Repentance is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] the mind within is stilled..
慚愧是法明門、内心寂定故.

Having finished our discussion of the four seals, we move next to a group of five gates that I suspect is designed to keep us from becoming icchantikas, beings who have so far destroyed their wholesome roots that they have no hope of awakening. (1)  I confess that it’s not entirely clear to me that this is the nature of the list because the words have come from Sanskrit through Chinese to Japanese, and there are any number of ways to interpret the translation. (2)  However, in any case these five gates have something important to say and are worth our consideration.  This week, let’s look first at repentence and then at the relationship with the mind that’s stilled.

Repentance is one of a pair of activities; the other is vow.  We can’t really talk about one without the other.  Our bodhisattva vows say that we’re going to liberate all beings from suffering, end all our delusions, take every possible opportunity to practice and thoroughly experience and understand Buddha’s way, and yet it’s not actually possible to do all this stuff in one human lifetime.  Thus at the same moment that we take vows, we have to repent.  As fast as we make the promise, we already have to acknowledge that in this limited human form, we’re not up to the task, and as fast as we make repentence, we vow all over again to do all these impossible things!

In our tradition, repentence isn’t about saying that we fell off the wagon and asking for absolution.  The core meaning of English “repent” is to creep or crawl on the ground, and in the West we immediately get a picture of someone groveling in fear and shame and begging forgiveness.  However, when you think about getting down on the ground in our tradition, you might think about full prostrations.  When I teach people how to do full bows, I tell them that the Japanese word for prostration is gotai tochi 五体投地, literally casting five parts of the body to the ground: right knee, left knee, right hand, left hand and head, in that order.  There’s a sutra (3) that talks about the repentance of the five parts of the body, and it turns out to be these same five, so we might think about how full bows to Buddha and repentance are related.

However, in Zen we’re not undertaking seeking absolution from a person or deity.  Absolution is made up of the Latin ab (away) and solvere (to loosen) -- in other words, to set free.  It usually means to set someone free from blame or responsibility, and in that context, one repents in order to be cleansed of guilt.  Our repentance is different.  Yes, we acknowledge that we’ve not been perfect bodhisattvas as we’ve gone about our daily human lives.  We also acknowledge that this practice is endless and we need to keep at it moment after moment because we’ll never be done.  

Buddhist repentence changes across time and space.  In India, the emphasis was more on confession and asking the forgiveness of the sangha.  In China, the emphasis was on repentence as the cause of the confession.  There are multiple kinds of repentance activities across Japanese Buddhism, and in Soto Zen today we have two kinds of repentance: formal and formless.  

The formal kind is where we realize we’ve been unskillful and may have taken some harmful action.  Maybe you’ve broken a precept or perpetuated some kind of suffering for yourself or someone else.  It’s natural to feel uncomfortable about this.  If you’re a healthy person, you realize that others have feelings and they want to live peacefully and happily just like you do.  Repentance practice gives us the chance to reflect on our actions, to bear in mind that everything we do is practice and everything we do has consequences for ourselves and others because of the truth of interdependence.

When we realize we’ve done something unwholesome, it’s natural to feel some regret.  Maybe an apology or other kind of restoration is in order, but maybe we simply need to acknowledge that what we did wasn’t optimal and we need to try not to do it again.  This is what we’re doing when we do the ryaku fusatsu ceremony at Sanshin every month.  It’s the oldest Buddhist ceremony that we still do.  Traditionally, the entire sangha got together to hear from each other how they might have gone off the rails and to recommit to following Buddha’s teaching.  Here, we listen to instructions about following the precepts, and then say something if we want to about what we may be practicing with at the time.  We do that in the presence of the other practitioners who come and we also invoke a lot of Buddhas and bodhisattvas.  In that way, the ceremony is about more than what’s going on for the small self.  It’s the whole universe is doing the ceremony together.

That brings us to formless repentence.  For that, we don’t just repent of our unskillful actions, we repent of all of our actions.  Why?  As long as there’s a “me” doing an “action,” there is duality.  The actual nature of the universe is also non-duality.  This is why zazen is an act of repentence.

What we’re doing here is noticing where our activity is motivated by some idea about the self.  As long as we cling to the delusion of a fixed self-nature and that drives our actions, we’re missing the mark.  That doesn’t mean that the action itself is bad; we could certainly do some good action that also has a bit of self-clinging.  That doesn’t negate the good, but we do get chance to see what’s happening and vow to do something else next time.

Formless repentance doesn’t need to wait for some actual action.  It’s the acknowledgement that we carry delusion about the nature of reality, and as human beings, we will always carry that delusion.  Thus we need to keep doing repentance practice and renewing our vows.  Maybe this turns around our misunderstanding that we do repentence because we’re bad people and need forgiveness.  That’s not what’s happening.  This is not about feeling guilty.  Clinging to guilt can be as much of an ego trip as clinging to doing good deeds because we’re using guilt as a means of writing a story about the self.

Since we’re talking about things like absolution, we should also consider the meaning of purification.  Repentence is not a means of purification as in getting rid of defilement.  We could say that purity is about nonduality.  If there is nothing outside the Buddha way, then even those things we might consider defiled are included.  Where is the line between purity and defilement?  To move toward purity is to deeply realize that samsara and nirvana are already not separate.  It’s not about getting rid of anything; it’s about seeing and acknowledging that the universe is already or originally undefiled.

Formal repentence deals with our karmic activity, the stuff that happens because causes and conditions resulted in our taking this human form and moving through the world.  Formless repentence deals with the point before there is separation and duality and delusion.  Formal repentence supports us in our zazen practice because it helps us settle down and let go of wrestling with the unhelpful things we did, including our responses to what others did to us.  Formless repentence is zazen itself, being in the space before separation and subject and object so we can see how these things go together and why repentence is essential in a practice style like ours here at Sanshin where zazen is central.

One of the elements of Sanshin’s practice vision is to enable the practice of shikantaza in the style of Uchiyama Roshi.  What does that mean?

• The study of the meaning of zazen in the context of Buddha’s teachings.
• Letting go of extra activities or formalities in an effort to focus on zazen. 
• Finding the significance of zazen and study in modern daily life.
  
  

If we equate zazen with repentance, we can see how that works in Sanshin’s particular practice style.  Working backwards, we might say that formal repentence is about our investigation of our modern daily lives, the concrete stuff we do.  Zazen is the experience of opening up space so we can see clearly what’s going on and not be dragged around by habituated responses that may or may not be skillful.  In zazen, we can become intimate with our own patterns and become aware of their affect on others.  We get the space to choose a response rather than just react, and we can also see how our practice is always incomplete.  Thus, finding the significance of zazen and study in modern daily life may be equated with formal repentence.

On the other hand, studying the meaning of zazen in the context of Buddha’s teachings might be about formless repentence.  One of the Buddha’s most basic teachings is that all things are interconnected because of dependent origination.  Nothing arises from nothing; everything is dependent on causes and conditions, so there is no separation, and in zazen we get to enact or embody that.  It’s the repentence of returning to a point before duality where there’s no “me” taking an action, just activity.

This is a good point at which to turn to the second part of the gate statement about stilling the mind.  There are two things to point out here.  The first is that the statement says “the mind within.”  The word here is naishin 内心: deep down in the heart-mind.  It’s not a case of doing repentance in order to make ourselves feel better on the surface, or to quiet our guilt or shame.  We’re talking about getting down to the deep roots of the origins of our karma and delusion.

The second thing to point out is related to last week’s gate: Reflection on stillness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not disturb the mind.  We equated the stillness in that statement with nirvana  The stillness in today’s statement is the same seijaku 静寂, sometimes translated silence, stillness or quietness.  The kanji are 1) silence/stillness/peace/tranquility + 2) silence with connotation of nirvana, blowing out the flames of suffering and affliction that happen when we don’t see reality clearly, or at least, not feeding those flames if we can avoid it.

We could reword today’s statement to say that repentance is a dharma gate because it puts us in touch with nirvana.  That makes a lot of sense in the context of both formal and formless repentance.  In our daily activity we try to understand that samsara and nirvana are not separate.  Sometimes we make mistakes because we’re trying to get to some better place or situation for the small self, not understanding that nirvana is already right here.  That’s formal repentance.

At the same time, sitting zazen and being in that place before duality is the formless repentance; that place before duality is nirvana.  If there’s no separation between subject and object, then I don’t need to break precepts to get what I think I need.

So how do we actually do repentance and walk through that gate to nirvana?  Like so much of Buddhism, it’s not linear; there’s no “do this and then this.”  However, as a piece of groundwork, we need to understand that it’s important and why it’s important.

Repentance isn’t just a ceremony or ritual.  As we’ve seen, it’s not really optional in this tradition.  The more we engage with it, the more we understand how necessary it is, and if we can let go of the idea that it’s about humiliating ourselves, then the ego can get out of the way.

The traditional words for repentance carry connotations of both disclosure and correction.  That means we have to be really honest with ourselves.  We start by not hiding our unskillful actions from ourselves, and then perhaps we disclose them to others.  It can be easy to rationalize our behavior and not take responsibility for what we do.  It’s difficult to accept that we’ve caused suffering or done something unwholesome, but as bodhisattvas we have to accept the suffering of the world and not look away, even when we’re the cause.  We can’t sincerely take vows until we first acknowlege where we’ve gotten in our own way and gotten tangled up in hindrances.  That’s why we chant the verse of repentence before taking precepts.

All my past and harmful karma,
born from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion,
through body, speech, and mind,
I now fully avow.

Unless we accept and take responsibility for our previous actions, we can’t promise to do the next one.  We’ve got to start by looking closely at our own habits and assumptions.  The verse refers to body, speech and mind, the three places where we create karma, so we also have to look at what we’re doing with our thoughts and how skillful we’re being there.  That includes understanding why we believe what we believe.  Where did those things come from, and are they helping or not?  Our thoughts lead to speech and action.  If I’m vowing to liberate all beings but on a daily basis I’m acting based on my need to feel important or my anger at the way my life is going, I’m not going to be effective.

There’s a fair amount of self-awareness work to do here.  We need to deeply investigate Buddha’s and the ancestors’ teachings on interdependence in order to get that what we do has consequences for ourselves and others.  Sometimes identifying exactly what we regret doing helps us clear up vague feelings of unease we may have about ourselves.  I don’t feel good about myself, but I don’t really know why.  We don’t want to look at these things, but eventually we can come to see that there’s a difference between I did something unskillful and I’m a bad or unworthy person.  We might be able to explode some ideas we’ve created about ourselves and may have been carrying for years.

Once I’ve stopped hiding my unskillful actions from myself, it might be helpful to disclose them to others in appropriate ways.  I might need to apologize to someone and explain what was going on for me (which is not the same as making an excuse).  I might want to talk to a sangha friend or get some advice from a teacher.  There’s much encouragement to be found in participating in ryaku fusatsu with a friendly group of practitioners who are all engaged in the same repentance practice.  

As part of repentence, we can practice giving up our reliance on the small self alone and turning toward the three treasures and, of course, so much of acknowledging past harmful actions and reversing the course of habituated thinking is about cultivating wisdom.  There’s a part of the Lotus Sutra that says: “If one wishes to carry out repentance, sit upright and ponder the true aspect. Then the host of sins, like frost or dew, can be wiped out by the sun of wisdom.”  We make mistakes because of our ignorance.  We can’t always see clearly the reality of our lives.  We can’t see past our ideas about how things are or how they ought to be, and our Buddha nature gets obscured by our deluded thinking.  Practicing sincerely and doing our best to deeply understand emptiness and manifest our Buddha nature is real repentance.  

Notes

(1) We must acknowledge here that the existence of beings classified as icchantika has been controversial within the Mahayana traditions, which hold that all beings have (or are) buddha nature and cannot be excluded from awakening.  See this short paper about buddha nature from Sotoshu.

(2) The next five gates that I suspect may be the direct antidotes to being an icchantika are repentance, humility, veracity, truth and dharma conduct.  Icchantikas are described as refusing to repent or admit wrongdoing because they have no sense of shame; denying both cause and effect and suchness, and thus creating a false view of reality; and selfishly breaking precepts without regard for others.

(3) See Ancient Buddhism in Japan: Sutras and ceremonies in use in the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. and their history in later times by M. W. de Visser, Paris, 1928.

Reflection on stillness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not disturb the mind.
寂定觀是法明門、不擾亂心意故.

The last of our dharma seals is silence, stillness or nirvana.  It’s a mark of existence because this is the complete freedom from duality.  We need to work with forms and objects in order to live in the world, but it’s also true that all those things are not separate from emptiness or nirvana.

The word for stillness here is seijaku 静寂, sometimes translated as silence, stillness or quietness.  The first kanji is silence, stillness, peace or tranquility.  The second is silence with a connotation of nirvana.  When we compare the kanji for seijaku to the kanji for nirvana (jakumetsu 寂滅), we see that jakumetsu is written with the same kanji for silence plus the kanji for extinguishing, like extinguishing a flame.  The roots of the word nirvana are about blowing something out, in this case, the flames of suffering and affliction that happen when we don’t see reality clearly.  Or, at least we don’t feed those flames if we can avoid it.  

In the Lotus Sutra, there’s a parable about a father trying to save his children from a burning house.  It’s another way to depict the Buddha trying to help us experience nirvana by dealing with the fires of our delusion.  Another translation of the gate statement is: Investigating peace is a gateway to the light of the Dharma, for it dampens the flames of passion.  This isn’t saying we should never have strong feelings about something.  It’s referring to the flames of the burning house, the flames of craving and aversion that keep us trapped on the wheel of samsara.  Thus the stillness in the gate statement is the stillness or silence of nirvana, the stillness that happens when we’ve let go of craving and aversion and delusions about the self.

However, blowing out the flames doesn’t mean we become inert, that we’re still and silent because we’re dead and there’s nothing going on.  One of the places that seijaku shows up is as a Japanese aesthetic that’s about tranquility in the midst of activity.  Maybe you’ve heard of wabi-sabi, the beauty of things that are “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.”  Something that’s incomplete, like a flower bud that’s not open yet or something that’s falling apart, suggests impermanence.  This coming and going is considered beautiful.  It can be so subtle that it takes a quiet mind and real attention to be aware of it.

It’s said that there are seven principles of wabi-sabi (1); the seventh is seijaku: tranquility in the midst of activity.  It’s not a lifeless stillness; it’s an energized stillness.  This is the stillness of zazen.  We’re not moving about and we’re not actively engaging with thoughts but there’s still plenty happening.  When we turn that around, we can also be physically very active and busy, but inside we can be calm, tranquil and concentrated.  This is taking zazen mind off the cushion and out into the world.  Tranquility in the midst of activity can look like either tranquility or activity, but both are there.

There are lots of Japanese arts-related or cultural activities that live in this intersection of stillness and activity.  One is the tea ceremony.  Tea master Sen Rikkyu in the 16th century taught that jaku 寂 is one of the four main principles of the Way of Tea.  (The others are purity, respect and harmony.)  Rather than being a dreamy psychological state, it’s the dynamic concentrated energy of one’s innermost being that comes out in the actions of the ceremony. 

Of course, we can apply this to our own liturgy and forms, to our zazen, to the way we cook and eat meals during sesshin—and to the way we cook and eat meals at home.  So how do we get to that point of stillness within activity?

We’ve said that seijaku is the stillness of nirvana.  In nirvana, we’ve extinguished the fires of craving and aversion and the suffering that results from that kind of delusion.  As a result, we’re able to settle down and concentrate on the here and now without being distracted by chasing after things and running away from things.  Without distractions, we can see things as they really are and live in an authentic way.

One of the biggest delusions and distractions is the attachment to a concept of self.  Last week we saw that no-self is one of the marks of existence, and yet we create all kinds of trouble for ourselves by ignoring that reality.  A scholar named Theodore Ludwig wrote an article about religious aesthetics in the tea ceremony.  In a section about seijaku, he said: Since there is disturbance as long as the “I am” idea persists, tranquility is the expression of the artist’s selflessness.  The “I am idea,” or attachment to self, is one of the biggest mind disturbances there is.  As soon as we disturb the mind, it’s like throwing a stone into a calm pond.  It makes ripples, we can’t see to the bottom anymore, and we also can’t clearly see the reflection of the sky.  We can think of seijaku or stillness within activity as an expression of no-self.  Once we can let the small self get out of the way, we see clearly right to the bottom of reality and we also clearly reflect that reality back out no matter what we’re doing.  That’s why our teachers say things like zazen is doing zazen.  There’s no “I” that’s doing zazen  (or dancing or cooking or whatever).

If attachment to self is one of the biggest causes of our suffering, then letting go of that attachment must be one of the most important things we can do in manifesting awakening.  Stillness in the midst of activity is how we concretely experience the teaching that samsara and nirvana arise together and can’t be separated.  We’re manifesting stillness right here, not waiting to get to somewhere else called nirvana where everything is perfect.  As bodhisattvas, we use this imperfect, impermanent body and mind as the ground of our practice.  It’s all we have.

Delusion, forms and everyday activity exist in the middle of absolute peace.  All that’s going on, and yet the mind is not disturbed.  My dharma great-grandfather Kodo Sawaki had this to say: 

Fundamentally we can walk in any direction: east, west, south or north­—whichever way we wish.  Each and every activity permates the entire ten-direction world.  We simply practice manifesting eternity through our action in each moment.

Once Sen no Rikyu needed a carpenter to drive a nail into an ornamental alcove post in a teahouse.  After looking here and there, Rikyu decided on the best spot.  The carpenter marked it and then took a break. Afterward, he couldn’t find the tiny mark.  He asked Rikyu to search again for the best location.  After a while, the tea master decided on the spot and indicated to the carpenter, “Right there!”  When the carpenter looked carefully, he found it was the very place he had marked the first time.

Don’t you see?  There’s always clear aim right in the midst of emptiness in which nothing is fixed.  We must have a decisive direction. (2)  

He’s showing how form and formlessness are interpenetrated.  Formlessness or stillness doesn’t mean we don’t have a direction in our day to day lives.  If that was the case, we couldn’t carry our our bodhisattva vows and we might never get on a cushion.  We don’t stop moving; we just stop being disturbed.

Kosho Uchiyama made some comments about what his teacher Kodo Sawaki said: 

East, west, south or north, whichever way we go, we just live the self that is only the self, and fortunately there’s no direction forbidden us.  So it’s okay for us to stride majestically wherever we go as the self that is only the self, with peace of mind.  But at the same time, in the midst of formlessness, which demands no particular direction, there must be a decisive aim.  No matter what we do, we should do it so each of our actions expands throughout the entire ten-direction world.  Eternity is manifested in each moment.

Because I live a lax and unsophisticated life, I would simply drive a nail into the post in a haphazard way, without asking a carpenter.  But for someone like Sen no Rikyu, who sees into emptiness, there must be a way of driving a nail as an expression of formlessness.  We human beings may stride in any direction: east, west, south or north—whichever way we like.  Only when we actualize the self that permeates the entire ten-direction world and practice manifesting eternity moment by moment will the peace of the self that is only the self no matter what ripen. (3)

There’s an example of inner tranquility leading to skillful action in the world.  When the mind is not disturbed and we have clarity, we can let go of the small self and still have direction.  Sen no Rikyo could act with precision in the midst of formlessness.  Stillness leads to wholesome, skillful action.

Dogen says the opposite is also true: skillful action leads to inner stillness.  It’s just another version of his famous teaching that practice and awakening are not two.  In the beginning of the Bendoho, he writes about the teaching of dojo daishu ichinyo: In activity and stillness, together with the community.  Interestingly, the kanji are: 動静大衆一如, literally activity - quiet - great - the people - one - suchness.  Of course, it’s always true that we’re all together within one suchness or one reality, but sometimes we forget.  Dogen says:

All buddhas and all ancestors are within the Way and engage it; without the Way they would not engage it.  The dharma exists and they appear; without the dharma, they do not appear.  Therefore, when the assembly is sitting, sit together with them; as the assembly lies down, lie down also.  In activity and stillness at one with the community, throughout deaths and rebirths do not separate from the monastery.  Standing out has no benefit; being different from others is not our conduct.  This is the buddhas’ and ancestors’ skin, flesh, bones and marrow, and also one’s own body and mind dropped off.

He’s talking here to novices in a training temple, but we can see how what he’s saying applies to us in our practice with the sangha.  Doing things together with others and following a schedule is a great way to free ourselves from selfish clinging.  If you’ve ever done sesshin or residential practice, you’ve seen what a great practice it is for letting go of ego.

It’s actually a good demonstration of what we can live without.  Usually, the demands of the ego seem imperative: we think we can’t live without determining for ourselves how we spend our time, being recognized for our specialness, or doing things the way we expect to do them.  During my very first sesshin, during orientation the teacher explained the daily schedule and said that the time for taking showers was during the break after work period.  A new participant said, “But we can take showers when we get up in the morning, right?”  No, the teacher repeated, the time for that was during the break.  She had no ability to imagine that a) there was a world without morning showers and b) she didn’t get to decide when to take one!

Not only does acting with others help us let go of clinging and picking and choosing, but it becomes a clear manifestation of Buddha nature in a non-discriminative way.  In other words, all of our actions are a reflection of awakening.  We don’t think, Well, I’ll be on my best behavior in front of the teacher or my sangha friends, and in front of others I don’t care.  We just do what’s being done, maintain the same stillness and zazen mind, and don’t change our behavior based on who’s watching.

Maintaining the harmony of the community is activity within stillness.  Someone who shows off, wants his own way, is looking for a reward or doing some other ego-based thing is breaking the harmony of the sangha.  That’s not activity within stillness, because the mind is disturbed by self-clinging.  Giving up the ego is an important part of seijaku.  In his instructions for temple officers, Dogen keeps pointing out that that work is for the sake of the public or the community, not for one’s own gain.  Doing for the sake of others is being in accord with the Way.

Dogen goes so far as to say that practicing on our own makes us vulnerable to demons, while practicing in a community protects us from them.  The demons he’s talking about are things like laziness, or going astray in our practice and misinterpreting teachings to match our own ideas.  Also, on our own without a community we’re vulnerable to self-clinging.  Being in a sangha reminds us over and over again that we’re not the only ones affected by what we do.  As soon as we lose stillness or tranquility, we’re liable to do something unskillful.  Without teachers and sangha friends to reflect that back to us and point out that we’ve gone off the rails, we might never know.

We can see that the teachings of this gate are like a wheel.  Giving up ego and craving and aversion helps us settle into silence and tranquility.  On the flip side, if we’re in a place of stillness, no matter what we’re doing, we are not troubled by craving and aversion and we’re not separate from nirvana.  It’s a very direct way into Dogen’s teaching that practice and awakening are not two.  He says we can’t separate stillness and activity; they arise together.  There is always activity in the midst of the stillness he’s talking about.

Historically in both Buddhism and Christianity there have been those who’ve criticized “mystical” practice as being about withdrawing from the suffering of the world.  Jesuits who encountered Buddhism two or three hundred years ago thought that Western philosophers wanted answers to the problems and scandals of the world, while we just wanted to go into a happy blissful state of our own, like animals, and escape from everything.  This is not what our teachers are teaching.  Stillness is not about barricading ourselves in and enjoying our own peace.  It’s about being able to take meaningful action in all aspects of our lives, action that corresponds with how things really are, not based on our own ideas.  Yes, quieting the mind will likely reduce our own suffering, but as bodhisattvas we turn that around and give it back to the universe.

Reflection on there being no self is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not taintedly attach to self.
無我觀是法明門、不染著我故.

This week we take up the next of the four dharma seals: no-self.  Our gate statement is telling us is that if we look closely at the nature of self, we will see that there is no fixed, permanent self and on that basis we will loosen our attachment to our ideas about what it is.  There’s nothing there that we can grasp and hang onto, and if we think so, that’s delusion (this gate uses “taint”).

Understanding the attachment to self is really important in our tradition.  The Japanese word bonno 煩悩 refers to our delusive desires, things that drive us to take unwholesome action.  The second bodhisattva vow, bonno mu jin sei gan dan 煩惱無盡誓願斷 (delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them) includes the same bonno.

There are four kinds of bonno or basic delusions:
- gachi: ignorance of the dharma
- gaken: egocentric views based on our ignorance
- gamon: arrogance
- ga-ai: attachment to self

Not understanding no-self is one of the most basic delusions we have.  It’s at the root of a lot of our suffering.  If I think the self is permanent, I need to make sure it’s as good as or better than all the other selves around.  This fiction of a self becomes a yardstick for measuring my life—but that makes no sense, because there really is no yardstick and nothing to measure.

So why do we say that there is no self?  After all, we encounter a variety of people every day.  We’ve seen each other here before, we recognize each other and remember things we’ve done together.  However, the teaching of no-self doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to have personalities or some particular characteristics.  Teachings about no-self are not saying that we as individuals don’t exist.  Buddha taught that the self is simply a collection of elements that come together in this moment based on causes and conditions.  Causes and conditions are always changing because all things are impermanent; therefore the things that arise from causes and conditions are also impermanent, and there’s nothing we can point to as a self that persists in a fixed way through time.  

Because everything arises from causes and conditions, nothing has an independent existance.  Everything, including the self, is dependent on other things.  It doesn’t arise from nothing or exist independently.  We might think we’re separate from all other beings or dharmas, but we can’t be.  

If that’s true, then where is the boundary between self and other?  I’m here today because my ancestors got on boats from various European countries and came to the US.  Myriad workers over the last 62 years have grown my food and sold me stuff and treated my illnesses.  Japanese Zen teachers left Asia and brought practice to North America and made it possible for me to practice.  I’m here in this moment exactly like this because of all of these people.  They’re part of the causes and conditions of this moment for me.  So where is the boundary between my life and theirs?  Where is the self?  It truly doesn’t exist.

At the same time, it’s also true that we inhabit individual bodies and have individual experiences, skills and interests.  These individual bodies are the ground of our practice and without them we couldn’t do zazen or help other beings.  No one can really trade places with anyone else.  We can’t negate ourselves as individuals with bodies and minds, but we also can’t cling to the self as a fixed, unchanging and independent entity.  To cling to one side or the other is delusion.

Uchiyama Roshi says that we live simultaneously as a personal self, an individual taken up with everyday affairs, and as a universal self that is inclusive of the entire universe.  He ought to know, because he said that the question of what is the self was the overarching theme of his life! 

So what is this universal self as distinct from the small self or personal self?  The personal self is made up of all our ideas, feelings and constructions about who we are, who other are and how things work.  The universal self is the life force that continues to play out even when we’re not thinking about who we are and clinging to some idea about self.  Uchiyama Roshi points out than when we’re asleep, we continue to live; our lives go on outside of our ideas about it.  When we’re sitting zazen and letting go of thought, our lives go on as well.  When we can let go of the small self and let it get out of the way, interesting things can happen—probably something more interesting than the fixed ideas we’re clinging to, something fresh and new that is a clear manifestion of the universal self.

When he talks about art practice, my dharma brother Hosshin Shoaf shares a useful quote attributed to John Cage:  You know, when you enter your studio, everyone is there—the people in your life, other artists, the old masters, everyone.  And as you work, they leave, one by one.  And if it is a really good working day, well, you leave, too.  Maybe when we arrive on the cushion, there’s also a lot of subject and object happening—me and a lot of other people and my relationships with them, what they think of me, what I need to do for them, and how I compare to them.  If instead we can sit in the middle of nonseparation, where there is no small self to manifest, then we can leave too.  

When we do, then the things we think we want from our practice arise naturally.  We usually come to practice wanting something out of it, like peace, stability or wisdom.  If we sit so we can learn to act that way, it’s still an act, and we’re still stuck on an idea of who we should be.  When we put small self aside, the real peace, stability and wisdom show up.  It’s no longer about how practice can benefit me; it’s now the universe doing what the universe does.  We’re seeing our lives from the broadest possible perspective and manifesting that very broad perspective in our day-to-day activities.

Okumura Roshi says that studying the self means studying how to walk with others.  That’s a good summary of how we need to carry these two aspects of self.  How do we take care of ourselves and carry out our individual responsibilities, and also not forget that the self is empty and doesn’t need to be defended?  He says this is why we need sangha: so we can learn to walk together with others while we hold both of these aspects.  

Buddhism says that self-clinging is one of the most basic delusions.  That means it’s pretty deeply rooted, which is a problem.  Okumura Roshi says that almost all of our actions, wholesome or unwholesome, are based on self-centeredness.  The three things we use to create karma are body, speech and mind, and that’s because they’re the three things we use to take action.  That puts self-clinging at the center of our karma.  It influences all of our actions, and potentially the outcomes of those actions.

Seeing our self-clinging doesn’t mean we don’t take action.  We need to see clearly what’s happening and still take the most skillful action we can.  We can’t wait for some state of purity that’s somewhere other than right here, or we can’t do our practice or our bodhisattva work.  Okumura Roshi says we have to try to become aware of our self-clinging even while we’re trying to do something wholesome in the world.

How do we gain some insight into the nature of self so we can be free from self-clinging?  Ironically, the idea that we need to study or acquire something in order to get rid of this delusion about self is itself a problem.  We might imagine that we need to correct our mistaken thinking about the self, or get rid of our delusion about the self.  All we really need to do is get out of the way.  Dogen says that practice and awakening are not two.  When we take the zazen posture, we aren’t controlled by delusive thoughts.  His teacher Tendo Nyojo used the expression shin jin datsu raku 身心脱落, dropping off body and mind, to describe being freed from the karmic self.  He first heard this expression from his teacher when he was 25, and he didn’t get it.  What is this dropping off body and mind?  Nyojo said that dropping off body and mind is zazen!  Dogen later taught that practice without self-centeredness is itself awakening.

The way to understand the self and be able to let go of it is to sit zazen.  It’s not that we’re going to learn something new about the self that we’re then going to use to be free from it.  It’s that zazen is itself dropping off body and mind, which is being free from the karmic self.  Uchiyama Roshi describes someone sitting in zazen as simultaneously being pulled around by thoughts about desires and also letting go of thoughts.  He says this is an ordinary person living out universal self.

In zazen we open the hand and let thoughts come and go by themselves.  This is non-thinking.  Even so, the mind keeps functioning by itself in each moment.  The stream of consciousness is like a waterfall; it constantly flows but has no permanent nature or self.  Even though thoughts are coming and going, we don’t take action based on those thoughts, so we don’t create karma.  This is what Dogen meant in Shobogenzo Zuimonki when he said zazen is the true form of the self: Sitting itself is the practice of the Buddha. Sitting itself is not-doing.  It is nothing but the true form of the Self.  Apart from this, there is nothing to seek as the buddha-dharma.  True self here means the self before discrimination between self and other, delusion and awakening, etc.

Uchiyama Roshi has a great description for this non-separation of beings: you exist within my universal self.  If you exist within me, how can we be separate?  How can I want to cause you suffering by breaking precepts or doing something unwholesome?  I’m just hurting myself.

In zazen, we begin to see that relying on small self alone is ultimately unsatisfactory because it’s impermanent and we can’t hang onto it.  The idea of a fixed self is an illusion, so it doesn’t make sense for us to build our entire world around it.  In the Sutta Nipatta, the Buddha said, Live in the world relying on the Self alone as a foundation, be freed from all things, depending on no thing.  The self here is universal self, the self that is not separate from all beings and not our own personal property.  When we rely on universal self rather than small self, we don’t get caught up in self-clinging.  We see that the small self is a manifestation of universal self.  Small self is real and we can’t ignore it, but it’s not the whole story and it’s not the basis for anything.  When we let go of small self, what a relief!  We’re freed from all things and depending on no thing.

Buddha says the same thing in the Dhammapada:  Take refuge in Self, take refuge in Dharma, take refuge in nothing else.  Again, this is big Self or universal self.  Uchiyama Roshi struggled to come up with the right term for this big Self.  He tried things like “the actual reality of life” but people didn’t make the connection that this was all about them.  There’s me here and the actual reality of life out over there.  In the end, it makes sense to call this thing the universal self, because what’s more intimate to us than that?  You exist within my universal self.

When we can let go of the small self we can start to explore the universal self because, after all, it’s our own life.  The whole world is our universal self.  Whatever is happening in the world is my own life playing itself out—those things exist in my universal self.  The joy and suffering of others is my life.  Wholesome and unwholesome things in the world are my universal self.  It puts our bodhisattva vows into new perspective.  To say My small self or my life are a part of a larger whole still misses the mark by creating separation.  My small self is the entirety of my universal self, 

Chinese Zen master Hongzhi was asked, “What is the self before discrimination?”  He answered, “A toad in a well swallows the moon.”  A tiny being in a narrow well contains the whole universe.  

This universal self is beyond what we think about it, so talking about it is kind of pointless.  It comes down to how the universal self lives out the universal self through the small self.  It’s the day-to-day things we do when we do them without self-clinging, because we’re paying attention to the hindrances that come up when we’re stuck on our ideas about self.

If we look closely at our suffering when it arises, we often see that it’s happening because some aspect of our self-concept is being challenged.  We have taintedly attached to self.  What can we do?  We can drop expectation.  Our ideas about how things “should” be are only our ideas and have no bearing on what the universe is actually doing.  Struggling with how things “should” be is a recipe for suffering.  There is no guarantee that we will be healthy, comfortable, popular or even safe.  In the midst of that, contentment still arises, and it arises because we are without attachment.  As soon as we go chasing after something we don’t have and running away from things we don’t want, the most basic kind of suffering has set in.

We also need to drop our fixed ideas about self and others.  The human condition is that we evaluate everything we encounter for its usefulness to ourselves.  When the government, the sangha, the family or any other human group doesn’t give us what we’ve decided we want or need, our habituated thinking says that we’ve been personally wronged.  In fact, no contract has been broken.  The universe never agreed to abide by our preconceptions.  We’ve let our delusions about self calcify into something we’re using as a yardstick to measure the worth of ourselves and others.

Instead, as bodhisattvas we move through the world making our best effort to ameliorate the suffering of beings without being attached to the outcome of those efforts.  There is no entitlement and no reward.  We simply offer what we have, and if others can take it up and make use of it, fine.  If not, so be it.  This is the universal self living out its life through us.

Reflection on suffering is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we cease all aspirations.
苦觀是法明門、斷一切願故.

This week we continue the discussion of the four dharma seals: inconstancy or impermanence, suffering, no-self and nirvana.  Last week we talked about the first seal in Gate 18 (Reflection on inconstancy is a gate of dharma illumination; for [with it] we reflect upon the desires of the triple world) and we saw that the triple world was made up of the worlds of desire, form and beyond-form.  In this gate we again have the triple world, although it’s not mentioned directly.  The Japanese for the second seal is sangai kaiku 三界皆苦: all beings in the three worlds are suffering.

Last week we saw that the three worlds of desire, form and beyond-form contain beings who have not permanently moved beyond suffering, despite being able to let go of sense experiences and the craving and aversion that arise from them.  It’s the first noble truth: life is characterized by suffering.

These three worlds contain beings who have not reached Nirvana; they’re still suffering because they’re still attached to something.  There’s a Japanese proverb that says: A child is a neck-shackle for the Three States of Existence (or the three worlds).  In other words, love or attachment to a child will impede your spiritual progress through not only this world but the other two!  It’s difficult to be a parent.

This gate asks us to deeply consider the reality that all beings everywhere have suffering, and further suggests that if we really understand this, we will stop chasing after things.  Even aspiring to move to a higher celestial realm will not end our suffering.  Does that mean we should have no goals in life?  Should we give up all of our plans?  And how do we make the daily choices necessary to get along in the world?  Do we just drift at the mercy of whatever comes along?

The good news is that this is not what our ancestors taught.  The element of the Eightfold Path known as Right View is all about truly understanding the Four Noble Truths, which explain the nature of suffering, how it arises and what we can do about it.  Here’s what Uchiyama Roshi had to say about sangai kaiku, all beings are suffering:
Suffering is not something that comes to attack me periodically; my whole life, as it is, is suffering.  Nevertheless, I go around fighting with people, loving them, ignoring them, without every being able to truly see that suffering.  Actually, suffering in the deepest sense is all of that.  In other words, as long as this matter of death remains unclear, everything in the world suffers.  That is the meaning of the idea that all sentient beings are suffering.  It is something that isn’t talked about much simply because most people wouldn’t have any idea of what it’s about. (1)

When he says that as long as this matter of death remains unclear everything suffers, he’s talking about impermanence, the first dharma seal: everything dies.  Intellectually, we can understand what the Buddha taught fairly easily.  The life of all beings is characterized by suffering, and that suffering is the result of our cravings and aversions that cause us to chase after things we want and run away from things (like death) that we don’t want.  There is a way to liberate ourselves and all beings from suffering, and that’s to engage in the practice of the Eightfold Path. 

However, just knowing what the words mean isn’t the same as deeply understanding that this path is a better means to a wholesome life than simply being led by our desires and delusions.  It’s not an academic or intellectual exercise.  Buddhism is a practice, something we do.

The way to get to grips with Right View and to reflect on suffering is to get onto the cushion.  Settling down in zazen, we can begin seeing through our ideas and cravings, and understand that even though we fall off the path, living a life of practice is a good thing for ourselves and all beings.  Now, we might ask: But isn’t aspiring to live in Buddha’s Way still an aspiration, something the gate statements warns us against?  

Recognizing that we’re working with a translated text, we need to understand what “aspiration” means in this gate statement.  Interestingly, the root of the word “aspire” is about breathing—breathing into or breathing on.  These days we think of “aspiring” as aiming toward a worthy goal, but the earliest historical sense of it is “panting with desire!”  

However, grasping and craving for things that shore up the small self is different from arousing bodhicitta and intending to walk Buddha’s path for the sake of both self and others.  Without some direction or intention we couldn’t practice.  Our understanding of bodhicitta and the direction of our practice changes throughout our lives as we get better at seeing the reality of ourselves and our existence.  The focus of our dharma study, the particular practice schedule we carry out, the specifics of our bodhisattva work may change, but our determination to live in Buddha’s way remains constant, supported by vow and repentance and not based on our personal desires.

Of course, as limited human beings we sometimes become attached to results or outcomes of our practice.  We may find ourselves trying to get something from zazen or dharma study in order to make ourselves feel accomplished, important or wise.  There’s a fine line between personally getting something from our practice and practicing for the good of the world.  The Buddha Way doesn’t leave anyone out, including ourselves.  We certainly share in the wholesomeness manifested by engaging in zazen and the Eightfold Path, but underneath it all, what’s our motivation to practice?

For many of us, it was our individual suffering that led us to make that first contact with a dharma center, read that first dharma book or seek out that first dharma teacher.  Something felt like it was out of whack and we were in search of some means of lessening that discomfort.  Maybe we’d already tried other spiritual traditions, various wellness activities or latest psychological method.  Maybe we’d resorted to the distractions of addiction to make our pain go away, resulting only in making it worse.  All else has failed, so let’s try Buddhism as the next spiritual technology.

Originally, we may have climbed onto the cushion looking for a reduction in the stress of our personal lives, but after awhile it likely became clear that there was more to this than our own circumstances.  Healing ourselves can’t help but change the things around us if we are not separate from the rest of reality.  Our actions of body, speech and mind—the three places where we create karma—affect ourselves and others now and give rise to the conditions of the next moment.  The understandably self-centered approach we originally brought to the cushion starts to expand, and we realize that it’s not actually possible to practice for ourselves alone.  We go from panting with desire for some kind of personal results to seeing the larger and more balanced worldview, and that happens when we see our true nature as bodhisattvas.

Even so, there are few human actions that don’t contain some degree of delusion and defilement, however small.   We may begin taking some pride in our practice: how many Dogen quotes we can spout, our experiences practicing abroad, how many chants we’ve memorized, the age of our rakusu, our intimate knowledge of things kept at the dharma center, our membership in the Buddhist in-crowd.  The basis of all of this is our engagement with the Three Treasures, and yet it’s resulted in self-aggrandizement.  It’s just another example of the need for lifelong moment-by-moment practice—as well as the need for good sangha friends willing to wisely and compassionately point out that we’re making some mistakes.

When we truly understand that suffering arises from craving and aversion, we stop chasing and avoiding.  We can keep ourselves aimed at manifesting awakening, but we’re able to accept and respond skillfully to things that happen along the way that we can’t predict.  We can make course corrections as our insight deepens, holding our goals loosely, finding new and helpful ways around obstacles without getting caught up in anger and discouragement when our ideas don’t match reality.  

We can’t possibly know the totality of the ways in which causes and conditions will play themselves out, so we can’t possibly control everything about our lives.  Without flexibility, it’s hard to keep our intention alive and pointed in the right direction.  Discouragement leads to giving up when it seems that goals aren’t achievable.  That’s when it’s time to examine our ideas and assumptions about what we’re trying to do.  There may be a better plan for getting where we’re going or a different way to frame the goal.  Maybe we have misperceptions about the way things work, or maybe something is more possible with the help of others.  Cultivating clarity lets us remain firmly on the path while letting go of the fixed ideas that lead to suffering.

There’s an Iowa poet named Robert Tremmel who’s clearly been reading Opening the Hand of Thought.  In 2016 he published a poem called Power Outage, and before the poem he includes a quote from Uchiyama Roshi: Truth must consist of living out our lives in accord with certain inescapable realities.  “Inescapable realities” is Uchiyama Roshi’s way of saying Four Noble Truths, and this is the inspiration for the poem.

Power Outage

Candlelight is not
enough light
to read by

any more than bluegills
circling blindly
beneath the ice
can lead anyone
to salvation

or even
mere enlightenment.

Outside, the wind groans
on, branches
heavy with snow twist
and creak, small feet
curl into fur.

In Japanese
there are words for this

shogyō mujō

the nature of the wick

sangai kaiku

the suffering
of the wax.

We can imagine being inside during a power outage.  It’s dark and the lights don’t work, so we’ve got a candle, but the light isn’t very bright and it’s not enough to read by.  We’re not going to get anywhere with whatever we’re reading and going on with it is kind of pointless, just like the fish swimming around under the ice in the lake outside are not going to lead anyone to salvation.  They don’t know where they’re going, and they can’t save anybody.  Blindly rushing around isn’t going to solve all our problems, and it’s not even going to lead us to mere enlightenment, seeing the undeniable realities of life.

Outside, we can hear the sound of the wind and the creaking of the branches.  Small animals have taken shelter somewhere and they’re doing what they need to do to ride out the storm.  These things are going on regardless—wind and snow are coming and going and small animals are living their lives.  The universe is doing what the universe does.

In Japanese, there are words for this / shogyō mujō / the nature of the wick
Shogyō mujō is the first dharma seal: all conditioned things are impermanent.  The wick provides a condition for the flame of the candle; without the wick, the candle cannot burn. Yet, the wick is changing, and as a result, the flame is changing.
  
sangai kaiku / the suffering / of the wax.
Sangai kaiku is the second dharma seal: all beings in the three worlds are suffering, as is the wax while the universe functions, the candle burns, and wax is consumed in the fire.  Each is completely filling its dharma position.

To return to Uchiyama Roshi for a moment:
The first undeniable reality (shogyō mujō or impermanence) is that every living thing dies and the second undeniable reality (sangai kaiku or suffering) is that we suffer throughout our lives because we don’t understand death.  The truth derived from these two points is the importance of clarifying the matter of birth and death. (2)

Because of impermanence, the wax changes shape, melts into a liquid and gets drawn up into the flame and burned.  Because of impermanence, we are born and live and die.  The light that comes from our burning desires isn’t enough to read by; it’s not going to get us to an understanding of reality.  The delusion that hinders our ability to find liberation for ourselves and others is like the ice that covers the lake and traps the fish.  We spend our lives moving about aimlessly, and again it’s not going to get us to an understanding of reality.

And yet, impermanence and suffering are not separate from reality.  Just like the house with the power outage is sitting in the midst of nature doing what nature does, and we can hear it, there’s a candle of our burning senses there on the table and it’s no good for reading—and yet it’s an undeniable part of reality.  It’s a complete manifestation of impermanence and suffering.

How can we see the real nature of the candle and of the fish under the ice, as well as the little animals and the wind and snow and tree branches?  It’s sometimes called using form to transcend the form, using our suffering to see the how craving and aversion arise and understand the true nature of reality.