[57] The four bases of mystical power are a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with them] the body-and-mind is light. 四如意足是法明門、身心輕故。 There has been a significant shift in the understanding of mystical or spiritual powers from early Buddhism through Dogen and up to today. Let’s start with early teachings about the four bases, then we’ll see what Dogen had to say (and he said a lot), and then how we can think about this today. These four bases of mystical power can be said to be related to four kinds of dhyana. Dhyana has various meanings depending on the context; it can mean training the mind, meditation or concentration, and it can also mean attention, thought or reflection. Meditation in early Buddhism was about letting go of being pulled around by sense-data. Withdrawing from the senses allowed for less distraction and more concentration and balance. For later schools, it’s less about withdrawing from the senses and more about fully entering into those experiences, seeing them for what they are so we’re not attached to them. The four dhyanas are stages of meditation. In the first, one starts letting go of sense-desires and the impulse toward unwholesomeness in getting what one wants. The second brings about mental concentration and serenity, and the third, joy and equanimity. In the fourth, one transcends both suffering and joy. There’s a real sense of progression along a path or following a curriculum in this early practice. Taking up the eightfold path is a preparation for meditation. Once you’ve gotten your life in order and settled down, you can start making progress toward nirvana in your sitting. You start with the four foundations of mindfulness, then you add the four exertions, you progress through the four dhyanas, and if do things right, you may develop some mystical powers! So what are these bases of mystical power? They’re four kinds of concentration: 1) Intention / purpose / desire / zeal (chanda) It might seem strange to find desire among the bases of support for manifesting awakening. We’re always being told that not being in the grip of desire is important in our practice. However, this kind of desire is aspiration or intention, wanting to carry out the four exertions. We’ve decided we’re going to practice, so we want to put energy into it, focus on it and make room for it in our lives. We concentrate on that direction and purpose and make a commitment. 2) Effort / energy / will (viriya) This one is about making a real effort in the long term to move away from unskillfulness and toward skillfulness. Even when we get scared or discouraged, we keep going. It’s not only about our activity or energy level, but also about diligence, perseverance and courage. This second base is related to right effort on the eightfold path. If we’re kind of halfhearted in our practice and don’t stick with it, unwholesomeness creeps back in. We forget what Buddha taught, we get out of the habit of sitting, and we can be influenced by what others are doing. This is why sangha is important—we need some regular contact with others who are doing this practice for support and encouragement. Practicing by ourselves is hard, because there’s a lot of delusion in the world and a lot of pressure to go along with it. 3) Consciousness / mind / thoughts (citta) This is the state of mind or mindset, the same citta as bodhicitta. It’s not the intellectual mind. This is important as a base for practice because our mindstate can be out of alignment with our aspiration. If these two things are going off in different directions, we have a problem and it’s difficult to practice. For instance, we may really want to live according to Buddha’s way but still fall prey to hindrances and develop some doubts. Msaybe we’re just too bored and lethargic to get on the cushion every day. It’s important to recognize when we’re running into one of the hindrances so we can do something about it. Citta can really lead us astray, or, if it’s in alignment with aspiration, it can a real support and source of strength. Watching our mindstates is an exercise in understanding impermanence. During sesshin, we can see that the state of mind at 4 am isn’t the same as at lunchtime or 7 pm. The light changes as the day goes along, and so does our attitude, outlook and state of mind. 4) Investigation / discrimination / wisdom (vīmaṃsā) We have to be able to distinguish between wholesome and unwholesome, or skillful and unskillful. Energy and exertion are fine, but are they in support of something real and good? We can feel happy and satisfied in our practice, but is it because we’re letting go of suffering or because we’re feeding our egos and feeling like wizards? We’ve got to apply some discernment about what we’re doing, our motivation, and the effects of our actions. It’s helpful to have teachers and sangha brothers and sisters to point out where we might be taking a wrong turn, but ultimiately we have to do the work. We have to be the ones who see our suffering and delusion clearly. These are the four bases, and we can see the way they’re interconnected in supporting practice. We have some direction or intention, we make some effort in that direction, we pay attention to the mindstate within which we’re carrying out practice activities (which is both cause and result of our actions), and we determine what’s wholesome and skillful and what’s not. If we do all these things, the gate statement says the mind and body will be light. Other translations of that word would be easy, simple, or gentle. We’re not obstructed or constricted, full of hindrances and extra layers of clinging and aversion, and less likely to act out in harmful ways. So what are these mystical spiritual powers that we’re supposed to get from these bases? The Pubba Sutta says: When the four bases of spiritual power have been developed and cultivated in this way, a bhikkhu wields the various kinds of spiritual power: having been one, he becomes many; having been many, he becomes one; he appears and vanishes; he goes unhindered through a wall, through a rampart, through a mountain as though through space; he dives in and out of the earth as though it were water; he walks on water without sinking as though it were earth; seated cross-legged, he travels in space like a bird; with his hands he touches and strokes the moon and sun so powerful and mighty; he exercises mastery with the body as far as the brahmā world.” That’s the early Buddhist point of view. Dogen’s list is a bit different, as we’ll see in a minute. He had a lot to say about spiritual powers in several places in his writings, but in all of his writings his point is this: having spiritual powers is all well and good, but it’s nothing other than awakening, and the way we manifest awakening moment by moment. Certainly, spiritual powers aren’t going to move us toward understanding the dharma. He may have been responding to practices around him like shugendo 修驗道, a combination of Shingon Buddhism and Japanese folk practices. Shu 修 is practice, gen 驗is supernatural powers gained by practicing in the mountains, and do 道 is way. Adherents chant mantras and do ascetic practices like not eating much or walking many miles to purify body and mind and gain magical powers. Dogen says activities like these don’t help with liberation from suffering, which is the central project of Buddhism. Of course, the first place we meet Dogen talking about special powers is in the Fukanzazengi. He lists various examples of awakening stories from the Denkoroku and then says these cannot be understood by discriminitive thinking, much less can they be known through the practice of supernatural powers. Special powers aren’t necessary or even helpful in seeing what Buddha and our ancestors saw. He says we need to sit zazen for ourselves, and this is probably the first place we encounter him talking about this when we begin practicing Soto Zen. Dogen also wrote about it in four or five places in the Eihei Koroku. In one of them: . . . suppose, moreover, that you have supernatural powers to transform yourself and move the great thousandfold worlds, and you can dry up vast oceans, can fly in the sky like a cloud, can walk on water as if on ground, and your body generates fire and water, wind and clouds, and radiant light. Still, in terms of the great matter [of the causal condition for the appearance of buddhas], you have not seen the ultimate Buddha Dharma, even in a dream. Such supernatural powers and so forth as mentioned above are simply the affair in the realms of the two vehicles of listeners and pratyekabuddhas and of those outside the way, and this is just the livelihood in the demons’ cave. How can such people understand this wondrous Dharma of the unsurpassed awakening of the tathagatas? (1) This teaching is making reference to the Lotus Sutra, which says the single great matter of the causal condition for the appearance of buddhas is opening up, demonstrating, realizing and helping others to enter the insight of buddhas—in other words, putting ourselves right in the middle of awakening by practicing. We’re not going to conjure up buddhas by developing some special powers that are somehow outside of the workings of thus one unified reality. We’re also not going to achieve the “cessation of outflows” or the body-and-mind that are light, easy and unobstructed, as the gate statement says, Here’s another teaching from the Eihei Koroku: A capable master must be endowed with the six spiritual powers. The first is the power to go anywhere; second is the power to hear everywhere; third is the poiwer to know others’ minds; fourth is the power to know previous lives; fifth is the power to see everywhere; sixth is the power to extinguish outflows (attachments). Everyone, do you want to see the power to go anywhere? The teacher Dogen raised his fist. Do you want to see the poiwer to know others’ minds? Dogen let one of his legs hang down from his seat. Do you want to see the power of hearing everywhere? Dogen snapped his fingers once. Do you want to see the power of knowing previous lives? Dogen raised his whisk. Do you want to see the power of seeing everywhere? Dogen drew a circle in the air with his whisk. Do you want to see the power of extinguishing outflows? Dogen drew a single horizontal line (the character for one) with his whisk and said: Although this is so, ultimately, six times six is 36. (2) "Six times six is 36" is simple math; spiritual powers are likewise simple everyday things. Also, there are many powers beyond 36; a buddha has innumerable spiritual powers by virtue of awakening. And a third example: Buddhas do not appear in the world by depending on the sixteen especially excellent meditation methods, which generate the spiritual powers. Even when ordinary people with sharp capacity practice these kinds of meditation, the cessation of outflows does not occur. When tathagatas expound the teaching, the cessation of outflows does occur. (3) "Sixteen methods" refers to 16 techniques of awareness in early Buddhism from the Anapanasati Sutta. Dogen says the practice of buddhas is not directed toward gaining some exalted state, unlike special meditation techniques. Dogen frequently says that understanding the dharma and completely manifesting Buddha nature in moment-to-moment activity is the same as having supernatural powers, so they’re nothing special. Although we might want to cultivate magical abilities, we usually do that in order to have power or impress people, or worse, to take advantage of others. Thus seeking after these things with an unwholesome motivation is a problem. Your natural functioning in everyday life after having dropped off body and mind and let go of the three poisons—or just doing whatever needs to be done—is a greater thing, according to Dogen. Previously we’ve talked about Dogen calling the six sense organs six instances of prajna. Rather than just being six sources of distraction that feeds delusion, they’re six kinds of wisdom. He also says that they themselves are six marvelous spiritual abilities. Dogen wrote a whole fascicle on spiritual powers called Jinzu, which we'll summarize in the remainder of this essay. In it he says that the unsurpassed spiritual ability is our three thousand acts of a morning and our eight hundred acts of an evening, which we take as the normal state of things. Supernatural powers are supposed to arise when we become Buddhas, but that means we’ll never recognize that we have them. Buddhas aren’t aware that they’re buddhas because they’re not separate from awakening. The powers are there before we’re buddhas and after we’re buddhas. In this fascicle Dogen tells a story about a teacher who wakes up in the morning, rolls over and calls out to his disciples. One brings him a basin of water to wash his face; another one brings him a cup of tea. The teacher says that all the everyday things they all just did were practicing their marvelous spiritual abilities. Dogen makes a distinction between the teachings and practices of early Buddhsm related to mystical powers, and says that his view is different, and that it’s the true wisdom passed down by buddhas and ancestors. He tells us, when it comes to these powers, not to practice like early Buddhists, or like non-Buddhists, or like academics. He tells this story again in the Eihei Koroku and says, The wondrous transformation of spiritual powers are simply bringing a basin of water and making tea. (4) Dogen says that even if we gain mystical powers, they’re limited and they don’t compare to the scope of awakening. That’s not the way to really understand the true nature of self. He doesn’t negate the potential for developing special powers of some kind, but he says that’s not a goal of our practice or even particularly helpful. Such things as the lesser spiritual abilities do also exist, enveloped within the capacity of this greater spiritual ability. The greater marvelous spiritual ability is in contact with the lesser spiritual abilities, but the lesser spiritual abilities are not aware of the greater marvelous spiritual ability. If somehow we end up with these mystical powers, he says we shouldn’t stop there and think we’re done, or that we‘ve achieved something. He describes how limited these powers are and concludes that therefore they can’t be an end goal and shouldn’t be mistaken for “awakening: They are all tainted by their practice being considered as separate from enlightenment and because they are confined to some time or some place. They reside in life but do not manifest after one’s death; they belong to oneself but do not belong to someone else. Though they may manifest in this land of ours, they may not manifest in all other countries; though some may manifest them without trying, others cannot manifest them when they would. If we consider mystical powers as separate from awakening, or a stepping stone to awakening, we’ve made a mistake. Then he points out that a person using these powers is limited to a time and place, and that such powers belong to one person but not to another. Thus if we’re practicing in order to gain this kind of advantage for ourselves, our motivation is questionable, and also we don’t understand awakening, which is not limited to a time or place or one person. Now we come to a very famous image: The marvelous spiritual ability manifests its enlightened functioning in our carrying water and our hauling firewood. Dogen is quoting this verse by Lay Disciple Hō’on. You’ve likely heard this teaching that it’s the very ordinariness of our moment by moment practice that’s important. Just chop wood and carry water. Dogen says You need to thoroughly explore this principle through your training. It’s not something to study with the intellect but to experience in carrying out our everyday tasks and activities. He says sometimes we do things for ourselves, and sometimes for others. Sometimes we’re not even aware that our daily tasks are manifestations of spiritual power or awakening, but that doesn’t make them any the less marvelous. He suggests we don’t need to compare our mundane activities with exotic mystical powers: Spiritual powers arise along with that which is beyond anything our consciousness can recognize, and they abide in that which is beyond anything our consciousness can recognize, and they take their true refuge in that which is beyond anything our consciousness can recognize. The ever-changing characteristics of the marvelous spiritual ability of Buddhas have no connection with something short or something long, so, in all seriousness, how can one possibly undertake to evaluate them simply by making comparisons? Then Dogen considers what it means to “possess” supernatural powers. Of course, we can grasp them and be hindered by them just like anything else for which we have craving and clinging. Is it really possible to own or possess such powers? Or is that just an obstruction? Does it put artifical limits on something that’s not actually limited? He quotes Hyakujo Ekai: When the six sense gates leave no trace, we call this ‘the six marvelous spiritual abilities’. Simply, at this very moment when we are smoothly going on, unhindered by all the various material and immaterial things that arise, and having brought to an end our dependency on our discriminatory thinking, then this too is called the ‘the six marvelous spiritual abilities’. Not claiming these marvelous spiritual abilities as one’s own is what we call not ‘possessing’ spiritual abilities. Dogen goes on to describe some characteristics of bodhisattvas who may have these powers. They’re no longer dependent only on discriminative thinking, and they may not use the powers they have. In other words, they’re not stuck in the karmic conditions around their powers. They see them from the perspective of the universal self rather than the small karmic self. He tells us not to mistake *meaningless feasting on externals for the daily behavior of returning to one’s True Home,* not to get caught up in the limited view of feeding the ego and instead to respond to this moment using whatever we have, but not being hindered or obstructed by whatever we have. We don’t hear so much about mystical or transcendental powers from our contemporary teachers. In general, it might be difficult for modern Western practitioners to think that teachings about supernatural powers are credible or relevant. Sawaki Roshi said: There are bodhisattvas “without magical abilities.” These are bodhisattvas who have even entirely forgotten words like “practice” or “satori”, bodhisattvas without wonderful powers, bodhisattvas who are immeasurable, bodhisattvas who are not interested in their name and fame. That’s right in line with what Dogen was saying. Elsewhere, Sawaki Roshi says: What’s called “having magical powers” doesn’t mean anything more than having a facial expression that isn’t muddled. It’s good to remember that the focus of this gate is on the bases of mystical power, not on the mystical powers themselves. It’s tempting to jump straight to “Cool! If I do enough sitting practice I can levitate and see through walls and walk on water!” Maybe so, but it’s not enough. The point of these four bases is that they support our sitting practice and help us to be easy and light in body and mind—in other words, to move freely through the world as bodhisattvas liberating beings from suffering without getting caught by the three poisons. Whatever else happens is fine, but whether or not we can read people’s minds or hear things that happen on the other side of the world is not a measure of the success of our zazen. Uchiyama Roshi says: The attitude of the practitioner practicing zazen as a Mahayana Buddhist teaching never means to attempt to artifically create some new self by means of practice. Nor should it be aiming at decreasing delusion and finally eliminating it altogether. We practice zazen, neither aiming at having a special mystical experience nor trying to gain greater enlightenment. Zazen as true Mahayana teaching is always the whole self just truly being the whole self, life truly being life. (5) Our practice not so linear as the early Buddhist style, but the important message is still that we need to cultivate and practice if we’re going to let go of three poisons. Just wishing it to be so or trying to become wizards in order to see what others don’t see isn’t enough. We can’t develop powers in order to aid us in our practice, and we can’t make developing powers as a result of our practice the goal. Okumura Roshi says: Our practice doesn’t have a mystical, mysterious or magical power to clear away all delusions. But like the raindrops, we sit moment by moment, day after day, year after year, and this sitting generates the power to erode a rock. . . . 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. (6) Notes: (1) Dogen, E. (2010). Dogen's Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Koroku. United States: Wisdom Publications. p. 512 (2) Eihei Koroku, p. 211 (3) Eihei Koroku, p. 347 (4) Eihei Koroku, p. 90 (5) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 83 (6) Okumura, S. (2012). Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 48-49. Questions for reflection and discussion:
The four right exertions are a gate of Dharma illumination; for they eliminate all evils and realize many kinds of good. 四正懃是法明門、斷一切惡成善故。 This a very old teaching in our tradition. It goes way back into the Pali canon and carries through to Dogen and to our teachers today. Sometimes these activities are called exertions and sometimes restraints. The Maggavibhanga Sutta says about the four right exertions: There is the case where a monk generates desire, endeavors, activates persistence, upholds and exerts his intent for: - the sake of the non-arising of evil, unskillful qualities that have not yet arisen. - the sake of the abandonment of evil, unskillful qualities that have arisen. - the sake of the arising of skillful qualities that have not yet arisen. - the maintenance, non-confusion, increase, plenitude, development, and culmination of skillful qualities that have arisen. Or, in perhaps plainer language: 1) to prevent bad that has not yet occurred, 2) to cause bad that has already occurred to be extinguished, 3) to bring about good that has not yet occurred, and 4) to promote the good that’s already here We can see why these are both exertions and restraits. We’re actively promoting wholesomeness and restraining unwholesomeness, and we get involved both before things arise and after they’ve appeared. We prevent bad from happening and try to get rid of it when it arises. We encourage good to happen and try to keep it around when it does. What is good and bad (wholesome and unwholesome) in the Buddhist tradition? Causing suffering to self or others is unwholesome. Reducing suffering and bringing joy to self and others is wholesome. The challenge is that the complete working of this kind of cause and effect isn’t clear. We can’t tell from looking just at this one action whether ultimlately good will come about or not. We have to look also at all other related actions and consequences. Thus we just vow to do our best in this moment, and if it all goes wrong, we make repentence and vow to do better next time. If it goes well, we don’t attach to that outcome as a validation of our wisdom and compassion; we just offer that up to the universe and move on. Buddha says doing the four exertions is both possible and is conducive to benefit and pleasure. Working with the four exertions is associated with Right Effort on the Eightfold Path. The important thing about Right Effort is to pay attention to what kind of energy that effort is generating and whether it’s wholesome or not. To understand this, we have to take a bit of a detour to look at early teachings about the Eightfold Path. The Eighfold Path has three divisions; wisdom, ethics, and concentration. Right Effort falls into the section about concentration, along with Right Mindfulness and Right Samadhi (or meditation or concentration). Right Effort provides the energy and Right Mindfulness provides the stable awareness for Right Concentration. Effort and mindfulness support concentration. However, that energy can go in any direction. It has to work together with Right View and Right Intention so that it’s directed toward wholesomeness and awakening. Energy can lead either to desire, aggression, violence, and ambition on the one hand, or generosity, self-discipline, kindness, concentration, and understanding on the other. If we’re not careful about where we put that energy, we can get caught up in unwholesome mental states and take actions that create harmful karma and perpetuate suffering rather than actions that move ourselves and others toward awakening. Effort arises again and again as a theme in Buddha’s teachings because each of us has to do our own practice. Buddha and our teachers can point out the path, but it’s up to us to actually put those teachings into practice. We have to start with investigating how our our own three poisons, delusions and hindrances arise, and make effort to see through them and release ourselves from making mistakes and creating suffering because of our ignorance. Preventing the arising of unwholesome states The point of this in the early teachings is to get rid of things that cause distraction in our sitting practice. Specifically, we’re talking here about the five hindrances: sensual desire, ill will, dullness and drowsiness, restlessness and worry, and doubt. The first two hindrances, sensual desire and ill will, are said to be the strongest of the set because they represent greed and aversion. The other three hindrances are less toxic but still problematic because they’re offshoots of delusion, usually mixed up with other defilements. Sensual desire is interpreted in two ways. Sometimes it’s craving for things coming in through the senses that get labeled as pleasant, and sometimes it’s just general craving for whatever—not only good sensations but power, money, nice belongings, social status. Overall, it’s concerned with craving, attachment, and wanting stuff. The second hindrance, ill will, is about the other side of craving: aversion. Craving and aversion are the same because they both mean we want things to be different than they are. I want what I don’t have or I don’t want what’s here. Ill-will includes hatred, anger, resentment, and every kind of pushing away. It could be directed towards other people, ourselves, objects, or situations. The third hindrance, dullness and drowsiness, feels like the opposite of energy and exertion: inertia, heaviness of mind, and the desire just to sleep. The fourth hindrance, restlessness and worry, is the other side of dullness. This is the unquiet mind, full of agitation, excitement, and jumping quickly from thought to thought. Maybe we’re worried and remorseful about past mistakes and anxious about their possible painful consequences. The fifth hindrance, doubt, is about indecisiveness. Rather than committing to practice and investigating the self and the rest of reality, we can’t commit because we’ve got lingering doubts about this whole thing. These five hindrances aren’t coming from somewhere else. Because of our karmic conditions, we have these tendencies, and when a cause appears, hindrances arise. These are things we’re generating ourselves. The problem isn’t objects of our senses; that’s not where delusion lies. The problem is what we do with that sensory information. We create an immediate overall impression of that object as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, and cling to that conclusion—and then start exploring details of the object or our perception of the object. Because of greed, we can become fascinated with something we think is agreeable. Because of aversion, we can be repulsed by something we find disagreeable. All that just perpetuates and multiplies the delusion. Instead, can we just be aware of the object and the process that’s happening without being hijacked and writing a story? Abandoning unwholesome states once arisen Despite our best intentions, we may still notice that something unwholesome has arrived and we need to make it disappear. Buddha had remedies for each of the five hindrances and for the hindrances as a whole. One is to replace the unwholesome thought with the opposite wholesome one. If we’re struggling with grasping and desire, we consider impermanence and the instablity of whatever we’re clinging to. For ill will, we consider loving kindness and the wish that all beings be well and happy. For dullness and drowsiness, some kinhin or even brisk walking might help, or simply renewing our vows or aspiration. For restlessness and worry, we can calm down by mindfulness of breathing. For doubt, investigate the teachings and practice, ask questions, and engage in study. In general, it’s said that there are three ways to work with these hindrances that are clamoring for our attention: consider that what’s arising is unwholecome and will have unfortunate consequences; redirect your attention to the opposite wholesome condition; and accept and acknowledge it, look at it head-on and investigate where it’s coming from and how it’s arising. These five hindrances make up the unwholesome states we’re told to prevent in the first of the four exertions and to abandon in the second. Encouraging wholesome states to arise Our practice is full of teachings and activities designed to help make this possible, everything from the Eightfold Path to the four foundations of mindfulness. Suffice it to say that applying ourselves to our practice is not different than establishing and maintaining wholesome conditions. Dogen says that practice and enlightenment are not two, but in these early teachings, this is a linear path. Mindfulness leads to investigation of phenomena, which leads to cultivation of energy, and so on. Our more immediate ancestors would say that these factors arise together. Maintaining wholesome states once they arise There’s another very old text with something to say about restraining unwholesomeness and encouraging wholesomeness, and that’s the Dhammapada, which may be more familiar than the Mahavibhanga Sutta. The Dhammapada is a collection of short poems, considered to be one of the oldest written scriptures, which means it existed before Buddhism was divided into sects in India. It contains a famous poem called “The Verse of the Teaching of All Seven Buddhas.” Not doing of any evil Doing of all good deeds Purification of one’s own mind This is the teaching of all buddhas. Our tradition says there were seven buddhas before Shakyamuni, so this is what all of buddhas have taught. The first two lines are pretty clear: don’t do bad stuff and only do good stuff. The third line about purification of one’s own mind has different interpretations, but one of the traditional ones is going beyond good and bad. That means not clinging to unwholesomeness but also not clinging to wholesomeness. This verse contains two levels of teaching: we should do good and not do evil, and we should go beyond good and evil. In early Buddhism, the first part about good and evil was for lay people and the one about going beyond good and evil was only for monks. Only monks could practice and go beyond good and evil, and they shouldn’t be involved with the world. Laypeople stayed within the cycle of transmigration, and the only way out was to become a monk. The role of the laity was to give money or other things to support the monks while they worked for Nirvana. In the Mahayana tradition this doesn’t work, because it doesn’t make a distinction between monks and laity when it comes to awakening. Thus somehow these two points of view had to be integrated: how to do good and not do bad and also go beyond good and bad. The four exertions are telling us to restrain unwholesomeness and encourage wholesomeness, and of course we should do that, but as soon as we create a yardstick to measure good and bad, we form attachment to our good deeds. If we ignore the difference between good and bad, that’s also a problem. At Gate 55 we saw that Nagarjuna said when we attach only to the absolute perspective, that’s the sickness of emptiness. We still have to live in world and what we do makes a difference. How can we just do good without clinging to our good deeds, trying not to do evil, and not judging ourselves or others? There’s both an internal and an external aspect to this gate. The oldest meaning of the four exertions is that in our personal practice, we try to understand the nature of our delusion and suffering so that we can prevent them from arising or liberate ourselves from them when they do arise. Likewise, we try to understand the nature of wisdom and compassion so we can encourage or cultivate them in our minds and hearts and perpetuate them when they do arise. However, we can also aspire to do these things in the outer world of the community. We can try to head off suffering when possible and help those who are already facing difficulty. We can also try to make good things happen in the world and keep wholesome activities going once they’ve started. This is clearly a case of, as Okumura Roshi has said, needing both to take a step back to study the self and a step forward to help others. In Living by Vow, he writes, We may practice zazen to pacify or calm ourselves, but that is not enough. We have to engage in the activity of our day-to-day lives. One of places we look for guidance about our actions is precepts, and indeed the Threefold Pure Precepts have something to say. When we do formal meals, one part of our chant before we eat is: The first portion is to end all evil the second is to cultivate every good the third is to free all beings May everyone realize the Buddha’s Way. Then we eat three bites from each bowl, and then eat as we please. This chant is making a reference to the threefold pure precepts:
Now we can see what Dogen had to say about all of this. If you come to our monthly ryaku fusatsu ceremony where we renew our aspiration to follow the precepts, you hear me read the Kyojukaimon. It’s a text containing Dogen’s teaching that was written down by his student Ejo. There’s a statement about each of the three pure precepts: The precept of embracing moral codes: This is the abode of the laws and codes of all buddhas. This is the root source of the laws and codes of all buddhas. Sometimes this is known as the precept of avoiding all evil acts. It’s same as keeping bad from arising and stopping it once it’s arrived. By abiding by the precepts, we avoid doing unwholesome things. Dogen says this precept is the origin of all of our precepts as well as the forms and rituals we use, so it’s not really a regulation or a rule but something that points to the reality of all beings because of interdependent origination. We’re already completely connected with everything else, so it’s not possible to do something unwholesome and receive only a benefit ourselves while other beings suffer. If we really understand that, we don’t feel moved to do bad things in the first place. This is really at the heart of our practice—it’s what it means to be a bodhisattva, it’s what it means to understand the four noble truths, and it’s what drives our practice and determines how we move through the world. Not doing evil is the root or origin of the Buddha’s laws and codes, and also the abode or manifestation of the Buddha’s laws and codes. The precept of embracing beneficial actions: This is the dharma of Unsurpassable True Awakening (Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi). This is the way in which one should practice by oneself and the way in which one should lead others. This is the same as encouraging and sustaining good. Dogen says that doing wholesome things is itself awakening. If we’re clear about the true nature of reality and the three marks of existence (interdependence, impermanence and no-self), then what arises naturally is wholesomeness rather than unwholesomeness. Until we can see with the eyes of Buddha, we have precepts, guidelines and teachings that help us stay on track. The precept of embracing all living beings: One should transcend distinction between ordinary beings and sages, and save both oneself and others. Embracing all living beings is another reference to interconnectedness, ands doing good or doing harm affects the entire network of all beings, so making effort for good and restraining bad is working for the universe as a whole. It would seem that all of this is pretty self-evident. Do good, don’t do bad, and positive things will result. However, as we’ve seen, it’s not that simple. Dogen says we also have to let go of even our desire to step through this gate of the four exertions. In his forthcoming book on the precepts, Okumura Roshi says: Any good or bad deed has its own result, and that’s not the end. There’s an endless circle within good and bad, and in order to reach nirvana we should be free from the motivation of doing good in order to get a good result, or trying not to do bad things in order to avoid going into hell. On that basis, we are endlessly transmigrating in a circular experience. Dogen says that if we cling to emptiness as an excuse to do something bad because there is no distinction between good and evil, that kind of teaching is the suggestion of demons. Not doing evil isn’t really a precept or a man-made rule, it’s awakening itself—a complete manifestation of reality. Not only that, the four exertions aren’t something we do by ourselves. They happen because we’re living together with all beings throughout space and time. Dogen also gave a little talk on this that was recorded in the Eihei Koroku: Don’t you see that the World-Honored One said, “You bhiksus already abide in the precepts. Restrain the five facilties and do not allow yourselves to indulge and enter into the five desires. For example, this is like a person who tends an ex, holding a staff and keeping watch so that it never violates the seedlings in others’ fields. If we indulge the five senses, then the five desires will simply grow beyond all bounds, and go beyond all control. Therefore, the descendants of buddha ancestors should not direct themselves on the evil paths of sounds and colors or fame and profit. Not directing oneself toward sounds and colors means that you should immediately discard fame and profit, and make the five faculties sharp and clear. To be sharp and clear means that once we hear that we should discard fame and profit and should discard self-centeredness, we immediately discard them. Such practitioners can be said to enact great functioning and have superior qualities. People who cannot yet be like this are called inferior vessels. This being the case, how can we tend an ox? How is the staff? How are the seedlings? How is our watching? And how is the master of the seedlings? Worldly people certainly do not know this; it is only correctly transmitted by buddha ancestors. [Talk #383, p. 343] So here we are, back again at managing the five hindrances and making right effort to watch where our energy is going the way a person tends an ox. If we let the ox run wild, it makes mistakes and tears up the neighbor’s field. If we pay attention, the ox is fine, the seedlings are fine, the neighbor is fine and we’re fine. How can we tend an ox? How is the staff? How are the seedlings? How is our watching? And how is the master of the seedlings? When Dogen says Worldly people certainly do not know this; it is only correctly transmitted by buddha ancestors, he’s telling us that the only way to take care of wholesome and unwholesome is to practice. Questions for reflection and discussion:
The Dharma as an abode of mindfulness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] wisdom is free of blurs. 法念處是法明門、智惠無翳故。 As we wrap up our consideration of the four foundations of mindfulness, we’ve seen that each of these four gates takes up an aspect: body, feeling, mind and dharma. This last of the four gates reminds us that this world of form and human activity or human experience is only once side of reality. There is also the wisdom that is free of blurs. The dharma here is simply the reality of our moment-by-moment lives. Wisdom is prajna, seeing emptiness of all conditioned things. Of the three poisons, ignorance is said to be the most basic. In this case, it’s referring to ignorance of impermanence, interconnected and emptiness. If indeed ignorance is the most basic poison, then wisdom that sees emptiness becomes even more important. This we need to consider wisdom and also emptiness, but let’s start with emptiness first. The Aksayamati Sutra says: When bodhisattvas rest and look at experience, they don’t see any experience at all. Therefore, there are no virtues of a Buddha. Therefore, there is no Awakening. Therefore, there is no path. Therefore, there is no liberation. Therefore, there is no salvation. Knowing that all experience has no salvation, they attain the meditative absorption of great compassion known as “Undistorted.” In other words, bodhisattvas understand that all their ideas about their experience and all the emotions that arise from that are without substance. They’re things we create by ourselves. There’s no permanent self that has delusions or three poisons, and there’s no delusion or three poisons to be possessed. Okumura Roshi says that looking for the self is like peeling an onion; apart from the layers, there’s no onion there. The onion is the collection of layers that make up the onion. It’s a great example of emptiness, just like the teaching that apart from the five skandhas, there’s no self that has some independent existence. At Gate 54 we saw that Uchiyama Roshi calls the three marks of existence “undeniable realities.” He says: The third undeniable reality is that all things lack substantial, independent existence; this is shohou muga. Since nothing is substantial by itself just as it is, there is nothing to hold on to. This means your thoughts are not something to hold on to either so the only thing to do is to let go of all that comes into your head. The expression “letting go of whatever arises” is my own way of expressing the idea of ku, or emptiness. This can also be interpreted as “without body or form,” or not being tied to form. We can talk about this or that only because we grab onto or try to make some connection with something. “Letting go of whatever arises” is not trying to forge a link with some outside object. This is the truth derived from the third undeniable reality. (1) Okumura Roshi sometimes talks about three kinds of emptiness. 1) When there’s a container, there’s something at the bottom and empty space above it up to the top—space that’s only occupied by air. 2) Then there’s the space that doesn’t disappear even when it’s not occupied by things; that space doesn’t appear, disappear or change, and it’s not defiled or pure depending on what’s in the space. 3) Finally, there’s emptiness as prajna, seeing everything without self-nature the way Buddha sees. This third kind of emptiness is not like empty space at the top of the container, a sort of lack of being, and also not space that allows everything to exist. It’s emptiness as the reality of all beings that penetrates the whole universe. This is the world of the five skandhas as the Buddha lives in it. Okumura Roshi says: 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. (2) He says the rakusu or okesa is a great example of emptiness. It starts out as a set of various pieces of cloth that are assembled together and sewed into a robe which stays in that shape for awhile. Thus the robe is more than a uniform; it embodies basic Buddhist teachings. However, there’s a more subtle way that the robe is an example of emptiness. The robe chant says that the robe has no fixed form just like the rest of the reality of emptiness. In other words, the robe has a form, but that form itself is formless or empty, so there’s nothing to which we can attach ourselves. As soon as we do, we’ve gone off the rails. (3) It’s the same with all the other dharmas we encounter, but to chant about the formless form of the robe and then put it on the body and wear it is an interesting way to practice with this teaching. Dogen says that everything is prajna precisely because everything is empty. Here’s what Okumura Roshi says about that: Dogen cautions us not to live our lives according to our thinking; he admonishes us rather to just see and to just live. To live in this way means that we just see and experience what we encounter in our lives without saying it is empty, even through it truly is empty. That’s it. We don’t need to say “This is empty” if it really is empty. Dogen placed importance on the true reality of each being rather than on any conceptual reality we might have of it. He saw that true reality does not dwell within our thinking; it is every one of myriad things. This is why Dogen said, Form is nothing but form, emptiness is nothing but emptiness. One hundred blades of glass -- ten thousand things. One hundred blades of grass and ten thousand things mean everything. In other words, everything is prajna paramita because everything is empty. Prajna is not a personal, individual wisdom we can possess; rather, each thing is itself reality and each thing is itself prajna or wisdom. (4) The English word “wisdom” is usually about using your knowledge, experience and good judgement. It’s very much about what you personally know or know how to do. It’s precisely because you’re more competent than others that you’re seen as wise or having wisdom. Prajna is completely different: the wisdom that sees emptiness. It’s not your individual ability to see emptiness but the reality of all things as empty. Each thing we encounter is wisdom because it’s empty. Each thing isn’t worried about whether or not it has self nature or is impermanent or interconnected. It knows everything it needs to know and know how to do everything it needs to know how to do. It’s just existing in emptiness. Prajna isn’t a function of our minds or a way of thinking or believing. It’s just the true reality of things as they are in this moment. It’s not a case of trying to see emptiness in things. trying to understand and convince ourselves that everything is empty. To see a flower and tell myself the flower is empty is already extra. It’s empty whether I say so or not, its emptiness isn’t determined by whether or not I see it. I don’t create emptiness the way I might think I’ve determined whether something is beautiful or ugly or large or small. In Shobogenzo Yuibutsu Yobutsu (Only Buddha Together with Buddha), Dogen says: An ancient buddha who had never spoken once said as follows: “In death, there is the living; in life, there is the dead. There are the dead who are always dead; there are the living who are always living.” This is not what is forcibly made by a person; the Dharma is like this.” There seem to be opposites here—form and emptiness, living and dead—but these pairs are already completely not separate. It’s not necessary to say that life is death and death is life, or that life is only life and death is only death. These things are already empty or prajna or the true reality of all beings; we don’t create that truth by understanding it. In the same way, the Buddha didn’t create the dharma in the sense of that word as the way the universe really works. He awoke to it, but it was already there. It might be good to say something here about the two truths: absolute truth and conventional truth. Absolute truth is the reality of emptiness or interdependent origination that we can’t describe in words and concepts. We can only describe absolute truth in terms of conventional truth: words and ideas that only have meaning in relation to other words and ideas. We can’t use thinking mind to understand absolute truth. We have to see reality from both sides: absolute and conventional. This is the basis of Nagarjuna’s philosophy and is an important thread in the Mahayana. (Nagarjuna is the fourteenth ancestor in our lineage.) He said that the teaching of emptiness is a medicine for the illness called attachment, but when we cling to the idea of emptiness we have another sickness for which there is no medicine! Thus we have to hold both of these two truths in a balanced way, without falling down on one side or the other. Living only in the world of emptiness is called spiritual bypassing today, and might be expressed as because everything is already empty, it doesn’t matter what I do here in this world of form. We can’t carry out our bodhisattva work with that attitude. Anyway, Okumura Roshi says holding these two truths is the central theme of the Mayahana, seeing one reality from two sides and expressing two sides in one action. This is important to our ability to take beneficial action. There are two sides to our bodhisattva practice: wisdom and compassion. He says we need to take a backward step to study ourselves and clearly see the emptiness of all things, and we also need to take a forward step to help living beings in need. We are expressing two sides in one action. (5) Emptiness can seem abstract and theoretical and not at all concerned with our practical moment by moment lives, but that’s because we have some idea about what emptiness is. Emptiness is nothing more than the complete interconnectedness of all things. Nothing has a separate self-nature because we can’t really say where the boundary is between one thing and another. We can’t point to anything and say that it’s completely independent of anything else. Sawaki Roshi and Uchiyama Roshi say that because nothing is substantial, when we start fighting over things it’s like having a tug of war over clouds. Everything is the result of temporary collections of causes and conditions, so everything is empty—but everything also exists. This is form is emptiness and emptiness is form. I’ve just said that emptiness can seem like abstract theory; we get it intellectually, even if we know that our ideas about emptiness aren’t the whole story. However, when it comes to actually practicing with that and releasing ourselves from craving and aversion, just understanding the theory isn’t so helpful. It seems like our experience of objects is the real concrete truth and that teachings about emptiness are abstract. Uchiyama Roshi says that it’s our ideas about the objects that actually the abstract element. I encounter an object, give it a name, decide whether I like it or not, and decide what its purpose is. Maybe I do this just by seeing an object or even just thinking about it. None of that is the actual reality of the object—it’s my abstract thinking, an idea that exists only in my head. The actual reality of the object is emptiness. The actual reality is that it’s only itself. I‘ve said various things here about seeing or understanding emptiness, and I’ve also said that we can’t grasp emptiness with the thinking mind. How do we work with mindfulness of the true nature of reality as this gate says? Okumura Roshi says: We are very uncertain about almost everything; this uncertainty is a key element of the reality of our life. Actually, this uncertainty is a very important experience of the Buddhist teaching of emptiness. (6) He points out that when Dogen talks about not understanding in various places in the Shobogenzo, it’s not a negative thing. As usual his language about that is kind of unusual. He uses a term that can be translated as “not understanding” but also as “to do not-understanding,” in other words, to actively embrace not intellectually understanding and not getting caught up in creating concepts and attaching to them. That’s what we do when our karmic consciousness kicks in. We write stories based on past experiences, including the things we talked about with relation to the first three abodes of mindfulness and that whole process of arising. Doing not-understanding is about keeping someting in mind without grasping it with a kind of personal understanding. It’s opening the hand of thought, just as in zazen. Nishiari Bokusan, one of Sawaki Roshi’s teachcers, says: The Buddha Way does not fall into form, and does not fall into emptiness. There is a point at which you jump off both form and emptiness and do not abide there. You must see through this. That is practice. , , , At the time when we see all dharmas as dharmas, we sill not fall into being and non-being. The reason is that being is free from being, and emptiness is free from emptiness. As beingis free from being, it is a real being. As emptiness is free from emptiness, it is true emptiness. Thus, all dharmas have the face and eyes of going beyond as dharmas suchness. (7) When we say form, emptiness is already there and vice versa. It’s not enough to just say form is emptiness and emptiness is form, or, we can really only say form is form and emptiness is emptiness. We don’t need to make a distinction and separate them. There’s form and emptiness as distinct and form and emptiness as not distinct. Prajna is dropping any conception about whether they’re distinct or not. At each of these gates we’ve been considering Dogen’s piece about the four foundations of mindfulness in the Eihei Koroku: Our Buddha (Shakyamuni) said to his disciples, there are four foundations of mindfulness on which people should depend. These four foundations of mindfulness refer to contemplating the body as impure, contemplating sensation as suffering, contemplating mind as impermanent and contemplating phenomena as non-substantial. I, Eihei, also have four foundations of mindfulness: contemplating the body as a skin-bag, contemplating sensation as eating bowls, contemplating mind as fences, walls, tiles and pebbles, and contemplating phenomena as old man Zhang drinking wine, old man Li getting drunk. Great assembly, are my four foundations of mindfulness the same or different from the ancient Buddha’s four foundations of mindfulness? If you say they are the same, your eyebrows will fall out (from lying). If you say they are different, you will lose your body and life. (8) Buddha says contemplating phenomena as non-substantial, while Dogen says contemplating phenomena as old man Zhang drinking wine, old man Li getting drunk. Again, my impression of this text is that Dogen is bringing the original more abstract text into the concrete world of objects and actions, and that he’s doing it to help us see form and emptiness and going beyond form and emptiness. Buddha is talking more broadly about non-substantiality. Nothing has a fixed self-nature in this universe of emptiness. Dogen says there are individual beings in the world. They are distinct and we can point to them. Zhang and Li are not the same person. He doesn’t negate the existence of form, but he’s also making the point that the dharma spreads and functions beyond our usual modes of perceiving because of emptiness. Zhang and Li are interconnected—one takes an action and another feels the effect. Being mindful of dharma and the wisdom of prajna isn’t just about processing what comes in through the sense gates and turning that into human activity driven by our karmic circumstances, although those aspects are not left out or cut off. Emptiness is beyond our usual modes of perceiving, and yet it’s not supernatural or otherworldly. Interestingly, when I was in grad school one of my professors in Asian and Buddhist literature said we shouldn’t use the word “supernatural” when talking about Buddhist themes because it implies that there is something outside of nature. There can’t be anything outside of nature, or the dharma, or the Buddha Way, or awakening, or emptiness. He used the word “fantastic” instead, as in something imaginative or fanciful. Emptiness isn’t a supernatural thing, it’s right here in the midst of form and not separate from that. Why is emptiness so important for us and how can we be aware of it in our moment-to-moment practice? The clearest manifestation is in being released from clinging. If everything is empty, there’s nothing to which we can become attached. If we’re not caught up in clinging, we manifest that in our actions. That means we give and offer freely, without worrying about what we’re going to get out of it. It means that when things come and go in our lives, we can let them come and go with much less suffering. It means we can be happy for others when something good happens for them rather than being envious or trying to get a piece of it for ourselves. It means we’re free from fixed ideas about good and bad, life and death, self and other, form and emptiness. It means that the impulse to steal doesn’t arise because there’s already nothing which is separate from us and because there isn’t really a self that can possess something. The wisdom that sees emptiness means not getting stuck anywhere, and also not leaving this world for somewhere else that might be better. Now we’re back to the bit of the Aksayamati Sutra that we looked at earlier: When bodhisattvas rest and look at experience, they don’t see any experience at all. I immediately think of Uchiyama Roshi’s intersection of peace and progress. We rest in emptiness because emptiness is already here, and the wisdom that sees emptiness is already here—and also, in the midst of that stillness, there is dynamic activity. The universe continues to do what the universe does. Awakening is carrying out awakening. Bodhisattvas are engaged in beneficial action, but they don’t see any experience at all! Because of prajna they don’t see a being carrying out activity and having an experience. They see complete functioning without separation. They see call and response arising together. They see vow and repentance arising together. They recognize that there are distinct forms and also no forms and that naming form and emptiness isn’t necessary. Mindfulness of the dharma such that wisdom is free from blurs is just like this. Notes (1) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 11. (2) Okumura, S. (2012). Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 9. (3) See Living by Vow, p. 82. (4) Okumura, S. (2010). Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen's Shobogenzo. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 37. (5) See Okumura, S. (2018). The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner's Guide to Dogen's "Sansuikyo". United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 92. (6) Mountains and Waters Sutra, p. 9. (7) Dogen, E., Zenji, E. D. (2011). Dogen's Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries. United States: Counterpoint Press, p. 34. (8) Dogen, E. (2010). Dogen's Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Koroku. United States: Wisdom Publications. p. 287. Questions for reflection and discussion:
Mind as an abode of mindfulness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we reflect that mind is like a phantom. 心念處是法明門、觀心如幻化故。 As we continue our consideration of the four abodes of mindfulness, we can begin to see how they’re helping us to understand the process of having an experience and then taking action based on that experience. First we saw how the sense organs of the body have some contact with something, and out of that arises feeling or sensation; we decide immediately whether that feeling is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Now we get to the third step in that process: thoughts and emotions arise in the mind. Mind in the case of this dharma gate is not just intellect. There’s some variety in the way the original Sanskrit words for these four abodes are translated and understood. For instance, “mind” is sometimes translated “mental states,” so it isn’t just intellectual thinking but also includes the feeling tone. This is the point where feeling or sensation gives rise to the three poisons. We have a pleasant sensation and greed arises; we want more happiness, satisfaction, self-esteem or reassurance. We have an unpleasant sensation and aversion arises; we want to escape from anger, hatred, fear or shame. We have a neutral sensation and maybe ignorance is there; we don’t pay much attention to it or we ignore it. Usually we’re rather unaware of this chain, and suddenly we may be completely hijacked by our response to something. In a split second our whole outlook can change, so it makes sense to pay attention to how things arise in the mind and how those mental states are changeable and impermanent. When we’re deep in the throes of misery, infatuation or some other mental state, it seems like that feeling is going to go on forever. Sometimes that’s good and sometimes it’s not. We like good feelings and happy thoughts, and don’t want to let go of those. We don’t like bad feelings and unhappy thoughts, and we want them to go away as quickly as possible. That’s all completely understandable in this human form. Our practice isn’t telling us not to feel things, or to suppress our responses to the world. We’re not completely and wholeheartedly living this human life if we’re doing that. There are parts of our selves and our lives that we don’t like so much and we’d like to pretend they’re not there, but as bodhisattvas, that’s not an option for us. Mindfulness of mind means we know what’s going on in our minds. We know and acknowledge when we’re feeling attraction or aversion. We recognize when we’re being pulled around by delusion. We’re also aware of the general condition of our minds: distracted or focused, clear or confused. It sounds pretty simple, like we shouldn’t have to be told about it. Of course I know what’s going on up there. However, when we start paying attention, we realize how much of the time things are happening that lead to action or affect our relationships, and we’re completely unaware of what’s driving us. Where did that come from? What was I thinking? Entering into this gate is a real chance to befriend ourselves, a real chance to become intimate with ourselves and the totality of our experience. That’s not always easy or pleasant, and sometimes we don’t like ourselves that much. It’s not easy to befriend someone you don’t like. Especially if we’re stuck in habituated thinking and we’re having responses that are really familiar, we can just take for granted that those responses are the only possible outcome and that that process is permanent. Taking up this gate is also a way to practice with an intimate experience of impermanence. You’ll recall that impermanence is one of the three marks of existence, other two being interconnectedness and the emptiness of the self. These three marks are characteristic of all conditioned things. In other words, everything arises from causes and conditions, and everything is impermanent, interconnected and empty. These three marks aren’t actually separate; they’re all really pointing to the same thing. Uchiyama Roshi calls impermanence one of the undeniable realities. He says that everything that has a life loses life, which applies not only to beings we might say are alive; even insentient beings are changing all the time, and so are our mental states. He says: Many people think that simply pursuing material happiness or riches is the most important in life. But stand that way of life next to the reality of death and it completely falls apart. When a person who thinks he is happy because of his material situation has to face death, he’s likely to fall into the depths of bitterness and despair. If happiness means having plenty of money and good health, then by that very definition, you’re only going to hit rock bottom when it’s your time to die. When you are faced with death, what good is being healthy or wealthy? That is why all of these materialistic pursuits only end in despair in the face of the undeniable reality of death. (1) He’s giving one example of how quickly mental states can change. One minute we’re happy because we have things we want, and the next we’re in a hell realm because those things have been lost. Okumura Roshi says that when we’re unaware of impermanence and we’re not mindful of mind, then ego seems to be the center of the world. When the ego tries to protect itself, then greed and anger arise. The ego thinks it needs things in order to feel good, so we chase them. When it thinks it’s threatened and becomes fearful, \we run away from things we don’t like. (2) There we have the beginning of the three poisons as the root of our other delusions, and our bad karma when we take action based on them. He says mental formations and the rest of the five skandhas can’t be controlled because there is nothing to control them. The self is empty, and we can’t actually control our lives. This body and mind aren’t possessions that we can control and operate as though we’re driving cars. Thus he says that to see this body and mind as impermanent and unstable is to free ourselves from attachments and three poisons. (3) If we try to fix the mind on any particular view or idea, that’s a problem. Even clinging to the idea that mind is impermanent is a problem. Clinging to mental states creates hindrances in our ability to clearly manifest Buddha nature and act skillfully because Buddha nature itself and awakening itself are constantly changing. Uchiyama Roshi says we can’t shoot down and carry away a ready-made awakening like some kind of trophy! Okumura Roshi takes up that teaching as well. If you feel good or enlightened in certain conditions, and you cling to this experience, you are deluded. You are already stagnating in enlightenmemt. So we just open our hands and keep practicing. This is the meaning of just sitting, of continuous practice. There is no one who is deluded or enlightened. (4) Sometimes this teaching that the mind or mental states are impermanent can feel scary. What do you mean that everything I think and believe is like a phantom? Isn’t there anything I can rely on? Deeply seeing the impermanence of small mind naturally leads us to some understanding of no-self. If my mind is constantly changing and there’s nothing up there I can point to and say “That’s me,” then what is the self? Who’s driving this bus? Well, it turns out that the self is empty of a fixed nature. On the one hand, we can distinguish individual people with individual psychological attributes and personalities. On the other hand, it’s also true that we are not separate from the entire functioning of this reality, which includes all the other individual people and mental activity. Thus in addition to paying attention to the small mind, the human psychological mind, we also have to pay attention to Original Mind or Pure Mind. Original Mind is nothing other than awakening. It’s simply the complete moment-by-moment functioning of the universe, or reality. Entering into today’s dharma gate is not being separate from this Original Mind. It’s being aware that our individual mental states are arising and changing and dissolving within Original Mind. So far we’ve considered impermanence of mind from a sort of modern Zen perspective, but in Dogen’s time there was quite an argument going on about whether or not the mind was permanent, as opposed to the body. Somebody asked him whether the teachings being given by another teacher named Senika were true. This teacher said that transmigration happens because we don’t understand that when the body dies, the mind goes on and returns to the ocean of original nature. This was his teaching about how to be released from birth and death. Of course, Dogen completely disagreed. He said that Buddhism teaches that body and mind are not separate, so how can the body be impermanent and the mind permanent? In fact, he says, the very mind that’s clinging to that idea is itself impermanent, and one other problem for him was that there was some sense that the body was impure and the mind was pure. Anyway, he said that you can’t separate body and mind, or life and death, or samsara and nirvana, so using an idea like “mind is permanent” to escape from the wheel of transmigration makes no sense. Here’s what Dogen actually says: In the gate of speaking about impermanence all dharmas are impermanent, essence and material form are not separate. Why do you call the body impermanent and the mind permanent contrary to the true principle? Not only that, you should completely awaken to life and death as exactly nirvana. You can never speak of nirvana as outside life and death. Furthermore, although you have the illusory idea that the understanding that mind is permanent and apart from the body is the buddha wisdom distinct from life and death, still the mind with this discriminating view is itself arising and perishing, not permanent at all. Isn’t this illusory idea insignificant? (5) The challenge for us is that it’s fairly easy to see impermanence in the body; we don’t look like we did ten years ago. We’ve gotten bigger or smaller, stronger or weaker, more wrinkled, less keen-eyed, and we can easily change the appearance of this body with a haircut or a makeup kit. Mindfulness of the impermamence of the body is pretty easy. Seeing the impermanence of the mind is a bit more difficult. We may think we’ve always had the outlook we have now. There are certain things we’ve always assumed are true, and we’ve based our worldview on certain beliefs and values. One of the basic elements of spiritual health is understanding why we believe what we believe. Having that kind of grounding feels stable and reassuring, and then something happens: we go to school or otherwise get some education, we grow up and things that were important to us in elementary school or high school are not so important now, and we have direct experience of something we’d only read or heard about. Maybe our level of suffering rises to the point that we fall under the influence of people or organizations that seem to explain our fear, which could be wholesome or not. It could be that we fall in with extremist groups, or it could be that we encounter the dharma and start to practice. Suddenly or gradually, our thinking and ideas change. I know I don’t see the world now the same way I did before I started to practice, but I haven’t always been aware that my mind is changing. I read an interview with a woman who had been involved with Q-Anon and eventually got out. While she was part of the group, she met up with an old school friend, who expressed surprise at the transformation: “This isn’t the person I used to know.” Until that moment, the woman had been unaware of how much her thinking had changed. We live with the body and mind all day every day, so it feels like the same body and mind all the time. We can see ourselves growing and changing and aging on the outside, but we don’t always see that change on the inside. Impermanence of the mind in the long term isn’t always obvious. That’s why it’s easy to think there’s a fixed self-essence or identity or soul that persists, something permanent that’s uniquely ours. Nishiari Bokusan, one of Sawaki Roshi’s teachers, said this, and he’s harkening back to Dogen’s disagreement with Senika: The form of the body is born and dies in every moment and keeps moving without ceasing even for an instant. The form of mind is said to be born and die fifty times within the cycle of a day and a night. People ordinarily think that their body and mind are permanent because they use them continuously all their life. But if you reflect on yourself intimately, what we call self-mind and self-nature perishes in each moment. The self-mind and self-nature are annihilated when this body is destroyed. There is no place where this so-called divine self abides. In each of these essays on the four foundations of mindfulness, we’ve been considering Dogen’s piece about them in the Eihei Koroku: Our Buddha (Shakyamuni) said to his disciples, there are four foundations of mindfulness on which people should depend. These four foundations of mindfulness refer to contemplating the body as impure, contemplating sensation as suffering, contemplating mind as impermanent and contemplating phenomena as non-substantial. I, Eihei, also have four foundations of mindfulness: contemplating the body as a skin-bag, contemplating sensation as eating bowls, contemplating mind as fences, walls, tiles and pebbles, and contemplating phenomena as old man Zhang drinking wine, old man Li getting drunk. Great assembly, are my four foundations of mindfulness the same or different from the ancient Buddha’s four foundations of mindfulness? If you say they are the same, your eyebrows will fall out (from lying). If you say they are different, you will lose your body and life. (7) Where Buddha says “contemplating mind as impermanent,” Dogen says “contemplating mind as fences, walls, tiles and pebbles.” I’ve been saying that I think what Dogen is doing is taking Buddha’s adjectives to describe each element and providing a concrete day-to-day example. It’s not so easy to contemplate our minds—it’s like using our eyes to see our eyes—but we can also understand that being mindful of fences and tiles is the same as being mindful of mind. Mind as fences and walls throws us back to Original Mind, mind as awakening that includes all dharmas and all beings. The forces at work on mind (interconnection, impermanence and no-self) are also at work on fences and walls. There’s no separation between mind and body, or mind and fences and walls. When we see impermanence, we see that everything is impermanent. The small mind is a reflection of the complete functioning of reality. Previously we considered how the six sense organs come into contact with something and some sensation or feeling arises. The mind is one of those six sense organs. When it comes in contact with something, some sensation arises. That leads to labeling and emotion and action. We can think of the mind like a mirror. Everything that passes in front of the mirror produces a reflection. That image isn’t the thing itself, and the mirror doesn’t have any control over what passes in front of it and how the reflection is created. It’s just constantly responding to causes and conditions and it’s in complete accord with those causes and conditions. There’s simply complete functioning without separation. Dogen says: All day and all night, things come to the mind and the mind attends to them; at one with them all, diligently carry on the Way. (8) If the mirror is warped or cracked, then the reflection is also distorted. Maybe the image is a pool of still water that’s reflecting everything that goes by; when you throw in a pebble and the surface changes, so the reflection also changes and distorts. Sitting zazen is getting that pool of water to become still again and accurately reflect this moment. If we’re looking at distorted images, we take distorted actions. Okumura Roshi points out that the impermanence of mental states means that we can start over when we make mistakes, no matter what they are. If we are mindful of mind, we can transform our thinking and our views when we discover they’re not wholesome, or not in accord with reality. It means awakening is possible. (9) Even in zazen, the mind comes in contact with something and there’s a response. There’s a constantly changing picture show happening. Mental states are coming and going even though we’re sitting silently and not moving. That’s the “opening the hand of thought” part of the very familiar four things we do in zazen: taking the posture, keeping the eyes open, breathing deeply through the nose and opening the hand of thought. Even in the midst of the activity of thinking, there is the stillness of nonthinking. Thinking happens when there’s “me” separate from a thought and I’m in relationship with it—there’s a subject and an object. Nonthinking is the brain or mind doing what it does and “me” not engaging with it. Okumura Roshi says: When we are sitting, we do not follow or get involved with our thoughts, nor do we stop them. We just let them come and go freely. We cannot call it simply thinking, because the thoughts are not pursued or grasped. We cannot call zazen not thinking either, because thoughts are coming and going like clouds floating in the sky. When we are sitting, our brain does not stop functioning, just as our stomach does not stop digesting. Sometimes our minds are busy; sometimes calm. Just sitting without worrying about the conditions of our mind is the most important point of zazen. When we sit in this way, we are one with Reality, which is “beyond-thinking.” (10) This gate is about seeing and accepting the changability of the mind, even in zazen when we think we’re “supposed” to have some steadiness, calm or peace in our minds. Sawaki Roshi says: You lack peace of mind because you’re running after an idea of total peace of mind. That’s backwards. Be attentive to your mind in each moment, no matter how unpeaceful it might seem to be. Great peace of mind is realized only in the practice within this unpeaceful mind. It arises out of the interplay between peaceful and unpeaceful mind. The very impermanence of our minds is an important ground for practice, and there’s some subtlety there: it’s not that impermanence of mind is something we need to overcome. It’s not an obstacle to anything: it’s the nature of reality. Our practice is to see it deeply and completely accept and enter into it. Contentment comes from not wanting impermanence of mind to be other than what it is. Seeing and accepting the unpeaceful mind is the arising of peaceful mind, just as there is nonthinking in the midst of thinking. We might wish that our practice would put our minds up onto a transcendant plane where we had a blissful mindstate all the time, where we could finally get some equanimity by leaving our changeable up-and-down mindstates behind, or avoid our worries about the emptiness of the self. Well, of course, practice is not like that. We practice by fully entering into the impermanence of mind. To live only in the world of the absolute is Zen sickness. That’s not where bodhisattvas live. Impermanence of mind is a fact of our existence. The question is whether and how we recognize and work with this undeniable reality. Notes (1) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 7. (2) see Okumura, S. (2012). Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 57. (3) see Living by Vow, p. 127. (4) Living by Vow, p. 163. (5) The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen's Bendowa, With Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. (2011). United States: Tuttle Publishing, p.161. (6) Dogen, E., Zenji, E. D. (2011). Dogen's Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries. United States: Counterpoint Press, p. 64. (7) Dogen, E. (2010). Dogen's Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Koroku. United States: Wisdom Publications. p. 287. (8) Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom: Three Fascicles from Shobogenzo with Commentary. (2018). United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 36. (9) see LbV163 (10) Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom: Three Fascicles from Shobogenzo with Commentary. (2018). United States: Wisdom Publications, p.81. Questions for reflection and discussion
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About the text The Ippyakuhachi Homyomon, or 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination, appears as the 11th fascicle of the 12 fascicle version of Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo. Dogen didn't compile the list himself; it's mostly a long quote from another text called the Sutra of Collected Past Deeds of the Buddha. Dogen wrote a final paragraph recommending that we investigate these gates thoroughly. Hoko has been talking about the gates one by one since 2016. She provides material here that can be used by weekly dharma discussion groups as well as for individual study. The 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination
[1] Right belief [2] Pure mind [3] Delight [4] Love and cheerfulness The three forms of behavior [5] Right conduct of the actions of the body [6] Pure conduct of the actions of the mouth [7] Pure conduct of the actions of the mind The six kinds of mindfulness [8] Mindfulness of Buddha [9] Mindfulness of Dharma [10] Mindfulness of Sangha [11] Mindfulness of generosity [12] Mindfulness of precepts [13] Mindfulness of the heavens The four Brahmaviharas [14] Benevolence [15] Compassion [16] Joy [17] Abandonment The four dharma seals [18] Reflection on inconstancy [19] Reflection on suffering [20] Reflection on there being no self [21] Reflection on stillness [22] Repentance [23] Humility [24] Veracity [25] Truth [26] Dharma conduct [27] The Three Devotions [28] Recognition of kindness [29] Repayment of kindness [30] No self-deception [31] To work for living beings [32] To work for the Dharma [33] Awareness of time [34] Inhibition of self-conceit [35] The nonarising of ill-will [36] Being without hindrances [37] Belief and understanding [38] Reflection on impurity [39] Not to quarrel [40] Not being foolish [41] Enjoyment of the meaning of the Dharma [42] Love of Dharma illumination [43] Pursuit of abundant knowledge [44] Right means [45] Knowledge of names and forms [46] The view to expiate causes [47] The mind without enmity and intimacy [48] Hidden expedient means [49] Equality of all elements [50] The sense organs [51] Realization of nonappearance The elements of bodhi: The four abodes of mindfulness [52] The body as an abode of mindfulness [53] Feeling as an abode of mindfulness [54] Mind as an abode of mindfulness [55] The Dharma as an abode of mindfulness [56] The four right exertions [57] The four bases of mystical power The five faculties [58] The faculty of belief [59] The faculty of effort [60] The faculty of mindfulness [61] The faculty of balance [62] The faculty of wisdom The five powers [63] The power of belief [64] The power of effort [65] The power of mindfulness [66] The power of balance [67] The power of wisdom [68] Mindfulness, as a part of the state of truth [69] Examination of Dharma, as a part of the state of truth [70] Effort, as a part of the state of truth [71] Enjoyment, as a part of the state of truth [72] Entrustment as a part of the state of truth [73] The balanced state, as a part of the state of truth [74] Abandonment, as a part of the state of truth The Eightfold Path [75] Right view [76] Right discrimination [77] Right speech [78] Right action [79] Right livelihood [80] Right practice [81] Right mindfulness [82] Right balanced state [83] The bodhi-mind [84] Reliance [85] Right belief [86] Development The six paramitas [87] The dāna pāramitā [88] The precepts pāramitā [89] The forbearance pāramitā. [90] The diligence pāramitā [91] The dhyāna pāramitā [92] The wisdom pāramitā [93] Expedient means [94] The four elements of sociability [95] To teach and guide living beings [96] Acceptance of the right Dharma [97] Accretion of happiness [98] The practice of the balanced state of dhyāna [99] Stillness [100] The wisdom view [101] Entry into the state of unrestricted speech [102] Entry into all conduct [103] Accomplishment of the state of dhāraṇī [104] Attainment of the state of unrestricted speech [105] Endurance of obedient following [106] Attainment of realization of the Dharma of nonappearance [107] The state beyond regressing and straying [108] The wisdom that leads us from one state to another state and, somehow, one more: [109] The state in which water is sprinkled on the head Archives
February 2025
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