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Reflection on inconstancy is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we reflect upon the desires of the triple world. 無常觀是法明門、觀三界慾故 With this gate, we move into a section of the text concerned with the thirty seven elements of bodhi (Jp. sanjūshichi-bon-bodai-bunpō 三十七道品), which includes Gates 18 through 55. These elements are sometimes called trainings toward awakening, but in Dogen's fascicle Sanjūshichi-bon-bodai-bunpō, they're characterized as thirty seven elements of the truth. Translators Nishijima and Cross note that the list is usually considered a "Hinayana" teaching: In Japan, and especially among Mahayana Buddhist masters, it was very rare for Buddhist monks to discuss these teachings. But Master Dōgen has his own views on Mahayana and Hinayana. According to him, there exists only the Buddhism that Gautama Buddha taught. He thought that any distinctions between Mahayana and Hinayana are reflections of the different ages and cultures in which the two schools of Buddhism were taught, and he refused to discriminate between the two Buddhist streams. In this chapter Master Dōgen explains the thirty-seven elements of the truth with no division into Hinayana or Mahayana, but based upon the practice of zazen. (1) The list begins with statements about the four dharma seals (Jp. shihōin 四法印): inconstancy or impermanence, suffering, no-self and nirvana. It’s said that if a teaching contains these four seals, it’s a real Buddhist teaching. They function like a signature stamp or a trademark. Of course, like many other sets of teachings in Buddhism, four seals are not actually separate—they arise and function together—but for the purpose of sharing dharma, we have to give them names and boundaries. The list of the four seals varies depending on context and tradition; the version we’ll discuss here is made up of the three marks of existence plus nirvana. The three marks are very old elements in the Buddhist tradition. We find them in the Dhammapada: 277. “All conditioned things are impermanent” — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification. 278. “All conditioned things are unsatisfactory” — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification. 279. “All things are not-self” — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification. Because we’re limited human beings, we have confusion and misunderstanding about these three marks, and we live in samsara. However, when we deeply experience and understand the nature of existence, we are also aware of nirvana, the cessation of suffering. Our gate statement for this week takes up the first of the seals: inconstancy, or impermanence. Buddha taught that all conditioned things—things that arise because of a combination of karmic causes and conditions—are constantly arising and falling away, constantly changing in gross and subtle ways. This includes not only objects we encounter in the world of form, like shoes, mountains, cell phones and fence posts, but also our bodies and minds, our thoughts and emotions, and our relationships. Shoes wear out, mountains erode or explode as volcanoes, cell phones become outdated or broken, and we ourselves age and die. The elements or skandhas that make up things of the world are impermanent, and the causes and conditions that bring them together are also impermanent. Clinging to the way things are in any particular moment and convincing ourselves that they will never change is a set-up for suffering. Intellectually, we may understand that everything is changing. These days, we can see particles moving under a microscope and we believe our eyes. Science tells us that atoms and molecules are in constant motion, and we can accept that—but we can’t stop there. The more profound understanding is that the world we encounter was deeply impermanent even before it arose. The causes and conditions that led to its arising are themselves impermanent, so how could the outcome of those causes and conditions not also be so? Causes and conditions are not simple to see. We have to deeply experience impermanence in a non-intellectual way, without concepts and theories, in order to truly understand it. The gate statement also refers to the triple world, and it’s just as important a topic here as impermanence. The three worlds are those of desire, form and beyond-form; together they make up the totality of the celestial realms. In the world of desire, we transmigrate around and around on the wheel of samsara, moving ceaselessly between the realms of hell, animals, humans, hungry ghosts, fighting spirits and gods. The world of form consists of the four higher celestial realms in which the desires of the body have fallen away, and the world of beyond-form includes the four highest celestial realms in which there is only the enjoyment of meditative states. In the Sangai Yuishin fascicle of the Shobogenzo, Dogen talks about a verse from the Avatamsaka Sutra that says these three worlds make up the entire unsurpassable universe—and also are all creations of our own minds. Our gate statement says that considering impermanence leads us also to consider the desires of this triple world. The world of desire is dominated by our sensory experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, in which we chase after things we want and run from things we don’t want. We worry that things we have will disappear, or that things we’d rather avoid will show up in our lives. That scurrying around is what keeps the wheel of samsara turning. The world of form is inhabited by beings who are temporarily able to suppress hatred and ill-will, and who have abandoned the desires that arise from sensory experience. The world of beyond-form has beings with no physical form or location, but some retain some ability to engage in perception. According to early Buddhist teachings, moving upward through these three worlds is the result of meditative attainment, and yet, Buddha saw that even existence in the highest planes was subject to impermanence and was not in itself the end of suffering. Beings in any realm could be reborn into any other realm, so suffering of existence went on. He saw that the only way to the cessation of suffering was the cessation of rebirth. Thus in the world of desire, our craving and aversion intersect with impermanence to keep us tied to the wheel of samsara, but even if we manage to loosen those bonds and move to the worlds of form or beyond-form, the very fact of our existence means we can’t leave suffering behind. This is the first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths: existence is characterized by suffering. Impermanence is at the heart of our ancestors’ teachings about emptiness. If all things are impermanent, then they can have no fixed and permanent essence; they are empty of self-nature. Emptiness doesn’t mean that things and people don’t exist; it means that because they are deeply impermanent, there’s nothing about them we can hold onto. In order to function in the world, we have to give names and attributes to things we encounter, but we also have to remember that these are provisional means that allow us to do our bodhisattva work in the world of desire. Any boundaries we set up around things are our own, because the true nature of all things is complete emptiness and liberation. Dogen took a close look at the nature of impermanence in the Genjokoan fascicle of the Shobogenzo. That inquiry was key to his resolving his disagreement with one of the teachings of Tendai Buddhism, the tradition in which he originally practiced. The relationship between impermanence and desire mentioned in the gate statement seems obvious, particularly as it relates to the arising of suffering: we grasp for things we like, those things are always coming and going and changing, and when they change or disappear we become unhappy. Yet Dogen wondered: if everything is impermanent, how can there be an absolute and unvarying Buddha-nature, as the Tendai tradition taught? Buddha-nature was supposed to be something unchangeable that you got at the end of a linear practice. Was it really something detached from everyday experience, a potentiality that you manifested somehow after years of effort? How could this be? If all conditioned things are constantly changing because the causes and conditions that lead to their arising are constantly changing, and if nothing is separate from causes and conditions, there can be nothing that arises and then remains fixed and immutable forever, including Buddha-nature. Dogen’s own experience of impermanence led him to see that there were two ways to understand it. One was the point of view of being an observer of things changing all around yourself. You feel sad when you’re clinging to something and it’s lost, and then you want to be released from those feelings. Another point of view was being completely immersed in the total dynamic functioning of the universe without artificial separation, understanding that you’re an element in that functioning which is as impermanent and changeable as everything around it. If you get this second point of view, you don’t get caught up in the sentimentality of impermanence because there is no self to own those feelings. but you also don’t deny them. When you completely enter into feelings of grief and loss. that can lead to insight into the real nature of impermanence. The reality is that humans cling and suffer. That can’t be ignored or separated from the truth of this moment. Clinging and suffering are not outside of the Buddha Way because the Buddha Way is unsurpassable—there’s nowhere it doesn’t reach. Thus Dogen isn’t telling us to cut off or push away our feelings of regret or sorrow at the transiency of the world. He’s pointing out that there is no separation between regret and no-regret. Regret is simply the outcome of the arising and falling away of impermanent phenomena. We don’t have to get caught up in it and use it to perpetuate delusion, but we also shouldn’t ignore it either, since it exists and serves as a gate of dharma illumination that helps us to understand desire and the nature of suffering. It’s an interesting view of our human relationship with impermanence. Our suffering is right in the midst of Nirvana, which is right in the midst of the Buddha Way. In one of his discussions of waka poems, Okumura Roshi says: Seeing impermanence and feeling grief is not necessarily negative in Buddhism, especially in Dogen’s teachings even though we feel sad. It is a good chance to arouse bodhi-mind and aspire to practice what the Buddha taught. As Shakyamuni Buddha said in the Sutra on the Buddha’s Bequeathed Teaching, within the practice, the Buddha’s indestructible Dharma Body is actualized. The very desire to which we as humans fall prey, the very clinging in the vain hope that things won’t change, the very emotions we experience when the things we love or believe we need are fading away—those are themselves the complete manifestation of the Buddha Way. In completely living our lives, we hold two paradoxical truths: we try to liberate ourselves from suffering by seeing through our delusion that the world is unchanging and loosening the grip of craving and aversion that leads to pain. At the same time, our deluded human experience of grief, loss and fear is itself what Okumura Roshi has called the eternal life of Buddha. Practice in the midst of impermanence is what gives rise to the Buddha’s indestructible dharma body. In his book on the Mountains and Waters Sutra, Okumura Roshi says: Impermanence is one half of reality. The other side is that everything is always abiding peacefully in its Dharma position, where nothing arises and nothing changes. Everything is there at this moment. (1) Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) Cross, Chodo, and Nishijima, Gudo. Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, Volume 4. United States, Booksurge Publishing, 2006. p. 3. (2) Okumura, Shohaku. The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s “Sansuikyo”. United States, Wisdom Publications, 2018. p. 173 Comments are closed.
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About the text The Ippyakuhachi Homyomon, or 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination, appears as the 11th fascicle of the 12 fascicle version of Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo. Dogen didn't compile the list himself; it's mostly a long quote from another text called the Sutra of Collected Past Deeds of the Buddha. Dogen wrote a final paragraph recommending that we investigate these gates thoroughly. Hoko has been talking about the gates one by one since 2016. She provides material here that can be used by weekly dharma discussion groups as well as for individual study. The 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination
[1] Right belief [2] Pure mind [3] Delight [4] Love and cheerfulness The three forms of behavior [5] Right conduct of the actions of the body [6] Pure conduct of the actions of the mouth [7] Pure conduct of the actions of the mind The six kinds of mindfulness [8] Mindfulness of Buddha [9] Mindfulness of Dharma [10] Mindfulness of Sangha [11] Mindfulness of generosity [12] Mindfulness of precepts [13] Mindfulness of the heavens The four Brahmaviharas [14] Benevolence [15] Compassion [16] Joy [17] Abandonment The four dharma seals [18] Reflection on inconstancy [19] Reflection on suffering [20] Reflection on there being no self [21] Reflection on stillness [22] Repentance [23] Humility [24] Veracity [25] Truth [26] Dharma conduct [27] The Three Devotions [28] Recognition of kindness [29] Repayment of kindness [30] No self-deception [31] To work for living beings [32] To work for the Dharma [33] Awareness of time [34] Inhibition of self-conceit [35] The nonarising of ill-will [36] Being without hindrances [37] Belief and understanding [38] Reflection on impurity [39] Not to quarrel [40] Not being foolish [41] Enjoyment of the meaning of the Dharma [42] Love of Dharma illumination [43] Pursuit of abundant knowledge [44] Right means [45] Knowledge of names and forms [46] The view to expiate causes [47] The mind without enmity and intimacy [48] Hidden expedient means [49] Equality of all elements [50] The sense organs [51] Realization of nonappearance The elements of bodhi: The four abodes of mindfulness [52] The body as an abode of mindfulness [53] Feeling as an abode of mindfulness [54] Mind as an abode of mindfulness [55] The Dharma as an abode of mindfulness [56] The four right exertions [57] The four bases of mystical power The five faculties [58] The faculty of belief [59] The faculty of effort [60] The faculty of mindfulness [61] The faculty of balance [62] The faculty of wisdom The five powers [63] The power of belief [64] The power of effort [65] The power of mindfulness [66] The power of balance [67] The power of wisdom [68] Mindfulness, as a part of the state of truth [69] Examination of Dharma, as a part of the state of truth [70] Effort, as a part of the state of truth [71] Enjoyment, as a part of the state of truth [72] Entrustment as a part of the state of truth [73] The balanced state, as a part of the state of truth [74] Abandonment, as a part of the state of truth The Eightfold Path [75] Right view [76] Right discrimination [77] Right speech [78] Right action [79] Right livelihood [80] Right practice [81] Right mindfulness [82] Right balanced state [83] The bodhi-mind [84] Reliance [85] Right belief [86] Development The six paramitas [87] The dāna pāramitā [88] The precepts pāramitā [89] The forbearance pāramitā. [90] The diligence pāramitā [91] The dhyāna pāramitā [92] The wisdom pāramitā [93] Expedient means [94] The four elements of sociability [95] To teach and guide living beings [96] Acceptance of the right Dharma [97] Accretion of happiness [98] The practice of the balanced state of dhyāna [99] Stillness [100] The wisdom view [101] Entry into the state of unrestricted speech [102] Entry into all conduct [103] Accomplishment of the state of dhāraṇī [104] Attainment of the state of unrestricted speech [105] Endurance of obedient following [106] Attainment of realization of the Dharma of nonappearance [107] The state beyond regressing and straying [108] The wisdom that leads us from one state to another state and, somehow, one more: [109] The state in which water is sprinkled on the head Archives
December 2024
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