into habits we’re trying to break.  In the world of emptiness, beyond good and bad, there is no effort and no backsliding.  We don’t regress or stray, as the gate statement says.   This is about seeing one reality from two sides and expressing two sides in one action, the main theme of the Mahayana.

[65] The power of mindfulness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not [blindly] go along with others.
念力是法明門、不共他故（念力是れ法明門なり、他と共ならざるが故に）。

We usually think of mindfulness as paying continuous attention to our experience, as in the early texts.  In later texts it’s about remembering what Buddha taught and remembering to practice.  In any event, it’s an individual activity, something we decide to undertake on our own, and no one can do it for us.  For some period of time and in some circumstances, we’re engaged in being mindful.  However, Dogen says: “Mindfulness as a root” is a withered tree as a mass of red flesh.  We call a mass of red flesh “a withered tree,” and a withered tree is “mindfulness as a root.” 

He’s talking about people sitting zazen and says that’s the root of mindfulness.  Although these people are alive, they’re sitting still and not being distracted by whatever’s around them, or what’s arising from their own hearts and minds, as though they’re withered trees.  It’s an example of the universe manifesting mindfulness.

We ourselves who are groping for the mark are mindfulness.  Even when we’re not acting skillfully or unable to be in touch withour own awakening, mindfulness is still there.

There is mindfulness that exists in moments of owning one’s body, and there is mindfulness that exists in moments of having no mind.  There is conscious mindfulness, and there is mindfulness in which there is no body.  In worlds of both form and emptiness, mindfulness is always arising, whether we’re attached to the body or not, whether we’re caught up in ideas about the self or not, whether we’re conscious of our physical presence or dropping off body and mind.

Dogen goes on to give more examples like this to show that we’re in the middle of mindfulness even when we don’t feel like we’re actively engaging in it.  There’s no escaping from mindfulness; it can’t be overturned because it arises from the true self.  The person sitting zazen as a withered tree is true self, groping around trying to hit the mark is true self, and whatever the body and mind are doing in the worlds of form and emptiness is true self.

Then he says: “Mindfulness as a power” is a “great brute, pulling a person’s nostrils.”  Thus, it is nostrils pulling a person.  He’s talking here about a Chinese Zen story.

Zen Master Shakkyō Ezō of Bushū asks Zen Master Seidō Chizō,“Do you understand how to grasp space?” Seidō says, “I understand how to grasp it.” The master says, “How do you grasp it?” Seidō clutches at space with his hand. The master says, “You do not understand how to grasp space.” Seidō says, “How do you grasp it, brother?” The master grabs Seidō’s nostrils and pulls them. Groaning with pain, Seidō says, “It is very brutal to yank a person’s nostrils, but I have directly been able to get free.” The master says, “Directly grabbing hold like this, you should have got it from the beginning.” (2)

This is a famous story; Dogen has written about it in other places.  Shakkyo grabbing Seido’s nose is pointing him back to true self.  The nose is the true self and Shakkyo’s true self is doing the pulling.  Dogen says mindfulness is the nose pulling the person.  Mindfulness is what happens when we manifest true self, and there’s no point at which we’re not manifesting true self.  He ends by saying Even if used by all people in the world, it will never be eroded.  Now mindfulness goes from being a faculty to being a power.

[66] The power of balance is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we discontinue all thoughts.
定力是法明門、斷一切念故（定力是れ法明門なり、一切の念を斷ずるが故に）。

Again, balance here can also be concentration.  In general, it’s about keeping the mind from wandering around.  The more we settle, the better we’re able to concentrate, and the more settled and balanced we become, and the cycle goes on.  

Dogen says that when balance is a facilty It is like a rock enveloping a jewel: we cannot call it completely rock or completely jewel. It is like the ground bearing mountains: we cannot call it totally ground or totally mountains. At the same time, it springs out from the brain, and springs in.  He gves several more examples of nonseparation, holding two views at one time or, as we like to say here, seeing one reality from two sides.

Balance as a power is like a child getting its mother, or like a mother getting her child. Or it is like the child getting the child itself, or like the mother getting the mother herself. But it is neither the swapping of a head and a face nor the buying of gold with gold. It is just a song growing gradually louder.

The bit about the mother and child finding each other might be a reference to a section of the Lotus Sutra that says when we read and recite that text we find our Dharma-body mother.  In that way balance or concentration is merging with dharma as the complete functioning of reality.  Dogen says there’s a child and a mother finding each other and also the child finding the child and the mother finding the mother.  It’s form and emptiness and going beyond distinctions of form and emptiness.

It is neither the swapping of a head and a face nor the buying of gold with gold.  It’s not being stuck in the world of differences and distinctions and also not being stuck in the world of sameness.  When we considered concentration or balance we said that one way to think about concentration is that it’s about refining our practice.  We become more and more aware of subtleties.  Dogen says It is just a song growing gradually louder.  When balance becomes an unshakable power, we’re better and better able to hear the subtle song.

Finally:
[67] The power of wisdom is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we depart from the two extremes.
慧力是法明門、離二邊故（慧力是れ法明門なり、二邊を離るるが故に）。

We’ve seen that wisdom as a faculty is a way to dispel ignorance.  That means cutting through the delusion that keeps us from seeing emptiness, or seeing all things as they really are.  For those who’ve done some Dogen study, what he says about wisdom as a power is going to have a familiar pattern.  “Wisdom as a power” is of deep and long years, and is like a ferry coming to a crossing. For this reason, it was described in ancient times as “like a crossing getting a ferry.”  The point is that a crossing is inevitably just the fact of the ferry. A crossing not being hindered by a crossing is called a ferry. Spring ice naturally melts ice itself.

When we see with ordinary eyes, we perceive that there is a ferry which is separate from an activity we call crossing, or that somehow the ferry is in charge of that activity or driving that activity.  When we see with the eyes of Buddha, A crossing is inevitably just the fact of the ferry.  A crossing not being hindered by a crossing is called a ferry.  Ferry and crossing are arising together and completely manifesting emptiness.  They are as they are and do what they do in this one unified reality.  Ferry and crossing don’t hinder or obstruct each other.

Dogen made a similar point when he was commenting on the expression “The great sky does not obstruct the drifting of the white clouds” elsewhere in the Shobogenzo.  He says that the sky doesn’t impede the sky from drifting, and the clouds don’t impede the clouds, and the clouds and sky don’t impede each other.  It’s not that this non-obstruction is necessary before the sky and clouds can do what they do; it’s already their true nature.

Okumura Roshi says this is like what happens in our zazen.  We just sit there and thoughts come and go.  Sitting doesn’t stop the thoughts from doing what they do, and thoughts don’t obstruct sitting.  Within the network of interdependence, or this one unified reality, everything is changing and arising and perishing; nothing is hindering anything else.  The universe is just working, or everything is living out the life of the self.  When we can really see this happening, that’s wisdom.  Seeing with the eyes of Buddha rather than with our usual human eyes makes wisdom an unshakable power.

Notes:
(1) Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, tr. Nishijima and Cross, vol 4. (2006). United Kingdom: Booksurge Publishing, p. 791.  All following quotations are from Chapter 73, Sanjūshichi-bon-bodai-bunpō (Thirty-seven Elements of Bodhi) unless otherwise indicated.
(2) Ibid,. Chapter 77, Kokū (Space).

[62] The faculty of wisdom is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we really see all dharmas. 
慧根是法明門、現見法故。

In our discussion of the five faculties that lead to liberation, we’ve looked at belief, effort, mindfulness and concentration.  Finally this week it’s wisdom, or prajna, which is said to be the highest virtue.  We’ve seen how these five faculties are connected and how they all support each other.  We need belief, effort, mindfulness and concentration in order for wisdom to show itself.

One way to understand pranja is that it sees the emptiness of all things, so we have balance, not being overly excited or disappointed, or swept away by craving and aversion.  Wisdom supports concentration, and concentration support wisdom.

Wisdom is a counter to ignorance, but it can’t exist on its own as an abstract concept.  Wisdom isn’t separate from the other four faculties of awakening or from the other paramitas or perfections.  We need to understand how each of these things is also connected to wisdom; otherwise we can use them for good or bad, wholesomeness or unwholesomeness.  Faith, effort, mindfulness and concentration are no good if they don’t contain wisdom.  Diligence and patience and generosity and all the other paramitas aren’t actually perfections unless they contain wisdom.  Ethics or morality doesn’t work without wisdom either.  Okumura Roshi says, “Without prajna the precepts become a lifeless set of rules.”  We can just apply them rigidly without actually seeing the circumstances of this moment; for instance, if we strictly applied the first precept, “Do not kill,” we couldn’t live; we would have nothing to eat.

We can make the same mistake in zazen.  If I think this is “my” zazen, designed to make me better at getting what I want and being self-centered, that’s zazen without prajna.  Okumura Roshi says that if we do that, “our practice has nothing to do with Buddhist teachings.  So wisdom, real wisdom is essential. . . . According to the Heart Sutra, prajna paramita is the essence of Buddhist teaching.  It is necessary to the transformation of our life from samsara to nirvana.” (1)

As we know, wisdom isn’t something we acquire, like book learning or experience, but those kinds of knowledge are also not separate from wisdom.  We may certainly study what our ancestors and teachers have said about how the universe works and how we can effectively live our lives as bodhisattvas.  Then we might do some reflecting and thinking on our own about whether the teachings match our own experience of the way things are, and at the same time, we establish a sitting practice so we can understand things in a non-intellectual way.  

While we’re told that wisdom or awakening are already present and there’s nothing we need to acquire, and that in fact letting go of thinking allows our wisdom to arise, we’re not born knowing how to live as bodhisattvas.  If it was a case of returning to some unformed state, then children would be less inclined to unskillful behavior than adults—and we know that children can be selfish and aren’t always aware of consequences.

We have to live and practice in order for our wisdom to manifest.  We have to use all four of the first faculties.  There is learning to do, but it’s not about just being clever in an everyday sense.  Wisdom in this context is a spiritual practice, and sometimes a difficult one.  

Someone asked Dogen how practitioners in Japan could ever hope to attain wisdom, because in this person’s view everyone there was stupid and narrow minded as opposed to the Chinese.  They valued the wrong things and looked up to the wrong kinds of people, the questioner went on, so even if they did zazen, what hope was there for them?  Dogen said that it doesn’t really matter whether people are brilliantly intelligent or educated not.  If brilliant intelligence was required, Buddha’s teachings wouldn’t have survived this long, because there aren’t that many geniuses in any country.  That’s not what wisdom is about.  He says if people have right faith, they can see through delusion no matter how smart they are (or not): Without doubt, all people are abundantly endowed with the true seeds of prajna, only they rarely accept it and have not yet received and used it. (2)

As Uchiyama Roshi explains this statement, Each and every one of us is living out the reality of life. (3)  A short description of prajna is that it sees everything as it is and cuts through the delusion that impairs our ability to see reality.  Since prajna is all about reality, it’s not just an abstract thing.  It’s what helps us understand what our lives are really about and how to conduct our lives in this concrete world.  Prajna puts us right in the middle of this place and time, seeing everything with nothing left out.

If you read around, you find a lot of various descriptions of prajna

• Prajna is understanding the four noble truths
• Prajna is understanding the nature of self
• Prajna is understanding absolute/relative, or form and emptiness
• Prajna is cutting off all passions and illusions

You just think: OK, which is it?  What am I really supposed to know or do here?

The answer is all of the above, but it’s not like a reading list or a study curriculum.  What it’s really saying is that if we see reality clearly, we can’t help but understand, the four noble truths, the nature of self, form and emptiness and all the rest, the three marks of existence, three poisons, etc.  All of those things are facets or aspects of reality.

Uchiyama Roshi says:  All Buddhist teachings are ultimately the same.  They are not difficult to understand.  Yet, if you don’t clarify the the fundamental expressions, they are ungraspable.  Once you make it clear, you will know that “mahayana,” “one mind,” “wondrous Dharma,” and other expressions in Buddhist literature indicate only one reality.  Prajna, Mahayana or jijuyu zammai [all work on this basis]. (4)

All that sounds pretty abstract.  If we just let go of everything and allow our natural wisdom to show itself, somehow we can just sit back and everything will be OK.  However, that approach ignores the world of form right here in front of us.  Wisdom is not separate from compassion; they don’t obstruct each other.  So what does all this wisdom mean in this samsaric world of here and now?

Okumura Roshi had the same kind of question.  How can we know if all these teachings about prajna are real?  In the end, he came to a conclusion: The Dharma eye, or Buddha’s wisdom (prajna) is not a certain way of using our brains.  It’s what’ s there what I let go of my thought.  It sees both sides of reality.  This is zazen, in my experience; zazen itself is Buddha’s wisdom.  But when I try to explain this, it becomes a concept made by humans, and then it’s not reality anymore.  To really “see” it we have to practice. (5)  It’s important to remember that wisdom isn’t a state or a thing.  It’s an activity.

Elsewhere Okumura Roshi says: We must be careful to remember that prajna paramita is something to be practiced.  Prajna (wisdom) is not simply a matter of how our brain works.  In Shobogenzo Maka Hannya Haramitsu, Dogen Zenju refers to “the whole body’s clear seeing.”  He is reminding us that this wisdom should be practiced with our whole body and mind.  Seeing with the whole body and mind means we become one with the emptiness of the five skandhas,  The five skandhas become five skandhas that are completely empty.  Zazen is itself prajna.  The five skandas (whole body and mind) clearly see the five skandhas (whole body and mind).  There is no separation between subject and object. ​(6) 

It’s important that we keep hearing about seeing and practicing wisdom with the whole body and mind.  We so often hear that this is a “transcendant” wisdom.  It makes it sound like we’re trying to go somewhere else, to elevate ourselves out of our day to day problems and responsibilities.  Transcending (literally “climbing across”) doesn’t mean we leave the world of form behind, or that there’s no wisdom to be found in our everyday lives.

Dogen says: When the mind is dropped away, the Dharma (realty) transcends seeing and hearing.  When this wisdom is thoroughly investigated, the way transcends emotional thinking.  At this very time, how are the bodies of all of you people?  From birth, both ears are aligned with the shoulders.  The spiritual cloud, Lingyun, was enlightened at the sight of peach blossoms.  He says the dharma is bigger than seeing and hearing and the way is bigger than emotional thinking, but he doesn’t say wisdom is apart from those things, because in the next sentence he’s talking about the reality of these five skandhas and the thusness of peach blossoms.  We’ve got no other opportunity to experience emptiness and awakening than with this body and mind in this world of form.  

There are lots of images and metaphors associated with prajna:

• anything that looks like light, including the candle on the altar
• putting down our own yardstick and taking a broader perspective
• Manjusri Bodhisattva (we’ll get back to him a bit later)
• seeing with the eyes of Buddha, or the Dharma eye 

Okumura Roshi sometimes talks about the five eyes of Buddha, so quick review here:

• physical eye
• divine eye: transcends ordinary time and space; we can achieve in with concentration
• prajna eye: sees emptiness, but let’s go of form -- doesn’t distinguish anything; thus it can’t save beings
• dharma eye: sees beings and knows what to do to save them; what happens when we open the hand of thought
• buddha eye: sees everything everywhere, including all first four

Clearly, wisdom is critical to doing our bodhisattva work in world.  It’s not enough just to try to get some emptiness for ourselves.  Even if we do become able to see all things equally in the midst of prajna, it’s not enough.  We can’t cling to that as a goal.  We need to cultivate each of these kinds of seeing if we’re going to do any good for anyone else or bring wholesomeness to world

Okumura Roshi says: [The Heart Sutra] points to the essential role of prajna in our efforts to fulfill our vows.  To follow the bodhisattva path, we study and practice prajna paramita, the wisdom that sees impermanence, no-self, emptiness and interdependent origination.  When we clearly see this reality, that we and other things exist together without fixed independent entities, our practice is strengthened.  We understand that to live by vow is not to accept a particular fixed doctrine but is a natural expression of our life force.  (7) 

Again we see that wisdom isn’t about absorbing and internalizing a set of dogmas or rules.  It’s not about convincing ourselves that various facts about the world are true.  Something that’s true in this moment might not be true in the next moment; if we make decisions based on old facts, that’s no good.  The reality of impermanence means we don’t get off that easy.  We can’t just memorize the book and spout out the answers.  Those are dead words, not the natural expression of our life force.

Uchiyama Roshi says: In Buddhism, wisdom, prajna, is neither intelligence in worldly matters, nor is it scientific knowledge.  By prajna, the reality of life itself starts to work.  It’s the foundation from which we make choices.  In other words, each time we make a choice, we are to make it from the perspective of universal life (all things being equal and interconnected). (8)  The wise choice is the one that’s in the best for the wellbeing of everyone, including ourselves, but seeing what that is is really not easy.  

In the Mahayana, the most important thing about prajna is seeing both form and emptiness, seeing one reality from two sides and expressing two sides in one action.  That’s what Shitou writes about in the Sandokai, or “Harmony of Difference and Sameness” -- being in the intersection of ultimate truth and conventional truth.  

Dogen described it this way:  In the realm of Dharma, there is no center or edge.  For the body of wisdom, there is no front or back. (9)   He also says that form and emptiness are so completely interpenetrated that even talking about them is a problem.  As soon as we label form and emptiness, we forget that they’re not separate.  The best way to express prajna is to sit zazen and let go of thought.  Dogen says zazen itself is prajna.

You may know that typically it’s not Shakyamuni but Manjusri, bodhisattva of wisdom, that we see on the altar in a sodo where people sit zazen.  We put Shakyamuni in the hatto, or space where we do ceremonies.  He sits on a lion and sometimes has a two- edged sword to cut through delusion.  I’m guessing one of the reasons he has the sword this teaching about two sides of one reality.

Manjusri is said to be the oldest bodhisattva in the tradition.  We can’t do much without wisdom, so it makes sense that Manjusri has been there from the beginning.  

We said earlier that wisdom isn’t a thing or a state but an activity or a practice, so there’s a bit of danger in anthropomorphising wisdom into a being “over there.”  We can take inspiration from Manjusri and his sword, but we’ve got actually take up that sword ourselves—which we do, every time we’re sitting and find our minds wandering around and come back to here and now; every time we’re about to say something unskillful and we stop and think “wait a minute . . .”; and every time we’re taken aback by something unexpected happening and asking ourselves “wait -- why did I think something else was supposed to happen here?”

We can see why Dogen and everyone else says zazen is prajna.  Letting go of the stuff we’re clinging to and running away from is itself an act of wisdom.  We’ve got the sense to see that whatever it is isn’t helping; it’s based on our own story and we need to open the hand of thought.  That’s not always fun or easy, and somehow poor old Manjusri isn’t nearly as popular as Avalokitesvara.  Everyone wants him/her on their altars and shelves at home,  Everyone wants compassion, sympathy, help and kindness.  Not many of us want to be confronted with a razor-sharp two edged sword.

However, of course even to say that the sword has two edges is a problem.  It has an infinite number of edges, and it doesn’t actually sever one thing from another.  Wisdom and ignorance aren’t actually separate.  Seeing through delusion doesn’t get rid of delusion.  We can watch the movie and enjoy it without thinking it’s real.

I read once a long time ago that soap opera stars get lots of letters from viewers with advice about how their characters should solve their problems because they think what they’re seeing is reality.  This was in the days before reality TV, when the line between reality and entertainment disappeared altogether.  Who can blame folks for being confused about the truth of what they’re seeing?

Anyway, if we can see the form in the emptiness and the emptiness in the form, then we’re practicing the way Manjusri does.  There’s a story in the Prajna Paramita literature in which Manjusri describes contemplating the Buddha.  He’s not contemplating only the physical characteristics of his body or what actions he’s taking; he’s seeing the suchness of the Buddha, what he really is as a manifestation of the dharma.  You may have heard the teaching that if you see the dharma then you see the Buddha; if you see the Buddha, you see the Dharma.  That’s what this story illustrates: practicing the wisdom that attends to both form and emptiness.

There’s another story about Manjusri in Buddhist mythology.  He’s standing outside the temple gate and Buddha calls to him:  “Manjusri, Manjusri, why don’t you enter?”  Manjusri answers, “I don’t see a thing outside the gate. Why should I enter?”  He’s making the point that there is no inside or outside, no Buddha field and not-Buddha field, nowhere to go because here and now have no boundaries.That’s a smart answer and we get what he’s saying, but that kind of answer can also lead to paralysis.  I’m so wise that I don’t make any distinctions between things, so there’s no action I need to take because everything is equal.

Hmmm.  That’s why wisdom and compassion are also not separate.  If we’re in this for own wisdom, so we can fix our own problems or look more knowledgeable about Zen than the next guy, we’re not complete bodhisattvas.

Maybe you’ve been in the situation where you’re listening to a dharma talk and someone has a question for the teacher.  The questioner goes on and on quoting various texts and teachings, and it seems like forever before she gets to the actual question.  Everyone can see that the point of the thing is to demonstrate her ability to ask a really advanced question and demonstrate how much she already knows.  There’s not much wisdom or compassion there for everyone else in the audience.

Wisdom is the counter to ignorance, just like concentration is the counter to distraction, effort is the counter to laziness, and faith is the counter to doubt.  It’s not enough just to stand outside the gate doing our spiritual bypassing.  I like to think that after he answered the Buddha, Manjusri came inside the temple gate and cooked dinner for everybody or patched the ceiling or something.  We can’t just take our wisdom or awakening and go home.  We have to go out the door and join the world.  Sometimes in this traditioin it’s called returning to the marketplace with bliss-bestowing hands; maybe you’re familiar with the 10 Oxherding Pictures.  Let’s make sure we take the wisdom of these five faculties out into our lives, living out the reality of life, as Uchiyama Roshi says, and seeing all dharmas as they really are.

Notes:

(1) Okumura, S. (2012). Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 138.
​(2) The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen's Bendowa, With Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. (2011). United States: Tuttle Publishing, p.10.
(3) The Wholehearted Way, p. 208  
​(4) Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom: Three Fascicles from Shobogenzo with Commentary. (2018). United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 12
​(5) Okumura, S. (2018). The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner's Guide to Dogen's "Sansuikyo". United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 87.
​(6) Living by Vow, p. 148.
​(7) Living by Vow, p. 9.
​(8) Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom, p. 15
​(9) Dogen, E. (2010). Dogen's Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Koroku. United States: Wisdom Publications p. 424.

The faculty of balance is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] the mind is pure.
定 是法明門、心淨故。 

The translation I’m using here says balance, but this fourth faculty is more commonly called concentration or meditation.  Nonetheless, balance is an important theme.  It’s about the settledness and mental equanimity that comes with the attention being perfectly focused.  Traditionally, it’s the evenmindedness that comes when we can accept both pleasant and unpleasant sensations for what they are, and can meet whatever is coming at us in a solid and stable way.

Concentration is what keeps us single-minded, if you will.  In early practice, keeping the mind focused on an  object of meditation was what allowed transcendent wisdom to arise.  Throughout, there is a sense of nonseparation of mind and object, or unifying subject and object.  In general, it’s about keeping the mind from wandering around, and it requires a certain amount of training.  The more we settle, the better we’re able to concentrate, and the more settled and balanced we become, and the cycle goes on.

Concentration was an antidote to the distraction of the five objects of enjoyment—in other words, what’s coming in through five senses of the body.  Instead, one concentrated on the true nature of reality.  In the Pali canon, it says that only someone who can “withstand the impact of the senses” can develop concentration.

If we think about what the word concentrate means in English, it’s to bring something to the center.  One meaning is to remove impurities or extra material so that we’re left with only the element we want, like removing water from juice so we can freeze and store it, or creating a highly concentrated laundry soap or perfume.  Buddha describes the process of refining gold; the goldsmith removes each kind of impurity from coarse sand to fine dust so that he ends up with a substance he can work.  If he doesn’t, the gold is brittle, not strong or flexible enough to make anything or “withstand impact.”

In the same way, he says, we need to get rid of the major hindrances and impulses toward misconduct, and then the moderate ones and more minor ones as we’re better and better able able to concentrate.  Driving out hindrances allows for settling and concentrating, and settling and concentrating allow for driving out more and more subtle hindrances.  However, we have to be careful about what we’re concentrating on.  Singlemindedness is not in itself necessarily wholesome.  If we’re fixated on satisfying our cravings and aversions, that’s concentration that’s loaded with hindrances.  Thus we’re talking about skillful concentration here.

At first, Buddha says, our concentration happens because we force ourselves into it.  We’re forceably keeping ourselves from wandering off.  It takes a lot of intentional restraint to stay focused, but once we’re not being pulled around by our delusion and hindrances, we can settle and concentrate naturally without force.

In the early teachings we hear a lot about meditative absorption and various stages of absorption.  What does that mean?  It’s actually a way of experiencing non-separation.  There were exercises designed to help the practitioner concentrate on a specific quality of an object so completely that it filled their awareness, and the awareness expanded to include the object in its entirety.  Concentration on one thing was not to the exclusion of the broader reality but a gateway to the broader reality.  It’s this broader or expanded awareness that allows for the emergence of balance or equanimity.  One image is that the mind becomes steady like the flame of a lamp in the absence of wind.  It’s not wandering around and it’s also not being pushed around by hindrances.

One reason that concentration is important is impermanence.  Everything is changing all the time, including conditions of mind.  What we’re thinking about, how we’re feeling, what we’re perceiving—all are in a constant state of flux.  There’s also more than one thing arising at a time.  For our own mental health, we need some kind of continuity of attention and processing.  However, there’s more than one kind of concentration.  There’s the intellectual concentration we use for studying or solving a problem, inventing or building something, or running an experiment.  It’s really an activity of the psychological mind only.

Concentration in practice needs the body, the emotions, our aspiration, our whole experience of this moment.  We take the posture as a part of our practice to support our focus, so we need to be paying attention to what we’re doing with body.  We live by precepts so that what we’re doing with our concentration is ethical and wholesome.

We take a broader perspective in our concentration that just the sensory world.  Our awareness includes both form and emptiness, and when we see that samsara and nirvana are both right here, there’s a better chance of us finding contentment in this moment.  The objects of our grasping and craving lose some of their seductive qualities.

Sometimes concentration is referred to as samadhi.  That can mean focusing our attention on one object, but in the Soto Zen tradition, it can mean to see and hold all things equally, or that mind and environment are one, or actor and action are one.  Dogen Zenji was not a big fan of the Theravada view of concentration, as we’ll see in a minute.

Of course, there’s a huge connection between concentration and our zazen.  The shikan in shikantaza means “just.”  When we sit, we just sit.  Sitting isn’t a time to ponder challenges in our practice or ruminate on the latest dharma book we read.  We do only four things in our zazen: take the posture, keep the eyes open, breathe through the nose, and let go of thought.  Anything else is extra.  We’re refining the gold and removing the extra stuff so that what we’re left with is something workable.  That takes concentration, but not the psychological kind.

Uchiyama Roshi says: When we think of mind in its ordinary use, we usually think of the psychological mind or conscious awareness.  In Sanskrit, mind used in this sense is referred to as citta, in which case the expression shin ikkyosho would mean to gather our confused mind together and concentrate on one thing.  By definition, zazen would become some sort of exercise in mental or psychic concentration, or a method for training the mind to attain a state whereby all of one’s ideas or thoughts about some object would disappear, leaving the person completely unperturbed.  This is the superficial implication of munen muso, no notion, no thought.  Zazen of the Theravada teachings and of the non-Buddhist teachings are of this type of psychic concentration.  Any method of psychic concentration works from the assumption that our mind is always in disorder and aims to still it by doing zazen.  Dogen Zenji, however, never taught that zazen was merely a method of working to improve yourself, not a simplistic straightening out of your own life with no concern for those around you.  Dogen once said: “Even if you have the mind of a wily fox, do not practice the Theravada way of trying only to improve yourself!” (1)  

Concentration is one of the three kinds of elements (prajna/wisdom, sila/ethics and samadhi/concentration) on the eightfold path, making it central to Buddhist practice.  Sometimes these are called the three basic studies.  Uchiyama Roshi describes the samadhi category simply as settling down in quietness.  The three elements that fall into this third category are right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration or right meditation.  It’s easy to get confused about the relationship between zazen and concentration; when texts are translated this way, sounds like they’re same thing.  However, Dogen says Do not consider zazen to be the concentration and meditation of the three basic studies. (2)

Uchiyama Roshi explains this comment: According to common sense, meditation or concentration is considered to be a means to calm down one’s mind, the thoughts—including emotions—produced in our brain.  Since thoughts make noise and cause is to worry about one thing or another, we try to calm down.  In other words, we try to bring our thoughts under the control of thought itself.  This practice takes place on the ground of our thoughts.

When we’re feeling agitated and unable to focus, it might seem like we should tell ourselves to concentrate on what we’re doing so we can calm down, but Uchiyama Roshi is saying the opposite: he says we can’t calm our minds with our minds—it’s like trying to pull up the mat we’re sitting on.  Thus concentration isn’t about control or forcing our minds into some kind of activity or state, and it’s not about getting our thinking to stop by driving out thoughts.

The second part of this gate is indeed about mind, so we have to understand what kind of mind we’re talking about here.  Uchiyama Roshi says: Mind as the directly transmitted buddhadharma is used in the sense of mind extending throughout all things, and of all things being included within mind.  When we speak of a zazen based on the innate oneness of mind and environment, it should not be understood that zazen is a method of psychic concentration or of trying to still one’s mind. (3) 

Let’s take a moment here to consider mind and what the gate statement means when it says the mind is pure.  Mind here is not the everyday thinking mind of the individual, psychological function that arises from the collection of five skandhas.  Historically, conflating Mind with the operations of the brain led to the argument that practice isn’t necessary because we (our thinking minds) are already awakened.  Dogen’s question about this teaching was: if we’re already awakened, why do we have to practice?  This led him to China and his teacher Tendo Nyojo in search of an answer.  Eventually he realized that practice and awakening are not two and are not separate from Mind.  This became one of the major themes of his writing.  

The individual and his/her/their activities are certainly not outside of this one unified reality.  The psychological operation is not separate from the total dynamic functioning of the universe, but this isn’t Mind within the Soto Zen tradition.  Mind is also not a “thing” that we can grasp or completely and accurately describe, because as soon as we conceive of it, we’re dealing with a copy of Mind itself.  Mind is the action of experiencing this moment in the most simple, direct, pure and authentic way, completely integrating the individual self and the universal self without a starting point or fixed point of view, before the personal thinking apparatus begins to color and shape that experience by itself.  Mind has no starting point, frame of reference or object.  It’s living in the highest degree of non-attachment.  In the “Bukkyo” fascicle of the Shobogenzo, Dogen described it as the  characters of the sutra without the paper on which they’re written.

When he translated the “Sokushin-zebutsu” ("Mind Itself is Buddha") fascicle, Okumura Roshi used the term  “to actualize sokushin-zebutsu.”  In Japanese it’s literally “to do sokushin-zebutsu.”  He says that when a person penetrates sokushin-zebutsu, the person and sokushin-zebutsu are both something happening.  At that point, saying “Mind and mind” or “buddha and practice” as different things doesn’t make sense.  That’s in line with Dogen frequently telling us to have a spirit of undividedness in each situation, and to work wholeheartedly or put undivided attention into the work.  That includes seeing what each circumstance calls for, and that’s concentration: seeing beyond small self to include all of reality and not being separate from that reality.

Shikantaza is just sitting with nothing extra, including an individual or personal point of view.  Uchiyama Roshi wrote that sitting in order to gain control of our minds, get rid of craving or delusion, and reach Nirvana is not the pure zazen of life itself.  That can feel like concentration, but we’re not doing it with the pure mind of this gate statement.  It’s flavored or colored with various kinds of profit or gain. (4)  On the other hand, shikantaza in which we let go of thought, and the perspective only of the small self, is the kind of mind we’ve been talkng about here.  The same descriptions we’ve used for Mind apply to shikantaza: the activity of experiencing this moment in the most simple, direct, pure and authentic way, completely integrating the individual self and the universal self without a starting point or fixed point of view, before the personal thinking apparatus begins to color and shape that experience by itself.  That’s why Sawaki Roshi teaches about sitting zazen beyond gain and beyond satori, translated by Okumura Roshi as “good for nothing.”

According to this gate statement, when we concentrate—in other words, when we doing whatever we’re doing with nothing extra—then we have balance and our experience of reality is direct and complete.  We see both ourselves and others.  We have both wisdom and compassion.  We have a direction and we’re also able to adapt.

Earlier I mentioned doing the four elements of zazen with nothing extra, and just now I noted that this was one manifestation of concentration.  However, we can practice concentration in whatever we’re doing by letting go of whatever is extra.  That means having some idea about what’s happening that keeps us from experiencing what’s really happening.  If I’m having a conversation with you, I can concentrate by listening carefully to what you’re really saying and not what I expect you to say or what I think you should say.  I can see who you really are and not who I think you are.  I can stop trying to be somebody in my response to you and instead let wisdom and compassion that are already there come out.  All that stuff is extra, and it’s taking up space.

Again, concentration is bringing something to the center rather than the attention wandering around.  When I notice my attention is sliding over to “What impressive thing can I say when he stops talking?” I can see that clearly and choose to let go of it and return to the actual conversation.  I’m not concentrating on whatever is at the center to the exclusion of some other part of my experience.  I have to be aware of what’s happening in this body and mind and not disregard that; at the same time, I have to be aware of what’s happening in the external world.

We might say that concentration is about refining our practice.  We become more and more aware of subtleties; that might be subtleties of what’s going on in the body while we’re sitting zazen, or it might be the little places where we get stuck in three poisons.  It might be the assumptions we’re making about who we are and the effects of what we do.  For instance, in the beginning of our precept practice we’re working at a pretty gross level: don’t kill people and take their stuff.  Then we start seeing more subtle ways in which we break precepts and contribute to unwholesomeness.  We see that anything can be an intoxicant, not just alcohol.  We see that not feeling anger and not indulging anger aren’t same.  We see that not slandering the three treasures is the same as zazen is good for nothing.

You may know that the original title for Uchiyama Roshi’s commentary on the Tenzo Kyokun was Refining Your Life.  It’s interesting to consider what that means: refining your life or concentrating your life into a pure form.  It really sounds like nothing extra, including nothing in our lives that pulls us off the path, feeds our hindrances or delusions, or clouds our vision.  Living a refined life in this case isn’t about being an elite, having the refinement of an expensive education or charm school etiquette or something.  I think it would be about making careful, intentional choices about what our lives include and what activities we’re doing.

Uchiyama Roshi actually equates refining your life with bodhicitta, the aspiration to practice and manifest awakening.  The Japanese term for bodicitta is doushin 道心, or way-seeking mind.  He says doushin means the aspiration to live the most refined life of the Self in every moment.  The bodhisattva vows are the same as living a concentrated or pure life of nothing extra.

Now, of course there’s another way to look at nothing extra.  Because of interconnectedness, there really is nothing extra.  There already can’t be anything extra or outside because there’s no separation.  In that sense, living a refined life of nothing extra is simply to see with the eyes of Buddha, to see that there is inside and outside and also to see that from the beginning there is no inside or outside.  Zazen with nothing extra is just doing the four activities with this particular body and mind and nothing else, but it’s also zazen that drops off body and mind so there’s no inside and outside.  Then we don’t need to try to concentrate on something in our zazen because there is already only one unified reality.

There’s kind of refinement or concentration that recognizes impurities, hindrances or delusions, and removes them.  There’s also the kind of refinement or concentration that sees that there never were any impurities to begin with.  Both of these views are true, and we have to attend to both of them.

Notes:
​(1)  Uchiyama, K.  (2005). How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment. United States: Shambhala, p. 25.
(2) Both references in this paragraph are from The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen's Bendowa, With Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. (2011). United States: Tuttle Publishing.  The first is p. 158 and the second is p. 29.
​(3) How to Cook Your Life, p. 26 
(4) See Uchiyama, K. (1973). Approach to Zen: The Reality of Zazen/Modern Civilization and Zen. Japan: Japan Publications, p. 70.

The faculty of mindfulness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for[with it] we thoroughly perform many kinds of work.
念根是法明門、善作業故。

“Faculty” here is in the sense of an inherent physical or mental power, as in being in full possession of our faculties.  From pre-Buddhist Sanskrit through the Chinese, there’s a feeling of something being created or growing from a root, so it makes sense that these would be factors of bodhi, or things that lead to awakening.

Interestingly, sometimes the same word was used for the senses.  The understanding was not that the senses are just there passively receiving stimuli, but that there was energy being expended to collect these stimuli and then something was created from them.  These faculties might be inherent, but they’re active.

These five faculties start with belief and build on each other until they lead to wisdom, so in the beginning we take things on trust and by the end we see and understand for ourselves with our own insight.  We’ve looked at belief and effort; this time it’s mindfulness.  We noted that it’s possible to overdo both belief and effort.  According to the early teachings, it’s not possible to overdo mindfulness; our mindfulness should always be strong because it protects the mind from both too much activity and not enough, or both exertion and restraint.  It’s the middle way, just like we walk the line between thinking and sleeping in our zazen.

Mindfulness in early texts is about getting to a calm place in the mind or heart and then protecting that space.  It sometimes feels like there are several layers in our minds: one is peaceful and balanced and steady. and on top of that is a layer of agitation and restlessness.  As we saw at Gate 52, the Mahasatipatthana-sutra is a main source text for mindfulness practice in the early Buddhist tradition.  It shows us how to methodically cultivate the ability to pay continuous attention to our experience of whatever is happening in this moment, usually so that we can see where our delusion is and work on letting go of it.  

On a day to day basis we might be so caught up in busyness, delusion and discursive thinking that we can hardly believe there’s any calm in here at all.  We certainly don’t feel it very often.  That’s because we’re not actually attending to what’s here and now, but instead getting pulled around by craving and aversion.  The Pali canon says (and sati here is mindfulness or awareness):
And what is the faculty of mindfulness? There is the case where a disciple of the noble ones is mindful, is endowed with excellent proficiency in mindfulness, remembering & recollecting what was done and said a long time ago. He remains focused on the body in & of itself — ardent, alert, & having sati — subduing greed & distress with reference to the world. He remains focused on feelings in & of themselves... the mind in & of itself... mental qualities in & of themselves — ardent, alert, & having sati — subduing greed & distress with reference to the world. This is called the faculty of mindfulness. [SN 29-30]  

There were said to be four things that keep us from being in that quiet place: the senses, desires, movement of the body and discursive thinking.  Those things are elements of our everyday lives, and they’re necessary, but the problems start when they run wild and then the five skandhas grab onto them and decide that there’s a “me” that’s doing these things.  Thus earlt practitioners were told to withdraw the senses from their various objects, to pay attention to bodily movement, to stop wanting things in ways that shore up a sense of self, and to cut off discursive thinking.  Mindfulness was about maintaining this kind of isolation and protecting that space of calm and quiet by putting a boundary around it and making sure no trespassers get in by paying close attention.

The Pali canon says:  
Just as a royal frontier fortress has a wise, experienced, intelligent gatekeeper to keep out those he doesn’t know and to let in those he does, for the protection of those within and to ward off those without; in the same way a disciple of the noble ones is mindful, highly meticulous, remembering & able to call to mind even things that were done & said long ago. With mindfulness as his gatekeeper, the disciple of the noble ones abandons what is unskillful & develops what is skillful, abandons what is blameworthy & develops what is blameless, and looks after himself with purity...

There were various exercises designed to develop mindfulness, but they were all ultimately aimed at guarding this space.  Let’s look at each of these four obstacles to our quiet minds 

The senses:  
Stimulation makes it possible for three poisons to arise and also distracts us from focusing on emptiness.  Paying attention to what’s coming in through the sense gates and how we react to that lets us see how much grasping and clinging and story-writing is actually happening.  Usually our attention kind of roams free in a rather involuntary and passive way, catching onto stuff as it goes by.  This is a practice of voluntarily controlling or disciplining attention.  The senses at work are not in themselves a problem; the problem is that we get seduced or enchanted by what comes in.  We make sense-data a priority, and they’re all we can see.

Now we can see that this kind of mindfulness isn’t just being aware of what’s coming in.  It’s also actively controlling what comes in and making an effort to reduce the volume of those stimuli.  For example, during sesshin some practitioners walk around with their eyes down.  We also keep zendos simple and free from distraction.  In early Buddhism, this is why monks left home life and withdrew from the world, didn’t handle money, didn’t touch the opposite sex and had only a robe and bowl.  The average person today can’t live in seclusion, but it doesn’t mean that mindfulness practice isn’t possible or appropriate.  In fact, this isn’t what we mean by paying attention to the senses in Soto Zen.  In some ways, we really do need to break from the lives of habituated thinking, assumptions and delusions that we’ve been leading up to now, but as bodhisattvas we do that in the midst of the world, not separate from it.

Bodily movement:
If the body isn’t settled, the heart and mind will never settle and vice versa.  We have to move around during the day, and that’s fine.  We’re talking here about movements that are uncontrolled, hasty, uncoordinated, or done carelessly.  We can pay attention to everything from breathing to how we cook lunch to how we use the toilet.  Dogen wrote about this, and there’s a lot in our tradition about deportment.  It isn’t that there’s only one right way to brush our teeth or open and close a door or walk around in the zendo; the guidelines are a means of getting us to pay attention to what we’re doing.

Desires:
It’s tough to stay calm and balanced in the face of strong craving and aversion, so we need some real self-awareness and insight in order to see what’s happening and know what to do.  We’ve got to be honest and say Yes, there’s that attachment again.  I don’t want to give it up because it feels good or boosts my ego, but I have faith that if I’m not pulled around by this thing my suffering will diminish.  Paying attention to the state of our craving and aversion can seem like an awful lot of self-involvement, and indeed, it can go that way; we have to be careful.  We have to remember that this is just five skandhas operating in the way that five skandhas operate, and it’s not personal.

Discursive thinking:
Discursive thinking is the background noise going on in our heads.  It bounces around from daydreaming to replaying conversations to worrying about the future to wishing we had cherry pie, and it’s frequently driven by craving and aversion.  It’s what we do when we’re not paying a lot of attention to our mindstate, and usually when we’re doing it our ability to really see and take in what’s happening here and now is diminished.

We know our practice of letting go of that stream and returning to our current experience in zazen as opening the hand of thought.  In order to do that, we have to recognize that we’re engaged in discursive thinking.  Then we have the choice to let go of it and for it to let go of us.

Whatever practice you were doing, the early role of mindfulness was to remember what you were supposed to be working on.  If your exercise was to pay attention to sensations in the body, or the breath, or phenomena arising and passing, or whatever, mindfulness keeps track of the focus of that exercise.  As we’ve seen, there’s been a shift in what mindfulness means between early practice and what Dogen taught.  Our practice is not about withdrawing from the world, but about seeing how samsara and Nirvana are not separate and learning how to be completely engaged in what’s happening without losing sight of the true nature of reality. 

At Gate 55 I introduced a section from the Eihei Koroku in which Dogen said that Buddha’s teaching about the four foundations of mindfulness was that the body was impure, sensations were suffering,  mind was impermanent, and phenomena were non-substantial.  However, Dogen said that the body was a skin-bag, sensations were eating bowls, the mind was fences, tiles, pebbles and walls, and phenomena were old man Zhang drinking wine, old man Li getting drunk.  The pattern for each of these is that Dogen takes the Buddha’s conclusion about each of these four foundations of mindfulness and replaces it with a concrete example of emptiness, if you will.  The early teachings were designed to break our enchantment with these things.  Dogen’s are too, but in a different way: don’t push them away, but see them as they really are, not as you’d like them to be.

Practicing with mindfulness in the Soto Zen tradition is a bit different than in early Buddhism.  We can trace that shift as Zen moves across Asia.  When it gets to China, it encounters a very different culture than in India.  Renouncing the world in China was a complete abrogation of societal responsibilities.  Practice there was about living in the world and understanding you were part of it rather than trying to transcend it or leap off the wheel, because the world itself was a place of awakening and being in the midst of it was how you came to understand it.  Rather than focusing on one element and holding that in mindfulness, you focused on the interconnectedness of all elements.  In fact, if you concentrate on one thing, it can take up all your psychic space so you can’t be aware of anything else.

It may seem strange that mindfulness can be about awareness of the universe as a whole instead of concentrating on one thing.  How can I attend to everything at once?  Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it—that we think there’s an I that has to be in charge of processing everything that comes in, rather than remembering that there is no separate I doing something?

We should take a moment here to consider mind or xin 心 as a word.  We’re not talking about psychological mind.  The original terms include the heart as well as the mind; there’s a sense in which the psychological mind is in the realm of subject and object while the heart/mind is about non-separation.  Okumura Roshi says: Uchiyama Kosho Roshi often said that the xin used in Zen is not “psychological mind,” but it is rather “life,” which includes both subject and object. In the 1970s when I tried to explain this to an American friend, he was puzzled by the expression “psychological mind” and asked, “Is there such a thing as mind that is not psychological?” In Zen, I think we would say yes.

“Many kinds of work” in the gate statement above actually means wholesome or morally good actions, though there is a kanji there for work activity.  It’s very much about everyday tasks related to operations, manufacturing, producing, cultivating, harvesting, or doing business.  I’d say there’s a connection here with right livelihood as well as right mindfulness on the eightfold path.

Intersecting these two things—mindfulness and work—we get the teaching that being aware of emptiness and interconnectedness lets us carry out our tasks in the temple or the world in a way that brings wholesomeness and liberates beings from suffering.  The gate statement says “thoroughly” perform many kinds or work, and that says to me nonseparation of actor and action.  Doing work in a mindful way seems like an individual activity: I’m cleaning my gutters or washing my floor by myself and keeping my attention on what this body and mind are doing.  However, in the Eihei Shingi, Dogen says we have to do our work with both a private mind and a public mind.  He’s talking about the work leader when he says this, but by extension he means all of us.  When we’re working with or supervising others, we pay attention to their situations as well as our own.  When we’re working alone, we’re still part of this interconnected reality living with all beings.

In their translation of the Eihei Shingi, Okumura Roshi and Taigen Leighton say in the introduction:
Mindful work is work done without a doer, a task, or an outcome. When we are not separate from action, we perform thoroughly—we do all that is necessary with nothing extra and nothing left out. No matter whether the task at hand is simple, like putting books back on a shelf, or more complex, like figuring out why the car has suddenly begun to make a high-pitched whine, we can do it seamlessly. That doesn’t mean we do it to the exclusion of awareness that the bookend is about to tip over or that a toddler on a trike has just pedaled up behind the back bumper. As Dogen teaches in the Tenzo Kyokun (Instructions for the Cook), each item with which we’re working needs to be handled carefully and with understanding about its relationship to all other dharmas. He quotes an old teacher: When steaming rice, regard the pot as your own head; when washing rice, know that the water is your own life.

Later on in that book, Dogen quotes an earlier text, the Zen-en Shingi:  For monks to be practicing peacefully in their quarters and value and protect the temple property is the reward of the work leader.  Clearly the work leader’s job is to take care of people in the community, not just to worry about the building and grounds.  There’s a public mind necessary for that role and the ability to exercise prajna in managing daily repairs and maintenance and operations, but the work leader isn’t the only one with responsibility in that relationship.  Workers and community members also need to have a public mind, not just self-interest.

Dogen goes on to quote the Zen-en Shingi again: For a resident monk to receive and use something without thinking of its use by later people is what is not rewarding for the work leader.  I can imagine the work leader’s frustration when he goes to get a hand sickle from the shop and finds they’re all missing, or that the wheelbarrow got broken and wasn’t fixed or replaced, or somebody used up the last of the glue and rice paper for fixing the doors and didn’t say anything.  It’s a poor return for the effort and care and attention the work leader is exercising in supporting the sangha.  It’s like the sangha is saying your work belongs to me and my work belongs to me, so there!

Dogen makes the point that the work leader’s effort and reward is the community’s effort and reward and vice versa.  How could the work leader’s job be only the spreading of conventional truth?  How could this be only something received and used as a means to get somewhere along the road?  This is a classic example of seeing one reality from two sides and expressing two sides in one action.  We’ve got mindfulness of what we’re doing here and now as well as mindfulness of the universe as a whole.  For the work leader, he’s taking care of everyone in the temple and the temple itself by carrying out everyday tasks.  For the community, they’re picking up and using things to do the things they need to do, but they’re not forgetting about the use of those things by later people.

The work leader is doing more than spreading conventional truth, in other words, just moving about in the world of form.  The community is doing more than just accepting the support of the work leader taking care of the temple so they can do their own practice and get themselves somewhere farther along down the road.  The mutual activity of work leader and community is itself a complete expression of thusness and awakening.  It’s thoroughly doing many kinds of work.

Mindful work isn’t about doing something now to get a reward later.  It’s the total functioning of this moment, with nothing outside of here and now.  I’m not only cleaning my gutters so that when it rains tomorrow the water doesn’t back up.  I’m not only washing my floor so the floor will be clean.  Simply carrying out those activities is itself practice if we don’t forget to approach them with attention.  That’s when we step through this dharma gate and engage in work for the benefit of all beings.

There’s a pitfall here: we can get really precious about sweeping the zendo or washing the teapot.  We can get some idea about what mindful work “should” be.  Then it becomes magical and special and we try to wring some peak experience out of it.  It’s just sweeping the zendo and washing the teapot.  Those activities aren’t any more pure or worthy than writing a piece of software or selling insurance or fixing the car.  I’ve seen people reluctant to use their professional skills on behalf of their temple when asked. because “I do that all week.  When I’m here I just want to do simple jobs that are real practice!”  Uusually that means something like raking gravel or cleaning incense burners or sweeping the front walk with a twig broom.  They have some idea about doing simple medieval Asian tasks (that’s real practice!) as opposed to what sangha really needs, which might be budgeting or legal advice or human resource management or something.

Yes, what the work leader does to take care of the temple is bodhisattva activity and mindful work—building altars, cutting down trees, repairing walls and ceilings—but so is board service and helping to manage the electronic archive and taking care of our own lives, families, jobs and schoolwork.  Seeing the way Buddha sees, in other words being mindful of both form and emptiness, means we can do many kinds of work as beneficial action.

The faculty of effort is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we thoroughly attain many kinds of wisdom.
進根是法明門、善得智故。

We continue this time with the five faculties that lead to liberation, within the 37 constituent factors of bodhi, or awakening.  These start with faith or belief and build on each other until they lead to wisdom, so in the beginning we take things on trust and by the end we see and understand for ourselves.  Including effort or energy may seems strange when our main practice is sitting still for long periods of time, but faith makes our effort possible, so this is next link in the chain.

Energy or effort is what sustains our practice so that we can work with hindrances and pitfalls and develop some maturity over time.  Awakening is already here, but there’s a lot about our practice that ripens and deepens as we become more mature practitioners.  That doesn’t happen overnight; this is a lifelong practice.  

It’s just common sense that if we want to engage in something, nothing is going to happen unless we make some effort.  Nagarjuna says that laziness in practice is like poisoned food: it looks and smells great at first, but ultimately it kills you.  It may seem easier or more fun to go at our practice kind of half-heartedly, but that’s not really going to allow us to liberate ourselves from suffering.

We keep encountering the teaching that buddhas or teachers or deities can’t practice for us.  We have to make our own effort, because even if all the causes and conditions are there, unless we’re diligent and put the teachings into practice, liberation from suffering doesn’t happen.  In a way, effort or exertion is a part of all 37 factors of bodhi.  We can talk about it separately, but there’s effort in mindfulness, concentration, developing spiritual powers, etc.

What we’re applying effort toward is the four exertions: cultivating wholesomeness, maintaining it, keeping unwholesomeness from arising, and making it go away when it’s already here.  As we saw with the four bases of mystical power, even if we make “progress” in our practice, we can’t stop making effort or we’ll backslide.  Habituated thinking kicks back in and we forget about practice and the dharma.  We lose the wholesomeness we’ve cultivated and no more arises.  Unwholesomeness starts arising again and doesn’t leave.  

A couple of aspects of skillfulness are involved in making effort.  We have to know what skillfullness to encourage and maintain, and what unskillfulness to discourage and abandon.  We also have to be skillful in how we do that.  We need to be skillful in encouraging skillfulness!  If the means of cultivating skillfulness is itself unskillful, we’ve got a problem; for instance, treating hatred with hatred is a problem.  To skillfully cultivate skillfulness, we need to really understand cause and effect.  If we do something unwholesome for the sake of helping something wholesome to arise, that could be dangerous.  We have to see clearly what we’re doing and what kind of effort we’re making.

Thus energy alone doesn’t work so well.  It needs the support of the other elements of the eightfold path and all of the other 37 elements of bodhi including wisdom, which is the second half of this gate statement.  We’ll talk more about that in a moment.

We can start to see the connection between faith or belief and effort.  Remember that Gate 58 said that with belief, we don’t blindly follow the words of others.  Dogen says:  With humility, we should not slacken and regress.  Such not slackening nor regressing involves making diligent effort.  To be diligent means not seeking fame and profit, and not having attachments to sounds and colors.  

Therefore we should not look at the words and phrases of Confucius or Laozi, and should not look at the Surangama or Complete Enlightenment scriptures. . . . We should exclusively study the expressions coming from the activities of buddhas and ancestors from the time of the seven world-honored buddhas to the present.  If we are not concerned with the activities of the buddha ancestors, and vainly make our efforts in the evil path of fame and profit, how could this be the study of the way? (1)

Faith also keeps us from looking in the wrong place for ways to sustain our effort.  If we’re looking for recognition for our exertion, we might not get it—but is that really the reason we’re practicing?  Are we looking for a personal reward, some special experience or mystical power?  Even Uchiyama Roshi had to struggle with that.  He says:  I had a very hard time when I stayed at a temple in Nagano for a year in 1947-48.  Although I practiced wholeheartedly, no one recognized my efforts.  Rather I was used like a servant by an old woman at the temple.  I felt miserable! . . . I always felt that I was throwing stones into a bottomless ravine.  I didn’t have even the slightest response from others about my activities.  Empty space is like this.  No matter how hard we practice, there is no response.  And yet we just keep practicing.  This is the point: we have to practice. (2) 

We also need some discernment about how much effort to make.  Sometimes we see something less than ideal arising and all we really need to do to dissolve it is to watch it and pay attention, but sometimes it takes a lot of effort for some unwholesome, unskillful thing to get dismantled.  We need to not exhaust ourselves, but we also need to not give up too soon or think we’ve somehow reached the end of practice.  However, of course, even before that we need to understand delusion and to see our own tendency toward the three poisons and the suffering that come from them.  There’s a passage in the Pali canon where Shariputra and Mogallana are talking about effort, and the upshot is that unless we see how we’re influenced by our craving and aversion to engage in unwholesome actions, we never arouse the energy and determination to practice and liberate ourselves.  Even if we really are without any delusion and suffering, we still need to make effort to keep those things from arising, so there’s no escaping the need for energy and effort.

There seem to be two images of practice, particularly something that looks like “meditation.”  One is that Zen practice is intensive and all about effort, and if you’re not working hard enough on your cushion, someone will come up behind you and hit you with a stick.  The other is that Zen is all about peace and calm and quiet and accepting whatever is happening, so you shouldn’t have to make any effort at all.  (For related teachings, see information about our sixth point of practice, balancing peace and progress.)

Then there’s Dogen’s famous question: if awakening is already here, why make the effort to practice?  We’re not creating or acquiring something with our practice, so why go to all that work for something that exists already?  The answer is that we don’t yet see what Buddha saw.  We can’t always act skillfully based on a clear picture of reality.  We still get hijacked by our delusions, craving and aversion, so we need to practice dropping off body and mind and returning to original self or emptiness.

Dogen’s always telling us not to waste time or spend our efforts in vain, but to energetically extinguish the flames on our heads and to courageously and diligently go forward in practice.  This teaching appears over and over.  Of course, the irony of making effort is that there isn’t really a “self” making an effort.  As soon as we have an idea about effort, then we’re not making pure effort.  On the other hand, if we’re wholeheartedly engaged in something, there’s no separation between ourselves and the activity, so there isn’t an extra thing called effort; there’s just activity happening.

Uchiyama Roshi says: It is dangerous to say, “I am working hard,” because later on we may say, “I am tired of it.  I’ll quit.”  Unconditionally, without expecting rewards, without gaining something, we just keep making an effort.  This is true diligence as the practice of paramita. (3) 

Okumura Roshi adds: Since we are part of all dharmas, the foundation of our practice must be our awakening to the reality that we are indeed part of all dharmas, or part of Buddha.  In other words, it is not I who practice, but rather Buddha carries our Buddha’s practice through me.  In our zazen practice and in our daily activity of bodhisattva practice, it is not a matter of individual actions based on individual willpower and effort.  It is rather the myriad dharmas, or all beings, that carry out practice through our individual bodies and minds. (4) 

When I was training in Japan, one day most of the other monks were away and there was just me, my friend and maybe one other person running the temple.  There are a lot of jobs in a senmon sodo, or training temple, and a lot of things that need to happen every day.  Some things are ceremonial and some things are about basic operations, but my friend and I remarked to each other about the many things that had to be done every day just to live there.  Someone had to cook meals, wash dishes, prepare the bath, carry out liturgy three times a day, deal with visitors and deliveries, answer the phone, and open and close the shutters and doors in the morning and evening.  That’s not counting the two work periods a day.  A day in a senmon sodo is a fairly complex operation, somewhat less so on days where people aren’t available or there’s something else happening, but for the most part we’re moving from 4 am to 9 pm.  You can leave your books and pastimes at home when you enter the senmon sodo—you’ll never have time for that stuff.

When we think about it, we’re always making a tremendous effort just to live, no matter our circumstances.  The body alone is doing all kinds of complex operations.  Change is happening all the time, so there’s really no getting away from expending energy.  The question is: where is that energy coming from and where is it going?

Sometimes we expend energy in a conscious striving toward something, trying to reach a goal, learn something or build something or get from here to there.  We expect to have a certain amount of control over what happens, and that’s a kind of individual effort, or a group of individuals.

There’s also the expending of energy that’s simply the universe doing what the universe does.  I might plant seeds and say I’m growing a crop, but I don’t really have anything to do with it.  The causes and conditions are such that plants are growing day by day on their own.  They’re taking in energy from the sun, rain and soil and expending energy to grow.  The seed’s effort is to negate being a seed and to grow into a plant.  Okumura Roshi points out: A baby just being 100 oercent a baby has the energy to negate babyhood and become a boy or girl.  Similarly, when we do something wholeheartedly with full attentiveness, that focused practice provides the energy that enables us to grow.  In this sense, a baby is not simply a baby; within the complete babyhood of being a baby, the baby negates babyhood itself. . . . And although the baby is doing such a complicated thing as negating babyhood, the baby does not conceive this; the baby is just wholeheartedly being a baby.  Our practice of zazen is the same as this. (5)

Now we get to consider the connection between effort and zazen.  Yes, we’re sitting and not moving, but we all know that’s not always easy.  It takes some effort to take the posture, keep the eyes open, breathe deeply and open the hand of thought.  If we’re paying attention, our posture feels natural and not forced, and not engaging in thought is not the same as actively pushing thought away, but still, it takes some energy.  Otherwise, we’re asleep.  If you sit a sesshin with other people, there’s a certain kind of settled, focused energy in the room, and yet we’re not straining to achieve something.  Certainly we’re not running away from our thoughts.  We’re just coming back to this moment, over and over, so we do have to be a bit careful about where our energy is going in zazen.

When we talk about making effort, particularly in zazen, we assume we’re supposed to be doing something.  Yes, our zazen is active, but there’s no me-doing-something.  Something is happening, energy is being expended, but I’m not driving that bus.  Uchiyama Roshi notes: It is not a matter of making a great effort not to be dragged around by desires.  It is just waking up and returning to the reality of life that is essential.  If we apply this to zazen, it means that, even if various thoughts do occur, they will all vanish when we wake up to zazen. (6)  

We can find other ways to practice with this even outside of zazen.  For instance, the way to work with impatience isn’t to work extra hard to be patient, or to argue with impatience and have aversion to it, but to see how it arises and let go of it.  One way to consider making effort is that starving a hindrance is a way of cultivating the opposite virtue or allowing that virtue to arise.  Effort is particularly important for bodhisattvas because they don’t practice for themselves.  Whatever good they don’t cultivate is good they can’t turn around and offer to others.  Whatever hindrances they don’t dissolve keep them from liberating others from suffering.  

In the Tenzo Kyokun, Dogen says: Future students must be able to see that side from this side as well as this side from that side.  [Here’s the major theme of the Mahayana, seeing one reality from two sides and expressing two sides in one action.]  Practicing with intense effort, using all your ingenuity, you will be able to grasp genuine Zen that goes beyond the surface.  To do otherwise will only result in being led about by variously tainted Zen that will leave you incapable of preparing meals skillfully for the community. (7)

In other words, if we don’t make the effort to stay on the path, it’s not only ourselves who are affected; it inhibits our ability to help others.  Even if we try hard and really exert ourselves to help others, we’re just not going to have the wisdom and compassion to do that skillfully.  

The gate statement says that with effort we thoroughly attain many kinds of wisdom.  The actual kanji 善得智 say something like “the virtue of wisdom.”  In translating early Buddhist texts, 智 was used for jnana, which is awareness or understanding as opposed to knowledge or intelligence.  Sometimes this character was also used for prajna, the wisdom of seeing the true nature of reality.

In fact, working on the four exertions or four restraints is sometimes called “wise effort.”  Putting energy into cultivating and maintaining wholesomeness and preventing and diminishing unwholesomeness is a wise thing to do.  We have to have the wisdom to discern what is a skillful use of effort and what isn’t, and how much effort is enough or too much or not enough.  To do that, we have to have a broad view.

Making effort is itself practice.  It’s not a means to an end.  We make effort because that’s what we’re doing right now, not because there’s something outside of here and now that’s going to appear.  Approached with wisdom and a spirit of inquiry, effort can tell us a lot about ourselves.  Am I making effort to shore up my sense of self or prove something to myself or others?  Am I striving for some kind of evidence that I’m doing this right?  All of this stuff just perpetuates habituated thinking.  Am I making less effort because I think whatever is supposed to happen in my practice is impossible?  Or because I really hate zazen but everyone says it’s good for me?  If so, some discernment and honesty with ourselves is called for.

If you spend the whole zazen period daydreaming about where else you’d rather be, or gritting your teeth and just getting through it, or, it’s time to try to gain some insight into what’s going on.  Okumura Roshi always reminded us that “our practice is not a torture.”  Sesshin at Sanshin is intensive, but it’s not an opportunity to prove you’re a samurai.

There are lots of ways that effort can go off the rails.  We need to make sure that what we’re doing is wise effort, just as Shakyamuni’s was, not too cushy, not too austere, not lazy, not being a workaholic, not sitting intensively for several days or a week and then not getting on the cushion again for a month.  Buddha said in his last teaching that this kind of stopping and starting was as ineffective as rubbing two sticks together to make a fire and then stopping before the wood got warm.

How can we make effortless effort, or strive without striving?  We can accept what’s happening in this eternal now without struggling to avoid it or falling in love with it.  We spend a lot of energy on rewriting our experience of this moment based on our expectations.  We also work pretty hard at trying to control what’s happening.  Some things we can control, but first we have to see what’s really going on, and frequently we don’t actually need to control it.  With wisdom, we can redirect the effort we make in unskillful, unwholesome or ignorant activity toward something else.

Notes:

(1) Dogen, E. (2010). Dogen's Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Koroku. United States: Wisdom Publications p. 341-342.
​(2) Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom: Three Fascicles from Shobogenzo with Commentary. (2018). United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 51.
(3) Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom, p. 37.
(4) Okumura, S. (2010). Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen's Shobogenzo. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 54.
​(5) Realizing Genjokoan, p. 178.
​(6) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 57.
​(7) Roshi, K. U. (2005). How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment. United States: Shambhala, p. 12.