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Mindfulness, as a part of the state of truth, is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it is wisdom that accords with real dharmas. 念覺分是法明門、如法智故。 We’re on to the last of the 37 constituent factors of bodhi, or awakening: the seven branches of the balanced truth. Gate 68 is about mindfulness once again. We’ve spent plenty of time on mindfulness itself in no fewer than 11 previous gates, so we don’t need to dwell here on what mindfulness is. The kanji for mindfulness in this gate statement 念覺 come from original Sanskrit terms that mean two things: remembering the various states we pass through in our sitting practice (and remember that early Buddhist practice was more linear than our Soto Zen practice of zazen is that developed later), and keeping proper awareness in meditation. In a Soto Zen context, mindfulness is simply remembering to practice, or remembering what the Buddha taught, remembering to see with the eyes of Buddha rather than getting caught up in greed, anger and ignorance. The more interesting topic now, I think, is what this has to do with wisdom that accords with real dharmas. There is a wisdom associated with mindfulness in early teachings that understands the true nature of nama and rupa, or name and form. Sometimes we put these two together into a compound; sometimes we consider each of these elements separately. The wisdom that sees both the sameness and the difference is said to lead to awakening, so if we understand how name and form are the same and also different, that’s awakening. So what is this namarupa, or name and form? Sometimes it refers to the five skandhas (form, feeling, perception, formation and consciousness). The first one, form, is material; the other four are mental. Sometimes namarupa means the objects of our senses. Name and form are what arise when the senses make contact with something and it becomes the object of our perception. Because of our karmic conditioning, our physical senses come in contact with something and then immediately we give it a name and distinguish it from other objects. The distinction is often based on what it means for me: is it good or bad or pleasant or unpleasant for me? Then of course we’re off to the races, writing stories and drawing pictures about this namarupa. Uchiyama Roshi says: The activities of our daily lives are almost entirely the result of chasing after ideas this way, causing vivid lifelike images to become fixed in our minds, and then giving more and more weight to these fixed delusions and desires until finally we get carried away by them. (1) Of course, this is a familiar process for us: we hear about it in our practice all the time. Then Uchiyama Roshi goes on to say: In the Shobogenzo Zuimonki, Dogen has the expression tori tonde tori ni nitari—”the flying bird resembles a bird.” That is, there is no real substance to all of the “things” to which we attach names. That which has no form (the flying bird) here and now takes a temporary form of a bird (resembles a bird). Dogen’s expression is his way of phrasing Nagarjuna’s “Seeing the arising of various dharmas [things] destroys the view that nothing exists substantially. Seeing the decay of various dharmas destroys the view that things exist substantially. For this reason, although all the dharmas appear to exist, they are like phantoms, like dreams.” (2) “The flying bird resembles a bird” means we perceive something and call it a flying bird, but that’s just our name for a bit of form and emptiness that we encounter; there’s nothing about it that is intrinsically a flying bird . Again, Nagarjuna’s argument is that seeing the arising of various dharmas proves that things have substance. Seeing that various dharmas perish proves that nothing has substance. Therefore, although things appear to exist permanently, that’s an illusion, and Dogen’s way of talking about this is the phrase “the flying bird resembles a bird.” Okumura Roshi has taught more than once about a section of the Sutta Nipatta in which the Buddha says that contact between senses and sense objects and the way we give rise to namarupa is the primary cause of “arguments and quarrels, tears and anguish, arrogance and pride, and grudges and insult.” Then Buddha says that if either subject or object is missing from the equation, contact can’t happen and the process is short-circuited. That sounds like a solution, but we have to be careful how we interpret this teaching about avoiding contact. Okumura Roshi says: On hearing this, some people fled society to live in caves, forests or mountains. This is one way to try to avoid contact. A second way is to try not think anything and to live without perceptions, concepts or value judgements. These ways don’t work very well. Priests or monks who live in forests or monasteries and try to avoid contact with society don’t work to teach and help others. Benefitting others is one of the points of Mahayana Buddhism. Yet when we meet people, situations and conditions, naturally something happens in our minds. We cannot stop thoughts and emotions from welling up. How then can we avoid this problem of contact? This is the essence of our practice and the teaching of Mahayana. Sometimes we just do things out of our habituated thinking, or without really thinking at all. I eat this cake because it’s here, or I impulse-buy yet another bottle of nail polish. It can be an interesting and useful practice to inquire into our relationships with objects. This is how they stop being namarupa: in other words, how we avoid contact and everything that arises from that. Am I buying this or eating this or wearing this because it’s an object of my desire? Is what’s going to happen as a result of my interaction with this thing wholesome or not for these five skandhas and for others? Am I being led by desire and delusion or by mindfulness as the wisdom that accords with real dharmas, as the gate statement says? From that one inquiry about that one relationship with an object we can learn a lot about our lives as a whole. Everything is connected with me and this piece of cake; the whole network of interconnectedness is there. I can decide whether to eat it or not based on wisdom that accords with real dharmas. Our practice is to not be fooled, if you will, by namarupa. To be fooled by namarupa is to think that there is actually a thing that corresponds to the name we give it. Not to be fooled by namarupa is to use concepts and intellectual thinking to do our work and study the world and go about our lives and carry out practice, but at the same time to realize nonseparation between self and objects, or self and thoughts. We don’t need to destroy namarupa or negate it or fight against it. We just need to be mindful of it and see it clearly. To be free from something doesn’t mean something doesn’t arise or that we run away from it. It means we don’t get stuck there, clinging to it and taking action based on it and creating karma. Okumura Roshi says: When we clearly see namarupa as namarupa, we are released from the bondage between perception and namarupa. (3) In zazen, for instance, namarupa ceases to exist. We’re just sitting there letting go of thought, and things just are what they are. We stop naming and evaluating and trying to do something with whatever we’re encountering. It’s not that the object ceases to exist; it’s certainly still there, but it ceases to be namarupa, the object of our thoughts. It reveals itself just as it is: impermanent, interdependent and having no fixed self nature. At the beginning of the Genjokoan, Dogen says: When all dharmas are Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, life and death, buddhas and living beings. “When all dharmas are Buddha Dharma” is the same as when things stop being namarupa, the object of our thoughts, or things with which we have a personal relationship where we want to get something out of that connection. When things are as they are, “there is delusion and realization, practice, life and death, buddhas and living beings.” We see these things with the eyes of Buddha: we see their emptiness, suchness or thusness. That’s all well and good, but once we get up off cushion and go into world, there are distinct objects with names and forms that need our attention. Yes, in zazen namarupa ceases to exist, but we can’t avoid namarupa all the time, so how does mindfulness work as wisdom that accords with all dharmas, or sees the reality of namarupa? As students of Dogen and practitioners of the Mahayana, we stop creating separation between ourselves and namarupa. Namarupa are still a part of our lives, but we recognize that we’re already one with them and not separate. One way to avoid contact with namarupa is to sit zazen, and drop off our naming and judging and labeling of whatever is coming up. Another is to be out in the world 100% interconnected with the objects we encounter; Okumura Roshi sometimes calls this “becoming one piece.” This is how we can still use tools, eat food, read books, type on a computer, interact with things to do our bodhisattva work in the world. These things are not objects of our desire: we can use them and take care of them without attachment. They cease to be namarupa, but they don’t cease to exist. They can still completely fulfill their function and dharma position. When we see with karmic consciousness, we’re the subject and there’s an object out there we’re giving name and form. When we see with the eyes of Buddha, or the mindfulness that is the wisdom that accords with real dharmas, there is only five skandhas seeing five skandhas. There’s no separation of subject and object. One way to read the kanji for “accords with the real dharmas” is as adhering to monastic regulations, or forms and protocols. In other words, if we’re clear about namarupa -- what they are and what they aren’t and how we work with them -- we naturally carry out forms. That might sound a little weird. How does understanding namarupa inevitably lead me to gassho and bow to my cushion or put down a zagu and do three prostrations? Aren’t those things just artificial customs we’ve inherited from a mixture of Eastern cultures? What do they have to do with awakening? Ikko Narasaki Roshi was abbot of Zuioji and Shogoji, two important training temples in Japan. He said that becoming one with each thing we encounter and dealing with it with the whole body and mind is the same as jijuyu zammai or self-fulfilling samadhi. The forms and protocols show us how to carry out fully jijuyu zammai with our body and mind throughout all the activities of monastic life, including zazen and kinhin as well as washing the face, using the toilet, putting on robes, eating meals, doing prostrations, reciting sutras, sleeping, waking up, and so on. (4) He goes on to say that embodying this is itself the correct transmission of the dharma, and that it’s difficult, so the forms and protocols are really important. We could say this is the physical manifestation of this gate statement: mindfulness that is the wisdom that accords with real dharmas. If we see namarupa clearly, we see both form and emptiness. We see the process that we as humans engage in to create our views and decide what to do. If we see all that clearly and we see nonseparation, then our deportment, or our behavior with others, naturally embodies things like gratitude, sincerity and harmony. We act skillfully for the benefit of ourselves and others. In a training temple, which is where the forms originate and where we internalize them, the forms are both a practical way to organize people and a chance to deepen practice. If you’re feeding 1200 monks in a temple, you’d better have some systems and protocols for how meals work, or there’s going to be chaos. Knowing and agreeing on something as simple as who goes through a door first or who stands closest to the altar during a service is a way to keep order, and also an opportunity to watch how attachment to self arises. How come he outranks me and stands up there? Just yesterday I saw him sneaking food from the kitchen! Of course, in the West we might not use all the forms we’ve inherited from Japan, or we might have to adapt some things to make them practical or understandable in our culture, but practicing with “according with real dharmas” as carrying out the forms and protocols of your community is a useful perspective on this gate statement. Your community might be the sangha, but it could also be your family, your workplace, your sports team or your culture. I’ve mentioned previously that Dogen wrote a fascicle of the Shobogenzo about these 37 factors of bodhi, which includes the seven branches of balanced truth and the statement we’re considering here. It’s not so common for Mahayana teachers like Dogen to talk about these 37 factors of bodhi because they’re more associated with early Theravada practice, but Dogen always said there was just one Buddha’s teaching, even though it might look different depending on time and place or across cultures. Thus he brings Buddha’s teachings together by considering everything through the lens of zazen or awakening. He says about this gate statement: “Mindfulness as a limb of the truth” is outdoor pillars walking in the sky. Thus, it is the mouth being like an acorn and the eyes being like eyebrows and at the same time it is to burn sandalwood in a sandalwood forest, and it is the roar of a lion in a lion’s den. (5) Here’s what I think he’s getting at. I think he’s using several images to point to the same thing: namarupa as namarupa, namarupa as emptiness, and going beyond that distinction. Of course, this is something Dogen talks about all the time, and here it is again. Outdoor pillars walking in the sky: In the temple, there are indoor pillars and outdoor pillars. There are indoor pillars in the hatto, or dharma hall, for instance. The hatto is a big open space with just a couple of rows of pillars. There are outdoor pillars holding up the front gate; sometimes there’s more than one front gate if the complex is big enough. Outdoor pillars are walking, or carrying out their function in their dharma position, in the fresh air. There’s no real boundary between the air that’s what we’d call the sky and the air closer to the ground. Outdoor pillars are immersed in the sky, and we can make a distinction between the pillar and the sky and we can also say that they’re not separate. Sky can also be a symbol of emptiness, which we’ll get back to in a moment “The mouth being like an acorn and the eyes being like eyebrows” show us two things we would say are not the same. We don’t usually think that a mouth is like an acorn or that eyes are like eyebrows. We give these things different names and we see that they have different forms and characteristics. They function differently and have different dharma positions. And at the same time it is to burn sandlewood in a sandlewood forest and it is the roar of a lion in the lion’s den. Now he’s showing us two things that are the same. We have sandlewood in the midst of sandlewood and we have a lion roaring in the midst of its own den. The lion’s roar is usually symbol of Buddha’s teaching, or the dharma, so we have thusness in the midst of thusness. The dharma is preaching the dharma. The functioning of the universe is the complete manifestation of buddha nature. Now we have a bunch of things that appear to be distinct—mouth and acorn, eyes and eyebrows—and they do in fact each have a particular form and function. That’s absolutely real. We also have a bunch of things that are completely interpenetrated—burning sandlewood in a sandlewood forest and the lion roaring in its den. This is namarupa as nonseparate and empty. Then we have the outdoor pillar walking in the sky. There’s a distinct form we call an outdoor pillar and use in a particular way. It’s walking in the sky, or in emptiness. This form is not separate from emptiness; it goes beyond the distinction between form and emptiness. This is a recurring theme in Dogen’s teachings. We can’t stop at just form or just emptiness or just “form is emptiness and emptiness is form.” We have to let go even of characterizing something as form or emptiness or some interpenetrated entity. Mindfulness—remembering to practice what Buddha taught and to see the way Buddha sees—is the wisdom that lets us understand what we encounter for what it really is. Even though we have compassion for ourselves as deluded human beings, we don’t get fooled by the stuff our minds create out of the experience of our senses. That wisdom allows us to be in the world doing our bodhisattva work and still be free from namarupa. Notes: (1) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 58. (2) Opening the Hand of Thought, p. 181. (3) Okumura, S. (2018). The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner's Guide to Dogen's "Sansuikyo". United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 161. (4) Dogen, E. (1996). Dogen's pure standards for the Zen community: a translation of the Eihei shingi. United States: State University of New York Press, p. ix-x. (5) Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, tr. Nishijima and Cross, vol 4. (2006). United Kingdom: Booksurge Publishing, p. 12 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
May 2025
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