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Abandonment, as a part of the state of truth, is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we [can] turn away from all kinds of lives. 覺分是法明門、厭離一切生故。 This gate is not unrelated to last week’s material on dharmas being in equilibrium, meeting each thing impartially, not chasing or running away, and not getting caught up in preferences. The kanji that’s translated as “abandonment” here is one that means awakening and the “turning away from all kinds of lives” comes originally from Sanskrit terms about becoming fatigued by the things of the world and abandoning them. When we do that, we stop the cycle of craving and aversion that leads to rebirth over and over again in this samsaric world. The gate statement is pointing to a really central teaching in our tradition called the twelve-fold chain of dependent origination. You can find lots of versions of a diagram or painting called the Wheel of Life that depict the twelve-fold chain and some other related teachings; there’s one in the section on dependent co-arising on our Buddhist Essentials page. What you see in the picture is the three poisons at the center, the six realms of samsara in the middle, and the twelve-fold chain on the outside. Starting in the center, the rooster is greed, the snake is anger, and the pig is ignorance. These are the three poisons. Notice that each one is biting the tail of the one before it, indicating that these three arise together—they’re not disconnected. The next ring shows people rising and falling through the realms of samsara. Then there are six sections for the realms of samsara. The three lower realms are animals, hungry ghosts and various hells; these are considered miserable places to be. The three upper realms are humans, demi-gods (asura), and gods; these are considered favorable places to be. Being in one of these six realms is characterized by a particular mental state or poison: 1) the god realm (pride), 2) the demi-god realm (jealousy), 3) the human realm (desire), 4) the animal realm (ignorance), 5) the hungry ghost realm (greed), 6) the hell realm (anger and hatred). Finally, we get to the outer ring that shows the twelve-fold chain of dependent origination. The point of this thing is to show how suffering arises from ignorance and and the things we do based on ignorance. 1) Ignorance (avidya), represented by a blind man. 2) Conditioned or formative actions (samskarakarma), as a potter making pots. 3) Consciousness (vijnana), as a playful monkey attracted by objects. 4) Name and form (namarupa), as two men in a boat. 5) Six senses (ayatana), as a house with five windows and a door. 6) Contact (sparsha) and its desire for an object, as a couple kissing or making love. 7) Feeling (vedana) or desire giving rise to feelings of pleasure and pain, as a man blinded by an arrow in one eye. 8) Craving (trishna) or thirst, as a man drinking alcohol. 9) Grasping (adana), as a monkey plucking all fruit from a tree. 10) Becoming or moving towards rebirth, as a pregnant woman. 11) Birth leading to endless rebirth, as a woman giving birth. 12) Aging and death (jaramarana) leading to endless cycles of life and death, as a corpse being carried to a cemetery. The wheel itself is held in the claws of Yama, the lord of Death, which symbolizes impermanence. He bites and consumes the wheel with his deadly fangs. Above and outside of this wheel stands the form of Shakyamuni Buddha, whose teachings lead to liberation from the endless wheel of cyclic existence. Sometimes this teaching is referred to as the twelve-fold chain or twelve links of causation or origination, sometimes as dependant arising or dependent origination. We need to be careful not to confuse this with the term “interdependent origination.” Interdependent origination means that phenomena are the products of an infinite number of causes and conditions, and because all the causes and conditions are interconnected and constantly changing, everything is empty of a fixed self nature. The early teachings about dependant arising were designed to show how our karma continues from a past life to this life to a future life because of our ignorance. That ignorance of the nature of self leads to clinging, preferences and attachment, and the creation of a “self.” In the Kalahavivada Sutta, the Buddha explains how each of these links leads to the next. Working backwards, he shows how having preferences leads to conflict, desire leads to preferences, deciding whether sensations are pleasant or unpleasant leads to desire, contact leads to sensations, making form the object of sense organs makes us want to have contact with them, and so on. Okumura Roshi says: The Buddha clearly says that there is a state where form (namarupa) ceases to exist; we can be released from bondage. What kind of state is it? I think this is the most important point. The Buddha describes the state without ordinary perception and without disordered perception and without no perception and withour any annihilation of perception. And he continues, “It is perception, consciousness, that is the source of all the basic obstacles.” . . .We need to pay attention to the fact that the Buddha says that perception or consciousness is the source of the problems, but annihilation of perception is ot the resolution of the problems.” (1) Various Buddhist traditions came up with different ways to be free from the sense organ making contact with something and the mind creating an object. Some negated the object and just focused on consciousness, and some focused only on form and negated mind. Our tradition goes beyond distinctions between subject and object, as we’ve learned from Nagarjuna and Dogen. This is Before the moment, preserving the eye that precedes the moment that we talked about at the last gate. Before taking an action, we preserve the viewpoint of emptiness or nondiscrimination that’s there before we make the choice, not losing track of what’s there before we decide that what we’re encountering is good, bad or neutral and then either chasing or running away. That place is where we’re sitting in zazen. This where we’re free from perceptions, whether they’re disordered or not. They’re still happening, but we’re not acting on them or believing them to be absolutely true. We’re not annihilating perception, but still we’re free from the chain of sense contact leading to preferences leading to attachment. This is the same kind of pattern we see in the Heart Sutra: There is no ignorance nor extinction of ignorance, there is no old age and death nor extinction of old age and death. This is a condensed version of the twelve-fold chain. Okumura Roshi says: Ignorance is the first link in the chain, and old age and death are the last. So the statement negates the first and last links and all of the ten links between them, yet it also says that there has been no extinction of those links. So the Heart Sutra is saying that there is no such thing as the twelve links of causation and yet they have never disappeared. (2) Thus the sense of this gate statement is that when we experience awakening, we come to see that clinging and desire lead to suffering. We become disenchanted or disillusioned with chasing after stuff and running away from other stuff. We want to distance ourselves from that whole process, or let go of the habituated thinking that compels us to grasp things in a way that perpetuates the illusion of self and keeps us trapped in this cycle of samsara. Buddha’s awakening experience happened when he sat down under the bodhi tree and had some insight into the twelve-fold chain as the basis of the four noble truths. In his first teaching after explaining the four noble truths, he says: Indeed a vision of true knowledge arose in me thus: My mind’s deliverance is unassailable. This is the last birth. Now there is no more becoming. (3) Awakening is leaping off wheel and liberating ourslves from suffering by seeing how that twelve-fold chain gets built link by link, starting with the three poisons, then the actions we take based on those three poisons, then the realms we create with our discriminative thinking and picking and choosing what’s pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, then the process of the five skandas clinging to the five skandhas and becoming a solid, inflexible thing called “me” even though we don’t really have a fixed self-nature and there’s nothing we can hold onto as “me.” Dogen’s comment on this branch of the balanced truth as one of the factors of awakening tells us how to do this: “Detachment as a limb of the truth” is “Though I have brought it, others do not accept it.” It is a Chinese person, even when barefoot, walking like a Chinese person. It is Persians from the southern seas wanting to get ivory. As usual, in order to make sense of this comment we need to wander away for awhile and then make our way back. “Though I have brought it, others do not accept it.” This is a reference to story which is making reference to another story. One of the most significant characteristics of medieval Asian literature is that it is highly allusive; it’s always making reference to other texts or incorporating those other texts by just quoting a phrase. Contemporary readers would have understood the references immediately and gotten the connotation or the flavor of what the writer was pointing to. For us today, these texts can feel like they’re full of inside jokes and we don’t get them and can feel left out and frustrated. I had to ask Okumura Roshi for help in tracking down this allusion. All I had was an English footnote, which turned out to be somewhat inaccurate. He was able to find the story; when I read it it was vaguely familiar, but I never would have tracked it down myself. It’s a reference to a story from the Record of Liángjiè (Dòngshān Liángjiè was a Chan teacher in 9th century China). In this text, a monk asks him about the transmission story of the Sixth Ancestor, Dàjiàn Huìnéng, who lived about 150 years before, so first we need to do quick review of that famous transmission story; then we can look at the conversation about it between Dòngshān and his monk, and what happens afterward. Then we can consider why Dogen is referring to this whole incident in his comment about abandonment. A very condensed version of Huìnéng’s transmission story is that he’s an illiterate worker in a temple, splitting firewood and pounding rice. The abbot decides to have a poem contest among the monks, and the one who demonstrates the greatest degree of understanding will inherit his robe and bowl and become his dharma heir. The head monk Yùquán Shénxiù wrote his poem on a wall, and everyone thought it was brilliant. It said: The body is the bodhi tree. The mind is like a bright mirror’s stand. At all times we must strive to polish it and must not let dust collect. Huìnéng heard this poem and immediately wrote one of his own: Bodhi originally has no tree. The bright mirror also has no stand. Fundamentally there is not a single thing. Where could dust arise? The abbot could see that Huìnéng had a deep understanding, but was concerned for his safety if the other monks found out. He secretly explained the Diamond Sutra to Huìnéng, who had a big awakening. The abbot handed off his robe and bowl in the middle of the night and helped Huìnéng to run away to protect himself and to spread the teachings as widely as possible. Huìnéng has various adventures with people trying to take back the robe and bowl, but he wins out in the end and becomes a very famous teacher. The important points here for us at the moment are in the two poems. Shénxiù says we need to constantly practice to purify our bodies and minds so we can get to awakening. Huìnéng says originally there isn’t a single thing, so there’s nothing to purify because everything is empty. That’s the story that’s being referred to in the conversation between Dòngshān (or Tozan in Japanese) and his monk. Here’s Okumura Roshi’s translation of that conversation: The Master (Tozan) gave instruction to the monks of his assembly saying, “Even if you straightforwardly say that originally there is no single thing, still you will not be worthy of obtaining the robe and bowl. Here, you should give me one pivotal phrase. Tell me, what can you say?” There was a monk who tried to give the Master a correct phrase 96 times but his speech did not accord with the Master’s intention. The 97th time he finally said something that satisfied the Master. Tozan said, “Why didn’t you say so sooner?” There was another monk who over and over listened to the successful one trying to give the Master a pivotal phrase, but he could not hear the final pivotal words. This monk asked the successful one what he finally said, but he would not tell him. The monk kept asking for three years, still the successful one would not tell him. Finally, the frustrated monk became very sick and thinking he was near death, he said to the successful one, “I have been asking you to tell me what you said for three years but you have been continually refusing me. If courteous requests cannot convince you to tell me what I want to hear, I will convince you in a violent way.” Then he picked up a sword and said, “If you don’t tell me, I will kill you.” The threatened monk was frightened and said, “Wait. I will tell you” and then said, ”Even if it is taken in, I don’t have room to place it.” The other monk made a prostration with gratitude. The successful monk’s statement ”Even if it is taken in, I don’t have room to place it” is what is translated in Dogen’s comment, “Though I have brought it, others do not accept it.” So what’s the point of this story? Dòngshān says that even if you straightforwardly say that originally there is no single thing, like Huìnéng, that’s not it, and he asks his monks to say something else. The successful one says Even if it is taken in, I don’t have room to place it. Here’s where I think he’s going; you may have another idea. It isn’t that there aren’t individual forms we can distinguish; it’s that we’re already not separate from them, so there’s nothing to acquire. Everything is already connected to everything else in this one unified reality, including me, so it’s not possible for you to hand me something that isn’t already here. There’s no room to place something additional because there isn’t anything additional. If I was trying to make a space for an additional something, I would not be understanding that there is nothing outside of the Buddha way. We practice with the forms of this body and mind like Shenxui, and we also go beyond body and mind to emptiness like Huìnéng, and we also go beyond the distinction between form and emptiness like the successful monk. We don’t need to chase after robes and bowls or anything else because they’re already here and there’s no blank space in which to put them. Dogen’s comment goes on: It is a Chinese person, even when barefoot, walking like a Chinese person. I admit that I don’t know exactly what the reference is here; I’m only speculating. One possibility has to do with a demonstration of rank. The Chinese had a lot of different kinds of shoes. They were among the first Asian societies to start making various sorts of footwear. What kind of shoe you wore said something about your role in society: court noble, farmer, soldier. However, even barefoot and without the designation of role or rank, Chinese people walk like Chinese people. There’s nothing they need to acquire to be what they are. Their role within Chinese society is already there, so putting on a shoe or a badge doesn’t add anything more. Even if the shoes are missing, complete Buddha nature manifesting as a Chinese person walking is already there. It is Persians from the southern seas wanting to get ivory. Again, I’m speculating here. In Dogen’s lifetime the Islamic world was relatively prosperous and was able to get ivory from both India and Africa. It was used a lot in boxes and inlaid patterns in wood. Persians would have been surrounded by ivory, so Persians wanting ivory is again looking around for something that’s already there. What does all this have to do with not being attached to the things of this samsaric world in a way that perpetuates suffering? “Detachment as a limb of the truth” is “Though I have brought it, others do not accept it.” [or ”Even if it is taken in, I don’t have room to place it.”] It is a Chinese person, even when barefoot, walking like a Chinese person. It is Persians from the southern seas wanting to get ivory. All of Dogen’s examples illustrate that we don’t cultivate non-attachment and stop chasing after things by withdrawing from sense contact with the world or by rejecting forms because they ultimately can’t give us lasting peace and happiness. Earlier we heard from Okumura Roshi that “that perception or consciousness is the source of the problems, but annihilation of perception is not the resolution of the problems.” As bodhisattvas, we don’t turn our backs on anything. We fully, wholeheartedly enter into everything because we’re already not separate, and not creating separation makes attachment impossible. There’s no “I” as a subject to be attached to something out there as an object. As long as there is separation, there’s some potential for chasing after this thing or running away from that thing. If there’s no separation, it can’t be done and all the karma and suffering that arises from it come to an end. As soon as we see clearly how the twelve-fold chain works, how it starts with ignorance, and then our senses make contact with something, craving and desire and attachment arise, the five skandhas start clinging to five skandhas and we create a separate self, and we think that self needs things in order to be valid, powerful and valuable. If we feel cut off from those things, we have suffering and a feeling of annihilation and death. Seeing what abandonment or non-attachment really is and where it really comes from is what lets us stop this cycle of going around and around in samsara, transmigrating moment after moment between heaven and hell, inside and outside, and abundance and lack. We don’t have to get anywhere or get anything because it’s all already right here. Notes: (1) Okumura, S. (2018). The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner's Guide to Dogen's "Sansuikyo". United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 149. (2) Okumura, S. (2010). Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen's Shobogenzo. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 34. (3) Mountains and Waters, p. 253. 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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