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[82] Right balanced state is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we attain undistracted samādhi. 正定是法明門、得無散亂三昧故。 Right balanced state here is shōjō 正定, from the Sanskrit samyak-samādhi. This term is associated with things like one-pointed concentration or bringing all of the mental factors together, but it’s not about focusing on one thing to exclusion of all others. If we’re really focused when we’re working on something, we might not notice other things going on around us, or even inside of us, because we’re so concentrated on an object or a result. This kind of samadhi or concentration is different. It’s an awareness without subject and object, or what Sawaki Roshi called the self doing the self by itself. In the early teachings, a practitioner moved through higher and higher states of concentration, gradually letting go of thinking, letting go of pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, until there was just pure awareness, concentration and equanimity, With no subject and object, of course, there’s no self that’s full of joy or happiness or attachment to those states. There’s a lovely description of the kind of distraction we may experience—it’s when the mind is wandering through the fields of the six senses and not stopping for an instant. Our attention is bouncing around from one sense gate to another, not just the physical senses but also the mind. I get this picture of perpetually wandering through a field, and here’s a daisy and there’s a storm cloud and now a bee is buzzing, and the wind is blowing and I don’t know what to take in first. However, I think the problem isn’t how I prioritize all these things, or how I figure out how to process all these things without being distracted. The problem is that there’s an I trying to achieve something. Sawaki Roshi says samadhi is practicing each and every thing with the entire universe moment by moment. It’s not a peak experience or a special state that “I” experience. If right balance or right concentration is awareness without subject and object, then there’s no I separate from what’s being encountered. Everything that’s going on in this field is just the total dynamic functioning of this one unified reality, and that includes me and my functioning. We’re all just unfolding the dharma together in a seamless way, so there’s no distraction, and no desire to be somewhere else doing something else. We’re able to fully enter into what’s happening because we’re not pulling out a yardstick and considering whether the small self is bored or interested or getting something out of it or not. As soon as we do that, we’re not functioning seamlessly with the universe any more. Okumura Roshi has shared a teaching about this from a modern Rinzai teacher, Soko Morinaga Roshi. He said samadhi is different from usual actions of our daily lives, and Okumura Roshi summarized it this way: Samadhi is like a child playing in a sandbox shovelling sand into a bucket. Someone asks the child, ‘Do you want to trade in your sand for something?’ The child’s answer must be ‘No!’ because the child is enjoying it; the child is just shovelling sand without seeking anything else. But when adults do the same thing — shovel sand into a bucket — they do it as a job to get a wage; the action itself is not the purpose. What we really want is the money, not to shovel sand for its own sake. We do the shovelling because we think this is the way to get the money we need; we do it even though it is hard or uninteresting. When we do the work with this attitude we don’t really enjoy it. Of course, he goes on to apply this to zazen. We may sit because we want to get something out of it, even though we don’t enjoy it, but zazen isn’t a job; it is itself samadi. This sitting practice is itself buddha’s practice; it is not a human practice in order to become buddha. In a little while we’ll come back to this teaching that our practice activity, our awareness without subject or object, is itself the body of Buddha. For now, here’s Dogen’s comment on this gate: “Right balance as a branch of the path” is to get free of Buddhist patriarchs and to get free of right balance. It is others being well able to discuss. It is to make nose holes by cutting out the top of the head. It is the twirling of an uḍumbara flower inside the right Dharma-eye treasury. It is the presence inside the uḍumbara flower of a hundred thousand faces of Mahā kāśyapa breaking into a smile. Having used [this] state of vigorous activity for a long time, a wooden dipper is broken. Thus, [right balance] is six years of floundering in the wilderness and a night in which a flower opens. It is, [when] “the holocaust at the end of a kalpa is blazing and the great-thousand fold world is being totally destroyed, just to follow circumstances.” (1) It sounds surprising that Dogen is telling us that right balance is to get free of right balance, and even to get free of our ancestors, but he’s telling us to look beyond our perception of right balance and Buddhist ancestors as something “out there” or “back then,” and to actually see and experience the complete reality of our lives here and now. If we do, we see that there is only the total functioning of this universe as Buddha’s dharma body, which includes our own activity. It is to make nose holes by cutting out the top of the head. Nose holes or nostrils are said to be symbols of aliveness. With right balance we see beyond our intellectual activities that seem to take us out of here and now. There is nothing outside of here and now, and the unfolding of here and now is dynamic and fresh and alive, but when we ignore that in favor of what’s going on in our thoughts and delusions in “the top of the head,” we create some separation from that aliveness. It is the twirling of an uḍumbara flower inside the right Dharma-eye treasury. It is the presence inside the uḍumbara flower of a hundred thousand faces of Mahākāśyapa breaking into a smile. Of course, here Dogen is referring to the story of Shakyamuni on Vulture Peak transmitting the dharma to Mahakashyapa. This story was important enough to Dogen that he wrote a fascicle of Shobogenzo called Udonge, or Udumbara Flower, and his version of the story is: On Sacred Vulture Peak, before an assembly of a million, the World-Honored One held up an udumbara flower and blinked. At that time, Mahākāśyapa broke into a smile. The World Honored One said, “I have the treasury of the true dharma eye, the wondrous mind of nirvāna; I now bequeath it to Mahākāśyapa.” Udumbara is a rare flower, said to bloom only once every 3000 years. Buddha goes before his sangha, holds up this flower and doesn’t say anything. Mahakashyapa was the only one who understood that teaching and smiled, and Buddha said that he had transmitted the treasury of the true dharma eye to Mahakashyapa. Dogen says right balance is the twirling of an udumbara flower inside of the treasury of the true dharma eye. “Treasury of the true dharma eye” is Shobogenzo, so that’s an important phrase; in the Mahayana in general it means the dharma. In Zen it can refer specifically to Buddha’s awakening beyond what’s written in the sutras, a broader view of dharma, and this is why transmission is from teacher to student and not just something we can get from reading and study. It has to be alive and lived moment by moment. Holding up a rare flower isn’t something we understand from reading a sutra. It’s a direct example of thusness or suchness that includes not only Buddha and the flower and Mahakashyapa, but the whole dynamic functioning of the universe and all beings. He’s pointing us toward awareness without separation into subject and object. He goes on to say that it’s the presence inside the udumbara flower of a hundred thousand faces of Mahakashyapa breaking into a smile. Those hundred thousand faces include yours and mine and all beings—we are all the faces of Mahakashyapa smiling. In this world of emptiness, this world of awareness without subject and object, we’re all sitting there in Buddha’s assembly watching him hold up a flower. Interestingly, in some Buddhist texts, the flowers of the uḍumbara are enclosed within its fruit, and this is why it’s considered rare to see it bloom. It may be that Dogen is also making reference to this, that the flower is inside the fruit and the hundred thousand faces are inside the flower. There’s this feeling of complete interpenetration and nonseparation of flower and fruit and unfolding and the dharma manifesting in each of us within this world of emptiness. Having used [this] state of vigorous activity for a long time, a wooden dipper is broken. Breaking a wooden dipper is an image for breaking free from our various hindrances and misunderstandings, perhaps particularly those related to our karmic conditions. Practicing in the midst of the living, functioning, active dharma, we begin to see reality clearly and become liberated from our delusion and suffering. Thus, [right balance] is six years of floundering in the wilderness and a night in which a flower opens. Dogen returns to the story of Shakyamuni Buddha here. Before his awakening experience, Shakyamuni spent six years engaged in ascetic practices, trying to understand truth of suffering—what Dogen calls floundering in the wilderness. Then a flower opens one night when he sits in meditation and things fall into place for him. He understands suffering, sees the nature of reality, and experiences awareness without subject and object. However, interestingly Dogen says that right balance is both the six years of floundering in the wilderness and the night of awakening. He’s pointing out that there’s also no separation between practice and awakening. This is one of the themes of Dogen’s writings overall: pre-awakening events and post-awakening events are not separate because practice and awakening are not two things, and there’s nowhere to go and nothing to get. It is, [when] “the holocaust at the end of a kalpa is blazing and the great-thousand fold world is being totally destroyed, just to follow circumstances.” Here Dogen is quoting a koan story: A monk asks Master Daizui Hōshin, “[They say that] when the holocaust at the end of a kalpa is blazing, the great-thousandfold world will be totally destroyed. I wonder whether or not this place will be destroyed.” The master says, “It will be destroyed.” The monk says, “If that’s so, should we just follow circumstances?” The master says, “We just follow circumstances.” (2) This story turns on the phrase “just following circumstances.” The Japanese is zuita-ko 随他去, which is literally something like following others completely. The idea is being in harmony with circumstances without any gap. Even if the world is on fire, we just follow circumstances. That doesn’t mean we don’t fight the fire, if that’s what’s appropriate. It means we do that not from a place of separation but as a completely integrated part of what’s happening. Our usual approach might be to turn circumstances into a battle, with two opposing sides and a hard barrier between them. Someone is going to win and someone is going to lose, and that makes me completely separate from the other side. The reality is that if two sides are fighting, they’re also completely interpenetrated. You can’t have a battle with only one side; it takes two to tango. Those two sides are acting and moving and responding together all the time. Just following circumstances doesn’t mean we’re passive and just accept whatever’s happening whether it’s wholesome or not. It means that we accept and understand that we’re completely a part of what’s happening. We experience awareness without subject and object, or right balance, and that’s the basis for our decisions about what skillful means are moment by moment. In the Shinjin Gakudo fascicle, Dogen says: Everyone has the state of just following circumstances, at which moment falling walls allow us to learn the ten directions and the absence of gates allows us to learn the 4 quarters. (3) He’s quoting a Chinese teacher here, Kankei Shikan, who said “In the ten directions there are no falling walls and in the four quarters there are no gates. [Reality] is open, completely naked, bare, utterly clear, and without anything to grasp.” Dogen says that it’s the very absence of falling walls and gates that allows us to see reality clearly, and that itself is just following circumstances and experiencing right balance or concentration. This is awareness without subject and object With that, we come to the end of the elements of the eightfold path as factors of awakening, and we finally come to the end of the 37 factors of awakening as a whole. These 37 factors are part of the Sanskrit Mahayana tradition, but they predate Zen. In the early tradition, they function on two levels. On a basic level, these factors can be practiced by ordinary beings; on a higher level, they’re undertaken as part of the stages to becoming a buddha. Once you become a buddha, then these 37 factors are qualities of that awakening rather than a means to achieve something. Dogen picks up on this in his comment about the 37 factors as a group. He says: These thirty-seven elements of bodhi are the very eyes and nostrils, the skin, flesh, bones, and marrow, and the hands, feet, and real features of the Buddhist Patriarch. We have been learning in practice, as the thirty-seven elements of bodhi, the Buddhist Patriarch’s whole person. At the same time, they are the realization of one thousand three hundred and sixty-nine realities, [each of] which is a constituent element of bodhi. We should sit them away and we should get free of them. To put this in the context of Dogen’s life, he gave this teaching, including all of his comments on the individual elements related to the gate statements we’ve been looking at, in 1244, about 9 years before he died. He was at Kippoji, where he’d been practicing for a year or so after he moved from Kyoto to Echizen and before he established Eiheiji nearby. In the first two sentences above, he’s saying that we’re getting to know Buddha by our own living practice of the 37 factors, and that these factors are themselves the functioning of Buddha. We become Buddha and enter into Buddha’s functioning by engaging in these factors of awakening. This is how we realize Buddha, or make Buddha real. It’s our own practice activity, learning in practice the Buddha’s whole person. At the same time, they are the realization of one thousand three hundred and sixty-nine realities, [each of] which is a constituent element of bodhi. We should sit them away and we should get free of them. 1369 is 37 squared (37x37). This is a structure we find in various places in Buddhist teachings. The idea is that the whole group of thirty-seven elements is present in each constituent element. It’s like an infinite series of reflections in a hall of mirrors, but at the same time all of these elements are interpenetrated. It sounds like a really important understanding of the nature of reality; these 37 elements are the hands and feet and whole person of Buddha, and they all function together in a seamless way, but Dogen says we should get free of them! Just as he said earlier that right balance is getting free of the ancestors and of right balance itself, here he’s saying we should get free of the 37 factors of bodhi. When we see beyond the small self and what that’s doing, we get free of the 37 factors because there are no five skandhas clinging to an idea about them. We’re simply following circumstances and functioning as Buddha without a gap. Sawaki Roshi says: Living out the buddha-dharma means fulfilling your function completely without knowing that you’re doing it. A mountain doesn’t know it’s tall. The sea doesn’t know it’s wide and deep. Each and every thing in the universe is active without knowing it. Again, Dogen isn’t negating right balance, the ancestors or the 37 factors. Getting free from something doesn’t mean it’s negated. It means we see it clearly and we’re not trapped by it. We don’t “know” anything about the 37 factors as something separate from our own lives. We just do what needs to be done. Notes: (1) Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, tr. Nishijima and Cross, vol 4. (2006). United Kingdom: Booksurge Publishing, p. 13. (2) Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, vol. 2, p 278 (3) Ibid. 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
July 2025
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