Not being foolish is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it stops the killing of living things.
道理を知り愚かでないことは法明門である。それは殺生を断つからである。

Sometimes in translations, for “foolishness” we can read “ignorance.”  At Gate 39 I shared a verse from the end of a sutra in which the Buddha said One should associate with the wise, not the foolish.  In that case, he was talking about monks who were displaying their ignorance of his teachings by quarreling amongst themselves.  That’s one frame for thinking about this gate.

However, we also know that foolishness is one of the two things Uchiyama Roshi saw in modern life; the other is craziness.  He described craziness and foolishness as two ends of a spectrum in the same way that thinking and sleeping are two ends of the zazen spectrum.  In this essay I’m intentionally going to take the “foolishness” in this gate from Uchiyama Roshi’s point of view, and then tie all these elements together.

One pattern we’re going to keep seeing is that we’ve got craziness, chasing, overactivity and overthinking, and we’ve got foolishness, ignorance, escaping, isolation and disengagement.  These play out in zazen and also in the rest of day to day life.  Let’s start with foolishness as ignorance and see how that’s related to working with the first precept about not killing.  Then let’s look at foolishness as disengagement or inaction and see how that might relate as well.

Ignorance here is ignorance of Buddha’s teachings, not knowing about the nature of suffering and how it arises, and not knowing about the three marks of existence (interconnection, impermanence and no-self).  If we don’t understanding how the universe really works, if we’re out of touch with this one unified reality, then we make mistakes.  To avoid making mistakes about killing beings, we have to be really clear about who and what other beings are, and also about who and what this small self is and how they’re related.

Of course, one of the first problems we run into with the first precept is that it’s not possible to live without eating other beings, so it’s not possible to keep this precept even if we’re scrupulous and even if we understand everything Buddha taught.  Ignorant or not, we’re going to kill beings.  The question is:  what’s our attitude toward that?  Are we running around killing beings because we enjoy it?  Has anger turned into agression and we’re acting that out?  Do we feel powerful or strong because we’ve killed something?  Are we feeding the ego with our killing?  Are we killing indiscriminately, harvesting more food than we can eat or cutting down more trees than we need?  Are we acting in a way that encourages others to do these things?  

What’s our approach to taking care of ourselves and the health of our own bodies?  Even if we’re practicing not being attached to the body or sense data, we still have to give the body the care it needs as the ground of our practice.  Being uncompassionate to the body is not part of our practice.  Buddha discovered that starving himself was not the path to awakening and that moderation or the middle way was better.

All of those motivations and attitudes are the result of ignorance.  That means forgetting about how suffering arises from craving and aversion and how we’re feeding the three poisons, forgetting that all beings are interconnected and that we’re pouring unwholesomeness into that network that affects everyone, forgetting that everything is empty and impermanent, so killing beings doesn’t really solve anything or fix anything for the small self in the long term,

However, all that is happening in the relative world of form.  We also know that in the absolute view, there are no beings and no life and death and that it’s impossible to kill anything.  This is the view from complete non-separation and nondiscrimination.  Our practice is to hold both viewpoints at the same time.  Okumura Roshi has written:  There is being free of any discrimination or judgment. There is also valuing and protecting life. How can we do both at the same time, within one action? This is really a difficult kōan. We are confused, and to experience being confused is an important part of our practice. That means that we are free from fixed ideas about life, death, taking life, this precept, and our practice.  However, being confused and free from fixed ideas can also lead us to negate life.

This is what Uchiyama Roshi is saying too, but in a different way.  Let’s turn to what he says about craziness and foolishness and then come back to see how what he says and what Okumura Roshi says are related.

Uchiyama Roshi says that on one hand we have craziness and thinking, which are both active.  If we’re spending our zazen time thinking, we’re grabbing at stuff, pushing away stuff and writing stories.  If we’re spending the rest of our lives on craziness, we’re madly chasing around after progress, trying to get ahead and being pulled around by the demands of the small self.

On the other hand we have sleeping and foolishness, which are both inactive.  If we’re spending our zazen time sleeping, we’ve become inert and we don’t care what we’re doing.  If we’re spending the rest of our lives on foolishness, we’re trying to preserve our sense of peace and calm by not engaging with anything, even when work to be done or someone needs help.

The craziness and foolishness pairing comes up when Uchiyama Roshi is teaching about the meaning of zazen in modern daily life.  He says we’re so caught up in achievement and competition that we’re always busy and working hard.  He called modern civilization “crazy civilization.”  On the other side, he said Buddha’s teaching is to settle down within the self, not chasing after things outside based on our desire.  

An important early Buddhist was to try to break the enchantment of the senses—to be less distracted by the physical sensations coming in through the body and the stories that the mind wrote about them.  Of course, we prefer pleasant sensations to unpleasant ones, and that means we can be distracted by what we’re feeling with the body.  We chase after feelings we like and run away from feelings we don’t like.  We get agitated by our engagement with the world, and it makes sense then to decide to protect our peace of mind by deciding to ignore the world of form.  In modern terms we call this spiritual bypassing: I’m only going to pay attention to the world from the absolute point of view, where everything is always OK.  In the absolute world there is no discrimination and no killing and no beings who are suffering—but of course that’s only half of the story.  It’s not reality or the universe in its entirety.

What the early Buddhists were trying to do was to become less attached to the senses so they could settle down, see clearly what Buddha was teaching and have some experience of awakening, but we can take that kind of practice and use it simply to make ourselves feel better or avoid our suffering.  This idea of settling down within the self and not being pulled by desire can create foolish civilization if misinterpreted.  It results in isolation or escapism, cutting off connection with external objects and stopping thinking so that the mind can become peaceful.  

Uchiyama Roshi sees these two as a pair: becoming so fixated on getting something that we don’t see anything else versus the escapism of thinking everything is OK and we don’t need to make any effort or take anyone else into account.  Both of these are pretty self-centered, aren’t they?  Uchiyama Roshi was trying to find the middle way between peace and progress.  He’s not saying that there isn’t some good in both of these things.  Craziness is associated with movement, change and making things better; foolishness is associated with tranquility and peace of mind.  His big questions is: Is it possible to integrate peace and progress in a wholesome way?

Of course, the answer is yes, and it happens in two places or ways.  One is in zazen, where we know that our practice is not about stopping thinking.  What we stop is the interacting with thoughts, which means we’re not separate from those thoughts.  We settle because we’re not grasping thoughts and acting on them.  The second is in bodhisattva life, where we work diligently and wholeheartedly and make great effort, but we do it for all beings rather than for ourselves.  We settle because we don’t feed the three poisons and create suffering.  Okumura Roshi says about this, Neither being a slave to desire nor being lifeless is samadhi.  [We could say that neither craziness nor foolishness is samadhi.  Neither one is the answer.]  The place where we can settle the whole self on the self is the here and now, and we do that by being attentive to what we’re doing.  If the mind is somewhere else during activity, we’re creating separation from that activity and samadhi is lost.  The Mahayana approach to concentration is not to stop thinking but to include thinking in becoming one with entire world.

Understanding interconnection is the key here.  This is how we live according to the first precept and keep from foolishly killing beings.  Okumura Roshi goes on: The main point of this precept of not killing is that we are living as a part of the network of interdependent origination in time and space. How we can keep the network in a healthy condition and continue to live with Buddha’s wisdom? To do so, we need to embrace and have compassion for all beings, not for our personal benefit or the benefit of a particular group of people. I belong to Japanese society, and you may belong to a Western society or to a family or company, or to other groups including a Buddhist sangha. If we think we are doing things for ourselves as individuals or for certain groups separate from other parts of the network, we are killing life.

Let’s pull all these things together.  Buddha says the first precept is not to kill beings.  Uchiyama Roshi says that trying to keep happy and calm by disengaging from others and ignoring interconnection means we don’t live as bodhisattvas and don’t carry out our vow to save all beings.  Okumura Roshi says ignoring interconnection and keeping our wisdom and compassion to ourselves is killing life.  Not being foolish is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it stops the killing of living things.

Thus the way to avoid killing beings is not by ignoring, escaping or disengaging from them—it’s just the opposite.  If we’re foolish in the sense of not bothering to get involved with the lives and sufferings of other beings, we’re not nurturing life.  If we’re foolish in the sense of being ignorant of interconnection, then we’re killing beings.

No matter what we think about interconnection, it’s already there.  We’re connected whether we like it or are interested in it or not, so it doesn’t really matter whether we want to be involved, and chances are we’re disturbing our own peace more in the long run by ignoring the reality of interconnection than by recognizing what’s really happening.  I might not want to have any relationship with my neighbors, but wishing won’t make it so.  The fact is that we’re already connected, so I can spend my time and energy running away from that or I can put my time and energy into making that relationship work.

Maybe you’ve heard of the experiment that was done in the 1940s in an orphanage.  One group of newborn babies was cared for normally.  The other had basic needs met but got no other attention—they were fed and kept clean, but caregivers were told not to touch or look at the baby more than needed: no communicating with the babies, no extended interactions, just fill the basic needs and keep the place sanitary.  The experiment had to be stopped after just four months because by then half of those babies had died.  Even those who survived had lifelong issues.

I first heard about this experiment in high school in the 1970s, and it came back to me immediately when I read Okumura Roshi saying that ignoring interconnection is killing life.  It’s pretty powerful!

Now when we say interconnection, of course that includes several other important teachings.  One is dependent origination, or the teaching that nothing comes from nothing; everything arises because of causes and conditions.  When those causes and conditions change, what arises also changes and that’s where teachings about impermanence come in.  When we put dependent origination together with impermamencw, we get emptiness.  Emptiness means that conditioned things are empty of any fixed or permanent self-nature.  Because nothing arises on its own, it’s not separate from everything else, and because causes and conditions are changing all the time there’s nothing we can grab and say “There!  That’s the fixed self-nature of this thing!”

Not being foolish is not losing sight of interconnection, interdependence and emptiness because when we do, we deny the reality of the life of beings.  In other words, we kill life.

Having peace of mind doesn’t require that we escape from the world or somehow make everything stop.  We have peace of mind when we see how thing really are and stop living based on the three poisons.  Not being foolish doesn’t mean we secede from Indra’s net somehow, which isn’t actually possible; in fact, we throw ourselves completely into Indra’s net because we’re actually already completely there with all beings.  Peace of mind comes from living in harmony with all those beings rather than killing them, intentionally or not.

I’m giving the last word to Kodo Sawaki, my dharma great-grandfather, because he had a lot to say about human foolishness, though the word he used was stupidity.  One of his more famous phrases was grupu-boku, group stupidity.  A point he makes repeatedly is that we can get caught up in going along with whatever our group is doing and stop thinking for ourselves.  That group could be a company, family, peer group, political party, sangha, country, or whatever.  His well-known writing about this is:
When people are alone, they’re not so bad.  However, when group forms, paralysis occurs; people become totally foolish and cannot distinguish good from bad.  Their minds are numbed by the group…Others work on advertising to attract people and intoxicate them for some political, spiritual, or commercial purpose.  I keep some distance from society, not to escape it but to avoid this kind of paralysis.  To practice zazen is to become free of this group stupidity.

It’s important that he says he does keep some distance from society, but not to keep himself comfortable.  He does it to limit distraction so he can see this one unified reality for himself and then work for all beings.  For him, one of the things that happens when we sit is that the mind stays sharp so we can drop our self-involvement.  Then we can see ourselves and our world clearly and go out and do what needs to be done.  Sitting is not a means of retreating into our own little comfortable, stress-free world.

It’s interesting that he uses the word “intoxicate” and says that advertisers attract and intoxicate people for their own purpose.  It takes us right back to bonno, or seductive desires that we talked about at Gate 36.  Also, of course, there’s a whole precept about intoxicants, and in the Kyojukaimon it says, Do not bring intoxicants in; do not let them come in.  This is truly the great brightness of wisdom.  Whatever we’re using as intoxicants are moving us away from reality and into our own little world, instead of supporting our practice of seeing the universe clearly and seeing the true nature of all beings.

In order to see clearly and understand we have to do some discernment.  That means asking questions and maintaining a spirit of inquiry.  You can’t do discernment in isolation, cut off from the world or from yourself and your experiences.  If we’re going to understand anger, we have to enter into it.  It’s the same for grief, embarassment, disappointment or any other uncomfortable condition.  No one can do that discernment for us; we have to explore these things for ourselves.  That means we’re willing to feel discomfort and to accept that there is suffering for ourselves and all beings.

If Job One for the bodhisattva is to show up and not look away, then that’s the opposite of foolishness.  We may not understand what we’re seeing and we may not know what to do about it—that’s OK.  That’s what discernment is about and that’s why we’ve got teachers and sanghas to help.  Sawaki Roshi says that our practice of zazen is looking at the world afresh after being in hibernation.  We wake up and come out of the cave of our own delusion and look around.  Oh! now I get it.  There are beings out here and we’re all living the same life within the total dynamic functioning of the universe.  I need to take care of them and not cut off their lives.

All beings means all beings.  We don’t get to pick and choose which ones we’re connected to; we’re connected to all of them.  That means they all receive our compassion and they’re all included in our practice.  If someone asks for the dharma, we don’t begrudge it.  We don’t make any distinction between people who deserve to be free from suffering and those who don’t.  Otherwise we’re being foolish in all the meanings we’ve looked at here.

We also take responsibility for looking broadly and deeply and asking: what affect am I and my thoughts, speech and actions having on other beings and on the universe as a whole?  What kinds of subtle delusion am I not seeing?  What am I taking for granted as true that might just be an assumption and not actually true?  When we uncover one of those delusions and crack it open, something really important happens.  We see the world completely differently, we stop being foolish, and in that moment, we save all beings.

Not to quarrel is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it stops angry accusations.
争い闘わないことは法明門である。それによって怒り争うことが断たれるからである。

The kanji here don’t actually say “accusations;” the sense is closer to conflict, dispute and dissention.  This week it’s not so helpful to take this gate statement apart word by word.

What we’re being told here is to avoid angry arguments, because they just feed our greed, hatred and ignorance.  We’ve got two things to consider here.  One is what the teachings say about anger, one of the three poisons. Another is what the teachings say about how that anger moves into quarreling, which is not right speech.  

We’ve considered anger in three previous gates.
14 Benevolence: In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Buddha says cultivating loving-kindness reverses anger and greed, although it takes some time.
15 Compassion: The opposite of compassion is anger.  Someone makes a mistake because of his own suffering and we can take it personally, become angry and lash out, or we can recognize the suffering and try to help stop that chain or cycle of pain perpetuating pain.  It’s possible over time to see our anger clearly and redirect that energy into something more wholesome.
19 Reflection on suffering:  We can make course corrections as our insight deepens and we recognize that we get hijacked when the universe doesn’t do what we want or expect.  We can hold our goals loosely, and find new and helpful ways around obstacles without getting caught up in anger when our ideas don’t match reality.

We’ve already nibbled at the edges of this thing.  We all have personal experiences of anger, so this is not exotic new territory.  Of course, our tradition has plenty to say about anger because it’s one of the three poisons, the most basic causes of suffering in the human condition.  

Anger usually happens when the ego is challenged.  I want things to be a certain way, and that’s not how they are; therefore my self-concept is threatened.  I think I “deserve” certain things or don’t “deserve” certain things.  Life isn’t fair—I worked hard and he didn’t and he got the prize.  I was standing here patiently waiting and someone cut in front of me in line.  She promised that she would do something for me and she forgot or changed her mind.

We go forward expecting certain things to happen and when we don’t get what we expect, it’s a bad surprise.  Sometimes we even get angry at ourselves because we don’t match up with our own ideal image of who we should be.  Sometimes we have a sort of pre-emptive anger.  I’m feeling insecure so I’m going to get angry at you first before you see that I’m inadequate.  I’m going to make my feelings your fault.

In a backwards way, that angry energy can feel good.  If I’m angry, I must be right, worthy and justified.  If I’m angry, I’m scary, powerful and in control.  Yet our anger has nothing to do with what’s “out there;” it’s our own response to what we encounter.  People and things can’t “make” us angry.

Anger may come up very quickly, and it feels like it’s not something we’re creating, and therefore not something we can control.  You stub your toe or cut your finger, and it hurts right now.  You get passed over for a promotion or you break a new tool the first time you use it, and it hurts right now.  That’s why we need practice—to become so intimate with ourselves that we see exactly what’s happening when feelings of anger come up.

We can certainly use anger to build up our self image.  I have a right to be angry because of what she said or did.  Yet that’s just an idea.  There’s no cosmic scorecard.

In my days as a government employee, one of the program managers ran into trouble with some equipment during an important presentation.  I frequently served as a resource for presenters around the agency, but I was not responsible for this particular problem.  Nonetheless, I got the brunt of this manager’s anger, and one of my coworkers became angry on my behalf: That was inappropriate and he owes you an apology.

I’m OK, I said.  That wasn’t really aimed at me.  He was unskillful, but he was just expressing frustration.  I could see that if I held onto a personal grievance based on my ego, I would just be perpetuating suffering and no good could come of it.  How does that help in this moment?

It’s important to understand that the Buddha is not asking us to ignore or suppress our anger.  Because we’re baby bodhisattvas and we’re still working on dealing with our delusions, we’re going to have anger.  Once it arises, we have to deal with it, and that means we have to fully enter into it.  Acting it out and squashing it down are both ways to avoid fully entering into it and fully experiencing it.  If I act it out, I turn my focus on you and I get to ignore what’s really happening with me.  If I squish it down, I pretend anger is not present and again I get to ignore what’s really happening with me.

Instead, I can acknowledge that OK, the reality is that I’m angry.  I don’t like what’s happening or how I’m feeling.  What’s being challenged and where am I uncomfortable?  Do I need to do something about my anger or can I see that it’s going to resolve itself?  If I need to do something, what skillful thing can I do?

There’s a difference between anger and aggression, a feeling arising and the action we take based on that feeling.  We need to open up a space between impulse and action.  Zazen gives us the opportunity to watch anger arise without being able to go pick a fight.  We’re not going to get up off the cushion and pick up the phone, but we do have to be careful not to just sit there silently for 50 minutes ruminating on what’s making us angry and fanning the flames so when the bell rings we boil over.  Looking carefully at anger doesn’t mean clinging to anger.  Let’s do what we can to create enough space within ourselves to see anger before it becomes agression—before we start the quarrel this gate is warning us about,

Dogen Zenji had some useful things to say about this in the Shobogenzo Zuimonki.
Once, Zen Master Shinjo Kokubun told his students, “In former times, I practiced together with Seppo.  Once Seppo was discussing the dharma loudly with another student in the monk’s dormitory. Eventually, they began to argue using harsh words, and in the end, wound up quarreling with each other. After the argument was over, Seppo said to me, ‘You and I are close friends practicing together with one mind. Our friendship is not shallow. Why didn’t you help me when I was arguing with that man?’ At the time, I could do nothing but feel small, folding my hands and bowing my head.

“Later, Seppo became an eminent master, and I too, am now an abbot. What I thought at the time was that Seppo’s discussion of the dharma was ultimately meaningless. Needless to say, quarreling was wrong. Since I thought it was useless to fight, I kept silent.”

This is the story that Shinjo told; now Dogen makes a comment:

Students of the Way, you also should consider this thoroughly. As long as you aspire to make diligent effort in learning the Way, you must be careful with your time. When do you have time to argue with others? Ultimately, it brings about no benefit to you or to others. This is so even in the case of arguing about the dharma, much more about worldly affairs. 

Even though the power of a wise man is stronger than that of an ox, he does not fight with the ox. Even if you think that you understand the dharma more deeply than others, do not argue, criticize, or try to defeat them.  

If there is a sincere student who asks you about the dharma, you should not begrudge telling him about it.  You should explain it to him.  However, even in such a case, before responding wait until you have been asked three times. Neither speak too much nor talk about meaningless matters. After reading these words of Shinjo, I thought that I myself had this fault, and that he was admonishing me. I have subsequently never argued about the dharma with others.

This is how Dogen learned to practice with his own impulse to be quarrelsome.  Interestingly, his conclusion is that it’s a waste of your time!  You’ve got better things to do, like actual practice.  Maybe you’ve heard the saying, Never try to teach a pig to sing.  It wastes your time and annoys the pig.  It seems that Dogen is saying something similar.  Don’t quarrel with folks.  It wastes everyone’s time and just makes people cranky.

Quarreling is what happens when we forget about interconnectedness and non-separation.  There’s something in my world that I don’t like and I want to get rid of it.  Therefore I wave my arms and make loud roaring noises and somehow that’s going to fix the problem.  Quarreling comes from being self-involved.  When we’re self-involved, it’s very difficult to see the world from another person’s point of view.  We have to be able to loosen our grip on our own ideas just enough to make space for new ideas to enter in.

That doesn’t mean we become wishy-washy and don’t stand for anything.  It doesn’t mean we can’t have opinions and values.  It means we don’t get so trapped in our own worldview that we can’t see beyond it to the context of the rest of the universe.  Dogen must have run into this dynamic in his own life, because he said in another part of the Zuimonki:

Even if you are speaking rationally and another person says something unreasonable, it is wrong to defeat him by arguing logically. On the other hand, it is not good to give up hastily saying that you are wrong, even though you think that your opinion is reasonable.  Neither defeat him, nor withdraw saying you are wrong. It is best to just leave the matter alone and stop arguing. If you act as if you have not heard and forget about the matter, he will forget too and will not get angry. This is a very important thing to bear in mind.

According to Dogen, we’ve got three ways to deal with a looming argument.  We can let our anger boil over into agression, we can roll over and submit and not offer information even when we know we’re right, or we can open the hand and not engage with the quarrel.  We can let the dust settle and let everyone calm down until we’re better able to see beyond our self-involvement to the rest of the circumstance.

As soon as we talk about quarrels that result from forgetting about interconnectedness, in this family we might think of Uchiyama Roshi’s retelling of the story of the squabbling squashes.  In the field behind the temple, an argument broke out among the squashes; they all took sides and started a loud quarrel.  The clergy came out, broke it up and taught them to do zazen instead, which they did until they were able to calm down.  The clergy told them to put their hands on their heads, and they discovered that each one of them was connected to all the others by the vine they were growing on.  They said, why were we taking sides and quarreling when we’re all living one life together on this vine?

This is a nice story, but I think it’s more helpful for working with a tendency to be quarrelsome than for stopping a quarrel in progress.  We have to come at this thing from two directions.  In the short term, we have to do our best to watch what’s happening right now before aggression boils over into a quarrel.  In the long term, we have to dislodge our habit of being quarrelsome.  In the short term, Dogen says, walk away from the fight.  Don’t pick up whatever someone else has thrown down and engage with it in battle.  In the longer term, Uchiyama’s story says, remember that all beings are interconnected and that ultimately it’s pointless to argue with yourself.  The right hand doesn’t need to quarrel with the left hand.  This bit of the universe doesn’t need to argue with that bit of the same universe.

Interestingly, the English word quarrel usually means a heated disagreement about something trivial between people who usually get along and are on good terms.  That fits pretty well with the squash story.  Some minor thing happens, the ego takes a hit, and suddenly we forget that we’ve been friends with this person or married to this person for years.  It’s actually the fact that this is a friend or family member or someone we like or respect that can make things so difficult.  We know this person or situation pretty well, we know what to expect, things have always been good before, and what he did or said was an extra-bad surprise.  Being hurt by this person is worse than being hurt by a stranger because this is an important relationship.  Kapow!  Lots of energy explodes.  
We forget that we’re connected by our shared history and shared interests and maybe by blood, and all we can see is ourselves and how angry we are.  Then we say unskillful things and quarreling arises. 

In the Vinaya, which is the part of the Pali canon that has the rules and procedures for the sangha, causing a schism was a grievous enough offense to get you kicked out.  Interestingly, the Buddha said that even in the event of a real schism, each side is still to treat the other with care and respect, even while there may be some investigation into what’s really happening.  Buddha even taught about how to choose sides.  He said we should always be on the side of the dharma. Which side is acting on behalf of the dharma?  That’s not always clear in any disagreement.  Which side is working for wholesomeness?  Both might have good and wholesome intent.

Whether we’re one of the quarreling parties or just a bystander, we need to pay attention.  In the case of someone actively sowing dissention with his or her speech with the intent to cause harm, our job is to be on the side of ameliorating suffering for the largest possible number of beings, not leaving out ourselves and the person creating the division.  In fact, there’s a story in the Pali Canon about monks in the sangha who were quarreling about the dharma and it just went on and on.  Buddha tried to mediate and find some peaceful way to end the quarrel, but the monks just kept fighting.  Finally he took his robe and bowl and left!  He went off into the forest by himself and lived nicely with the animals.  Eventually the laity heard that the Buddha had left so they stopped giving alms to the monks.  Ananda had to come to Buddha and persuade him to come back, and ultimately the quarreling monks apologized to him.

What a great example of walking away from a fight!  Not only did the Buddha not get caught up in the disagreement himself or feed that quarrel somehow, but the fact of his leaving was what got the monks to stop and look around and realize that they weren’t getting any material support anymore.  He did something smart to break the monks’ self-involvement.  He didn’t say anything or make a big show of leaving—he just left.

However, he was also making a comment on the condition of those quarreling monks.  The verse at the end of the sutra says:
One should associate with the wise, not the foolish.
It would be better to live alone if we cannot find good friends.
There is no companionship with the foolish.

For foolish here, we can read ignorant.  Ignorance is one of the three poisons: being ignorant of the nature of suffering.  These monks were displaying their ignorance by quarreling.  They were showing the whole world that they were inflexible, ego-driven and clinging to their own ideas.  In essence, Buddha said, it’s not worth my time to hang out with you.  You’re not in any position to engage with me or each other in a meaningful, mature, wholesome way.  I’ll come back when you’ve done some growing up!

Differences of opinion are normal and healthy.  We’re never all going to agree about everything; our karmic circumstances are all different.  The question is: what do we do with those differences of opinion?  Do we attack the other person and create a win-lose situation?  Or do we maintain our equanimity so we can think clearly and see clearly and leave some possibility for agreeing to disagree?  Do we maintain a spirit of inquiry and give the other person a chance to explain his or her viewpoint?  Or do we just grab as much territory as possible for ourselves?

We need to not fall prey to the idea that others will agree with us once they understand what we’re saying.  They may understand perfectly well what we’re saying and still not agree—and we have to be OK with that.  We can disagree without resorting to being dismissive, arrogant or condescending.  We can disagree without quarreling if we don’t make it personal and if we don’t injure the other person.  Injury here means things like ridiculing, demeaning and disregarding.

Handling disagreements without quarrelling is a gate of dharma illumination because it shows our true nature in an unclouded way and it also helps us to settle down so we can see the true functioning of the dharma in our world.  The truth is that we’re interconnected and bickering serves no real purpose.  It feeds a self that’s actually empty and doesn’t need that feeding.  If you win the quarrel, you don’t really win anything.  You just feed the three poisons and sow the seeds of future quarrels.  So, yes, we offer our insights and points of view.  Yes, we skillfully correct someone when that’s appropriate.  Yes, we stand our ground when necessary.  But we do no harm.

Reflection on impurity is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we abandon the mind that is tainted by desire. 
身の不浄を観じることは法明門である。それによって欲心を捨てることが出来るからである。

The kanji here mean something like contemplating the impurity of the body, oneself, or one’s place or position; this is not about considering things “out there” and holding up a yardstick to decide which of them is pure and which is tainted.  It feels pretty intimate: the impurity of our own viewpoints and our own relationships with what we encounter.

One definition of purity is that something is pure when it’s not mixed with anything else.   From the standpoint of practice, that means meeting this moment with prajna or wisdom, not adding our own defilement or narrow ideas.  Yet we can also say that real purity is going beyond purity and impurity.  As long as we have ideas about what purity is, we’ve broken purity and made it impure.  This is a bit like the discussion at Gate 37 about knowing being about going beyond knowing and not knowing.

You may have heard of Baizhang, a famous 7th century Chinese Zen master.  He said about purity, "It is not seeing the impurity of the water and speaking of the ills of the water’s impurity. If the water were pure, nothing could be said; speech instead would defile that water."

To get to purity, we have to keep opening the hand and dropping our ideas and attachments.  Whatever we’re describing,thinking about or talking about is intrinsically pure; it’s already whole and not separate before we come along.  If the water were pure, nothing could be said.  As soon as we talk about whether it’s pure or not, we’ve added something extra.

Baizhang goes on to say:
You must distinguish the terms of purity and impurity. “Impure things” have many names, such as greed, aversion, grasping love, etc. “Pure things” also have many names, such as enlightenment, extinction of suffering, liberation, etc. But while in the midst of the twin streams of purity and impurity, among such standards as profane and holy, amidst form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and phenomena, things of the world or things which transcend the world, the immediate mirror-like awareness should not have the slightest hair of grasping love for anything at all.

When this gate refers to “reflection on impurity,” our first thought might be that this means look out for things that are impure and do our best to get rid of them, to reflect on impurity and make sure we’re not seduced into unskillful behavior or attachments.  Baizhang points out that attachment to anything we decide is pure, even enlightenment or liberation, is also a problem.  The true self doesn’t grasp for anything at all.

He further says that if we give up clinging and think this is good, that’s a first step.  We’ve taken up practice and are making some effort, but we’re still attached to nonattachment itself.  If we give up nonattachment, that’s better but it’s still not enough; we’re only halfway there.  We’re still clinging to an idea about non-attachment.  He says this is the bondage of bodhisattvas.  If give up both attachment and non-attachment and all our ideas about them, that’s the final good.  Then we avoid getting stuck anywhere.  We avoid being either demon or bodhisattva.

Baizhang concludes, "The pure disciples of bodhisattvas are lucid and clear; whatever they say, they do not cling to nonexistence or existence.  All their awareness and activity is not contained by either purity or impurity."

In our tradition we have the metaphor of the mani-jewel.  It stands for various things depending on text and circumstances; several are related to purity and are helpful for our purposes here.  In one case it’s a water-purifying jewel, said to have been carried by Buddhist monks when they traveled.  On their journeys they often had to drink water from a pond, lake or river, which might be muddy,  They put the mani-jewel into the water and the mud would settle so that the water’s surface became clear.  It’s not hard to see the metaphor for practice here.  The mind settles down and we let go of the delusion that stirs things up and keeps us from seeing clearly and acting without adding anything extra.  This is a repeating cycle: settling the mind means we can see clearly so the mind becomes more settled so we see more clearly.

The mani-jewel is also metaphor for Buddha-nature in some sutras.  The jewel itself is purely without color but reflects all the colors of the things around it.  If we’re caught up in delusion, we think the jewel itself has all these colors.  The metaphor is that buddha nature is completely manifested in this human form of body and mind, but if we’re caught up in delusion, we think awakening or buddha-nature has the same kinds of characteristics as body and mind.  Actually, buddha nature has no characteristics at all because it’s pure.

Buddha said that this body and mind are composed only of the five skandhas or aggregates (form, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness).  The five skandhas are defiled because of the three poisonous minds (greed, anger and ignorance) and the delusions and karma that arise from them, but when the defilements of the five skandhas are eliminated, the purity of the mani-jewel pervades the entire world.

Because the mani-jewel is transparent, its color changes depending on surrounding conditions.  The jewel is complete awakening, or Buddha nature, but because of our three poisonous minds its beauty is hidden and not revealed.  We see only the color of our delusion and we think the jewel itself is defiled.  Our clinging to self means we see only the defilements of the five skandhas without seeing the purity of the jewel or buddha-nature.  As Okumura Roshi has often said, five skandhas cling to five skandhas and we think that’s the self, so our pure nature or complete awakening is not revealed.  When we’re free from the three poisonous minds—and this gate mentions greed specifically—then purity is revealed.  This is Nirvana.

If you like more technical Buddhist studies, this is the Tathãgatagarbha theory.  Tathãgatagarbha is literally “the embryo of Buddha.”  Even though our body/mind is defiled on the surface, our original nature or Buddha-nature is always pure and undefiled.  Even though on one level our mind/body is continually influenced by many things, the true nature of our mind is always pure and clear and free from discrimination. 

The kanji for the second half of this gate mean that we’re prepared to abandon the heart and mind of greed.  If we understand purity and impurity, we’re then able to let go of clinging—but interestingly, if we let go of clinging, we’re also then able to understand purity and impurity.  Really, all this is arising together.

Our old friend Baizhang says, “Just put an end to all fettering connections, and feelings of greed, hatred, craving, defilement and purity all come to an end.”  Notice that he says that all delusion comes to an end, but also purity!  He goes on, “Not bound by any good or evil, emptiness or existence, defilement or purity, doing or nondoing, mundane or transcendental, virtue or knowledge, is called enlightened wisdom.”  This is prajna, seeing with the eyes of Buddha.  “When the mind of purity and impurity is ended, it does not dwell in bondage, nor does it dwell in liberation; it has no mindfulness of doing, nondoing, bondage or liberation—then, though it is within birth and death, that mind is free.”

All this seems to be saying that we shouldn’t have any kind of moral compass, that there is no pure and impure, or no good and bad, so it’s OK to run amok and do whatever we want and “be free.”  Okumura Roshi has written and spoken a lot about going beyond good and bad, particularly related to Dogen’s fascicle Shoaku Makusa, or Not Doing Evil.

If our tradition was telling us that we should just do whatever our cravings and aversions compelled us to do, there wouldn’t be all the ethical teachings that there are.  There wouldn’t be precepts or the right speech/action/livelihood section of the eightfold path.  That not what’s happening here.  In fact, in the Bonmokyo, from the Brahma Net Sutra, which is where we get some important teachings about the precepts, it says, “They are the precepts of all living beings; their source is the purity of self-nature.”  Thus the precepts are a description of what happens when the five skandhas give up clinging to five skandhas and buddha-nature is completely or purely manifested.  They aren’t rules of morality imposed by god or man;  they come from understanding the human situation in the world.

Several years ago I read an article about Christian parents who were very upset that Buddhist meditation was being taught in schools.  Teachers said it was a way to help kids manage emotions, learn to stay focused, and enjoy all the benefits that go with mindfulness.  Those parents believed that since kids were being taught to let their thoughts come and go without judgement, they were never going to learn right from wrong.  They have to be able to know which thoughts are OK and which aren’t, they argued, or they won’t have any sense of morality.

I thought it unfortunate that there was no one there to explain to parents what the teaching actually was.  Acceptance is not approval and compassion is not condoning.  Accepting that our delusions and suffering exist and may lead to unwholesome action, and facing them squarely, is not the same as approving of them or encouraging them.  Having compassion for someone whose suffering leads to unskillfulness is not the same as condoning that action.                  

Going beyond pure and impure is seeing this one unified reality.  One thing can’t be separated into good and bad, tainted and stainless, pure and defiled.  In the largest possible sense, there can’t be either a pure mind or an impure mind, or anything else.  Reflection on the impurity of our human condition is reflection on our tendency or potential for creating separation by introducing something extra into a unified reality which is pure precisely because it is unbroken.

The gate statement refers to a mind tainted by desire, or literally the mind of greed.  We saw above that being free from the three poisons enables seeing clearly, and vice versa.  Buddha said that a mind tainted with defilements was unable to fully assimilate his teachings, so we have to do something to get that cycle of purification and wisdom going.  To that end, he told a story called the Simile of the Cloth.

Monks, suppose a cloth were stained and dirty, and a dyer dipped it in some dye or other, whether blue or yellow or red or pink, it would take the dye badly and be impure in color. And why is that? Because the cloth was not clean. So too, monks, when the mind is defiled, an unhappy destination [in a future existence] may be expected.

Monks, suppose a cloth were clean and bright, and a dyer dipped it in some dye or other, whether blue or yellow or red or pink, it would take the dye well and be pure in color. And why is that? Because the cloth was clean. So too, monks, when the mind is undefiled, a happy destination [in a future existence] may be expected.

This is the same teaching as the Chinese story of the important man who comes to see a Zen teacher.  The teacher sees that he’s too full of himself to take in any dharma, and while talking with him, he pours the man a cup of tea.  However, he keeps pouring until it overflows and the man says, “Stop!  It’s too full!  No more will go in!”  Well, yes, points out the teacher, just like you.  

When five skandhas begin to let go of five skandhas, there’s room for some dharma.  When the cloth is clean, it takes the dye well.  When we understand purity and impurity, we’re in a position to abandon the heart and mind full of greed.  

As we’ve seen, purity is frequently associated with emptiness, non-separation and freedom.  It’s about not being stuck—not stuck to something, not stuck in one place, not stuck in narrow, habituated thinking.  This is partly why we have these iconoclastic, seemingly-crazy characters in the Zen tradition, people who are childlike, don’t conform to expectations, break the rules, or don’t act like responsible grown-ups.  Society frequently says these people are tainted by madness, delusion or irresponsibility, and yet within our tradition they’re often described as pure-hearted and frequently generous, though they have very little themselves as they wander from place to place.  They’re the physical embodiment of abandoning the heart and mind of greed, or the mind tainted by desire.

The poet Ryokan is a well-known example.  Here are two of his poems:

Without desire everything is sufficient.
With seeking myriad things are impoverished.
Plain vegetables can soothe hunger.
A patched robe is enough to cover this bent old body.
Alone I hike with a deer.
Cheerfully I sing with village children.
The stream beneath the cliff cleanses my ears.
The pine on the mountain top fits my heart.

Spring wind feels rather soft.
Ringing a monk’s staff I enter the eastern town.
So green, willows in the garden;
So restless, floating grass over the pond.
My bowl is fragrant with rice of a thousand homes.
My heart has abandoned splendor of ten thousand carriages.
Yearning for traces of ancient buddhas
Step by step I walk begging.

Folks like this navigate the physical world just fine, but they also know that they live in the world of emptiness.  They accept everything and everyone, not only people but all beings.  They aren’t cloistered in a temple or house, but go out into the world and meet it openly without any expectations.  These folks are the human version of the lotus, which is a common symbol of purity in our tradition but goes back in India to a time before Buddha.  The lotus has its roots in the mud at the bottom of the pond (delusion), but it blooms in the sunlight on the surface of the water (awakening).

There’s a verse we say after formal meals and at the end of ryaku fusatsu: "Abiding in this ephemeral world, like a lotus in muddy water, the mind is pure and goes beyond.  Thus we bow to Buddha."  While we live in the world of samsara, or impurity, the pure mind is not attached to the things of this world, so it goes beyond samsara while still being in the midst of it.

Belief and understanding are a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with them] we decisively comprehend the paramount [truth].
仏法を信じ理解することは法明門である。それによって法の究極の道理を悟るからである。

This translation leaves out something I think is important: belief in what?  Understanding of what?  The Japanese says belief in and understanding of the buddha-dharma or buppou 仏法.  There various meanings to the word buddha-dharma depending on the sect or teacher; for our purposes, we can say that it’s the teachings and practices transmitted by the Buddha and his successors.

However, it’s not just the teachings, not just the stuff that got said and written down.  It’s also the way those teachings are put into practice, what Buddha and our teachers have taught us to do with them.  Until they’re realized or brought to life, they’re just dead words on a page, just an intellectual pursuit—and that’s important to belief and understanding.  We need confidence in the three treasures in order to practice, but our practice verifies that the teachings are true.

The very first of the 108 gates is Right belief is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] the steadfast mind is not broken.  You’ll recall I made the point that the list begins right away with a gate that is difficult for some Westerners to encounter: belief.  North American sanghas are full of people who have left Judeo-Christian churches because they are not comfortable relying on what they perceive to be “blind faith,” or feeling that they are being told what to believe.  

One of the first ideas they may encounter in a Zen center is that the Buddha taught that nothing should ever be taken on faith, that practitioners should only trust their own experience, and that the individual’s own discernment is the ultimate yardstick.  It’s a distortion of the piece of Buddhist scripture perhaps most often taken out of context in the West: Buddha’s encounter with the Kalamas in the Kalama Sutra:  
Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing, nor upon tradition, nor upon rumor, nor upon scripture, nor upon surmise, nor upon axiom, nor upon specious reasoning, nor upon bias toward a notion pondered over, nor upon another’s seeming ability, nor upon the consideration ‘The monk is our teacher.’ When you yourselves know: ‘These things are bad, blamable, censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,’ abandon them... When you yourselves know: ‘These things are good, blameless, praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,’ enter on and abide in them.

It’s easy for us as rugged individualists to read this sutra as saying that belief in anything, including the Buddha and his teachings, is bad, and that only personal experience and the individual understanding of that experience is reliable.  That’s not at all what’s actually happening in this sutra.

Buddha has been approached by group of people confused about various claims being made by a parade of religious teachers who have come through their town over time.  Each one has a different teaching and each one disparages the teachings of the others.  The group has heard good things about the Buddha and goes to him to ask for guidance.  These folks already have some degree of spiritual understanding, but they’re not yet Buddha’s disciples and he can’t just plunge right into teaching them the dharma.  He tells them they are right to doubt all the various things they’ve been told and begins with a series of questions that lead the group members to discover for themselves the three poisons (greed, anger and ignorance) as the basis for unwholesome living.  They see that this teaching is immediately verifiable by logic and the Buddha gains their trust in the dharma as a means of liberation.  The group wasn’t ready to put faith in the Buddha at the start of the encounter; he could well have been just another in a long line of religious teachers with doctrine followers were simply told to believe.  

Once the Kalamas became Buddha’s disciples, he went on to explain the Four Noble Truths and the rest of his teachings.  The group could accept that they were doing what was wholesome and effective, and the more their understanding deepened, the better they were able to rely on their own insight into what was “bad, blamable, censured by the wise,” and what was “good, blameless, praised by the wise.”  Up to that time, they didn’t have enough experience to know what was harmful and what was wholesome.

Buddha said, “Come, Kalamas,” not “Come, followers of the Way.”  He wasn’t speaking to his own sangha; he was speaking to people who had not yet taken up the buddhadharma.  Once we become Buddha’s students and take refuge in the three treasures, we give up the idea that our own ideas are the ultimate yardstick of what is helpful and wholesome and what is not.  We step through the gate of right belief.

As we saw at Gate 36 about the hindrance of doubt, belief doesn’t mean we stop our investigation.  We still have to approach our lives and practice with a spirit of inquiry and aspiration to see what’s really happening, but we’ve decided to take this path and stay on it and see where it leads us.  

Repentance, by the way, is important to belief according to Dogen.  
Furthermore, if the mind or the flesh grow lazy or disbelieving, we should wholeheartedly confess before the Buddha.  When we do this, the power of the virtue of confessing before the Buddha saves us and makes us pure.  This virtue can promote unhindered pure belief and fortitude.  Once pure belief reveals itself, both self and the external world are moved [into action], and the benefit universally covers sentient and nonsentient beings. . . . The power of confession causes the roots of wrongdoing to dissolve.  This is right training of one color; it is right belief in the mind and right belief in the body.

Here again we see that right belief is not an intellectual exercise.  Repentance is acknowledging that we’ve done things with our bodies, speech and minds that go against our understanding of how the universe works and how suffering arises.  Repentance reminds us of what we believe.

Now we’ve seen something about belief in the buddhadharma; how about understanding?  Our teachers are always telling us that we can’t understand the buddhadharma with our heads.  A psychological definition of understanding says in part: Understanding is a relation between the knower and an object of understanding. Understanding implies abilities and dispositions with respect to an object of knowledge that are sufficient to support intelligent behavior.

Immediately we’re faced with a subject and an object.  There’s a person who is understanding and something out there being understood.  If the understanding is right, the person takes skillful action with regard to the object.  That sounds perfectly reasonable in the world of form.

However, there’s a koan about a conversation between the Sixth Ancestor, Huineng and another monk:
A monk asked, “Who attained the meaning of Huang-mei (the fifth ancestor)?  Huineng said, “Those who understood the buddhadharma attained it.”  The monk asked, “Did you attain it, master?”  Huineng said, “No I did not attain it.”  The monk asked, “Why didn’t you attain it?”  Huineng said, “I don’t understand the Buddhadharma..” (1)

This guy is asking Huineng who got what his teacher was teaching.  Huineng said those who understood the buddhadharma got it, but he wasn’t one of them.  That sounds like he failed in some way, but his real point is that buddhadharma isn’t something we can understand intellectually or grasp as an unchanging concept.  If we think we can, or we think we’ve done it, then that’s an indication that we don’t really get it—that’s a mistake rather than an achievement.

Huineng says not understanding the buddhadharma is actually the point of view of awakening: not grasping with the intellect, not setting up a duality between the person understanding and the object of knowledge, not settling into a place of thinking we get it or thinking we don’t.  Thus when this gate suggests that understanding the buddhadharma is important, it’s not saying that we should cling to teachings and practice with our heads.  It might be better to say that going beyond understanding and not-understanding is important.

Dogen writes about this koan in Shobogenso Kenbutsu (Seeing Buddha):
In seeing buddha, there are many forms that are seen and no-form that is seen; that is “I do not understand the Buddhadharma.”  In not seeing buddha there are the many forms that are not seen and no-form that is not seen; that is, “People who understand the buddhadhara have attained it.”

“Seeing buddha” is “I don’t understand the buddhadharma.”  “Not seeing buddha” is “People who understand the buddhadharma have attained it.”

Dogen gives another explanation in the Genjo-koan:
When a person does practice/enlightenment in the buddha way, as the person realizes one dharma, the person permeates that dharma; as the person encounters one practice, the person [fully] practices that practice. [For this] there is a place and a path. The boundary of the known is not clear; this is because the known [which appears limited] is born and practiced simultaneously with the complete penetration of the buddha dharma. We should not think that what we have attained is conceived by ourselves and known by our discriminating mind. Although complete enlightenment is immediately actualized, its intimacy is such that it does not necessarily form as a view. [In fact] viewing is not something fixed.

The boundary of the known—what we understand or don’t understand—is not clear when we’re practicing without ideas about what we’re doing.  Ironically, as soon as the boundary between known and unknown drops away, we completely understand the buddhadharma and this gate opens up.

Next, the gate statement says we decisively comprehend the paramount truth.  The kanji say “the ultimate truth of the dharma.”  The word translated here as “decisively comprehend” is satoru 悟る, which has the same root as satori or enlightenment.  In common usage it means to know or understand, but in the Buddhist world it’s associated with awakening.

So: when we believe in Buddha’s teaching and practice and when we fully enter into them without limited ideas, then we wake up to the ultimate truth of the dharma.  Uchiyama Roshi would say we wake up to the universal self.  We simply immerse ourselves in practice without trying to measure our progress toward understanding or awakening.  For one thing, there is no finish line in our practice.  Our delusions are endless and our bodhisattva vows are endless.

It reminds me of this little game I play on my tablet.  I saw the other day that I was at level 1200-and-something.  That means I’ve solved 1200 puzzles; as soon as I solved one, there was the next one.  I wondered if there was an end point and I thought no, the people who made the game are just going to keep coming up with the next level and the next level and the tablet is just going to keep downloading these updates forever.  It’s interesting and a bit scary to think that I’ve put in enough time on this thing to solve 1200 levels, but if I got to the last one, I’d be disappointed because the fun is in the engagement with the challenges.  You do learn some strategies after awhile, but each puzzle is different and you can’t solve each one the same way.

Likewise, we don’t measure progress in our practice because there’s no end point, and also if we become too rigid about it, that’s not helpful.  If we’re driven to memorize as many teachings as possible or drive out anything that doesn’t fit some idea of the perfect practice, we get so caught up in that that what’s really happening in this moment of our practice goes right over our heads.  

Earlier this year I was telling my novices about the Soto Zen reform movement in the 1700s in Japan.  Dogen’s teachings and life story had just become more widely available after being neglected and unread for centuries, and the reformers went through all of Dogen’s writings to see where actual practice had deviated from what Dogen described.  Anything that didn’t match, they wanted to throw out.

Now who’s to say whether this impulse is good or bad?  However, we have to remember that Dogen had been dead for 500 years and there was plenty he didn’t ever write much about, like kinhin, so we don’t really know everything about his practice.  We end up interpreting what he wrote, which makes it our own idea even though we’re attributing it to Dogen.  It can lead us to discount the experience of actual practice that we’ve learned today from our sangha and teachers—and in fact that’s what happened with the reform movement.  The government sided with the reformers over many Soto Zen leaders and ruled that the texts were the authoritative source, while the people who were practicing at Eiheiji said they had the one true way because they were direct descendents of Dogen and were the protectors of his temple and practice.

I’m not saying that texts aren’t important or that we shouldn’t deeply investigate practice with body and mind, but we might consider whether there’s something useful in the balance of belief and understanding and in the balance of face-to-face practice and studying written teachings.  I suspect the ultimate truth of the dharma that this gate talks about is in both, but we only see that when we go beyond believing and not-believing, or understanding and not-understanding.  When we accept Buddha’s teaching and practice and when we fully enter into them in an unlimited way, then we wake up to the ultimate truth of the dharma.

What does that look like in our actual lives?  It’s one thing to read about what Buddha or Dogen or Okumura Roshi is teaching and another to dive in completely.  Zen is a practice; it’s something we do.  If the alarm goes off in the morning and you turn it off, roll over, and tell yourself that it’s OK to skip zazen because you’ll read an extra chapter in that new dharma book tonight, look carefully at what you’re doing.  If you find yourself making excuses for doing whatever you want even when you know that practice should be guiding you to make some other choice, then that’s an opportunity to be honest with yourself about what’s going on.  Are you having trouble accepting and believing in the teachings?  Are you unconvinced this is wholesome and beneficial practice?  Are you confused about what Buddha was actually saying, what the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path are about?

None of those impulses is evil; they’re the human condition.  Yet if we’re committed to waking up to the truth of the dharma, or the true nature of reality, then we need to take some action.  Our daily life in samsara is not the whole story; if it was, then we’d already be completely manifesting awakening.  So ask yourself: what does it mean to me to believe in the three treasures and what can I do to investigate that and keep it going?  How do I understand prajna, or wisdom, seeing the way Buddha sees?  What am I doing to cultivate that?

Fully entering into Zen practice or fully entering into this gate isn’t about filling your home or your life with Buddhist knick-knacks and trophies or adopting exotic attitudes about your daily activities.  It’s fine to have reasonable external supports for our practice, but practice starts inside and it happens even when no one is looking.  Often the trophies and jewelry and stuff are more about declaring to the world one’s identity as a “Buddhist” than they are about being reminders to practice.  They’re not evil, but we need to investigate why we think they’re important.  It’s OK not to have a rigid Zen persona that’s always trying to be a perfect Buddhist.  After all, there is no fixed self-nature anyway.

Uchiyama Roshi said that as practitioners we should be sure to have hobbies.  Our dharma cousin Issho Fujita told a story about a conversation he had with Uchiyama Roshi when he was 84 and dying.  Issho was a very serious practitioner and Uchiyama Roshi said that to be a good monk you need a hobby.  For Uchiyama Roshi, it was origami.  He asked Issho what his hobby was, and he said reading books.  Uchiyama Roshi told him he had better find something else because books cost money.  Find something you can do anytime, anywhere, without special supplies, with others or by yourself, he said.

His point was that hobbies can seem trivial when you’re really focused on being a good practitioner, but unless we can have a nice time and enjoy just doing what we’re doing in our practice in this moment without any agenda, the way we do hobbies, then we remain separated from the reality of our lives—and that’s where suffering begins.

Notes
(1) Okumura, Shohaku. The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner's Guide to Dogen's "Sansuikyo". United States, Wisdom Publications, 2018.  Note 28.

Being without hindrances is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] the mind is free of doubt.
煩悩の障りが無いことは法明門である。  それは心に疑惑が無いからである。


The word for hindrances here is bonno 煩悩, the same bonno as in the bodhisattva vows, although there it’s frequently translated as delusion: bonno mujin seigan dan or delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.  Bonno are things like worldly cares, sensual desire, passions, unfortunate longings, suffering and pain.  Delusion is not a simple thing!  One word is really not enough to convey all complexity of bonno—and now we can see why they’re inexhaustible.

The first kanji of bonno (煩) is troubles, worries, vexations, concerns, afflictions or annoyances.  It has a connotation of being noisy, fussy and distracting, something clamoring for our attention.  The second (悩) gives the feeling of seduction or enchantment, something we yearn for or long for.  These are the sufferings born from our desires.  We want things even when we know they won’t help when they’re distracting us from what we really need to do or from more wholesome things.  They’re like potato chips—they seem desirable and we eat them, but they don’t really provide much nourishment, and the salt makes us thirsty.  A short time later we’re hungry again, maybe for real food this time, but potato chips are easy and taste good and satisfy our body’s desire for fat and salt.

Bonno has a feeling of temptation.   We suffer because we’re tempted by our attachments.  Even when we know we’re going to suffer because of them, somehow we can’t resist.  Whenever I overindulge in internet shopping, I have trouble paying my bills . . . but I just can’t resist that new jacket or book or video game.  Maybe this time it won’t really be a problem somehow!  This is one kind of delusion; it comes from compulsions and habituated thinking.  We do the same things over and over and somehow don’t accept the result.

Another Japanese word related to delusion is mayoi 迷い.  In Buddhism it means maya, the illusion of thinking that duality is the real nature of things.  As an everyday Japanese word it has the sense of being lost.  We hesitate and we are bewildered because we’ve lost our way, literally losing touch with reality.  When we’re deluded we believe in things that contradict ultimate reality.  We do it because of ignorance, the same root as ignore.  This delusion that comes from ignorance is the second kind of bonno.

One hundred and eight is an important number in our tradition.  It shows up here as the 108 gates of dharma illumination, and there are also said to be 108 bonno to overcome to reach Nirvana.  Temples and shrines often have 108 steps up to them, which might be two stairways of 54 steps or  three stairways of 36 steps.  In Japan at the New Year, temple bell rings 108 times to ward off delusion and protect practitioners.  

Shiku hakku 四苦八苦 is an expression meaning to be in dire distress, or to have difficulty; it represents the sufferings of life.  It has the same sound as 4, 9, 8, 9,  shi ku ha ku.  If you add up 4 times 9 and 8 times 9 it turns out to equal 108.  Shi ku ha ku (as 108 gates or bells) helps you get rid of shikuhakku (as the sufferings of life).  The physical act of ringing a bell 108 times or walking up 108 steps is a kind of body practice to symbolically eliminate each bonno.

In any event, the Yogacara school of Buddhist philosophy from which our Soto school descends says that there are four fundamental bonno from which all the other ones spring:

• gachi 我癡:  ignorance of the reality of egolessness and impermanence
• gaken: 我見 clinging to established views of the things around us; it can be translated “selfish mind”; literally “looking at myself”
• gaman: 我慢 arrogance, putting ourselves ahead of others
• ga-ai: 我愛 self-attachment  literally self love

Ignorance, egocentric view, arrogance and self-attachment are the basic bonno.  The 我 at the beginning of each of these means I or me.  They’re all centered on I: my attachment to certain things, my point of view, my concept of myself, my need to be better than others.

In the gate statement, bonno is part of a larger phrase: bonno no sawari 煩悩の障り.  Sawari is impediment, obstacle or hindrance, and the complete phrase means the hindrance of seductive delusion.  Buddha said that a hindrance is something that overwhelms our awareness and weakens our discernment.  He said having hindrances is like having a river where the water gets diverted through various little channels until it loses momentum and the current stops flowing.  It’s like these hindrances sap our energy or our attention until we just can’t go forward anymore.  If on the other hand we dam up all those little channels of hindrance, the river keeps flowing strongly and we can stay focused and stay on the path.  We don’t fall prey to the seductive distractions of our delusions.  Interestingly, one of the hindrances the Buddha talks about is uncertainty or doubt, to which we’ll return shortly.

The next part of the gate statement is nai koto 無いこと, a thing that does not exist or does not arise.  The bodhisattva vows say delusions are inexhaustable—we never run out of delusions.  We keep working on their non-arising, and they still keep showing up.  We don’t have to count up to 108 to know there are a lot.

Dogen wrote a poem that gives an illustration about how hindrances or sawari get in the way:
People in this world are like an elephant going out the window. 
Only its tail remains without being pulled through. 
[Such a tiny thing becomes] the obstacle [to renouncing the mundane world].  ("Obstacle" here is sawari.)

Dogen’s point is that there were many people in his time who left home to become Buddhist monks, but many of them still had some attachment to fame and profit.  The seduction of this kind of delusion was still pretty strong, and thus they were unable to free themselves from samsara.

Okumura Roshi says about this poem:
When we compete with other people and want to consider we are better than others, or we want other people to consider us as superior practitioners to them, or if we study Buddhist teachings to show others that we have better knowledge, our motivation is not genuine bodhi-mind. We are moved by our ego-centered desire to be winners in the competition. This is the way we ourselves create samsara within our own Buddhist practice. That is the tiny tail of the elephant that binds us to samsara. 

Even within our practice, seductive delusion is there!

The rest of the gate statement is about shin ni giwaku 心に疑惑:  doubt, mistrust, or misgivings of the heart-mind.  The feeling of giwaku is confusion and bewilderment.  It’s not just being suspicious of something, but being perplexed and unable to make up one’s mind about the right choice.  We have misgivings because we’re confused, not because we see our options clearly and don’t have confidence in this one or that one.

Buddha said there were eight objects of doubt:

• doubt in regard to the three treasures: Buddha, dharma and sangha
• the (threefold) training of wisdom, ethics and concentration or prajna, sila and samadi; this is another way to say the eightfold path
• the past, the future, both past and future
• and the whole notion of dependent origination, that everything arises from causes and conditions

The overall feeling of this gate is that we’re usually being led astray by the seductive nature of our delusions.  Walking around in this fog of unclarity that makes it hard for us to find our way, but when we can see the true nature of reality clearly and the fog lifts, then the hindrances to our expression of our Buddha nature don’t arise and we don’t have any doubt about practice, teachings and whether to walk this path.

The Samannaphala Sutra says: 
A man traveling through a desert, aware that travelers may be plundered or killed by robbers, will, at the mere sound of a twig or a bird, become anxious and fearful, thinking: “The robbers have come!” He will go a few steps, and then out of fear, he will stop, and continue in such a manner all the way; or he may even turn back. Stopping more frequently than walking, only with toil and difficulty will he reach a place of safety, or he may not even reach it.

It is similar with one in whom doubt has arisen in regard to one of the eight objects of doubt.  Doubting whether the Master is an Enlightened One or not, he cannot accept it in confidence, as a matter of trust. Unable to do so, he does not attain to the paths and fruits of sanctity. Thus, as the traveler in the desert is uncertain whether robbers are there or not, he produces in his mind, again and again, a state of wavering and vacillation, a lack of decision, a state of anxiety; and thus he creates in himself an obstacle for reaching the safe ground of sanctity. In that way, skeptical doubt is like traveling in a desert.

That reminds me of the part of the Heart Sutra that says: 
With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajna paramita and the mind is without hindrance.  Without hindrance, there is no fear.  Far beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirvana.

By the way, the Japanese word that’s translated here as “hindrance” is not sawari but a different word: samatageru 妨げる.  This one means to obstruct, block or prevent.  Interestingly, this same kanji is used in words related to electrical insulators—something that prevents electricity flowing between two connectors.  It’s a helpful picture: our hindrances keep our Buddha nature insulated by covering it up.  We have a harder time making contact with it when it’s buried in delusion.

Finally, the gate statement says that without hindrances the mind is free from doubt.  Doubt is itself one of the hindrances and Buddha said some of the same things about it that he said about ill-will.  When we dwell on feelings of doubt, not only do we strengthen the doubt we have, we set the conditions for new doubts to arise.  Hanging out with people who are noble friends, or good role models for us, helps dispel doubt.  Suitable conversation, or paying attention to Right Speech, is also important.  Those three antidotes are the same as for ill-will.

Buddha teaches about two other ways to work with doubt also.  First is dharma study, getting to know the scriptures, asking questions about what you don’t understand, and becoming familiar with the teachings.  Second is following the precepts, whatever form that takes in your life.  If you’ve formally received lay precepts or you’re part of the ordained sangha, you carry out those vows.  If you’ve not done something formal, at least be familiar with the precepts and make an effort to live in a wholesome way.  With these two kinds of effort we can develop some firm conviction about the Three Treasures.  That leads us to take refuge because we know we can rely on the three treasures as a complete expression of the buddha-dharma.  We even include a reference to being without hindrance in the refuge chant we do as part of the ryaku fusatu ceremony every month:

I take refuge in Sangha, together with all beings
Bringing harmony to everyone, free from hindrance.

To take refuge in something, you really need to believe in it.  We need to believe in immersing body and mind deeply in the way and awakening true mind.  We need to believe in entering the merciful ocean of Buddha’s way, and we need to believe in bringing harmony to everyone, free from hindrance.  We need to really know that these are wholesome, real things that reflect our true nature.

Buddha said that when we have hindrances like ill-will and doubt, we can’t be clear about what’s good for ourselves and what’s good for others and what’s good for both.  We’re going to do what we shouldn’t do and not do what we should do, and on that basis we perpetuate suffering and get a bad reputation.  He said that giving up hindrances is not only the basis of wisdom but the manifestation of wisdom.  When we do, the mind becomes flexible and steady and we’re better able to concentrate on practice.

You’d think that the outstanding teachers in our dharma family would never have been bothered by doubt or seduced away from practice by delusion, but at least two of them were, and they’ve shared that experience so we can learn from it.  First is Dogen, who’s Great Doubt led him to some of the insights and teachings that define the Soto school today.  His teachers were telling him that everyone has buddha nature, and his question was: then why do we have to practice?  Nonetheless, he kept at it, visited various teachers and ultimately came to an answer that resolved his doubt.  He realized that we don’t practice in order to get something like Buddha nature or awakening, but that practice and our moment-by-moment lives are manifestations of the true self that we already are.

The other teacher with doubts was Uchiyama Roshi.  He wrote about how he and others who were practicing with Sawaki Roshi had serious doubts about this just-sitting as opposed to working with koans or trying to get satori:  
Kodo Sawaki had a special appeal as a human being as well as having a distinctive character as a true zen monk. . . . Those who heard his zen dis­course for the first time were immediately drawn to him as iron is drawn to a magnet. So despite roshi’s declara­tion that the practice of zazen will come to nothing (his way of expressing the character of zazen for which there is “no gain and no satori”), many of his audience would conclude that in the course of practicing zazen they would surely attain something. That’s why so many became his students.

Those lay practitioners, who come to sesshins from their homes to join us in zazen may not have thought as deeply about shikantaza as those who shaved their heads and were ordained by roshi, devoting their lives to zazen. They may not reach a point as many of the monks did where they have doubts about shikantaza. no matter how much these monks practice zazen it doesn’t completely satisfy their hunger. it’s as if they never feel completely full no matter how much they eat. For them not feeling sufficiently satisfied now means they haven’t had their fill of the thing called satori.

Young people, in particular, who have thrown themselves into a religious practice will wonder whether it is meaningful spending their early lives practicing a zazen in which nothing stays with them. Once they start feeling this way, they begin to feel that the seniors who have practiced for many years are all deluded beings once their exterior coat has been peeled off. So, they presume, they had better attain satori. For this reason many leave roshi’s community. I too was riddled with doubts. however, I stayed with roshi for twenty-five years until his death, serving as his attendant and continuing my zazen practice. So i understand how people feel when they have doubts about this practice.  On the other hand, I also understand the meaning of shikantaza as expressed by Zen master Dogen and by Sawaki roshi.

He goes on to say that when we try to read Dogen Zenji’s writings or even Sawaki Roshi’s teachings, we don’t understand what they’re saying and we doubt the practice.  Like the Buddha, he encourages us to do some dharma study so that we can see that these writings are simply talking about our everyday moment-to-moment experience.  They sound mysterious and exotic to us, particularly Dogen’s writings, but we’ve probably all had the experience of hearing Okumura Roshi or another teacher do some exegesis on something Dogen wrote and suddenly it all makes sense.

All our teachers are saying: stick with it.  Watch out for the seductive delusions that lead us astray.  Pay attention to hindrances like doubt when they arise, and don’t feed them.  Do shikantaza, let go of thoughts and cultivate some insight.  When we do, we can develop confidence that our practice is meaningful and worthwhile.