Reflection on inconstancy is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we reflect upon the desires of the triple world.
無常觀是法明門、觀三界慾故

With this gate, we move into a section of the text concerned with the thirty seven elements of bodhi (Jp. sanjūshichi-bon-bodai-bunpō 三十七道品), which includes Gates 18 through 55.   These elements are sometimes called trainings toward awakening, but in Dogen's fascicle Sanjūshichi-bon-bodai-bunpō, they're characterized as thirty seven elements of the truth.  Translators Nishijima and Cross note that the list is usually considered a "Hinayana" teaching:
In Japan, and especially among Mahayana Buddhist masters, it was very rare for Buddhist monks to discuss these teachings.
But Master Dōgen has his own views on Mahayana and Hinayana.  According to him, there exists only the Buddhism that Gautama Buddha taught.  He thought that any distinctions between Mahayana and Hinayana are reflections of the different ages and cultures in which the two schools of Buddhism were taught, and he refused to discriminate between the two Buddhist streams.  In this chapter Master Dōgen explains the thirty-seven elements of the truth with no division into Hinayana or Mahayana, but based upon the practice of zazen. (1)

The list begins with statements about the four dharma seals (Jp. shihōin 四法印): inconstancy or impermanence, suffering, no-self and nirvana.  It’s said that if a teaching contains these four seals, it’s a real Buddhist teaching.  They function like a signature stamp or a trademark.  Of course, like many other sets of teachings in Buddhism, four seals are not actually separate—they arise and function together—but for the purpose of sharing dharma, we have to give them names and boundaries.  The list of the four seals varies depending on context and tradition; the version we’ll discuss here is made up of the three marks of existence plus nirvana. 

The three marks are very old elements in the Buddhist tradition.  We find them in the Dhammapada:  
277. “All conditioned things are impermanent” — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification.
278. “All conditioned things are unsatisfactory” — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification.
279. “All things are not-self” — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification.

Because we’re limited human beings, we have confusion and misunderstanding about these three marks, and we live in samsara.  However, when we deeply experience and understand the nature of existence, we are also aware of nirvana, the cessation of suffering.  

Our gate statement for this week takes up the first of the seals: inconstancy, or impermanence.  Buddha taught that all conditioned things—things that arise because of a combination of karmic causes and conditions—are constantly arising and falling away, constantly changing in gross and subtle ways.  This includes not only objects we encounter in the world of form, like shoes, mountains, cell phones and fence posts, but also our bodies and minds, our thoughts and emotions, and our relationships.  Shoes wear out, mountains erode or explode as volcanoes, cell phones become outdated or broken, and we ourselves age and die.  The elements or skandhas that make up things of the world are impermanent, and the causes and conditions that bring them together are also impermanent.  

Clinging to the way things are in any particular moment and convincing ourselves that they will never change is a set-up for suffering.  Intellectually, we may understand that everything is changing.  These days, we can see particles moving under a microscope and we believe our eyes.  Science tells us that atoms and molecules are in constant motion, and we can accept that—but we can’t stop there.  The more profound understanding is that the world we encounter was deeply impermanent even before it arose.  The causes and conditions that led to its arising are themselves impermanent, so how could the outcome of those causes and conditions not also be so?   

Causes and conditions are not simple to see.  We have to deeply experience impermanence in a non-intellectual way, without concepts and theories, in order to truly understand it.

The gate statement also refers to the triple world, and it’s just as important a topic here as impermanence.  The three worlds are those of desire, form and beyond-form; together they make up the totality of the celestial realms.  In the world of desire, we transmigrate around and around on the wheel of samsara, moving ceaselessly between the realms of hell, animals, humans, hungry ghosts, fighting spirits and gods.  The world of form consists of the four higher celestial realms in which the desires of the body have fallen away, and the world of beyond-form includes the four highest celestial realms in which there is only the enjoyment of meditative states.  In the Sangai Yuishin fascicle of the Shobogenzo, Dogen talks about a verse from the Avatamsaka Sutra that says these three worlds make up the entire unsurpassable universe—and also are all creations of our own minds.

Our gate statement says that considering impermanence leads us also to consider the desires of this triple world.  The world of desire is dominated by our sensory experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, in which we chase after things we want and run from things we don’t want.  We worry that things we have will disappear, or that things we’d rather avoid will show up in our lives.  That scurrying around is what keeps the wheel of samsara turning.  

The world of form is inhabited by beings who are temporarily able to suppress hatred and ill-will, and who have abandoned the desires that arise from sensory experience.  The world of beyond-form has beings with no physical form or location, but some retain some ability to engage in perception.  

According to early Buddhist teachings, moving upward through these three worlds is the result of meditative attainment, and yet, Buddha saw that even existence in the highest planes was subject to impermanence and was not in itself the end of suffering.  Beings in any realm could be reborn into any other realm, so suffering of existence went on.  He saw that the only way to the cessation of suffering was the cessation of rebirth.  Thus in the world of desire, our craving and aversion intersect with impermanence to keep us tied to the wheel of samsara, but even if we manage to loosen those bonds and move to the worlds of form or beyond-form, the very fact of our existence means we can’t leave suffering behind.  This is the first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths: existence is characterized by suffering.

Impermanence is at the heart of our ancestors’ teachings about emptiness.  If all things are impermanent, then they can have no fixed and permanent essence; they are empty of self-nature.  Emptiness doesn’t mean that things and people don’t exist; it means that because they are deeply impermanent, there’s nothing about them we can hold onto.  In order to function in the world, we have to give names and attributes to things we encounter, but we also have to remember that these are provisional means that allow us to do our bodhisattva work in the world of desire.  Any boundaries we set up around things are our own, because the true nature of all things is complete emptiness and liberation.

Dogen took a close look at the  nature of impermanence in the Genjokoan fascicle of the Shobogenzo.  That inquiry was key to his resolving his disagreement with one of the teachings of Tendai Buddhism, the tradition in which he originally practiced.  The relationship between impermanence and desire mentioned in the gate statement seems obvious, particularly as it relates to the arising of suffering: we grasp for things we like, those things are always coming and going and changing, and when they change or disappear we become unhappy.  Yet Dogen wondered: if everything is impermanent, how can there be an absolute and unvarying Buddha-nature, as the Tendai tradition taught?  

Buddha-nature was supposed to be something unchangeable that you got at the end of a linear practice.  Was it really something detached from everyday experience, a potentiality that you manifested somehow after years of effort?  How could this be?  If all conditioned things are constantly changing because the causes and conditions that lead to their arising are constantly changing, and if nothing is separate from causes and conditions, there can be nothing that arises and then remains fixed and immutable forever, including Buddha-nature.

Dogen’s own experience of impermanence led him to see that there were two ways to understand it.  One was the point of view of being an observer of things changing all around yourself.  You feel sad when you’re clinging to something and it’s lost, and then you want to be released from those feelings.  Another point of view was being completely immersed in the total dynamic functioning of the universe without artificial separation, understanding that you’re an element in that functioning which is as impermanent and changeable as everything around it.  If you get this second point of view, you don’t get caught up in the sentimentality of impermanence because there is no self to own those feelings. but you also don’t deny them.  When you completely enter into feelings of grief and loss. that can lead to insight into the real nature of impermanence.  

The reality is that humans cling and suffer.  That can’t be ignored or separated from the truth of this moment.  Clinging and suffering are not outside of the Buddha Way because the Buddha Way is unsurpassable—there’s nowhere it doesn’t reach.  Thus Dogen isn’t telling us to cut off or push away our feelings of regret or sorrow at the transiency of the world.  He’s pointing out that there is no separation between regret and no-regret.  Regret is simply the outcome of the arising and falling away of impermanent phenomena.  We don’t have to get caught up in it and use it to perpetuate delusion, but we also shouldn’t ignore it either, since it exists and serves as a gate of dharma illumination that helps us to understand desire and the nature of suffering.  

It’s an interesting view of our human relationship with impermanence.  Our suffering is right in the midst of Nirvana, which is right in the midst of the Buddha Way.  

In one of his discussions of waka poems, Okumura Roshi says:  
Seeing impermanence and feeling grief is not necessarily negative in Buddhism, especially in Dogen’s teachings even though we feel sad. It is a good chance to arouse bodhi-mind and aspire to practice what the Buddha taught. As Shakyamuni Buddha said in the Sutra on the Buddha’s Bequeathed Teaching, within the practice, the Buddha’s indestructible Dharma Body is actualized.  

The very desire to which we as humans fall prey, the very clinging in the vain hope that things won’t change, the very emotions we experience when the things we love or believe we need are fading away—those are themselves the complete manifestation of the Buddha Way.  

In completely living our lives, we hold two paradoxical truths: we try to liberate ourselves from suffering by seeing through our delusion that the world is unchanging and loosening the grip of craving and aversion that leads to pain.  At the same time, our deluded human experience of grief, loss and fear is itself what Okumura Roshi has called the eternal life of Buddha.  Practice in the midst of impermanence is what gives rise to the Buddha’s indestructible dharma body.  

In his book on the Mountains and Waters Sutra, Okumura Roshi says: Impermanence is one half of reality.  The other side is that everything is always abiding peacefully in its Dharma position, where nothing arises and nothing changes.  Everything is there at this moment. (1)

Abandonment is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we turn away from the five desires.
是法明門、厭離五欲故。

This week we take up the last of the four brahma viharas or divine abodes.  We’ve considered benevolence, compassion, sympathetic joy, and this time it’s abandonment (Skt. upekka), frequently translated as equanimity.  

You may have heard of something in the Buddhist tradition called the Eight Worldly Winds or Eight Worldly Conditions.  These are:

• loss and gain
• good-repute and ill-repute
• praise and censure
• sorrow and happiness

This is the stuff that swirls around us in our lives and pulls us off center or off course.  It’s interesting that they’re in pairs of opposites; there is definitely a “good” and “bad” here.  We chase after one and avoid the other; it’s basic craving and aversion which, as we know, leads to suffering.  Equanimity is being calm and balanced and stable in the midst of the swirling of these eight worldly winds.  The English word is made up of “equal” plus “animus,” which is mind or spirit.  We encounter various things with equal spirit, looking carefully, not looking away, not immediately deciding to connect with this and throw out that.

The gate statement says that abandonment is a gate because we turn away from the five desires, also known as the five hindrances (Skt. pancha nivarana).  These are known to be obstacles to tranquility of mind.  They are:

• Sensory desire: seeking happiness through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and physical feeling.
• Ill-will:  all kinds of thought related to wanting to reject; feelings of hostility, resentment, hatred and bitterness.
• Sloth-and-torpor: heaviness of body and dullness of mind which drag one down into disabling inertia and thick depression.
• Restlessness-and-worry: the inability to calm the mind.
• Doubt: lack of conviction or trust.

At Gate 36 we’re going to be returning to these five desires or hindrances and we’ll go into additional detail then.  For the moment, let’s connect the five desires with the eight worldly winds and abandonment or equanimity.  The gate statement says that we turn away from sensory desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt.  That allows us not to be thrown off in the midst of loss and gain, good-repute and ill-repute, praise and censure, sorrow and happiness.  That in turn creates the conditions for equanimity, or the ability to abandon picking and choosing and needing to take a side.

All this is a more complex way of saying that if we’re not paying attention to these things arising in our minds and understanding them really well, they get in the way of our zazen and the rest of our lives.  Before we realize it, we get hijacked into taking sides, and chasing after and running away from things.  As Dogen says, Flowers fall with our attachment, and weeds spring up with our aversion.  We want the flowers, and as soon as we see them, our grasping comes up.  We don’t want the weeds, and as soon as we see them, our aversion comes up,  We can become consumed with that and lose our balance.  Once we’ve lost our balance, we don’t see clearly and it’s difficult to be skillful bodhisattvas in the world.  It’s really hard to do anything useful for others when we’re caught up in our own greed, grasping and craving.

Now, equanimity is not about being passive and apathetic.  It would be easy to think that not giving in to desires means that we should just become inert and never make a choice, but it doesn’t really mean we just say, well, everything’s OK and there’s nothing I need to do.  It helps us see where can actually be useful and what we just need to let go of, because there are things we want to change and things we can actually change.

Having equanimity is about being stable in the face of everything coming at us in good times and difficult times.  It’s not about detaching or withdrawing from the world, maintaining our personal peace by ignoring what’s happening.  Buddha is not saying we should be indifferent or unconcerned about others.  He’s saying that abandoning the hindrances allows us not to get swept away by the eight worldly winds.  The only thing we’re indifferent to is the demands of the ego or the small self.

In the face of loss and gain, we accept that things come and go.  Sometimes we want something we don’t have, and sometimes we have something we don’t want.  Sometimes we have something we want and we’re afraid to lose it, and sometimes we’re afraid of something coming into our lives that we’d rather avoid.  That’s what this worldy wind is about.

When we lose a job or get a new job, break up a relationship or start a new one, make a lot of money or lose all our money -- can we fully enter into what’s going on, fully see and accept what’s happening, and not get blown over by it?  In the face of good-repute and ill-repute, or changes in what others think of us, we can do our best to maintain good relationships, but in the end even if we do our best to be skillful, there are those who are just going to disagree with us or even disparage us.  In the midst of that, can we stick to our principles and do what we think is right and wholesome?

I’m sure you’ve heard this story about Hakuin:    
A beautiful girl in the village was pregnant. Her angry parents demanded to know who was the father. At first resistant to confess, the anxious and embarrassed girl finally pointed to Hakuin, the Zen master whom everyone previously revered for living such a pure life. When the outraged parents confronted Hakuin with their daughter’s accusation, he simply replied “Is that so?”

When the child was born, the parents brought it to the Hakuin, who now was viewed as a pariah by the whole village. They demanded that he take care of the child since it was his responsibility. “Is that so?” Hakuin said calmly as he accepted the child.

For many months he took very good care of the child until the daughter could no longer withstand the lie she had told. She confessed that the real father was a young man in the village whom she had tried to protect. The parents immediately went to Hakuin to see if he would return the baby. With profuse apologies they explained what had happened. “Is that so?” Hakuin said as he handed them the child.

In the midst of good repute and ill repute, or honor and dishonor, he remained stable and simply cared for the child.  In the face of praise and censure or criticism, can we avoid becoming proud or shriveling up and hiding?  In the face of sorrow, can we pick up and keep going while taking care of the grieving process?  In the face of happiness, can we completely enter in the joy of that while not becoming consumed by it?

Within the four brahma viharas, equanimity is not only its own point but helps to refine the other three.  Steadiness combined with benevolence, compassion and sympathetic joy helps us wish all beings well and enter equally into their suffering and joy, regardless of our personal likes and dislikes or the condition that we ourselves are in

Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes: When you encounter suffering that you can’t stop no matter how hard you try, you need equanimity to avoid creating additional suffering and to channel your energies to areas where you can be of help. In this way, equanimity isn’t cold hearted or indifferent. It simply makes your goodwill more focused and effective.

Our interactions and relationships with others don’t swing wildly in one direction or the others depending on how we feel that day or latest thing the other person has done or said.  When we remain steady and stable, we create less suffering for ourselves and better causes and conditions for those around us.  Regardless of how much goodwill or compassion you’ve cultivated, there are bound to be people whose past actions are unskillful and who cannot or will not change their ways in the present.  Equanimity helps make sure we can benefit all beings.

Upekkha has been described as freedom from all points of self-reference.  It’s also been described as learning to put aside your preferences so that you can watch what’s actually there.  Equanimity helps us take a step back and see that not everything is about us, our wants and likes and ideas.  As soon as everything is about me, I’m subject to every whim, delusion and misperception that comes out of the small self.  It’s an unstable and fatiguing place to be, and not a good basis for decisionmaking.

Dogen wrote a waka about equanimity, which Okumura Roshi has translated:  
Natsu fuyu mo
Omoi ni wakanu
Koshi no yama
Furu shi-ra-yu-ki mo
Naru i-ka-zu-chi mo 

Whether summer or winter, the mountain of Koshi
is free from discriminative thinking.
It sees equally falling of white snowflakes 
or roaring of thunder. 

Not discriminating between summer and winter, accepting all of the different conditions of four seasons, means we encounter summer storms and winter snow with equal spirit.  It’s just the next thing that’s happening, and it’s not necessary to decide whether it’s good or bad.  We may still need to clear away the fallen trees or shovel the snow—in other words, we may still need to take some action—but we can do that without grumbling.  It’s just the next thing that needs to be done.

Okumura Roshi says that this waka reminds him of what Dōgen wrote in the Tenzokyokun (The Instructions for the Tenzo) regarding magnanimous mind:

As for what is called magnanimous mind, this mind is like the great mountains or like the great ocean; it is not biased or contentious mind. Carrying half a pound, do not take it lightly; lifting forty pounds should not seem heavy. Although drawn by the voices of spring, do not allow your heart to fall. The four seasons cooperate in a single scene; regard light and heavy with a single eye. On this single occasion you must write the word ‘great.’ You must know the word ‘great.’ You must learn the word ‘great.’”

This “great” is a pointer back to ”magnanimous.”  He’s exhorting us to deeply study what these words mean.  Okumura Roshi is giving us a clue here about how we can cultivate equanimity or abandonment.  We enter into magnanimous mind and we see and accept 100% of this one unified reality.

Imagine a time when you were caught up in one of the hindrances.  Maybe you were worried about the outcome of something, feeling unmotivated and that everything was pointless, or feeling bitterness that your input about something was not asked or was disregarded.  At times like this, hard to see beyond two immediate stories: there’s what you want and then there’s how things are going.  One is good and one is not good, and everything gets evaluated in terms of that dichotomy.  You accept one and reject the other, and that’s it.

There’s actually a bigger world out there in the world of magnanimous mind.  We accept all possibilities and options without judging and labeling from a self-centered perspective. and we can see all sides of the situation and all the elements involved.  If you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle and you pick up a piece and try it and it doesn’t fit, you don’t say, “Well, that’s a bad piece”  or “I really hate that piece.”  You say, “Well, it doesn’t fit there.”  You’re able to take action, but it’s not based on what that piece means to you personally; it’s based on what’s needed in that situation.  Equanimity allows us to hold both ends of the dichotomy equally and at the same time: loss and gain, honor and dishonor.  In the middle of two things, or in the middle of seeming chaos, we can stand up, look around, and see clearly what’s happening and what we need to do.  We can see that these two things are not actually separate.

In addition to the desire for one element or another, there is frequently an additional desire: to avoid ambiguity.  Sometimes we have a hard time with uncertainty.  Deciding on one thing or another can give us a feeling of being in control or having something solid to hang onto.  It can also make it difficult to change our thinking when we’re presented with new information.  That’s when we can find ourselves entrenched, and if the “other side” is equally dug in, that’s a problem.  Equanimity allows for keeping an open mind.

Just as the mountain has a firm foundation, we need to build a firm foundation in our practice.  Giving way to restlessness and doubt makes it hard to practice, and we need that stable practice foundation in order to go forward.  We don’t just wake up in the morning and say, Today I’m going to have equanimity and magnanimous mind.  They come from deeply understanding the nature of impermanence and no self and how causes and conditions work.  Deep understanding requires regular committed zazen practice.  Zazen is a fine place to cultivate equanimity.  There’s a reason we have phrases like “sit like a mountain.”  It’s sitting that’s solid, stable, and unmoving.  The mountain has strength and dignity, but is completely natural.  Equanimity also has to be natural, not something you put on.  It’s not about suppressing thoughts or feelings so you appear calm.  It’s about seeing through those thoughts, feelings and hindrances so they don’t cloud your understanding and judgement.

Joy is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we abandon all unpleasant things.
喜是法明門、一切不喜事故.

This week we take up the third of the four brama viharas, sympathetic joy (Skt. mudita).  This is the joy we feel with others when something goes well for them.  (Compassion was feeling others’ suffering with them.)  How much better it would be for us if we could be happy with others in their joy rather than feeling envious: how come him or her and not me?  Why not increase our own happiness by partaking in the joy of others?

The classical image of sympathetic joy is the joy of a parent when the child grows, develops and prospers.  Parents feel very connected to their children, so they’re pleased for them when they learn to walk and talk, do well in school, get a date for the prom, or get a good job.

So how do we cultivate or create the conditions for this sympathetic joy?  We need look no farther than Dogen’s famous teaching that to study the self is to forget the self.  If we practice and loosen the grip of this idea that there is a fixed and unchanging self nature that persists through time and that we need to defend, we are naturally able to feel others’ joy.

It’s interesting how all the brahma viharas we’ve talked about over the last few weeks are not about ourselves.  Benevolence is about wishing others well.  Compassion is feeling others’ suffering with them.  Sympathetic joy is feeling others’ happiness with them.  All of these things which are the result of our getting ourselves out of the way are supposed to lead us to a heavenly realm.  If we simply keep running after what we want, we create suffering.  If we let go of self and focus on others, we receive everything we need and end up in heaven!

There’s another relationship between compassion and sympathetic joy.  Sympathetic joy keeps compassion from becoming condescention: I’m helping you because I have something you need.  I’m helping you out of your suffering and so you can achieve some better state.  Instead, I share your suffering with you and on that basis I do what I can to relieve that suffering, and I share your joy when things have gotten better.  It’s a subtle difference.

What if we could gain happiness for ourselves by noticing and entering into the joy we find around us every day?  We don’t need to thrust ourselves into someone else’s conversation or activity, or ask them for anything.  When we see a family or a couple who are happy just to be together, well, good for them!  When someone wins a contest, gets a good grade or finishes a project, good for them!  This isn’t a selfish joy; I’m not acquiring happiness at the expense of someone else or because someone else has let me in on it.  I don’t have to have a personal relationship with what’s happening.  I can simply recognize that the universe is doing what the universe does, and joy arises naturally.

The happiness of others can my happiness.  Why not?  Where is the actual barrier?  What’s keeping me from sharing in that joy?  Why shouldn’t I smile when I see child playing with puppy or young person giving up a seat on bus for an older person?  It’s not like there’s a limited about of joy in the world and I’m stealing it from someone else.  The brahma viharas also called the four immeasurables, after all.  It’s like lighting a candle from another candle.  It’s not like there’s a limited amount of flame, and now we’re cutting it in half to light another candle.  If anything, there’s now twice as much!

Now, this is not an exercise in avoiding suffering, covering it over with hearts and flowers and marshmallow creme.  It’s not about being inauthentic or hypocritical.  Sympathetic joy can lighten spirits, but doesn’t erase suffering.  As Buddha said, life is characterized by suffering.  The way to deal with it is to see where it comes from and our relationship with it, then try to reshape that relationship.

Sympathetic joy is also not advocating that we become frivolous and superficial and try to surround ourselves only with YouTube videos of funny cats.  Looking for and taking in the happiness around us is not a means of avoidance, and it won’t become that if we’re not letting go of wisdom.  Wisdom is about seeing the whole catastrophe, joy and suffering, and not looking away from either one.

Forgetting the self makes it less possible to get stuck in avoidance because we’re not in this for ourselves.  We’re not cultivating sympathetic joy so that we can get some personal reward.  Daniel Zelinski is a philosophy professor at Missouri State and he has written: Dogen’s ideally nonattached individual is a humble agent in the world whose perceived sense of a pervasive interconnected unity of all things through Buddha-nature instills a sympathetic connection to others within him or her, which in turn results in his or her projects and actions expressing both respect and compassion. (1)

Cultivating sympathetic joy is both a means of forgetting the self and a manifestation of forgetting the self.  They reinforce each other.

The envy and jealousy and resentment I mentioned a moment ago is based in the delusion that somehow we aren’t enough as we are, that somehow this self is insufficient or something is lacking.  If we are buddha-nature, there’s nothing we need to acquire and we don’t need to be insecure about ourselves.  We just need to learn how to see through our delusions, get out of our own way and move through the world skillfully with wisdom and compassion.  That’s what the bodhisattva does.  Can you imagine Manjusri and Avalokitesvara being envious of each other every time someone made an offering or built a shrine?  No, because they know that something good happening for one of them doesn’t take anything away from the other.  As human beings, we don’t like to acknowledge envy.  It’s not good that he got that promotion -- not because I’m envious, of course, but because he doesn’t have the right skills.  We’re going to find a way to justify our resistance.

I was once asked to officiate at an important ceremony.  When my friend found out, her response was, You're doing it?  Well, of course, the reason I wasn’t asked was because the organizers must have already known that I wasn’t available that day.  Ouch!  However, this reaction wasn’t meant to hurt me, and clearly wasn’t about me at all.

Jack Kornfield says:  The near enemy of sympathetic joy (the joy in the happiness of others) is comparison, which looks to see if we have more of, the same as, or less than another... (2)

It is (or should be) fairly easy to enter into sympathetic joy with our friends and family and people we like.  What about people we don’t like so much?  Can we be happy for someone who has something good going on in her life when we don’t like what’s happening?  We’re not talking about condoning bad behavior, or cheering on someone who’s getting some reward for causing harm.  We’re talking about struggling when something good and wholesome is happening for someone we don’t like.

Here’s something written by a member of a prison sangha in Maryland.  I’ve been constantly been told by other inmates to treat the staff like they are the enemy. This us vs. them never sat right with me and when you look at the Buddhist teachings you will see that there is really is no us vs. them. I found that when I’ve treated people (whoever they are) with kindness, I have been usually treated the same in return. When a corrections officer or another inmate treats me cruelly I remind myself that they are suffering and trying to attain happiness just the same as everyone else. So, they act out and it really has nothing to do with you, but their own drama. Putting our ego on hold can be challenging, but it can be done. I have found it helpful to simply take a step back and take a few silent breaths. Remember, we are trying to attain enlightenment for the benefit for all. (3)

Goodness, where are you ever going to be that’s more of a challenge to sympathetic joy than in prison?

Here’s the thing: we might as well enter into sympathetic joy, because not doing it isn’t going to change the situation.  You’re not going to get revenge on somebody by withholding joy.  Carrying resentment rather than sympathetic joy is the ego trying not to die.  If I let go of my resentment I might disappear; I need to maintain this fiction that I’m better than you or more deserving than you, or at least separate from you.  Otherwise, I might cease to be.

Instead, we can aspire to be like Manjusri and Avalokitesvara, or some other selfless beings we may know.  We can try not to overlook the various sources of joy that we can enter into every day.  If we’re really trying to live like bodhisattvas and help all beings, than we need to be encouraging people.  Even someone who’s really deluded can probably take even a small skillful action or make even a small change toward wholesomeness.  The bodhisattva response to that success is not “Well, it’s about time you shaped up!  I told you you should stop doing this or start doing that.  It’s all well and good that you’ve taken this small step, but you’ve still got a long way to go, so don’t slack off!”

It’s not kind, and not helpful, and not entering into sympathetic joy.  Instead, look for the opportunity to recognize and celebrate wholesome action.  It doesn’t mean you’re letting this person off the hook for other harmful stuff.  It does mean you’re building a trust relationship and not perpetuating the delusion of separation.  A rising tide floats all boats.  His success is my success.  At minimum, there’s just that tiny bit less suffering in the world for everyone.

It’s said that cultivating sympathetic joy is the hardest of all the brahma viharas.  It’s just so easy to say, I deserve happiness more than he does or she does.  However, we have to remember: we don’t know about all of our own causes and conditions, let alone someone else’s.  We’ve done both wholesome and unwholesome things; so has that person.  Karma says that there are actions that lead to pleasure and actions that lead to pain.  We don’t need to worry about who deserves what; the universe will sort that out, and not in a personal way.

If we’re awarding sympathetic joy, or compassion, based on people’s purity, what are we doing?  First, who are we to judge?  How can we know all the streams of causes and conditions at work here?  Second, if there is no one outside of Buddha’s way, there is no one who falls outside of our practice of the brahma viharas and there is no one from whom we’re really separate.  Instead, we cultivate an attitude of wishing everyone well, suffering with those who suffer and feeling joy with those who feel joy.  If we do that, where is boundary between self and other?  It’s a really powerful way to experience that nonseparation.

Here’s the other thing about karma: what we do now sets up the causes and conditions for what arises in the next moment.  Do we go into that moment filled with resentment and envy, or do we go into it wishing people well?  And what comes out of that choice?  What happens if I’m constantly judging and envying what others have, and then something good happens to me?  Will others have sympathetic joy for me, or just their own resentment?  What dynamic have I set in motion there?

When we talked about compassion, we talked about feeling the suffering of others without being overwhelmed by it.  Sympathetic joy provides some balance and optimism.  Yes, there’s suffering, but there is also joy.  It keeps us from being consumed by pain and grief.  If we collapse under the weight of compassion, it’s hard to do anything to actually help.  We need the balance of entering into the happiness of others as well as their suffering.

Nyanaponika Thera was a German Theravadan monk who died about 25 years ago.  He wrote this about sympathetic joy:
It is the divine smile on the face of the Enlightened One, a smile that persists in spite of his deep knowledge of the world’s suffering, a smile that gives solace and hope, fearlessness and confidence: “Wide open are the doors to deliverance,” thus it speaks.

Compassion is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not kill or harm living beings.
悲是法明門、不殺害衆生故.

This week we continue our discussion of the  part of the text that deals with the four brahma viharas or divine abodes.  Last week we talked about benevolence (or loving-kindness or metta).  This week it’s compassion or karuna, and we still have sympathetic joy (mudita) and abandonment (upekka) ahead of us.  Again, cultivating these qualities was said to lead to the arising of the mind of brahmas or loving gods, or to allow one to live with the gods.

In the kanji for compassion 悲是, the first character has to do with grief, sorrow, sadness  (hi).  Of course, the roots of the English word “compassion” mean to feel with (someone).  When we have compassion, we’re feeling someone’s suffering along with him or her.  Our interactions with that person and the actions we take arise from our recognition of shared suffering.  Compassion is the recognition of the first of the four noble truths: life is characterized by suffering.

A sanghe member once asked me whether benevolence and compassion were the same, and I said no.  Benevolence is about wishing all beings to be well and happy while compassion is wishing all beings to be free from suffering—recognizing the suffering of beings and doing what we can to relieve it, or at least not perpetuate it.  The difference is subtle and they are related, but there are two different aspects here.

The opposite of compassion is anger.  When someone makes a mistake because of his own suffering, we can take it personally and become angry and lash out, or we can recognize the suffering and try to help stop that chain or cycle of pain perpetuating pain.  That’s the difference between anger and compassion.

When I first read this gate I immediately thought of this teaching from the Tibetan tradition:  Just as I wish to be free from suffering and experience only happiness, so do all other beings. In this respect, I am no different from any other being; we are all equal.

Compassion is understanding that all beings can experience suffering just as we can, so we don’t do harm to them.  It’s when we see others as others, who are somehow disconnected from us and not our responsibility, that we make mistakes.  We can put ourselves in their place because in a way we are already in their place: no one is outside the Buddha Way.  

As we saw last time, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra is a good source for teachings about the brahma viharas.  Buddha is teaching about the pure actions of a bodhisattva, and the sutra makes the point over and over again that Buddha views all beings as he does his son Rahula.  We as bodhisattvas are also to see all beings as we would see our own children.  This is not easy; people question the Buddha about whether he can really do this.  This or that person did this or that bad thing; can you really see him as your son?  Yes, it’s true, I really do.  The point is not to blame, shun or get angry at the person, but to fix the problem so suffering doesn’t perpetuate.

Buddha says it’s like seeing that your okesa has a hole in it and simply repairing it.  There’s a tear in the dharma fabric somewhere and something is out of alignment.  Suffering arises because something is out of whack—our expectations, perceptions, craving and aversion, or whatever.  Our job as bodhisattvas is simply to mend the tear so beings don’t keep falling through the hole.

Buddha sees beings falling into hell with their suffering, and because of compassion he tries to do something so it doesn’t keep happening.  In the sutra, he says: Should I see but one person falling into Avichi Hell, I would, for the sake of that person, stay in the world for a kalpa or less than a kalpa. I have great compassion for all beings. How could I cheat one whom I regard as my son and let him fall into hell?  Seeing a person falling into hell, I cause repairs [to be made] and bestow the precepts for good deeds.

Buddha could have seen people making mistakes and falling into hell realms and just written them off or become angry.  Instead, he provides teachings, guidance and precepts the way a parent would care for a child.  A parent might make a rule that the child not to go outside of the yard and into the street; when the child is older, she understands on her own that the street is busy and dangerous and has no desire to go there, but for now she needs help.  This is how we’re also encouraged to approach the world: seeing the suffering of beings and what that suffering leads to.  When we wake up, we can see enough to keep some of our suffering from arising, but for now we and others need help.  This is compassion, and we can see that it arises from Right View from the Eightfold Path.  Right View is a clear and deep understanding of the nature of suffering, how it arises and what we can do about it.  If we don’t understand suffering, we can’t act compassionately.

Now we can see how wisdom and compassion are connected.  We have to have wisdom to see what’s actually going on and to know how to act skillfully to mend the tear.  It’s not enough just to feel sorry for someone; I feel sorry for you still means I don’t see your suffering as my own (and I’m glad it didn’t happen to me).

Also, Dogen’s teacher Tendo Nyojo tells us how zazen and compassion are connected:  The zazen of buddhas and ancestors places primary importance on Great Compassion and the vow to save all living beings. … In buddhas’ and ancestors’ zazen, they wish to gather all Buddha Dharma from the time they first arouse bodhi-mind. Buddhas and ancestors do not forget or abandon living beings in their zazen; they offer a heart of compassion even to an insect. Buddhas and ancestors vow to save all living beings and dedicate all the merit of their practice to all living beings.

The vow to save all beings means to liberate all beings from suffering.  This is Great Compassion, and the kernel of the whole thing.  The most important, basic kind of compassion is the first of the Four Bodhisattva vows: liberating all beings from suffering.  This is what our practice is all about.

Buddhas and ancestors do not forget or abandon living beings in their zazen.  Again we are reminded that we’re not sitting for our own benefit alone.  We’re not sitting so that we can reduce our stress and feel peaceful or have a peak experience; we’re sitting in order to liberate all beings.  Zazen is not about closing ourselves off from the world in order to focus or concentrate; it’s about letting the whole world and all beings in.  We don’t forget or abandon living beings in zazen.

If compassion is the whole point of our practice and we’re putting all of our attention there, then it’s not possible to harm beings, because anger and ill-will is the opposite of compassion.  When we see how central Great Compassion is in our practice and tradition, then no wonder Kannon is such an important bodhisattva.  Kannon is the embodiment of our aspiration to free all beings from suffering.  One of the manifestations of Kannon has a thousand hands and eyes, and Dogen wrote a whole fascicle about it.  He says that Kannon’s whole being is hands and eyes—in other words, compassion fills the universe.  There is no “I see suffering with my thousand eyes so I’m using my thousand hands to help.”  Compassion is already completely there.

Kannon’s whole being and our whole being is compassion.  Eyes are seeing everywhere and hands are helping everywhere wherever there are suffering beings to be liberated.  There are a lot of stories in the medieval Buddhist tale literature about Kannon manifesting in various forms to save people in their hour of need: curing illness, saving them from danger, helping the poor, helping them have children, or liberating themselves or their parents from hell realms.  Kannon stories are among the most popular in the tale literature.  Why?  Because we all suffer and would like to be saved.

You may know that Avalokitesvara in India was male, and somehow by the time he makes his way to China and becomes Kuan Yin and to Japan as Kannon, he becomes female.  The male version was said to represent compassion in a general way, but the female version is compassion in action.  Compassion isn’t just a feeling.  It’s something we do.  No wonder, then, that in the tale literature, Kannon actively comes to the aid of people who need help.

As we move through the world, we do our best not to cause injury or harm, but compassion isn’t about just being nice, never doing or saying anything that shakes anyone up.  Sometimes the compassionate thing to do is to bruise someone’s ego.  If I’m drinking on the job, the compassionate thing is for my supervisor or somebody to say, “Look, get it together.  You can’t go on like this.”  If I let my ego get involved, I might feel foolish or insulted, but that doesn’t make this an uncompassionate act.  What about all the rest of the people around me who are affected by what I do?  Dealing with me is the compassionate thing for them.  Preventing harm to beings can mean making the tough call and it might be that not everyone likes it.

Compassion is not all hearts and flowers and sugary stuff.  It’s not one big Hallmark card.  Seeing all the suffering of the world and vowing to liberate beings is not an easy thing.  People sometimes ask, how can I take on all the suffering of the world when I can’t even deal with my own?  If we take it on like Kannon, there is no such thing as compassion fatigue.  Compassion doesn’t come at a personal cost to ourselves if our egos aren’t poking their heads in.

My friend and fellow dharma teacher Dr. Tomon Marr is a palliative care physician.  She wrote a piece called “Can Compassion Fatigue?” in the Journal of Palliative Care.  (She also gave a dharma talk on the topic here.)  She makes the point that to say compassion can fatigue assumes that there’s a limited well of compassion in each of us.  Once it’s used up, either we must replenish the well, or move along without it, devoid of our compassion or with impaired compassion.  Instead, if we’re just wholeheartedly focused on this moment without worrying about where else we should be or what else we should be doing, we can show compassion without burning out.  Our self-care strategies can actually work against us if we’re getting through the day in order to get to our real life or our leisure time, where self-care supposedly happens.

She’s speaking here specifically of compassion fatigue.  We certainly need physical rest, downtime, and activities other than work.  However, rather than relying on going somewhere other than here and now to recover from compassion fatigue, we have to understand what compassion really is.  Real compassion doesn’t cost us anything.

Perhaps what gets in the way is the idea that we should be able to finish the work.  Beings are numberless and I vow to free them, but it’s not possible.  It’s a never-ending uphill slog.  Just because can’t do everything doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything.  As Okumura Roshi has frequently reminded us, our practice will always be incomplete.

We do our best not to harm beings.  We recognize that one of the marks of existence is suffering.  We all have that in common: we all want to be free from suffering and not come to harm.  The opposite of harming beings is seeing that all beings are suffering and doing what we can to lessen that suffering.  We take bodhisattva vows that include liberating all beings.  

Compassion becomes a dharma gate when non-harming is the natural outgrowth of our wisdom rather than something we have to acquire or put on.  For now, we may need to remind ourselves to look for the compassionate response to what’s happening in our lives, but the more we practice the more it arises naturally because there’s no gap.  Our challenge is: how do we get out of the way of our own compassion—because there’s an unlimited well already there.  We just have to find it.

Benevolence is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] good roots prevail in all the situations of life.
慈是法明門、一切生處善根攝勝故

This week we move into discussion of the four brama viharas, or the four divine abodes.  You may not recognize them in this text if you’re used to them as loving-kindness (Skt. metta), compassion (Skt. karuna), sympathetic joy (Skt. mudita), and equanimity (Skt. upekkha).

It’s interesting that the brahma viharas come right after mindfulness of heavens in this text.  Brahma vihara literally means “divine abode,” and cultivating these qualities was said to lead to the arising of the mind of brahmas or loving gods, or to allow one to live with the gods.  One cultivates brahma viharas in order to overcome ill-will and sensual desire, and to facilitate training in deep concentration (samadhi).

The brahma viharas are very, very old.  They predate Buddhism, and three of the four show up in the Hindu Upanishads.  They also appear in the Jain tradition.

Brahma viharas are also called apramāṇa, the four immeasurables that develop the spacious or unlimited mind of the gods.  However, Buddha took these teachings and reinterpreted them.  He said he was not practicing these things in order to be reborn in a heavenly realm with the gods;  he was practicing while walking the Eightfold Path in order to manifest awakening and live with gods right here and now.

Other than in the list of the 108 gates, the brahma viharas don’t really show up in Dogen’s writings.  They do show up in Japanese Buddhism as shi muryo shin 四無量心, literally the four immeasurable minds.  “Immeasurable” or “limitless” is muryo, the same kanji as those found in the third of the four bodhisattva vows: homon muryo seigan gaku  法門無量誓願學 (Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them). (1)

The Mahaparinirvana Sutra is a good source for teachings about the brahma viharas.  In it, Buddha is teaching about the pure actions of a bodhisattva mahasattva.  The person with whom he’s speaking makes the point that you can’t really separate these four minds and that there is really only one.  Buddha says that indeed they are completely interconnected, but in order to teach beings he has to talk about four aspects of reality; this is skillful means.  

This week we start with benevolence or loving-kindness.  The kanji in the gate statement is 慈 ji.  In English, benevolence literally means "well-wishing."  Okumura Roshi translates ji as the mind that offers joy to others.  This is a kanji associated with love or affection, and it shows up in the Japanese words for charity and philanthropy.  Jizen 慈善 is charity; ji is love and zen is goodness.  Jizenshin 慈善心 is benevolence: love + goodness + heart/mind.

In the sutra, Buddha says loving-kindness reverses anger and greed, but that this will take some time.  For a long time past, over innumerable kalpas, one has amassed delusions and not practised what is good. For this reason, one is unable to subdue the mind in a day.  Then he goes on to use some interesting metaphors:

When a pea is dried up, one might try to thrust an awl through it, but one cannot.  Delusions are like that.

Also, the dog of a house does not fear people, and the deer of the forest fears man and runs away. Anger is difficult to do away with, like the dog that guards a house; but the heart of loving-kindness easily flees, like the deer in the forest. It is therefore hard to subdue this mind. 

When we draw a picture on stone, it always remains thus. But drawn on water, it disappears immediately and its strength does not remain there. Anger is hard to do away with, like a drawing that has been done in stone. A good deed easily disappears, like a picture drawn in water. That is why it is not easy to subdue this mind. 

A great ball of fire sustains light for a long while; the brightness of a flash of lightning cannot endure long. It is the same here. Anger is a fire-ball; loving-kindness is like lightning. That is why this mind is hard to subdue.

Even when we aspire to benevolence, we have trouble sustaining it.  We get it intellectually, we know what we want to do, but holy mackerel—we keep falling off the wagon.  You may be aware of loving-kindness meditations from the Theravada tradition, like meditation on loving-kindness that starts with yourself and moves to family/friends, acquaintances, strangers, and finally people you don’t like.  In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Buddha says we haven’t reached great or limitless loving-kindness until we experience it equally for everyone.  It’s easy to experience it for yourself and your loved ones, harder for strangers and impossible for people you hate!

In the sutra, Buddha says we are really practicing loving-kindness when we don’t see wrongs and anger doesn’t arise.  We stop seeing what others do as personal affronts to ourselves or attacks on our egos, and if we don’t take stuff personally, we don’t get angry.  Sometimes it’s as basic and commonplace as “She didn’t mean to step on my foot.”  Sometimes it’s “Yes, he spoke unskillfully to me in a way that was painful, but clearly he was caught up in his own stuff and wasn’t really responding to the situation in this moment, so it wasn’t really about me.”  Then we have the opportunity to not rise up on our hind legs, fill ourselves with righteous indignation, and say something hurtful right back because our egos have been bruised.

This doesn’t mean we condone unskillful, harmful behavior.  It means we don’t respond out of our personally motivated anger.  We do what we can to resolve the problem, sometimes forcefully if necessary, but not because we’re protecting our egos or getting revenge.  We do this in a loving and benevolent way, wishing everyone well. 

 In the sutra, the Buddha says:  If one does not feel anger even towards a single being and prays to give bliss to such a being, this is loving-kindness.  I’m guessing this may be related to another line that says, If any person asks about the root of any aspect of good, say that it is lovingkindness.  All the wholesomeness in the world is based on benevolence.  Whatever good is happening is because of wishing others well and wanting them to be able to liberate themselves from suffering.

Wishing others well is not hoping their cravings for diamond rings and cherry pie are fulfilled.  It’s wishing they have wisdom, compassion and insight so they can cut through delusion and wholesome circumstances can arise.  This is where our own individual practice intersects with benevolence.  In the sutra, the Buddha says, A person who performs good is [one of] true thinking.  In other words. benevolence arises from insight into the true nature of reality.  If we really see how things work, if we really see dependent arising, impermanence, the nature of self and how suffering arises, benevolence happens naturally.  This is the kind of benevolence that is both skillful and not done for any kind of personal reward.  We wish others well because it doesn’t make sense not to.

Buddha goes on to say, Loving-kindness is the Buddha-Nature of all beings. Such a Buddha-Nature has long been overshadowed by defilements. That is why all beings are unable to see. The Buddha-Nature is loving-kindness.  Loving-kindness is the Tathagata.

Though Dogen doesn’t write specifically about the brahma viharas as a group, he does have something to say about each of them.  In the Gakudo Yojinshu (Points to Watch in Studying the Way), he says, The buddhas take pity on all living beings and help them through compassion. Everything they do is neither for themselves nor for others. This is the usual way of the buddha-dharma.  That’s interesting, isn’t it?  There’s no label to be applied to this kind of benevolence.  It’s not benevolence for personal gain, but it’s also not intended as something done for others; those are both ideas.  It’s just a normal day in the life of the bodhisattva.

 I’m sure you have seen that even small worms or animals raise their young. Parents experience physical and mental hardships, and yet they persevere. After their young have grown up, fathers and mothers receive no reward. And yet, they have compassion toward their young. Even small creatures have this attitude. This is very similar to the Buddha’s compassion towards all living beings.

Benevolence is our natural approach to our lives if we can just get out of our own way, and that’s why we have to practice.  Until it arises naturally, benevolence is just our idea.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still do good actions, but our practice at that point is incomplete.  When there’s no “me” trying to be “benevolent,” then I can enter into this week’s gate and benevolence completely manifests in everything I do.

In the Shushogi, Dogen says: The stupid believe that they will lose something if they give help to others, but this is completely untrue for benevolence helps everyone, including oneself, being a law of the universe.  We’re not actively looking for some reward, but we can’t help but be benefitted.  Why?  Because benevolence is one of the four immeasurables, which means there’s no limit.  Nothing is outside of the Buddha Way including us, so creating wholesome conditions for others also increases our own wellbeing.  A rising tide floats all boats, or, as the gate statement says, good roots prevail in all the situations of life.

There’s no limit to who receives our goodwill, so no one is left out, including us.  We don’t lose anything by being benevolent; we can only benefit.  What is there to lose by wishing others well?  It’s in not wishing others well that we lose because we’re going against a law of the universe.  We’re out of alignment with reality and we’re causing dissonance and suffering.  And yet, that can be so hard.  What does it mean when someone is doing something really bad and yet we still wish him well?  Aren’t we letting him off the hook and saying it’s OK?

No.  We’re envisioning for him a circumstance in which he wakes up, mends his ways, and stops hurting himself and others.  That takes a really, really expansive and clear viewpoint.  Suffering happens because people are ignorant.  They’re doing stuff in an attempt to get rid of their own pain and discomfort, and nine times out of ten they’re making things worse.

Here’s the point of view of a lady who’s been involved in dog rescue:
The most important point of all is benevolence. Most people do the best they can.  Yes, people do things that disappoint us.  Yes, others will do things that we consider to be mistakes.  Yes, some people do horrible things to dogs, not to mention to other people.  But the more we can feel benevolence for other people, as much as we do for our dogs, the better off we will all be.  Over the decades that I have been in the dog world, I have seen so much anger about the behavior of others, and so much guilt from wonderful people about decisions they have made with the best of intentions. If only we could gather up all that negative energy we could power the world on it.  But in my humble opinion, it’s not what the world needs right now, and it’s not what each individual within it needs.

Malevolence, the opposite of benevolence, won’t help.  It’s a waste of time and energy.  It’s easy to be kind to dogs and have goodwill for dogs.  It’s not easy to have goodwill toward people who abuse dogs or children or vulnerable women or anyone.  Can we do it?  Buddha and Dogen say yes, we can, and we have to.  We have to because we are bodhisattvas and we don’t have a choice.  This is our immeasurable, limitless life.