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[85] Right belief is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we attain the supreme Dharma. 正信是法明門、得最勝佛法故。 The first gate of dharma illumination includes exactly the same term for right belief (shōshin 正信). The first gate statement is Right belief is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] the steadfast mind is not broken. In this one, we attain the supreme Dharma. There’s an important text in our tradition called Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana or Awakening of Mahayana Faith. Traditionally this text comes from the Sanskrit, but modern scholarship says it’s actually Chinese. The way we translate and interpret the title is important. Mahayana here doesn’t mean the Mahayana schools and sects; it’s not pointing to a particular group of practitioners. It’s pointing to emptiness, suchness or the absolute. There’s also an argument that says that rather than faith in something, the title actually refers to a particular kind of faith. Rather than faith in the Mahayana as a tradition, it’s a Mahayana kind of faith—a faith based on emptiness. When we eliminate our doubts and delusions about nature of self—when we understand that the five skandhas are empty of fixed self-nature—then we awaken this Mahayana faith and attain the supreme dharma, as the gate statement says. The main point of this text, Awakening of Mahayana Faith, is that form and emptiness, mind and suchness, samsara and nirvana are not actually separate. Buddha nature is already here and we manifest it most clearly when we don’t get caught up in thinking that our perceptions are the only reality rather than being something we create out of sense data. The text says that suchness is a gateway of the mind, but arising and ceasing is also a gateway of the mind. In other words, both stillness and activity or both emptiness and form are equally elements of this one reality, and each of these two gateways contains all dharmas because they’re not really separate from one another. They’re two aspects of the same thing; one isn’t better than the other. The text uses the image of waves on the water to describe the relationship between form and emptiness, or delusion and awakening. This is like the great ocean, where water moves in waves due to the wind. The characteristics of the water and the wind [as waves] are not separate from one another. Since it is not in the nature of water to move [by itself], its characteristic of movement will cease if the wind ceases, without its wetness ever being destroyed. And it is because, in the same way, the intrinsically pristine mind of sentient beings is moved by the wind of ignorance. Both the mind and ignorance lack characteristics of shape, and they are not separate from one another. Since it is not in the nature of the mind to move [by itself], its continuous flow will cease if ignorance ceases, without the nature of cognition ever being destroyed. Okumura Roshi has this to say about that image in the text: Originally One-Mind is pure and without defilement, like peaceful water. Somehow, suddenly the wind of ignorance blows, and waves are caused, that is, our discriminative thinking, which differentiates good/bad, right/wrong, like/dislike etc. We take actions based on such discriminations, we make good or bad karma, and as the result, our life becomes transmigration within samsara. By stopping discriminative thinking, we return to the original One-Mind. Even when we are in delusion and transmigrating in samsara, the original One-Mind is not eliminated; it is hidden but still there, only we cannot see it. He goes on to say that this one-mind that gets hidden by our picking and choosing is sometimes called original enlightenment, and when we arouse bodhicitta and practice and return to that one-mind, that’s actualization of enlightenment. Awakening the right Mahāyāna faith means eliminating the doubts caused by creating separation, and by misunderstanding people and dharmas to have a “self.” Again, this is an understanding based on emptiness. This is familiar territory for us—we hear this teaching all the time—but this particular text isn’t among those we hear about the most. It did have a real impact on Chinese Buddhism and particularly the Huayen school. Huayen is big on the teaching that everything is interpenetrated, and that everything can only exist because it’s a part of this one unified reality. Indra’s Net was an important image here. Everything depends utterly on everything else for its existance. Huayen also teaches that practicing one teaching is practicing all teachings, and that ending one defilement is ending all defilements. Good includes evil, truth includes falsehood or illusion, and we’re back in the territory of nonseparation. Awakening of Mahayana Faith was important to our 7th century ancestor Daiyi Daoxin and his immediate successors, Daman Hongren and his student, Sixth Ancestor Huineng. Interestingly, with Daoxin we first see the establishment of a residential community, which is a move away from the solitary-wandering-monk kind of life that happened in India. That change makes sense in China, where community life and societal obligations are really important. Daoxin’s school didn’t rely on a single text, which was common in other sects; it looked to several sutras and texts, including Awakening of Faith. They did several kinds of meditation; one was a meditation on śūnyatā or emptiness in which one contemplates all dharmas of the body and mind as empty. Thus we can see that right belief or correct faith continue to be really important for these ancestors. This thread carries through to Tendai Buddhism in Japan, where it’s connected to teachings about buddha nature and original enlightenment. One important teaching was about radical non-dualism. Everything is seen as empty of permanent self-nature and also, because there is no separate fixed self, everything is interconnected. Thus there’s no difference between an ordinary person and a Buddha, and all other kinds of distinctions are also illusions. The other important teaching is that the world of form is a true expression of buddha nature, so form and emptiness are not two different things, and neither are delusion and enlightenment or samsara and nirvana. Of course, these teachings had a direct effect on Dogen. He started off as a Tendai monk on Mount Hiei, and of course he had serious doubts about original enlightenment as laid out in that text. His early question was: if we’re already awakened, why do we have to practice? He ultimately concluded that awakening is already here, but we can’t manifest it clearly without dropping off body and mind. Awakening is simply understanding that from the beginning everything is empty and there is no separation. Awakening of Faith says that as soon as we are freed from some idea of what awakening is, awakening is there. The only reason we think we’re deluded is that we have some idea about what delusion and awakening are. Likewise, if we stop having some idea of what the self is, then the separation between self and other disappears. It’s helpful to remember that what the gate statement is saying is not that we need to have faith in a teaching about emptiness. It’s not pointing to a sutra or the words of a particular teacher. It’s saying that we need to take refuge in reality itself, not what someone is saying about reality. So again, Mahayana in this context is not a particular sect. Maha means great, so we immediately see the connection with the broadest, most expansive view—the point of view of emptiness, which doesn’t discount form but goes beyond the distinction between form and emptiness. When Uchiyama Roshi wrote about this text, Awakening of Mahayana Faith, he thought of maha as “Buddha dharma beyond comparison” or “the Buddha dharma as a whole,” and now we see the second half of the gate statement. He quotes from the text: Generally speaking, Mahayana is to be expounded from two points of view. One is the principle [Dharma] and the other is the significance. (1) Here’s another way of saying that we need to see this one reality from two sides and express two sides in one action. He goes on to make the point that understanding the title of the text is difficult because maha is often translated as great, vast or higher. Mahasattvas are great beings, and maha prajna paramita is the great perfection of wisdom. However in this case, maha is not an adjective, it’s a noun, and he says it expresses all of buddha dharma as a whole. Uchiyama Roshi looks at this one reality from two points of view: jin issai seimei and jin issai jiko. Jin issai seimei is the mind that includes all beings. This is the point of view of emptiness or universal self. Jin issai jiko is the self that is one with all beings. This is the point of view of form or personal self. Thus we have the mind that includes all beings and the self that is one with all beings. He quotes the text again: “This mind includes all dharmas [beings] inside this world and outside this world. This Dharma and one-mind are the Buddhadharma.” Then goes on to comment: Such insight into Buddhadharma is entirely different from the usual Western, scholastic, or scientific way of thinking. Maha, in Buddhadharma, includes all beings and is beyond comparison. In other words, maha is the reality of life itself. We can see the challenge of trying to capture maha, or emptiness, in words when it’s really ungraspable. Even just in his writing about this text, Uchiyama Roshi equated it with buddhadharma as a whole, buddhadharma beyond comparison, one-mind, universal life, the reality of life itself, wondrous dharma. After awhile all these terms and phrases just swim around in our brains because they don’t seem to be anchored to a concept we can get our heads around . . . which is true! Uchiyama Roshi says: The significance of Mahayana, or “greater vehicle” in the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana is that all buddhas ride on this vehicle of maha and all bodhisattvas reach buddhahood riding this Dharma, or maha. This is different from the kind of distinction between vehicles we talked about a couple of gates ago when we talked about the “Hinayana” as small vehicle and the Mahayana as greater vehicle. Uchiyama Roshi says we’re all riding same bus and it has maha painted on the side. Then he says that the functioning of this maha is prajna or wisdom. The basis of wisdom is this one true, unified reality, and when we have some insight into the nature of maha, then prajna can function We start the process of creating a separate small self early on as children; it’s sometimes called individuation. As babies, we’ve got all the sense data coming in but we’re not able to make conclusions about things being separate entities. Over time, we start to associate sense data with each other and begin to form concepts. Oh, that face that shows up in front of me many times a day is associated with food and comforting, and we start to form an idea of daddy or mommy. Then as young children we notice that birds are different from cats and yellow is different from green. Maybe we see that our friends look and sound different from one another, but even that can take awhile. I knew someone whose little adopted daughter was born in Korea. She commented one day that her Korean friend had a Korean face, and just to see what she would say, the mother asked her daughter if she herself had a Korean face. Her firm response was No! At some point we see ourselves as an “I” that’s part of part of various groups: family or American or Buddhist or human. We think that finding our own way and becoming independent is “growing up” and that’s a good thing. Becoming mature and autonomous is completely natural, but maybe we also lose sight of the universal self. Blindly adopting the values and choices of those around us leads to what Sawaki Roshi famously called group stupidity, so certainly, discernment is important, and discernment early in life helps us not wake up on our 50th or 60th birthday and regret what we have or haven’t done with our lives. Not going through healthy individuation can make us dependent on parents, family or others in problematic ways. We have to be able to take care of ourselves in the world, and if we can’t, it can lead to depression and lack of self esteem. This process of creating an individual self starts with the toddler that learns to say no, goes through the kid who’s embarassed when the parent shows up at school, and may continue on into adulthood when someone divorces or breaks up with a partner and starts redefining his/her/their life. The reality is that this process and the small self of the five skandhas is not separate from maha and emptiness. The buddhadharma includes the world that we create through making distinctions and trying to use words and abstract thinking to capture it. It’s not always easy for us to see the difference between our trying to get hold of abstract concepts using the intellect and our actually seeing the reality that exists before our perceptions and opinions. That’s not an intellectual exercise. That’s dropping off body and mind. We forget that when I look at this cup and when you look at it, we’re not actually seeing the same thing. We’re each seeing it from a different angle with different eyes and immediately applying different perceptions and conclusions. Based on our previous experience of this thing, we think we understand what it is and how it’s going to behave, but the reality is that this moment is this moment and we don’t completely know what will happen. Nonetheless, all of that is within emptiness, maha, reality. Even though I know I’m caught up in delusion as a finite, limited human being, I also know that emptiness or buddhadharma is right here. Elsewhere when Uchiyama Roshi was writing about the Awakening of Faith, he pulled out this quote: The true mind of the sentient being turns around and awakens the sentient being himself. . . . in other words, this true mind itself is the Buddha’s vow of compassion. What a great description of non-reliance! Put that next to the gate statement: Right belief is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we attain the supreme Dharma. Right belief, or correct faith, is nothing more than our true minds turning around and awakening us. We’re simply not relying on anything other than our own bodhicitta and our own awakening. Uchiyama Roshi says: Since we are already living out life connected to all things, we are awakened and led by that life. Buddhism expresses this fact by saying that the Buddha saves sentient beings by means of vows. Therefore, you should understand that even if I talk about the vow of Amitabha, I am not talkiung about some other person or thing called Amitabha. Amitabha is not outside of the self. (2) I don’t know about you, but again I keep getting stuck in the words. For him, everything is just another name for universal self or universal life, and I keep trying to be a good student and keep the words and definitions straight. Actually, I think the lesson is that we don’t need to do that, and in fact it gets in the way. When I read a gate statement like this one, my brain wants to make a construction like faith in something. That presumes that there’s an I who has passed judgement on a certain teaching and decided to accept it even though I can’t see it—but that doesn’t make sense next to “a Mahayana kind of faith,” faith based on suchness, thusness or emptiness. The more I read Uchiyama Roshi, the more I think he’s not considering correct faith to be a transaction with subject-verb-object. I think he sees it as eliminating doubt by eliminating separation. I don’t need to have faith in my pancreas or my left foot because we’re already not separate and we’re functioning completely together. The way we have correct faith is to drop off body and mind and completely throw ourselves into the emptiness that doesn’t negate form. This is the true mind of the sentient being turning around and awakening that being. Of course, there is no true mind separate from the sentient being that can actually turn around and act on him/her/them. This is really just total dynamic functioning. Sometimes it’s called turning the wheel of the dharma and being turned by the wheel. Correct faith is getting out of the way and removing the obstacles to complete interpenetration. The supreme dharma or the universe is functioning through us without hindrance and suffering doesn’t arise. Notes: (1) Unless otherwise indicated, this and all following quotes are from Deepest Practice Deepest Wisdom: Three Fascicles from Shobogenzo with Commentary. (2018). United States: Wisdom Publications. (2) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 183-184, note 47. 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
August 2025
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