Abandonment, as a part of the state of truth, is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we [can] turn away from all kinds of lives.
覺分是法明門、厭離一切生故。

This gate is not unrelated to last week’s material on dharmas being in equilibrium, meeting each thing impartially, not chasing or running away, and not getting caught up in preferences.  The kanji that’s translated as  “abandonment” here is one that means awakening and the “turning away from all kinds of lives” comes originally from Sanskrit terms about becoming fatigued by the things of the world and abandoning them.  When we do that, we stop the cycle of craving and aversion that leads to rebirth over and over again in this samsaric world.

The gate statement is pointing to a really central teaching in our tradition called the twelve-fold chain of dependent origination.  You can find lots of versions of a diagram or painting called the Wheel of Life that depict the twelve-fold chain and some other related teachings; there’s one in the section on dependent co-arising on our Buddhist Essentials page.

What you see in the picture is the three poisons at the center, the six realms of samsara in the middle, and the twelve-fold chain on the outside.  Starting in the center, the rooster is greed, the snake is anger, and the pig is ignorance.  These are the three poisons.  Notice that each one is biting the tail of the one before it, indicating that these three arise together—they’re not disconnected.

The next ring shows people rising and falling through the realms of samsara.  Then there are six sections for the realms of samsara.  The three lower realms are animals, hungry ghosts and various hells; these are considered miserable places to be.  The three upper realms are humans, demi-gods (asura), and gods; these are considered favorable places to be.  Being in one of these six realms is characterized by a particular mental state or poison:
1) the god realm (pride),
2) the demi-god realm (jealousy),
3) the human realm (desire),
4) the animal realm (ignorance),
5) the hungry ghost realm (greed), 
6) the hell realm (anger and hatred).

Finally, we get to the outer ring that shows the twelve-fold chain of dependent origination.  The point of this thing is to show how suffering arises from ignorance and and the things we do based on ignorance.
1) Ignorance (avidya), represented by a blind man.
2) Conditioned or formative actions (samskarakarma), as a potter making pots.
3) Consciousness (vijnana), as a playful monkey attracted by objects.
4) Name and form (namarupa), as two men in a boat.
5) Six senses (ayatana), as a house with five windows and a door.
6) Contact (sparsha) and its desire for an object, as a couple kissing or making love.
7) Feeling (vedana) or desire giving rise to feelings of pleasure and pain, as a man blinded by an arrow in one eye.
8) Craving (trishna) or thirst, as a man drinking alcohol.
9) Grasping (adana), as a monkey plucking all fruit from a tree.
10) Becoming or moving towards rebirth, as a pregnant woman.
11) Birth leading to endless rebirth, as a woman giving birth.
12) Aging and death (jaramarana) leading to endless cycles of life and death, as a corpse being carried to a cemetery.

The wheel itself is held in the claws of Yama, the lord of Death, which symbolizes impermanence.  He bites and consumes the wheel with his deadly fangs.  Above and outside of this wheel stands the form of Shakyamuni Buddha, whose teachings lead to liberation from the endless wheel of cyclic existence.

Sometimes this teaching is referred to as the twelve-fold chain or twelve links of causation or origination, sometimes as dependant arising or dependent origination.  We need to be careful not to confuse this with the term “interdependent origination.”  Interdependent origination means that phenomena are the products of an infinite number of causes and conditions, and because all the causes and conditions are interconnected and constantly changing, everything is empty of a fixed self nature.

The early teachings about dependant arising were designed to show how our karma continues from a past life to this life to a future life because of our ignorance.  That ignorance of the nature of self leads to clinging,  preferences and attachment, and the creation of a “self.”  In the Kalahavivada Sutta, the Buddha explains how each of these links leads to the next.  Working backwards, he shows how having preferences leads to conflict, desire leads to preferences, deciding whether sensations are pleasant or unpleasant leads to desire, contact leads to sensations, making form the object of sense organs makes us want to have contact with them, and so on.

Okumura Roshi says: The Buddha clearly says that there is a state where form (namarupa) ceases to exist; we can be released from bondage.  What kind of state is it?  I think this is the most important point.  The Buddha describes the state without ordinary perception and without disordered perception and without no perception and withour any annihilation of perception.  And he continues, “It is perception, consciousness, that is the source of all the basic obstacles.” . . .We need to pay attention to the fact that the Buddha says that perception or consciousness is the source of the problems, but annihilation of perception is ot the resolution of the problems.” (1) 

Various Buddhist traditions came up with different ways to be free from the sense organ making contact with something and the mind creating an object.  Some negated the object and just focused on consciousness, and  some focused only on form and negated mind.  Our tradition goes beyond distinctions between subject and object, as we’ve learned from Nagarjuna and Dogen.

This is Before the moment, preserving the eye that precedes the moment that we talked about at the last gate.  Before taking an action, we preserve the viewpoint of emptiness or nondiscrimination that’s there before we make the choice, not losing track of what’s there before we decide that what we’re encountering is good, bad or neutral and then either chasing or running away.  That place is where we’re sitting in zazen.  This where we’re free from perceptions, whether they’re disordered or not.  They’re still happening, but we’re not acting on them or believing them to be absolutely true.  We’re not annihilating perception, but still we’re free from the chain of sense contact leading to preferences leading to attachment.

This is the same kind of pattern we see in the Heart Sutra: There is no ignorance nor extinction of ignorance, there is no old age and death nor extinction of old age and death.  This is a condensed version of the twelve-fold chain.  Okumura Roshi says:  Ignorance is the first link in the chain, and old age and death are the last.  So the statement negates the first and last links and all of the ten links between them, yet it also says that there has been no extinction of those links.  So the Heart Sutra is saying that there is no such thing as the twelve links of causation and yet they have never disappeared.  (2) 

Thus the sense of this gate statement is that when we experience awakening, we come to see that clinging and desire lead to suffering.  We become disenchanted or disillusioned with chasing after stuff and running away from other stuff.  We want to distance ourselves from that whole process, or let go of the habituated thinking that compels us to grasp things in a way that perpetuates the illusion of self and keeps us trapped in this cycle of samsara.

Buddha’s awakening experience happened when he sat down under the bodhi tree and had some insight into the twelve-fold chain as the basis of the four noble truths.  In his first teaching after explaining the four noble truths, he says: Indeed a vision of true knowledge arose in me thus: My mind’s deliverance is unassailable.  This is the last birth.  Now there is no more becoming. (3)

Awakening is leaping off wheel and liberating ourslves from suffering by seeing how that twelve-fold chain gets built link by link, starting with the three poisons, then the actions we take based on those three poisons, then the realms we create with our discriminative thinking and picking and choosing what’s pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, then the process of the five skandas clinging to the five skandhas and becoming a solid, inflexible thing called “me” even though we don’t really have a fixed self-nature and there’s nothing we can hold onto as “me.”

Dogen’s comment on this branch of the balanced truth as one of the factors of awakening tells us how to do this: “Detachment as a limb of the truth” is “Though I have brought it, others do not accept it.”  It is a Chinese person, even when barefoot, walking like a Chinese person. It is Persians from the southern seas wanting to get ivory.

As usual, in order to make sense of this comment we need to wander away for awhile and then make our way back.

“Though I have brought it, others do not accept it.”
This is a reference to story which is making reference to another story.  One of the most significant characteristics of medieval Asian literature is that it is highly allusive; it’s always making reference to other texts or incorporating those other texts by just quoting a phrase.  Contemporary readers would have understood the references immediately and gotten the connotation or the flavor of what the writer was pointing to.  For us today, these texts can feel like they’re full of inside jokes and we don’t get them and can feel left out and frustrated.

I had to ask Okumura Roshi for help in tracking down this allusion.  All I had was an English footnote, which turned out to be somewhat inaccurate.  He was able to find the story; when I read it it was vaguely familiar, but I never would have tracked it down myself.  It’s a reference to a story from the Record of Liángjiè (Dòngshān Liángjiè was a Chan teacher in 9th century China).  In this text, a monk asks him about the transmission story of the Sixth Ancestor, Dàjiàn Huìnéng, who lived about 150 years before, so first we need to do quick review of that famous transmission story; then we can look at the conversation about it between Dòngshān and his monk, and what happens afterward.  Then we can consider why Dogen is referring to this whole incident in his comment about abandonment.

A very condensed version of Huìnéng’s transmission story is that he’s an illiterate worker in a temple, splitting firewood and pounding rice.  The abbot decides to have a poem contest among the monks, and the one who demonstrates the greatest degree of understanding will inherit his robe and bowl and become his dharma heir.  The head monk Yùquán Shénxiù wrote his poem on a wall, and everyone thought it was brilliant.  It said:  The body is the bodhi tree.  The mind is like a bright mirror’s stand.  At all times we must strive to polish it and must not let dust collect.

Huìnéng heard this poem and immediately wrote one of his own:
Bodhi originally has no tree.  The bright mirror also has no stand.
Fundamentally there is not a single thing.  Where could dust arise?

The abbot could see that Huìnéng had a deep understanding, but was concerned for his safety if the other monks found out.  He secretly explained the Diamond Sutra to Huìnéng, who had a big awakening.  The abbot handed off his robe and bowl in the middle of the night and helped Huìnéng to run away to protect himself and to spread the teachings as widely as possible.  Huìnéng has various adventures with people trying to take back the robe and bowl, but he wins out in the end and becomes a very famous teacher.

The important points here for us at the moment are in the two poems.  Shénxiù says we need to constantly practice to purify our bodies and minds so we can get to awakening.  Huìnéng says originally there isn’t a single thing, so there’s nothing to purify because everything is empty.  That’s the story that’s being referred to in the conversation between Dòngshān (or Tozan in Japanese) and his monk.  Here’s Okumura Roshi’s translation of that conversation:

The Master (Tozan) gave instruction to the monks of his assembly saying, “Even if you straightforwardly say that originally there is no single thing, still you will not be worthy of obtaining the robe and bowl.  Here, you should give me one pivotal phrase. Tell me, what can you say?”  

There was a monk who tried to give the Master a correct phrase 96 times but his speech did not accord with the Master’s intention. The 97th time he finally said something that satisfied the Master. Tozan said, “Why didn’t you say so sooner?”

There was another monk who over and over listened to the successful one trying to give the Master a pivotal phrase, but he could not hear the final pivotal words. This monk asked the successful one what he finally said, but he would not tell him. The monk kept asking for three years, still the successful one would not tell him. 

Finally, the frustrated monk became very sick and thinking he was near death, he said to the successful one, “I have been asking you to tell me what you said for three years but you have been continually refusing me. If courteous requests cannot convince you to tell me what I want to hear, I will convince you in a violent way.”  Then he picked up a sword and said, “If you don’t tell me, I will kill you.”

The threatened monk was frightened and said, “Wait. I will tell you” and then said, ”Even if it is taken in, I don’t have room to place it.”   The other monk made a prostration with gratitude.

The successful monk’s statement ”Even if it is taken in, I don’t have room to place it” is what is translated in Dogen’s comment, “Though I have brought it, others do not accept it.”

So what’s the point of this story?  Dòngshān says that even if you straightforwardly say that originally there is no single thing, like Huìnéng, that’s not it, and he asks his monks to say something else.  The successful one says Even if it is taken in, I don’t have room to place it.

Here’s where I think he’s going; you may have another idea.  It isn’t that there aren’t individual forms we can distinguish; it’s that we’re already not separate from them, so there’s nothing to acquire.  Everything is already connected to everything else in this one unified reality, including me, so it’s not possible for you to hand me something that isn’t already here.  There’s no room to place something additional because there isn’t anything additional.  If I was trying to make a space for an additional something, I would not be understanding that there is nothing outside of the Buddha way.

We practice with the forms of this body and mind like Shenxui, and we also go beyond body and mind to emptiness like Huìnéng, and we also go beyond the distinction between form and emptiness like the successful monk.  We don’t need to chase after robes and bowls or anything else because they’re already here and there’s no blank space in which to put them.

Dogen’s comment goes on: It is a Chinese person, even when barefoot, walking like a Chinese person. 
I admit that I don’t know exactly what the reference is here; I’m only speculating.  One possibility has to do with a demonstration of rank.  The Chinese had a lot of different kinds of shoes.  They were among the first Asian societies to start making various sorts of footwear.  What kind of shoe you wore said something about your role in society: court noble, farmer, soldier.  However, even barefoot and without the designation of role or rank, Chinese people walk like Chinese people.  There’s nothing they need to acquire to be what they are.  Their role within Chinese society is already there, so putting on a shoe or a badge doesn’t add anything more.  Even if the shoes are missing, complete Buddha nature manifesting as a Chinese person walking is already there.

It is Persians from the southern seas wanting to get ivory.
Again, I’m speculating here.  In Dogen’s lifetime the Islamic world was relatively prosperous and was able to get ivory from both India and Africa.  It was used a lot in boxes and inlaid patterns in wood.  Persians would have been surrounded by ivory, so Persians wanting ivory is again looking around for something that’s already there.

What does all this have to do with not being attached to the things of this samsaric world in a way that perpetuates suffering?

“Detachment as a limb of the truth” is “Though I have brought it, others do not accept it.”  [or ”Even if it is taken in, I don’t have room to place it.”]  It is a Chinese person, even when barefoot, walking like a Chinese person. It is Persians from the southern seas wanting to get ivory.

All of Dogen’s examples illustrate that we don’t cultivate non-attachment and stop chasing after things by withdrawing from sense contact with the world or by rejecting forms because they ultimately can’t give us lasting peace and happiness.  Earlier we heard from Okumura Roshi that “that perception or consciousness is the source of the problems, but annihilation of perception is not the resolution of the problems.”  As bodhisattvas, we don’t turn our backs on anything.  We fully, wholeheartedly enter into everything because we’re already not separate, and not creating separation makes attachment impossible.  There’s no “I” as a subject to be attached to something out there as an object.  As long as there is separation, there’s some potential for chasing after this thing or running away from that thing.  If there’s no separation, it can’t be done and all the karma and suffering that arises from it come to an end.

As soon as we see clearly how the twelve-fold chain works, how it starts with ignorance, and then our senses make contact with something, craving and desire and attachment arise, the five skandhas start clinging to five skandhas and we create a separate self, and we think that self needs things in order to be valid, powerful and valuable.  If we feel cut off from those things, we have suffering and a feeling of annihilation and death.  Seeing what abandonment or non-attachment really is and where it really comes from is what lets us stop this cycle of going around and around in samsara, transmigrating moment after moment between heaven and hell, inside and outside, and abundance and lack.  We don’t have to get anywhere or get anything because it’s all already right here.

The balanced state, as a part of the state of truth, is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we recognize that all dharmas are in equilibrium.
定覺分是法明門、知一切法平等故。

What this gate calls the balanced state is right concentration, or for us, zazen or shikantaza.  All dharmas being in equilibrium is the way we see things from the standpoint of emptiness or nondiscrimination, so we might restate this gate as: in zazen we know emptiness.

This isn’t our first go-round with these topics in in our work with the 108 gates.  At Gate 13 we said that with our insight into the true nature of reality, we give rise to magnanimous mind, the mind of nondiscrimination and inclusivity.  Gate 49 was all about the equality of all elements and how when we give up discriminative thinking we can also give up rules and guidelines because we can go beyond good and bad.  At Gate 61 we considered balance and concentration and keeping the mind from wandering around so we could get to nonseparation.

Today we’ll look at what Dogen has to say about this gate, and then suggest some ways that this teaching about all dharmas being equal can go wrong in dharma centers.

We know right concentration as one of the elements of eightfold path.  It’s what Uchiyama Roshi describes as settling down in quietness. (1)  When we settle down, we concentrate and refine our practice by letting go of whatever is extra.  That includes the habituated thinking, stories and ideas that keep us from really understanding that we’re not separate from anything else.  That’s the absolute view, or the viewpoint from emptiness, where nothing has a fixed and permanent self nature that we can grasp.

This gate says that in the concentration of zazen, we see the way Buddha sees, with impartiality and equality.  Dogen’s comment about this gate:  
“Balance as a limb of the truth” is, before the moment, preserving the eye that precedes the moment; it is blowing our own noses; and it is grasping our own rope and leading ourselves. Having said that, it is also being able to graze a castrated water buffalo.

Before the moment, preserving the eye that precedes the moment
Before taking an action, we preserve the viewpoint of emptiness or nondiscrimination that’s there before we make the choice, not losing track of what’s there before we decide that what we’re encountering is good, bad or neutral and then either chasing or running away.  That place is where we’re sitting in zazen.

Blowing our own noses, grasping our own rope and leading ourselves
Without relying on fixed rules or other people’s viewpoints to tell us what to do, we can see reality clearly for ourselves and we know what the skillful action is.  Here again, we encounter this teaching about seeing the equality of all dharmas allowing us to go beyond good and bad.  That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter what we do, or that there aren’t wholesome and unwholesome actions.  It means we don’t need to judge and label what’s good or bad or wholesome or unwholesome; we can see the working of the network of interdependent origination, and the choice is about what will keep that network in the most healthy condition.

But it’s also being able to graze a castrated water buffalo
This is a reference to another Shobogenzo fascicle called Kajou, or Everyday Life.  Now we need to go down the rabbit hole for a few minutes and then come back out.

Dogen quotes Zen Master Enchi Daian, who says that he spent 30 years going about his everyday life on his mountain, doing his everyday, mundane activities but not learning Zen.  Instead he just watched over a castrated or domesticated water buffalo.  A water buffalo is not an exotic thing, but a working animal.  Even today, more people depend on them than on any other domestic animal.  They’re particularly good for tilling rice fields and give a rich milk.

Enchi Daian says about this buffalo:
When it strayed into the grass, I dragged it out.
When it invaded another’s seed patch, I whipped it.
Though disciplined for a long time already,
As a pitiful creature, it suffered people’s remarks.
Now it has turned into a white ox on open ground.
It is always before me.
All day long it is in a state of conspicuous brightness.
Even if driven away, it does not leave.

In other words, he had to train this water buffalo not to make mistakes.  It was hard work for him and not so pleasant for the buffalo!  Of course, this is an allegory for his own practice and training.  He’s training and disciplining himself.

Then he says the water buffalo has turned into a white ox on open ground.  Now he’s referring to the famous story in the Lotus Sutra where the children are playing in the burning house.  They’re too busy playing with their toys to notice that the house is on fire and try to escape.  Their dad tries to get them to come out by telling them that there are three lovely toy carts outside for them.  The kids get excited about the carts and come out of the house and they and their dad all sit down together on the open ground, but instead of the three little toy carts, Dad presents them with a really impressive great white ox.  The allegory here is that we’re all so caught up with chasing after things and running away from things that we don’t realize we’re trapped in samsara with all of our burning desires.  Buddha tries to get us out by offering three different kinds of teachings as expedient means. but actually, there’s only one Buddha Way and only one unified reality.

For Enchi Daian, the 30 years of training this everyday domesticated water buffalo has resulted in his awakening.  He sees the great white ox or the Buddha Way all day long, whether he’s trying to or not: even if driven away it doesn’t leave.

Now let’s tie everything together in Dogen’s comment on this gate.  We need to be able to see emptiness or nondiscrimination in the moment before we choose and action and take it.  If we can do that, we don’t need to be told what to do, because we can see clearly, we know for ourselves what the skillful action is.  Having said that, we have to practice and train ourselves in order to be able to see the way Buddha sees.  Zazen is one place where maybe we can best see all dharmas being in equilibrium, or all things being empty.  We also have to be guided by precepts, teachers and forms until we can let go of them and stand up on our own.  When we can do that, our lives are complete manifestations of Buddha nature that the precepts describe.  We manifest emptiness in the midst of form all the time.

We always have to be careful how we take in and practice with teachings about nondiscrimination.  There are some wonderful insights that can come with it, but also there are some big potential pitfalls.  We can’t see only nondiscrimination or emptiness; we also have to see and acknowledge differences or else we can’t function effectively in the world, and we can actually perpetuate suffering rather than liberating ourselves and others from suffering.

These days a number of sanghas, including ours, are considering how to be more inclusive and how to make sure that everyone feels welcome and cared for in the dharma center.  We might summarize the wish of diverse practitioners as “to be safe and seen” in our dharma centers and sanghas.  This isn’t just a policy thing for the board to figure out.  This gate is pointing us to some important dharma teachings related to diversity and inclusion.  Let’s look at some of the recurring themes in the national conversation about dharma and diversity, and we can see how form and emptiness and this gate statement keep showing up.
 
Let me describe statistically who primarily shows up in the American dharma center.  (I wrote an article about this for Tricycle magazine back in 2008.)  Pew Research Center has just released its newest Religious Landscape Survey; I'll update the numbers below soon,)

• 44% of American Buddhists are White, 33% are Asian, 12% are Latinx, 8% are mixed/other and only 3% are Black.  The relative percentage of Latinx practitioners is growing.  (For comparison:  the five largest ethnic groups in Monroe County are White (83.5%), Asian (6.67%), mixed/other (3.1%), Black or African American (3.03%), and Latinx (2.57%).)
• Most practitioners make $30,000 or less per year and this group is growing relative to the whole.  The next largest group makes between $50,000 and $100,000.  (These are 2014 numbers and thus do not reflect pandemic impact.)
• The majority of practitioners have at least some college education, with about a fifth holding post-secondary degrees.  (At Sanshin, more than 85% have a bachelor’s degree or greater.)
• The number of married practitioners is decreasing and is now about even with the number who have never been married.
• 69% of American Buddhists are Democrats or lean Democratic.  44% are liberals and 36% are moderates.

There are also some things we know about Sanshin specifically.  Just about all the practice leadership here is male.  In the last year, two thirds of the people signing up for our Getting Started sessions have been men.  Most people who come to sesshin are male and mid-30s or younger.  Most of the people who used to come to genzo-e were female and older.  Before the pandemic, the people who practiced here were a mix of retired folks and young adults, people without young children at home that require care.  This reflects national trends, in which a growing percentage of American Buddhists are either 20 to 30-year-olds or 65+.  Only about a fifth of practitioners have children under 18.  Thus we could describe dominant culture within American Buddhism as White, middle-class, liberal, Democrat, no kids at home, and at Sanshin, historically particularly male (though female participation is increasing and nationally the gender distribution is pretty evenly split).  With that picture in mind, let’s look at these recurring themes:

1) It might seem like a good thing to say “we see everybody equally” or to smooth over differences as a way of being inclusive, but actually it can be a way to avoid acknowledging our fear of people who arrive at the dharma center and are unlike ourselves.  Yes, there is no distinction in emptiness, but we also live in the world of form.  Yes, Buddha says that everyone already has Buddha nature and awakening is already here, but that doesn’t mean it looks the same for everyone.  In trying to be welcoming, we can give out a message that “We don’t see you as different from us and therefore you’re welcome here.”  Why should new people have to be like us in order to be included?  The subtle message is still that you’re not OK being you.  Under a veil of welcoming and acceptance that can make us feel good about ourselves, we can still make it unacceptable to be different from the sangha’s dominant culture. worldview or physical form.  “I don’t see color” is not necessarily skillful; it can disregard people’s actual karmic circumstances.   Treating people equally isn’t same as giving people what they need.

2) When we’re experiencing some discomfort with what’s arising in our practice, dharma teachers sometimes point us back to our own hearts and minds.  We’re reminded not to blame others but to look at what we’re creating and adding to the situation, where we might be clinging to our ideas and where our own hindrances lie.  It’s often a skillful means and an important redirection, but when working with diverse practioners we need to be careful not to leave them with the conclusion that the inequities of society and the resulting suffering are either all in their imaginations or all their own fault.  Teaching everyone the same way might not be effective.  Yes, suffering is a characteristic of human life; it’s the first of the four noble truths.  However, but people from diverse communities often experience particular forms of suffering.  Teachers and sangha need to see the context of that so diverse practitioners get good help and support with their questions about self and karma and where they fit in the network of dependent origination.

There aren’t easy answers for this.  Like most American dharma teachers, I’m not Black or transgender or a mother with a small child experiencing poverty.  My teaching stories and cultural filters don’t necessarily reflect their experiences and worldviews.  Dominant-culture sangha members might have trouble discussing and empathizing with these folks’ karmic circumstances, and for beginning practitioners in particular, these things present challenges to establishing a practice.  How can we encounter and treat everyone equally in terms of access to practice and teaching and the dharma, and still recognize and affirm differences rather than trying to get rid of them or ignore them?

3) Diversity and inclusion are not matters of personal emotion.  As individuals, we can be sincerely friendly and welcoming to everyone who comes to the dharma center, we can try to exercise our wisdom and compassion all the time, and still not recognize the obstacles to practice that exist for people of different karmic circumstances.  Reaching out to diverse populations, inviting them in, saying we see and welcome everyone equally and simply waiting for them to start arriving isn’t enough.  It might not be that these folks don’t know the dharma center exists; there are likely barriers to participation that are not obvious to the existing sangha.  Folks might be dying to come and sit zazen, but they don’t have transportation or child care, or the building isn’t ADA compliant.  They may be worried that there won’t be others with similar karmic circumstances, or they don’t see teachers and leaders to whom they can relate, and these might not even occur to the existing sangha, which would be happy to welcome them personally.  It can be puzzling for good-hearted sangha members who say, Well, Buddhas and ancestors say that everyone does the same zazen, so why can’t everyone just fold into the practice?  We can’t just assume that diverse groups don’t come to the dharma center just because they’re not interested.  That doesn’t encourage a broader and deeper conversation about potential barriers that may be present for people who are not part of the dominant culture.

4) At the same time that we need to listen to the experiences and insights of diverse practitioners in the dharma center, it’s not their responsibility to resolve the barriers to inclusion.  Ideally, the dominant-culture sangha is also asking itself what might be getting in the way of new people joining the practice and sharing the dharma.  That’s not necessarily a comfortable dharma gate, but there’s a difference between naming barriers to diversity and blaming someone for them.  Identifying obstacles doesn’t require us to get defensive.  These are our karmic circumstances too; we’ve all been conditioned to see things in a certain way.  It takes time to work with seeing emptiness in zazen and also seeing difference in the world of form and knowing how to navigate that skillfully.

Once we’ve started to uncover the barriers, we might indeed start doing some special, targeted things.  There might be committees, trainings or events about dharma and diversity, but we have to be careful not to make inclusion a “problem” to be solved by a small group of sangha members or to see this kind of practice as a sort of subspecialty.  It’s just one more manifestation of Mahayana teachings about seeing one reality from two sides and expressing two sides in one action.  

If we do start looking for someone to turn to for advice about inclusion, we can quickly see that there are few dharma teachers of color or who are part of other various diverse groups.  These few people are often put in the position of speaking for their entire groups in discussions of dharma and diversity.  They’re suddenly in huge demand by sanghas and conferences that want to be educated about issues of diversity and inclusion, often simply because of their affiliation with a diverse group rather than because of their abilities or credentials as dharma teachers.  

Likewise, practitioners from diverse groups are suddenly deluged with invitations to become board members, serve on committees or do other things, regardless of their backgrounds and talents, simply because sanghas want to increase their apparent inclusiveness.  We have to be careful here about difference and sameness.  In the midst of trying to work with diversity, we can just take the most obvious characteristic of a person and see only that, rather than a whole individual with differences and samenesses to other people.  This teacher or board member is Black / transgender / Spanish-speaking / something else and therefore is automatically an expert on the issues facing that group of practitioners and can speak for them.  What if someone came to a White or middle class or gender conforming dharma teacher and said:  Please educate us on everything we need to know about how your group practices?  The answer would probably be: We’re all different.  I can’t speak for everyone.  I can only tell you about my own experience.

We’ve been talking about how we look at practice from the point of view of including diverse sangha members without forcing them to ignore or suppress their own different karmic circumstances, but there’s a recurring theme that’s kind of the opposite situation.  There is a certain amount of cultural appropriation and adaptation in American dharma centers that can make Asian practitioners uncomfortable.  White American practitioners can adopt various language habits, gestures, aesthetics, and other elements of personal style that they believe to be “Asian” in a conscious or unconscious attempt to be more “Buddhist.”  Likewise American dharma centers are sometimes designed and decorated to look “Asian” as a means of creating a particular practice atmosphere or establishing credibility, even when the sangha is has no connection with Asian culture and the leaders never trained there.  Often these “Asian” characteristics are the products of the imagination of the dominant culture.  Somehow all these White, middle-class, liberal, Democrat, no-kids-at-home practitioners believe they need to be something else in order to practice.  Somehow it becomes important for them not to be different from what they think a traditional Asian practitioner is, and this is the atmosphere and expectation that gets imposed on everyone, including Asian practitioners who don’t recognize any of it because someone made it up.

When we work with this gate as it relates to diversity, seeing in our zazen and off the cushion that all things including beings are empty of a fixed and permanent self nature and encountering each thing and being the way Buddha does, with impartiality and nondiscrimination, we need to think about why this intersection is important as a container for bodhisattva activity.  We don’t practice with diversity and inclusion in order to make ourselves or the dharma center look good.  There’s a lot of temptation to be caught up in trends, virtue-signaling, and doing things because others are doing them.  It’s certainly useful to watch what’s happening around us and consider what it means for our own practice, but our motivation has to come from bodhicitta and being sincere and wholehearted.  

We’re also not in this to offer the dharma to underserved, suffering, downtrodden, helpless populations so that we can “save” them.  It might sound nice, bringing dharma to people who need it, but that approach can quickly become an exercise in ego.  We’re in a higher position offering something to people in a lower position so we can feel good.  From the point of view of diverse practitioners, the compelling reason is that marginalization creates suffering, and as Buddhists our first vow is to liberate beings from suffering.  If we do it skillfully, explore and investigate our own clinging to greed, anger and ignorance, and seeing how that’s related to issues of marginalization, are meaningful dharma gates that are relevant beyond discussions of diversity and inclusion.  
Beginning with individuals ceasing to perpetuate suffering and dharma centers ceasing to perpetuate suffering, the sangha can then move outward to community engagement or beneficial action in ways that it deems appropriate.  It’s helpful to frequently and broadly ask ourselves: “How might our practice, teachings and activities be inaccessable to people who are not able-bodied, White, middle-class, college educated, liberal, childless, etc?  How am I doing in seeing both the truth of emptiness and the truth of karmic circumstances?”  Paying attention to these questions will make us skillful bodhisattvas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was said that there are five kinds of rapture: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plum flowers are peeping from the December snow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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