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.