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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. Questions for reflection and discussion
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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
October 2024
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