The bodhi-mind is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we are not separated from the Three Treasures.
菩提心是法明門、不斷三寶故。

As usual, first I’d like to look at bodhi-mind so we understand what that is, and then look at its relationship to the three treasures of buddha, dharma and sangha.  Bodhi-mind goes by various names: bodhicitta, bodai-shin, mind of the Way, true mind.  Bodhi means awake.  We also find it in bodhisattva, “awakened being,” for instance.  Bodhi-mind is the awakened mind.

There are two kinds of bodhi-mind, which we might call aspiring and engaging.  With bodhi-mind as aspiration, we see that our limited point of view isn’t the whole story.  We decide to investigate reality through practice as best we can, and we aim ourselves at manifesting awakening; that’s our intention or our plan, even though we can’t do it perfectly.  Bodhi-mind as engagement is the reality that as soon as we see reality clearly enough to want to practice, we’ve already taken vows and we’re already bodhisattvas.  Unsurpassed complete perfect awakening is already present and there’s nothing to get.

The bodhisattva Samantabhadra, or Fugen in Japan, represents both aspects of bodhi-mind.  Fugen is the bodhisattva of practice, just as Monju is the bodhisattva of wisdom and Kannon the bodhisattva of compassion.  It’s said that Fugen made 62 vows, and one of them is, “I will cultivate the pure paramitas with vigor and never abandon the Bodhi Mind.  I will banish all obstructions and defilements and fulfill all wondrous practices.”  In a number of the other vows he makes reference to completely carrying out the practice of bodhi, or completely attaining bodhi.  We can see why Fugen is associated with wholehearted practice.  Sometimes we find Shakyamuni depicted with Monju for wisdom on one side and Fugen for practice on the other as a triad.  

Dogen had a lot to say about bodhi mind; he wrote a whole fascicle about it called Shobogenzo Hotsu Bodaishin.  He says he first aroused bodhi-mind because of seeing impermanence.  The story goes that he experienced impermanence in a deep way when he saw the incense smoke rising up at his monther’s funeral when he was seven years old.  This connection between impermanence and bodhi-mind is a theme in his teaching.  When Dogen got back from China and founded Koshoji, some of his earliest teaching to his monks was about impermanence and bodhi mind.  In fact, he defines bodhi mind simply as the mind that sees impermanence.  He says that when you see impermanence, then egocentrism doesn’t arise and neither does the desire for fame and gain.  In addition to impermanence, the second important connection Dogen makes with bodhi mind is faithfulness to the tradition.  In his instructions for temple administrators, he says, “What is called the mind of the Way is not to abandon or scatter about the great Way of the Buddha ancestors, but deeply to protect and esteem their great Way.”  Maintaining the guidelines for conduct is the same as giving up practicing for fame and gain, which is arousing bodhi-mind.  In practicing with others, we stop practicing for sake of small self; there isn’t “my” practice and what I get out of it, there’s just practice unfolding in the liberation of all beings.  (For more on these connections, see Okumura Roshi’s article here.)

The gate statement connects bodaishin or bodhi mind with the three treasures.  One connection we’re already familiar with is the verse of the three refuges.  We chant these every month as part of the ryaku fusatsu ceremony, when we renew our aspiration to follow the precepts.  The first part of the verse is:
I take refuge in Buddha, together with all beings
Immersing body and mind deeply in the Way, awakening true mind.

Immersing body and mind in the way is arousing bodhi mind, and it’s also personally engaging in practice (remember aspiring and engaging?).  The “awakening true mind” piece is interesting.  Other translations are "vowing to awaken" or "resolving to awaken."  Why true mind?

I don’t know whether there’s actually a connection, but once Dogen decided to practice and enrolled in a temple, his view of his own aspiration started to change.  His earliest teachers told him he should study hard so that he could be learned and famous and become known in the imperial court.  Then he read the biographies of eminent monks in China, one of the genres of writing that greatly influenced him.  (For more on literary trends in Dogen’s time, see the third lecture in my Introduction to Dogen.)  Dogen realized by reading how these Chinese teachers lived and practiced that he had the wrong idea.  Practicing for fame and gain wasn’t what real bodhi mind was about.  After all, all you have to do is look at the life of the Buddha to see that he gave up a royal lifestyle to practice and awaken.  This is true mind, or real bodhi mind.  Dogen’s changing understanding of bodhi-mind was one of the things that pushed him to travel around and to go to China, looking for authentic practice and teachers.

We’re vowing to awaken, and not just for our own sakes but for the sake of liberating all beings from suffering.  Taking refuge in Buddha is taking refuge in awakening, or bodhi.  In Minnesota, where I first practiced with Okumura Roshi many years ago, we used a different translation of the refuge verse, “Embodying the Great Way, resolving to awaken,” as opposed to “Immersing body and mind deeply in the Way, awakening true mind.”  Here’s what he says about this using this other translation:
We have to understand the Great Way with our bodies.  The Buddha’s teaching is not something we can understand merely with our intellects; we have to practice it in our day-to-day lives.  To understand and agree with this teaching is not enough.   If we agree with this teaching, we have to carry it out, to live it.  . . .  [W]e have to embody the Great Way in our daily lives. (1)

An interesting characteristic of bodhi mind is that the thing that’s causing us to seek is the thing that we’re seeking.  If awakening wasn’t there, we wouldn’t be aspiring to awaken.  Embodying the Great Way or immersing our bodies and minds deeply in the Way is itself both aspiration and awakening.  Immersing ourselves in the way is practice, and according to Dogen, practice and awakening are not two separate things.

Okumura Roshi goes on: When we embody the Great Awakening, we awaken to the awakening mind.  Its a strange expression, but that is the reality.  We awaken the awakening mind in order to wake up. (2)  Although bodhi-mind includes both aspiring and engaging, there’s really only one bodhi-mind or one awakening.  One of the themes of Dogen’s teaching is there’s really only one Buddha.  We might see Buddha in various forms or representing various aspects of the tradition, but really there’s only one, and that’s because there’s only one awakening.  (Related: Two founders and two head temples in Buddhist Essentials.)

Dogen says:
In the past the buddha-ancestors were like us; in the future we may be buddha-ancestors.  When we look up at the buddha-ancestors, we see only one buddha-ancestor.  When we contemplate arousing [bodhi-]mind, there is only a single mind that is aroused.  When [buddha-ancestors] radiate their compassion in all directions, we will receive helpful conditions and drop them off as well. (3) 

This is immersing body and mind deeply in the way.  We’re in the midst of the wisdom and compassion of the universe, so we receive helpful conditions, or support for our practice and we verify our bodhi mind with our own experience.  At the same time, we drop off those helpful conditions.  We don’t cling to them as something we own or something that will never change, and we don’t get stuck with our ideas about what good conditions for practice are.  We’re immersed in this one swirling dynamic reality of practice.  It’s always been true, but with bodhi mind we can start to see it, and sometimes it’s a bit unsettling.

When we think about taking refuge in something, that sounds comforting and safe, but arousing bodhi mind and deciding to practice is really a couragous thing to do.  It means challenging all of our assumptions and preconceptions.  It means we’re going to be uncomfortable, because change is going to happen and change is scary.  In the midst of that growth and change and taking our first tottering steps as bodhisattvas, it does help to know that the three treasures are always there for us, that they are wholesome and real and don’t leave anyone out.

The next part of the refuge verse is:
I take refuge in Dharma, together with all beings
Entering deeply the merciful ocean of Buddha’s Way.

When we arouse bodhi mind and start learning to see, what we see is the dharma, the true functioning of reality.  Dharma is the reality to which Shakyamuni awakened, and that’s what we awaken to as well when we enter into that space with him.  As I mentioned, an important element of arousing bodhi mind is seeing that our ideas and conventional thinking aren’t whole story.  At some point, we get the sense that there’s something larger going on in the universe, that there’s something else we’re just not seeing.  As Okumura Roshi says, The meaning of taking refuge in the Dharma is that we value Dharma more than our own limited opinions and views based on our personal karma. (4)

The dharma treasure is also important to bodhi mind because without it there’s nothing to practice.  There wouldn’t be much point in arousing bodhi mind.  To enter the ocean of dharma teachings is to embody awakening and to transmit those teachings through our bodhisattva actions.  Provisionally, there is awakening or Buddha, and dharma, the contents of that experience, but we need to remember that also, in the largest sense, they’re not different.  Okumura Roshi says: We usually think of awakening as something subjective that happens inside a person, and dharma as the object of awakening.  In the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, there is no separation between subject and object, between the person who sees reality and the reality that is seen.  When we separate the two, wisdom becomes delusion.  Awakening, beings and reality are one.  The dharma is bodhi, awakening itself. (5)
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I said above that Dogen felt that maintaining guidelines for conduct within temple and sangha is an expression of bodhi-mind.  Those guidelines are designed to show us how to fold seamlessly into the functioning of reality.  They’re based on the reality of impermanence, interconnectedness and the emptiness of the self, so this is an example of the connection between bodhi-mind and the dharma treasure.  

The last part of the refuge verse is:
I take refuge in Sangha, together with all beings
Bringing harmony to everyone, free from hindrance

Uchiyama Roshi saw a real connection between bodhi-mind and the sangha treasure:
It is important that every one of us cooperate with each other to protect and maintain an atmosphere conducive to practicing together.  There is no one who can claim to always embody bodhi-mind, the mind that aspires to practice and attain enlightenment.  Each of us gathers and contributes his or her own little bodhi-mind to the general effort.  Sawaki Roshi often said that a monastery is like a charcoal fire in a hibachi.  If you put in just one little coal, it will go out right away.  But if you gather many small coals, each glowing just a little bit, then the fire will flare up.  In the same way, each one of us should contribute a little bodhi-mind and thus enable our sangha to thrive. (6)
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This is a different specific way in which our bodhi mind contributes to liberating beings.  Simply being present with others who practice supports them in that practice.  There were plenty of folks who were practicing in isolation during the pandemic and were very anxious to come to Sanshin once we were gathering in person again without masks.  Keeping that flame alive when you’re doing Sanshin Solo practice can be hard.  This is why I’ve been requesting that practitioners who live in Bloomington and are able to get here to participate in person rather than virtually.  It’s better for them, but it’s also better for the rest of us.  Yes, it’s really convenient to slide out of bed on Sunday morning and turn on the computer rather than getting yourself here, but everyone here appreciates that extra effort.

Bodhi mind supports practice, but practice also supports bodhi mind, and Uchiyama Roshi says that as soon as we stop sitting and those little flames of bodhi mind start to go out, cracks start appearing in the sangha.  It’s the common thread of bodhi mind that defines a sangha: a community of people with the same bodhi mind.  He says: Even in a community of practitioners, troubles arise somehow without any particular reason when we don’t sit, for example for a month during summer vacation.  Since the monastery is a community of people with the same bodhi mind, there should not be any conflict.  Yet as soon as the bodhi mind becomes even a little bit weak, the world of individual strangers appears.  When we uphold bodhi mind and devote ourselves to practice and cooperate together, practitioners become even more intimate with each other than parents or brothers and sisters.  When bodhi mind weakens, the world of conflict arises.  When we start sesshin and daily zazen schedule again, the disputatious mind melts away. (7)
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With Buddha we have awakening, and with dharma and sangha we’re arousing the vow to actually do something with all that wisdom and compassion.  Thus bodhi mind is also closely tied to precepts: how we actually go about engaging in liberating beings.  One interesting thing about the connection between bodhi mind and liberating beings is that you can’t arouse bodhi mind in someone else.  One reason Buddhism doesn’t evangelize is that you can’t talk someone into believing  and practicing if bodhi mind isn’t already there.  Folks have their own timeline, which you can’t push.  They’re not ready until they’re ready.  All you can do is be available when their time comes.  If Sanshin launched a huge advertising campaign around Bloomington expecting to get a lot of new practitioners, it wouldn’t help.  People might show up in the zendo for a lot of reasons, thinking that zazen is good for something, but unless bodhi mind was already there, they’d just get disappointed and they wouldn’t stick around.  When people are ready for us, they can find our website and we’ll welcome them in.

The upshot is that we can be grateful that bodhi mind has showed up for us, and that we’ve encountered the three treasures and started to practice.  We don’t need to judge others for whether or not bodhi mind has arisen for them.  We don’t get personal credit for the karma that led us here; we can just be happy it did.  We were able to have enough faith in the beginning to stick with it even though our own experience didn’t yet confirm our bodhi mind.  Once we have some personal experience of practice and awakening and we have some wisdom and compassion, then we don’t need anyone else to tell us that zazen is good or practice is meaningful.

As Okumura Roshi says: In other religions, we can’t understand, so we believe.  But in Buddhism, we have faith because we have the wisdom to see. (8)  Bodhi mind arises in the midst of some degree of faith,  and then practice and wisdom verify that faith.  With that wisdom we see clearly.  With compassion we feel with others because of interconnection, so action arises naturally.  It’s not a matter of theory or philosophy.  We’re already a part of the dynamic functioning of the universe, so our actions are a seamless part of that.

Dogen equates arousing bodhi mind to taking bodhisattva vows.  All those arousing bodhi mind are already bodhisattvas.  When we see that everything is impermanent and that we’re pulled around by clinging to things that change, compassion arises naturally and we want to liberate ourselves and others from the pattern of five skandhas clinging to five skandhas.  He says: [W]hether we wish in our mind or not, being pulled by our past karma, the transmigration within the cycle of life and death continues without stopping for a single [instant]. With the body-and-mind that is transmigrating in this manner through the cycle of life and death, we should without fail arouse the bodhi-mind of ferrying others before ourselves. Even if, on the way of arousing the bodhi mind, we hold our body-and-mind dear, it is born, grows old, becomes sick, and dies; after all, it cannot be our own personal possession.

This very body and mind is a constant and acute example of impermanence.  Even if we don’t want it to age,  get sick and die, it will anyway.  Seeing that is the arousing of bodhi mind, and since all beings are in the same situation, we all have this kind of suffering, so the vow is already there.  This also illustrates another important intersection in Dogen’s teaching: the five skandhas clinging to five skandhas is what keeps us from seeing impermanence and arousing bodhi mind.  The five skandhas are Mara, the demon that came to Shakyamuni while he was sitting under the bodhi tree and tried to keep him from realizing awakening.  It’s our own body and mind that provides the hindrances to bodhi mind.

However, Dogen also says that the five skandhas are five instances of prajna, or five kinds of wisdom.  There is nothing other than the five aggregates, so there is no awakening or wisdom outside of them, and yet they can be what keeps us from arousing bodhi mind.  When we don’t see the emptiness of the five skandhas, we have delusion and hindrance and Mara.  When we let go of self clinging and see them for what they are, then wisdom and compassion are right there.  We have to do this over and over, millions and millions of times.  We have to arouse bodhi mind moment by moment, over and over again—it’s not a one-time thing.  This is why we need to keep practicing and keep verifying, and why we need to keep doing vow and repentance.

There’s a real intersection here between the individual self and the universal self.  Arousing bodhi-mind is something that happens for each of us and we can’t do it for someone else.  At the same time, as soon as that mind comes up, it stops being an individual small-self event or process.  We have to take care of our own bodhi mind; we have to manifest it here and now in this body and mind.  We have to undertake our own practice, but we don’t do it by ourselves or for ourselves.  This is our practice of non-reliance.

In his final lecture at Antaiji, Uchiyama Roshi said: You can spend your whole life oblivious of what’s happening around you, or you can live your whole life with an aware mind.  To live blindly is utterly meaningless.  Bodhi-mind—or Way mind, or awakening mind—is that mind which constantly reminds you to wake up in the real sense.  So, “realizing that development and backsliding are your responsibility alone, endeavor to practice and develop.” (9)  

Notes:
(1)  Okumura, S. (2012). Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 64
​(2)  Living by Vow, p. 64-65
(3)  Boundless Vows, Endless Practice, p 3-4
(4)  Living by Vow, p. 65
(5)  Living by Vow, p. 91
(6)  Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 168
​(7)  The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen's Bendowa, With Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. (2011). United States: Tuttle Publishing, p.111
​(8)  Living by Vow, p. 68  
(9)  Opening the Hand of Thought, p. 165​

[82] Right balanced state is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we attain undistracted samādhi.
正定是法明門、得無散亂三昧故。

Right balanced state here is shōjō 正定, from the Sanskrit samyak-samādhi.  This term is associated with things like one-pointed concentration or bringing all of the mental factors together, but it’s not about focusing on one thing to exclusion of all others.  If we’re really focused when we’re working on something, we might not notice other things going on around us, or even inside of us, because we’re so concentrated on an object or a result.  This kind of samadhi or concentration is different.  It’s an awareness without subject and object, or what Sawaki Roshi called the self doing the self by itself.

In the early teachings, a practitioner moved through higher and higher states of concentration, gradually letting go of thinking, letting go of pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, until there was just pure awareness, concentration and equanimity,  With no subject and object, of course, there’s no self that’s full of joy or happiness or attachment to those states.

There’s a lovely description of the kind of distraction we may experience—it’s when the mind is wandering through the fields of the six senses and not stopping for an instant.  Our attention is bouncing around from one sense gate to another, not just the physical senses but also the mind.  I get this picture of perpetually wandering through a field, and here’s a daisy and there’s a storm cloud and now a bee is buzzing, and the wind is blowing and I don’t know what to take in first.  However, I think the problem isn’t how I prioritize all these things, or how I figure out how to process all these things without being distracted.  The problem is that there’s an I trying to achieve something.

Sawaki Roshi says samadhi is practicing each and every thing with the entire universe moment by moment.  It’s not a peak experience or a special state that “I” experience.  If right balance or right concentration is awareness without subject and object, then there’s no I separate from what’s being encountered.  Everything that’s going on in this field is just the total dynamic functioning of this one unified reality, and that includes me and my functioning.  We’re all just unfolding the dharma together in a seamless way, so there’s no distraction, and no desire to be somewhere else doing something else.  We’re able to fully enter into what’s happening because we’re not pulling out a yardstick and considering whether the small self is bored or interested or getting something out of it or not.  As soon as we do that, we’re not functioning seamlessly with the universe any more.

Okumura Roshi has shared a teaching about this from a modern Rinzai teacher, Soko Morinaga Roshi.  He said samadhi is different from usual actions of our daily lives, and Okumura Roshi summarized it this way: Samadhi is like a child playing in a sandbox shovelling sand into a bucket.  Someone asks the child, ‘Do you want to trade in your sand for something?’  The child’s answer must be ‘No!’ because the child is enjoying it; the child is just shovelling sand without seeking anything else.  But when adults do the same thing — shovel sand into a bucket — they do it as a job to get a wage; the action itself is not the purpose.  What we really want is the money, not to shovel sand for its own sake.  We do the shovelling because we think this is the way to get the money we need; we do it even though it is hard or uninteresting.  When we do the work with this attitude we don’t really enjoy it.

Of course, he goes on to apply this to zazen.  We may sit because we want to get something out of it, even though we don’t enjoy it, but zazen isn’t a job; it is itself samadi.  This sitting practice is itself buddha’s practice; it is not a human practice in order to become buddha.

In a little while we’ll come back to this teaching that our practice activity, our awareness without subject or object, is itself the body of Buddha.  For now, here’s Dogen’s comment on this gate:
“Right balance as a branch of the path” is to get free of Buddhist patriarchs and to get free of right balance. It is others being well able to discuss.  It is to make nose holes by cutting out the top of the head. It is the twirling of an uḍumbara flower inside the right Dharma-eye treasury. It is the presence inside the uḍumbara flower of a hundred thousand faces of Mahā kāśyapa breaking into a smile. Having used [this] state of vigorous activity for a long time, a wooden dipper is broken.  Thus, [right balance] is six years of floundering in the wilderness and a night in which a flower opens.  It is, [when] “the holocaust at the end of a kalpa is blazing and the great-thousand fold world is being totally destroyed, just to follow circumstances.” (1)

It sounds surprising that Dogen is telling us that right balance is to get free of right balance, and even to get free of our ancestors, but he’s telling us to look beyond our perception of right balance and Buddhist ancestors as something “out there” or “back then,” and to actually see and experience the complete reality of our lives here and now.  If we do, we see that there is only the total functioning of this universe as Buddha’s dharma body, which includes our own activity.

It is to make nose holes by cutting out the top of the head.  Nose holes or nostrils are said to be symbols of aliveness.  With right balance we see beyond our intellectual activities that seem to take us out of here and now.  There is nothing outside of here and now, and the unfolding of here and now is dynamic and fresh and alive, but when we ignore that in favor of what’s going on in our thoughts and delusions in “the top of the head,” we create some separation from that aliveness.

It is the twirling of an uḍumbara flower inside the right Dharma-eye treasury.  It is the presence inside the uḍumbara flower of a hundred thousand faces of Mahākāśyapa breaking into a smile.  Of course, here Dogen is referring to the story of Shakyamuni on Vulture Peak transmitting the dharma to Mahakashyapa.  This story was important enough to Dogen that he wrote a fascicle of Shobogenzo called Udonge, or Udumbara Flower, and his version of the story is:
On Sacred Vulture Peak, before an assembly of a million, the World-Honored One held up an udumbara flower and blinked. At that time, Mahākāśyapa broke into a smile. The World Honored One said, “I have the treasury of the true dharma eye, the wondrous mind of nirvāna; I now bequeath it to Mahākāśyapa.”

Udumbara is a rare flower, said to bloom only once every 3000 years.  Buddha goes before his sangha, holds up this flower and doesn’t say anything.  Mahakashyapa was the only one who understood that teaching and smiled, and Buddha said that he had transmitted the treasury of the true dharma eye to Mahakashyapa.

Dogen says right balance is the twirling of an udumbara flower inside of the treasury of the true dharma eye.  “Treasury of the true dharma eye” is Shobogenzo, so that’s an important phrase; in the Mahayana in general it means the dharma.  In Zen it can refer specifically to Buddha’s awakening beyond what’s written in the sutras, a broader view of dharma, and this is why transmission is from teacher to student and not just something we can get from reading and study.  It has to be alive and lived moment by moment.  Holding up a rare flower isn’t something we understand from reading a sutra.  It’s a direct example of thusness or suchness that includes not only Buddha and the flower and Mahakashyapa, but the whole dynamic functioning of the universe and all beings.  He’s pointing us toward awareness without separation into subject and object.

He goes on to say that it’s the presence inside the udumbara flower of a hundred thousand faces of Mahakashyapa breaking into a smile.  Those hundred thousand faces include yours and mine and all beings—we are all the faces of Mahakashyapa smiling.  In this world of emptiness, this world of awareness without subject and object, we’re all sitting there in Buddha’s assembly watching him hold up a flower.

Interestingly, in some Buddhist texts, the flowers of the uḍumbara are enclosed within its fruit, and this is why it’s considered rare to see it bloom.  It may be that Dogen is also making reference to this, that the flower is inside the fruit and the hundred thousand faces are inside the flower.  There’s this feeling of complete interpenetration and nonseparation of flower and fruit and unfolding and the dharma manifesting in each of us within this world of emptiness.

Having used [this] state of vigorous activity for a long time, a wooden dipper is broken.  Breaking a wooden dipper is an image for breaking free from our various hindrances and misunderstandings, perhaps particularly those related to our karmic conditions.  Practicing in the midst of the living, functioning, active dharma, we begin to see reality clearly and become liberated from our delusion and suffering.

Thus, [right balance] is six years of floundering in the wilderness and a night in which a flower opens.  Dogen returns to the story of Shakyamuni Buddha here.  Before his awakening experience, Shakyamuni spent six years engaged in ascetic practices, trying to understand truth of suffering—what Dogen calls floundering in the wilderness.  Then a flower opens one night when he sits in meditation and things fall into place for him.  He understands suffering, sees the nature of reality, and experiences awareness without subject and object.  However, interestingly Dogen says that right balance is both the six years of floundering in the wilderness and the night of awakening.  He’s pointing out that there’s also no separation between practice and awakening.  This is one of the themes of Dogen’s writings overall: pre-awakening events and post-awakening events are not separate because practice and awakening are not two things, and there’s nowhere to go and nothing to get.  

It is, [when] “the holocaust at the end of a kalpa is blazing and the great-thousand fold world is being totally destroyed, just to follow circumstances.”  Here Dogen is quoting a koan story:
A monk asks Master Daizui Hōshin, “[They say that] when the holocaust at the end of a kalpa is blazing, the great-thousandfold world will be totally destroyed.  I wonder whether or not this place will be destroyed.” 
The master says, “It will be destroyed.”
The monk says, “If that’s so, should we just follow circumstances?” 
The master says, “We just follow circumstances.” (2)

This story turns on the phrase “just following circumstances.”  The Japanese is zuita-ko 随他去, which is literally something like following others completely.  The idea is being in harmony with circumstances without any gap.  Even if the world is on fire, we just follow circumstances.  That doesn’t mean we don’t fight the fire, if that’s what’s appropriate.  It means we do that not from a place of separation but as a completely integrated part of what’s happening.  Our usual approach might be to turn circumstances into a battle, with two opposing sides and a hard barrier between them.  Someone is going to win and someone is going to lose, and that makes me completely separate from the other side.  The reality is that if two sides are fighting, they’re also completely interpenetrated.  You can’t have a battle with only one side; it takes two to tango.  Those two sides are acting and moving and responding together all the time.

Just following circumstances doesn’t mean we’re passive and just accept whatever’s happening whether it’s wholesome or not.  It means that we accept and understand that we’re completely a part of what’s happening.  We experience awareness without subject and object, or right balance, and that’s the basis for our decisions about what skillful means are moment by moment.

In the Shinjin Gakudo fascicle, Dogen says: Everyone has the state of just following circumstances, at which moment falling walls allow us to learn the ten directions and the absence of gates allows us to learn the 4 quarters. (3)  

He’s quoting a Chinese teacher here, Kankei Shikan, who said “In the ten directions there are no falling walls and in the four quarters there are no gates.  [Reality] is open, completely naked, bare, utterly clear, and without anything to grasp.”  Dogen says that it’s the very absence of falling walls and gates that allows us to see reality clearly, and that itself is just following circumstances and experiencing right balance or concentration.  This is awareness without subject and object

With that, we come to the end of the elements of the eightfold path as factors of awakening, and we finally come to the end of the 37 factors of awakening as a whole.  These 37 factors are part of the Sanskrit Mahayana tradition, but they predate Zen.  In the early tradition, they function on two levels.  On a basic level, these factors can be practiced by ordinary beings; on a higher level, they’re undertaken as part of the stages to becoming a buddha.  Once you become a buddha, then these 37 factors are qualities of that awakening rather than a means to achieve something.

Dogen picks up on this in his comment about the 37 factors as a group.  He says:
These thirty-seven elements of bodhi are the very eyes and nostrils, the skin, flesh, bones, and marrow, and the hands, feet, and real features of the Buddhist Patriarch.  We have been learning in practice, as the thirty-seven elements of bodhi, the Buddhist Patriarch’s whole person.  At the same time, they are the realization of one thousand three hundred and sixty-nine realities, [each of] which is a constituent element of bodhi.  We should sit them away and we should get free of them.  

To put this in the context of Dogen’s life, he gave this teaching, including all of his comments on the individual elements related to the gate statements we’ve been looking at, in 1244, about 9 years before he died.  He was at Kippoji, where he’d been practicing for a year or so after he moved from Kyoto to Echizen and before he established Eiheiji nearby.  

In the first two sentences above, he’s saying that we’re getting to know Buddha by our own living practice of the 37 factors, and that these factors are themselves the functioning of Buddha.  We become Buddha and enter into Buddha’s functioning by engaging in these factors of awakening.  This is how we realize Buddha, or make Buddha real.  It’s our own practice activity, learning in practice the Buddha’s whole person.

At the same time, they are the realization of one thousand three hundred and sixty-nine realities, [each of] which is a constituent element of bodhi.  We should sit them away and we should get free of them.  1369 is 37 squared  (37x37).  This is a structure we find in various places in Buddhist teachings.  The idea is that the whole group of thirty-seven elements is present in each constituent element.  It’s like an infinite series of reflections in a hall of mirrors, but at the same time all of these elements are interpenetrated.  It sounds like a really important understanding of the nature of reality; these 37 elements are the hands and feet and whole person of Buddha, and they all function together in a seamless way, but Dogen says we should get free of them!  Just as he said earlier that right balance is getting free of the ancestors and of right balance itself, here he’s saying we should get free of the 37 factors of bodhi.  When we see beyond the small self and what that’s doing, we get free of the 37 factors because there are no five skandhas clinging to an idea about them.  We’re simply following circumstances and functioning as Buddha without a gap.

Sawaki Roshi says: Living out the buddha-dharma means fulfilling your function completely without knowing that you’re doing it. A mountain doesn’t know it’s tall. The sea doesn’t know it’s wide and deep. Each and every thing in the universe is active without knowing it.

Again, Dogen isn’t negating right balance, the ancestors or the 37 factors.  Getting free from something doesn’t mean it’s negated.  It means we see it clearly and we’re not trapped by it.  We don’t “know” anything about the 37 factors as something separate from our own lives.  We just do what needs to be done.

[81] Right mindfulness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not consider all dharmas intellectually.
正念是法明門、不思念一切法故。
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Ah yes, mindfulness again.  Mindfulness has shown up in no fewer than 13 of the 81 gates we’ve explored already.  What’s left to say?

Quick review: In a Soto Zen context, mindfulness is simply remembering to practice, or remembering what the Buddha taught.  What Buddha taught was dharma, and there are three kinds.  There’s what Shakyamuni preached and taught to his students and followers (the manifesting dharma treasure), there’s the written version of those teachings in the sutras and the Pali Canon that we can still pick up, carry and read today (the maintaining dharma treasure), and there’s the dharma that’s simply how the universe works, the complete functioning of reality in this moment (the absolute dharma treasure).  Mindulness, remembering what Buddha taught, is being in the midst of dharma.

Right mindfulness here is shōnen, from the Sanskrit samyak-smṛti.  We’ve encountered nen before as mindfulness.  Sho is true, the same sho as in Shobogenzo, the treasury of the true dharma eye.  The sense is of something done fully and completely, completely penetrating or going completely through to the bottom.  It’s the same “true” that we use in unsurpasable true awakening (anyuttara samyak-sambodhi).  All of the “right” elements on the eightfold path are things we do fully and completely, without a gap between subject and object.  We simply do them as the universe carrying out its function.

For us, right mindfulness, to continuously keep dharma in mind, is not about “me” as a subject remembering an object.  There is simply recognizing the ongoing presence of that teaching or activity.  It’s the Buddha manifesting as dharma—these two things aren’t really two.  We are always aware of the manifestation of Buddha.  In a concrete sense, we’re reminded by immersing ourselves in practice, encountering Buddha figures and encountering his teachings in sutras and canonical texts, and being with sangha friends who are on the path with us.  However, in the larger sense, we don’t have to be reminded, because we see Buddha in the continuous, complete functioning of this one unified reality.  

In this gate statement we’re also intersecting right mindfulness with “not considering all dharmas intellectually.”  The kanji here actually indicate “not thinking.”  With complete mindfulness or awareness, we go beyond thinking.  We should also take that to mean we go beyond both thinking and not-thinking to something we call non-thinking.

We know what thinking is: there’s a “me” that’s thinking an object called a thought.  As long as there’s a subject and an object, there’s “thinking,” and not thinking is not engaging in this activity.  Yet non-thinking doesn’t negate either thinking or not-thinking.  There is room for both thinking and not-thinking within non-thinking.  This is what happens in zazen.  Thoughts arise and do whatever they do because the universe is functioning and doing what it does.  We can’t stop thinking because we have karma that continues to unfold related to past experiences and various influences, but there’s no “me” that owns or drives those thoughts.  We let go of the construct of subject and object.  We just sit in the midst of that activity and we’re completely part of it rather than separate from it, but we’re not engaged in it and trying to control it.  That’s non-thinking, going beyond our ideas of thinking or not-thinking and just being immersed in reality.

This gate says true awareness of Buddha or awakening and non-thinking are connected.  It’s not that the intellect shuts down when we “do not consider all dharmas intellectually.”  It’s that we don’t limit our engagement with all dharmas to an intellectual relationship.  Buddha sees the intellect and sees beyond the intellect and sees beyond that distinction as well, and since we are already Buddha, we’re in that same space.

Here’s what Dogen has to say about today’s gate:

“Right mindfulness as a branch of the path” is the eighty- or ninety-percent realization of the state of being duped by ourselves. To learn that wisdom occurs following from mindfulness is “leaving the father and running away.”  To learn that wisdom occurs within mindfulness itself is to be fettered in the extreme. To say that being without mindfulness is right mindfulness is non-Buddhism. Neither should we see the animating soul of earth, water, fire, and wind as mindfulness. Upset states of mind, will, and consciousness are not called mindfulness. “You having got my skin, flesh, bones, and marrow” is just “right mindfulness as a branch of the path.” (1)

“Right mindfulness as a branch of the path” is the eighty- or ninety-percent realization of the state of being duped by ourselves.  Our usual thinking would take that to mean that it’s not complete realization—that there’s something missing—but that’s not what it means to Dogen.  He talks about this in Shobogenzo Kannon, where he quotes a koan dialogue between two monks, in which one says that what the other has said is all right but is only 80 or 90 percent of it.

Dogen’s comment on this part of the story is:
When we express completely without leaving out something unexpressed or something inexpressible, we simply say, “[your expression is] eighty or ninety percent.”  In studying the above-mentioned meaning, even if there is one hundred percent achievement [using language], if the person is unable to express the whole [through his practice], it is not actual penetration.  Even if his expression is eighty or ninety percent perfect, if [he] expresses eighty or ninety percent perfectly, then he expresses one hundred percent perfectly. . . . We should learn that “achieving eighty or ninety percent” is tantamount to saying [achieving] “hundreds or thousands” or “innumerable.”

The point of this whole thing is that there are two kinds of expression happening, what gets said with words and what gets expressed with the totality of our functioning in this moment.  When we say something in words, that language might only express 80- or 90- percent of the truth.  We know that language is limited and there’s the problem of the dualism of language; it can’t entirely express the ineffable.  However, if our activity of saying those words is done completely, with no gaps or hindrances, within complete awareness or awakening, then we’ve still achieved 100% expression of true reality.  On the other hand, if we’re brilliant with words and are somehow able to 100% sum up reality with language but we’re unable to function seamlessly within the activity of the universe as a whole, then we’ve still not achieved 100% expression of true reality.

“Right mindfulness as a branch of the path” is the 80- or 90-percent realization of the state of being duped by ourselves.  Right mindfulness as complete awareness is complete realization or expression of delusion.  This is a point he makes several times.  Delusion and awakening are not separate.  Expressing reality completely includes expressing our delusion completely.  

From here he goes on to show mistaken ideas of mindfulness and how things that should negate each other or obstruct each other really don’t.

To learn that wisdom occurs following from mindfulness is “leaving the father and running away.”  This is a reference to a story in the “Belief and Understanding” chapter of the Lotus Sutra.  A wealthy man’s child runs away from his father and spends 50 years wandering around in complete poverty, hiring himself out as a menial laborer.  One day by chance he ends up at his father’s mansion.  The father is overjoyed to see his son again and wants to give him all of his wealth and possessions, but his son doesn’t recognize him; he’s overwhelmed and runs away.  The father sends a messenger to bring him back, but the son thinks the messenger has come to arrest him and he’s so scared he faints.  Then the father sends two servants in dirty old clothes to hire him to clean out the toilets, and the son is happy to take the job.  

After awhile, the father puts on dirty old clothes himself and goes to see his son, telling him he can work there as long as he wants and that he will treat him like his own son.  He goes on working like this for 20 more years and gradually becomes more confident.  The father promotes him to be the administrator of his property and over time he gets to know how the whole thing operates.  When the father knows he’s going to die, he invites a lot of important people over and reveals who the son really is.  Then he hands the whole estate over to him.

The point of the story is that the father is Buddha, who wants everyone to experience the same awakening as his own, just like the father wanted to give all his possessions and wealth to his son.  The son represents ordinary people who transmigrate in the realms of samsara without encountering the way.  The Buddha and the father use expedient means to bring people to understanding so the truth can be revealed.  To learn that wisdom occurs following from mindfulness, or holding the view that mindfulness leads to wisdom, is a non-Buddhist view, “leaving the father and running away.”

Usually we think of mindfulness as an individual activity with a subject and an object—there’s a “me” being mindful of “something”—but that doesn’t work if mindfulness is a complete functioning.  In that case, there’s no subject and object and there’s no separate thing we can call mindfulness.  Earlier in the Buddhist tradition, the generally accepted sequence was that an ethical life necessary before engaging in concentration practice, and then that concentration practice would lead to wisdom or prajna.  Dogen says prajna is foundation of everything, not the end point, so mindfulness doesn’t lead to prajna; it’s not a means to an end.  Prajna is the basis of mindfulness; if prajna wasn’t already there, mindfulness wouldn’t be possible. 

To learn that wisdom occurs within mindfulness itself is to be fettered in the extreme.  Not only does wisdom not happen after some human activity called mindfulness, even saying that it happens within mindfulness is still to put boundaries on prajna and separate it, to say it’s contained within something else.  It’s still a misunderstanding.

To say that being without mindfulness is right mindfulness is non-Buddhism.  The word used for mindfulness can also mean thought, so this could be read as to say that being without thought is right thought is non-Buddhism.  In several places elsewhere in his writings, Dogen points out that even delusion is not separate from the dharma manifesting as the complete functioning of the universe.  Drawing a distinction between right mindfulness and without mindfulness, or the human brain working and the human brain being a blank, is just our idea.

In his fascicle called Dignified Conduct of Practice Buddha, Dogen says (in Okumura Roshi’s translation):
Such [concepts] as having thought (u-nen) and being without thought (mu-nen), or having awakening (u-kaku) and being without awakening (mu-kaku), or gradual enlightenment (shikaku) or original enlightenment (hongaku), which are thought by the common people of these days, are solely the thoughts of the common people; they are not what has been transmitted from a buddha to another buddha.  Having thoughts (u-nen) of the common people and having thoughts (u-nen) of the buddhas are extremely different from each other; do not compare them.

Shutting down our mental operations isn’t the point.  That’s not how we fully enter into the dharma.  It’s not that we push aside our thinking in order to be mindful.  There is mindfulness and not-mindfulness and non-mindfulness that goes beyond the distinction or separation.  These three all exist in the same space and don’t negate each other.  

If we have idea about what right mindfulness is, that’s just our idea, not a Buddha’s experience of right mindfulness.  As our gate statement says, right mindfulness is not considering all dharmas intellectually.

Neither should we see the animating soul of earth, water, fire, and wind as mindfulness.  The reference here is to the godai, or five great elements.  It comes from esoteric Japanese Buddhism with roots in China and India.  Under this philosophy, all material things in the world come from the same source and can be put into one of four categories: earth, water, fire or wind.  Earth is things that are solid.  Water is things that are fluid.  Fire is things that are energetic.  Wind is things that grow or expand.  The highest of the elements is the void, which is associated with potential or creative energy.  This is the source of everything that has physical existence.

There were stories of warriors who could connect with the void to sense their surroundings and act without using the mind or the physical senses.  Dogen says this is not right mindfulness.  He’s pushing back against something he sees around him, not saying that paying attention to nature isn’t OK.

By the way, if you look at a Japanese stupa or pagoda, you can see that it’s built in five layers or stories.  These represent the godai; this kind of teaching was there in a physical way that people could encounter every day.

Upset states of mind, will, and consciousness are not called mindfulness.  These three are a summary of mental processes, based on the Nikayas of early Buddhism.  Dogen is pointing to a mindfulness which goes beyond the working of our individual psychology.  He’s not negating the functioning of our brains, but he’s saying that’s not where his brand of mindfulness lives.

“You having got my skin, flesh, bones, and marrow” is just “right mindfulness as a branch of the path.”  Now that he’s shown what right mindfulness is not, now he begins pointing to what it is.  Of course, here he’s referring to a famous koan story about Bodhidharma and four of his students.  He also talked about it in his comment back at Gate 20, reflection on no-self, and he includes it in Shobogenzo Katto; in Okumura Roshi’s translation:
The Twenty-Eighth Ancestor said to his disciples, “The time is coming. Why don’t you speak of what you have attained?”
At that time, the disciple Daofu said, “My present view is something like neither clinging to words nor departing from words, and yet carrying out the function of the Way.
The Ancestor said, “You have attained my skin.”
The nun Zongchi said, “My present understanding is that it is like Ananda seeing the land of Aksobhya Buddha: he saw it once but never saw it again.
The Ancestor said, “You have attained my flesh.” 
Daoyu said, “The four great elements are originally empty; the five aggregates are non- existent. Therefore, my view is that there is not even a single dharma to be attained.”
The Ancestor said, “You have attained my bones.”
Finally, Huike made three prostrations, after which he stood at his position.
The Ancestor said, “You have attained my marrow.”
As a result, [Bodhidharma] made him the Second Ancestor, transmitting to him the dharma and the robe.

The common understanding is that Huike won the contest, that Bodhidharma thought his answer was the most profound because he said nothing and expressed his answer with the body and the other three only got as far as skin, flesh and bones but didn’t penetrate to the marrow.  Yet in Katto, Dogen says no: all of the answers were equally effective expressions and nobody won.  He says these answers don’t oppose each other or cancel each other out.  Skin, flesh, bones and marrow aren’t a ranking but simply four different images for being in that same space of awakening with Bodhidharma.  

So when he refers to this story here in his comment on right mindfulness and says “You having got my skin, flesh, bones, and marrow”is just “right mindfulness as a branch of the path,” what’s his point?  Bodhidharma is verifying his student’s understanding and Dogen says that all four of them have received dharma transmission in this story.  All four of them are doing right mindfulness by being right in the middle of Buddha’s dharma body.  Transmission is not a one-way street.  There are formal ceremonies in our tradition for receiving dharma transmission in a way that recognizes you as a teacher; it means you’re now allowed to function on your own as clergy and you get some documents and new robes.  However, the reality of transmission is that nothing is transmitted and you don’t receive anything.  You’ve entered into the space of awakening with all the buddhas and ancestors across space and time.  Anytime we enter into that space, we’re in there with all of them, so we all transmitting and receiving to and from each other.

In the story of Bodhidharma, all five of those folks are together in that space.  It’s kind of the same idea as the story last week where the teacher told his students that he met them in zazen no matter where they were sitting, and that was the “monastery.”

With right mindfulness, we encounter things and people and events authentically by seeing right to the bottom of reality.  We can’t do this when we encounter things from the perspective of the small self that sees everything in relation to what it means for “me” and considers all dharmas intellectually.  We have to drop off body and mind and put aside the distortions that go with our hindrances and delusions, and yet we do that without negating body and mind.

[80] Right practice is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we arrive at the far shore.
正行是法明門、至彼岸故（正行是れ法明門なり、彼岸に至るが故に）。
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You may be more familiar with this topic as right effort.  The original Sanskrit word became shogyo in Japanese, which is literally right practice.  We can see why, because the Sanskrit term could mean physical exertion, or exercise, so there’s always been a feeling of training or cultivation.  We’re not just making effort in order to be active or not be idle.  We’re striving toward something—in this case, toward meeting our aspiration as bodhisattvas.

Back at Gate 56 we talked about the four right exertions:
1) to prevent unwholesomeness that has not yet occurred, 
2) to cause unwholesomeness that has already occurred to be extinguished, 
3) to bring about wholesomeness that has not yet occurred, and 
4) to promote the wholesomeness that’s already here

This is one way to frame right effort, or right practice.  There’s also another way to frame it: abandoning the wrong factors of the path.  The Maha-cattarisaka Sutta explains:  

“One tries to abandon wrong view & to enter into right view. This is one’s right effort...
“One tries to abandon wrong resolve & to enter into right resolve: This is one’s right effort...
“One tries to abandon wrong speech & to enter into right speech: This is one’s right effort...
“One tries to abandon wrong action & to enter into right action: This is one’s right effort...
“One tries to abandon wrong livelihood & to enter into right livelihood: This is one’s right effort.”

This approach is not unrelated to the first one.  It puts some specifics on our practice of cultivating wholesomeness and abandoning unwholesomeness.  On a day-to-day basis, we probably need to abandon unwholesomeness by paying attention to unhelpful stuff that arises for us and actively choosing to do something else, actively changing direction or reversing course.  When we discover there’s something about the dharma that we don’t understand, we can do some study, ask dharma friends or teachers, and do some discernment about the point that’s coming up in our practice.  Our view of the world and what we encounter is gradually reshaped by our understanding of what the Buddha or Dogen based on how they saw the world.  When we realize that our aspiration has gone a bit off track, we can look carefully at our motivations, attend ryakyu fusatsu, pay attention to effect of our actions and try to shore up our vows.

When we’re concerned about our habits of speech, we can notice how we fall into unhelpful habits and decide what we’d rather do instead.  Speech reflects our thinking, so we may also have some habits of thinking to deal with.  In my younger days I was frequently sarcastic in some unkind ways, which I had some vague sense was because I was unhappy and resentful and wanted others to see that.  If the me of today could talk with the me of 45 years ago, I would ask her whether expressing unhappiness in that way was really doing any good, or whether it was not only perpetuating my own unhappiness but spilling it onto others.

Thinking and speaking can lead to action, so when we’re concerned about our actions, we might have to look backwards to what leads up to them.  Wrong action is often based on habituated thinking and a reflex that kicks in when we’re in certain situations.  When I’m under stress, I overeat, or when I’m bored, I stir up trouble to entertain myself, or when I see something I want, I get it any way I can regardless of consequences to others  

When we’re concerned about how we’re supporting ourselves materially or financially, well, that’s probably the hardest of all.  Sometimes there isn’t a lot we can do if we need to support ourselves and our families and job opportunities are limited.  As long as we’re not actively breaking precepts with our livelihood, we may have to put up with something that’s not ideal.  However, sometimes we can look around and see even small ways to do what we’re doing in a more wholesome way.  Maybe that means suggesting to the boss a greener or more ethical way of doing business, and maybe that means small things we can do on our own that adjust our approach to our work.  Can I take bus to work instead of driving single-occupant vehicle?  Can I personally make best use of company resources and reduce what I put into a landfill by even a small fraction?  Can I offer some simple encouragement or support to my coworkers that makes the workplace more wholesome?

Things like these are specific actions we can take as we make effort to reverse unwholesomeness, and also, in the larger picture, unwholesomeness doesn’t arise because there is no subject and object, no separate “I” who makes effort, takes action, carries a deluded view or worries about aspiration.  In this one unified reality, right effort is simply the total dynamic functioning of the universe.  Everything in the universe is 100% engaged in being what it is.  In the absolute view, that’s right effort.  When we study the dharma by immersing ourselves in this reality without separation or without duality, that’s right effort.  By dropping off body and mind, we can’t help but make right effort because we’re acting without delusion and hindrance.

I find it helpful, actually, to think that right practice and right effort are the same thing.  Practice is not separate from the rest of our lives and daily functioning.  Simply living and carrying out our regular activities is practice, without our having to give them some special meaning as sacred.  

According to this gate, that brings us to the far shore, in other words, nirvana, or the extinguishing of the burning fires of delusion and suffering.  In the early Buddhist teachings, this is a linear path: we practice or make effort and then we are rewarded by leaping off of the wheel of samsara and landing in nirvana.  In Soto Zen, we would take this gate to mean that right practice and nirvana arise together; as soon as there is right practice or effort, awakening is already there also.

Of course, this unity of practice and awakening is one of Dogen’s favorite themes.  Prior to him, sila or an ethical life was a prerequisite for samadhi, and samadhi or concentration was a prerequisite for prajna or wisdom.  Dogen says prajna is the basis for everything.  Without prajna we don’t know how to make right effort and we don’t have any desire to do zazen, because zazen is simply a manifestation of prajna.  He says that if we understand this, we’re completely free.  In other words, we arrive at the far shore.

In the Bendowa he says:
Thinking that practice and enlightenment are not one is no more than a view that is outside the Way.  In Buddhism, practice and enlightenment are one and the same.  Because it is the practice of enlightenment, a beginner’s wholehearted practice of the Way is exactly the totality of original enlightenment.  For this reason, in conveying the essential attitude for practice, it is taught not to wait for enlightenment outside practice.

In a moment, we’ll see another case of the practice of seniors and beginners coming together.  

Not surprisingly, Dogen’s comment on this gate comes at it from a non-dual point of view:
“Right effort as a branch of the path” is action that gouges out a whole body, and it is the fashioning of a human face in the gouging out of the whole body.  It is to ride upside down around the Buddha hall, doing one lap, two laps, three, four, and five laps, so that nine times nine comes to eighty-two. It is repeatedly to repay [the benevolence of] others, thousands and tens of thousands of times; it is to turn the head in any direction of the cross, vertically or horizontally; it is to change the face vertically or horizontally, in any direc tion of the cross; it is to enter the [master’s] room and to go to the Dharma hall. It expresses “having met at Bōshutei Pavilion, having met on Usekirei Peak, having met in front of the monks’ hall,”and having met inside the Buddha hall—there being two mirrors and three kinds of reflection. (1)

OK, let’s take this apart.

“Right effort as a branch of the path” is action that gouges out a whole body, and it is the fashioning of a human face in the gouging out of the whole body.
Gouging out the eyes of Buddhas and ancestors appears in various places in Dogen’s writings.  It starts with his own teacher, Tendo Nyojo, as recorded in the Hokyoki: Once, when sitting in his abbot’s quarters, Zen master Tendo Nyojo said, “Gouge out Bodhidharma’s eyeball and use it like a mud ball to hit people!”

In the Zanmai-o-Zanmai fascicle, Dogen says: In the last several hundred years, my late teacher alone gouged out the eyes of the buddhas and ancestors and sat therein. Few masters in China have been equal to him.

In the Ikka Myoju fascicle, Dogen says: Gouging out Bodhidharma’s eyeballs is thorough investigation. 

Aha!  Gouging out eyeballs as right effort is thoroughly investigating this one unified reality, seeing the way Buddhas and ancestors see.  In the case of the Ikka Myoju fascicle, Dogen is actually setting up a contrast in order to make a point.  He’s talking about pilgrimage, or traveling around to practice, like Bodhidharma coming to China or Chinese ancestors going back to India.  He says that’s not thorough investigation; it’s not necessary to go somewhere else to practice because there’s all of reality to investigate right here.  The real thorough investigation is gouging out eyeballs or, as he says in his comment on this gate, gouging out whole body and then fashioning a human face—in other words, manifesting our true nature, the true self in this human form.

It is to ride upside down around the Buddha hall, doing one lap, two laps, three, four, and five laps, so that nine times nine comes to eighty-two. 
There’s another translation of this that says It is to ride an ox or a water buffalo backward right into the Buddha hall, then doing one lap around the hall, two laps, three, four, or five laps, so that nine times nine equals eighty-two.  This translator interprets Dogen as creating a nonsensical picture to say that we shouldn’t be worried about keeping track of numbers of things in our practice.  We should just do what the moment calls for without having an agenda or checklist.  That’s thorough investigation.  Of course, he’s making this comment in the midst of all these gates that talk about four types of mindfulness, four kinds of correct effort, four modes of special powers, five faculties, five powers, seven branches of awakening, the eightfold path . . . all these things we encounter in these talks.
 
If we accept the theory that riding backwards or upside down around the Buddha Hall until 9X9 = 82 is nonsense and put it next to Dogen’s insistence on thorough investigation right to the bottom of reality, then he’s telling us to let go of our ideas about how the universe works and see what’s really there.  We don’t need to go on pilgrimage and we don’t need to memorize formulas; that’s not where our effort needs to go, and in fact, putting our energy there is somewhat misguided.

However, there’s another interpretation of this whole backwards water buffalo 9x9=82 thing that says it means we should be ready to undertake what cannot actually be done.  We shouldn’t be restricting our effort only to those things we think we can achieve; that would be attachment to outcome and again we have an agenda.  Thorough investigation is to let go of our ideas about our own limitations as vessels of the dharma.  You can decide whether either of these explanations makes sense to you!

It is repeatedly to repay [the benevolence of] others, thousands and tens of thousands of times; 

Now we’re moving into a series of illustrations of nonseparation.  Repaying the benevolence of others is completely interpenetrated functioning.  Others are supporting us at the same time we’re supporting them within the network of interdependent origination, so it happens tens of thousands of times, not just when I think you’ve done something nice for me.  This repaying of blessings is the complete functioning of reality.  We’re making this kind of right effort without even having some intention about it.

it is to turn the head in any direction of the cross, vertically or horizontally; it is to change the face vertically or horizontally, in any direction of the cross; 
I have to admit that this bit is somewhat obscure to me.  Dogen uses the phrases “turning the head and changing the face” elsewhere in his writings, but those are also kind of obscure.  Putting it next to the rest of his comment on this gate and knowing that it’s in the middle of a section about nonseparation, I’m going to guess that he’s setting up an example of freedom of movement in any of the ten directions (forming a cross).  There’s an interpretation of “changing the face” elsewhere in his writings that concludes that it means awakening.  Here it could mean that when we turn the head in any of the ten directions, or move through the world with this individual body and its karmic conditions, we also show the face, or our awakened nature or Buddha nature, in the ten directions.  The head and the face are not separate just as our karmic selves and our Buddhanature are not separate.  At lease, this is my guess.

it is to enter the [master’s] room and to go to the Dharma hall. 
Now we’ve got nonduality between senior practitioners and the entire sangha, including beginners.  If you had dharma transmission, you got to go to the teacher’s quarters to hear teachings and ask questions or have a private meeting about your practice and the dharma, but everyone was expected to go to the Dharma hall to hear the teacher’s talks for the community.  Thus thorough investigation is to carry our your responsibilities as a senior member of the sangha, but not to think you’re too good to do what the rest of the sangha is doing or that you’ve achieved something and don’t need to practice any more.

It expresses “having met at Bōshutei Pavilion, having met on Usekirei Peak, having met in front of the monks’ hall,”and having met inside the Buddha hall—there being two mirrors and three kinds of reflection.
Dogen is incorporating by reference a koan story:
Seppō addresses the assembly, “I have met you at Bōshutei Pavilion, I have met you on Usekirei Peak, and I have met you in front of the monks’ hall.” Hofuku asks Gako, “Let us forget for a while the front of the monks’ hall.  What about the meetings at Bōshutei Pavilion and Usekirei Peak?” Gako runs back to the abbot’s quarters. Hofuku lowers his head and goes into the monks’ hall. 

Dogen talks about this story again in Shobogenzo Komyo:
Great Master Shingaku of Mt. Seppo once told his monks, “I met you in front of the monastery.”  This was the expression of his enlightenment and the true expression of himself.  He wanted to teach the monks the real meaning of the word “monastery.”  Once Seppo’s disciple Hofuku asked Gako, another disciple, “Our master insists on only using the expression ‘I met you in front of the monastery’ to explain his teaching but never mentions Boshutei or Usekirei.”  Then Gako quickly returned to the master’s quarters and Hofuku to the monastery.  They understood the meaning and purpose of their master’s teaching.  By returning to their respective dwellings they showed that enlightenment is only to meet our real selves.  This is the real meaning of meeting in front of the monastery.  Similarly, great Master Shino of Jizo-in said, “The monk in charge of the kitchen enters the kitchen.”  This expression surpasses the meaning of time.

Bōshū Pavilion and Useki Peak are two scenic places on Mount Seppō where people did meditation.  The teacher says he’s met his disciples at all of these places where they engage in zazen.  The word for “meeting” here includes a kanji that indicates some mutuality, or nonseparation of subject and object.  The teacher says that wherever they meet in zazen, or wherever we understand that there is only one awakening within this one unified reality, that’s the monastery.  They don’t have to mention the other scenic places on the mountain, and they don’t really even need to physically be in the same place.  They can each be in their own quarters or wherever and still be “meeting,” or not be separate.  When Dogen says this expression surpasses the meaning of time, he’s pointing out that people in different times as well as different spaces are still not separate within awakening, and again, thorough investigation or right effort is not limited to one space or one time.

And finally, the end of Dogen’s comment:
It expresses having met inside the Buddha hall—there being two mirrors and three kinds of reflection.
Subject and object are reflecting each other like two mirrors, and also those two mirrors are the undivided reality of this moment, so there are three reflections.  There’s subject, object, and going beyond the distinction between subject and object.  There are individual people meeting, talking and sitting, and there is also the reality that includes all the people and their activities.  Thorough investigation or right effort operates from the point of view of individuals and forms and subject and object, and also from the point of view of emptiness.

Thorough investigation, or right practice, or right effort, is about immersing ourselves in the complete functioning of this moment, doing that without any gaps or creating any separations.  This is not like investigating with the intellect only, doing research in books and looking up facts.  Uchiyama Roshi figured that out early on in his practice life.  He says:
By studying Western philosophy academically you can pretty much learn what it’s all about, but Buddhism is another matter.  To investigate and understand Buddhism and zazen thoroughly, I became a monk.  My becoming a monk was something of a fabricated means for doing zazen, because it was easier to do zazen if I took on the lifestyle of a monk, , , , I had been an intellectual, doing little besides reading and thinking, but I was determined to put all my energy into this practice.  Later I wrote a poem I called “Poem for Leaving Home”:
Like a sunbeam on a bright autumn morning
I would like to become completely one,
Body and mind,
With transparent wholehearted practice. (2)

The sunbeam is transparent, just shining the way it shines, carrying out complete functioning with no gaps, not disconnected from either the sun or whatever it lands on.  We can see individual sunbeams in relation to shadows or to something in the air, like water vapor or dust particles, but in the absence of those things, we can’t separate a sunbeam from the rest of the light coming from the sky.  Sometimes it has form and sometimes it doesn’t have any self-nature of its own, but in both cases, right practice is there.  The question for us is how we can abandon unwholesome activities and turn instead toward “becoming one with transparent, wholehearted practice.