To work for living beings is a gate of Dharma illumination; for with it we do not blame others.
爲衆生是法明門、不毀呰他故.

Last week we talked about not praising oneself and said that that was one half of the seventh precept.  This week we take up the other half about not disparaging others.  Interestingly, Uchiyama Roshi made the same points as our gate statement in his last lecture at Antaiji.

You have to expect to be trampled on by difficult circumstances, maybe even for many years, but don’t lose your life force under all the pressure. Unless you have that vow, you will lose heart. Only when you live by vow does everything you meet--wherever, whenever, whatever happens--reinforce your life as buddhadharma. As long as you have that vow to live out your life wherever you are, sooner or later spring will come. And when it does, you will have the strength to grow. This is the life force. You have to thoroughly understand that this is completely different from selfish ambition.

Ultimately, development and backsliding depend only on you. It really is pointless to say that you became rotten because of your circumstances, or that your education is responsible, or that the blame belongs to somebody else. The fundamental attitude of a practitioner must be to live out one’s own whole self.

That’s a long quote, so let’s look at it more closely.

You have to expect to be trampled on by difficult circumstances, maybe even for many years . . .  He starts by saying, in essence, that life is characterized by suffering: the first of Buddha’s four noble truths.  We have to accept that we will have difficult circumstances

. . . but don’t lose your life force under all the pressure. Unless you have that vow, you will lose heart.  In the face of that suffering, we’re going to become discouraged and lose our way unless we are living by vow.  Living by vow is the opposite of living by karma.  Okumura Roshi talks about this a lot and even called one of his books Living by Vow.  Here’s how he describes the difference.  He says that part of the definition of a bodhisattva is a person living by vow rather than by karma.  Karma includes our personal habits and preferences, and also the system of values we inherit from our culture that we use to evaluate what we encounter and decide what to do.  Living on that basis is living by karma.

A bodhisattva lives by vow, pointing toward Buddha’s way.  There are several kinds of vows.  There are general vows, like the four vows we chant after the dharma talk, or the vows to follow the precepts that we take during jukai or when we become clergy.  There are also individual vows that are specific to each person about our own aspirations.  Vows are what drive our practice.  Uchiyama Roshi and the gate statement say that without the vows, we get discouraged when we meet some obstacle in our lives.  

Only when you live by vow does everything you meet—wherever, whenever, whatever happens—reinforce your life as buddhadharma.  As long as you have that vow to live out your life wherever you are, sooner or later spring will come. And when it does, you will have the strength to grow. This is the life force.  When we’re being driven by the four vows, we always know our purpose and where we’re headed.  The first vow says Beings are numberless; I vow to free them.  This is working for living beings, as it says in the gate statement.

Uchiyama Roshi says that as long as you have that vow, your whole life is the buddhadharma.  There is nothing you encounter that’s separate from you or outside the buddha way.  The vow is how we remember to take refuge in the three treasures and look to our practice for support.  It’s how we remember our place in the universe, and that we’re interconnected and being supported by all beings.  When we remember that, it helps with the discouragement.

Next, Uchiyama Roshi says an interesting thing: You have to thoroughly understand that this is completely different from selfish ambition.  Again, our aspiration is to work for living beings rather than to be dragged around by our delusions about the self.  We still make effort and we still have a direction, but that direction is not determined by the three poisons of greed, anger and ignorance.  What we do is based on wisdom, compassion and generosity.  The ultimate yardstick is not necessarily our personal comfort or the fulfilling of all our cravings; our view of the world becomes much broader than ourselves.  Thus, we’re living by vow and not by karma.

Next Uchiyama Roshi says, Ultimately, development and backsliding depend only on you. It really is pointless to say that you became rotten because of your circumstances, or that your education is responsible, or that the blame belongs to somebody else. The fundamental attitude of a practitioner must be to live out one’s own whole self.

Now we’re getting to the stuff about blame.  By the way, the root of the word blame is the same as for blaspheme, so certainly something is going on here about unwholesome speech.  The point is that it’s not possible to blame others for your suffering if you’re not separate from them and you’re working on their behalf.  

If we’re living out our own whole selves, we’re living the life of the universal self.  That means we’re not focused on our small grievances.  It also means that we really understand the Right View component of the Eightfold Path.  Right View is deeply understanding the nature of suffering and how it arises.  If we really understand where our suffering comes from, we see that it doesn’t come from other people.  It comes from clinging to our own expectations and ideas about how things “should” be.  Just because I think things should be a certain way, that doesn’t mean the universe agrees!

When things don’t go my way, the easy response is to blame someone else.  Probably, I’m doing that rather than taking responsibility for my own suffering.

I want to emphasize here the difference between acceptance and approval.  We need to accept that there is suffering and how it arises.  That doesn’t mean that suffering is OK and we shouldn’t do anything about it, and it doesn’t mean that others shouldn’t be held accountable for unskillful behavior.  We also need to be careful about using karma to blame victims for their own circumstances.  It’s been misused in Asian history to rationalize injustice and societal oppression.  The message is that people born into poverty or disability deserve their situation because of misdeeds in past lives.  It’s a really harmful thing.

Blame might seem like a powerful response to our suffering.  It was all his fault, it wasn’t mine.  I didn’t do anything wrong.  The related message is that I don’t deserve my suffering.  When we think and say these things, they might make us feel stronger, but actually, these are not positions of strength.  They reinforce our habits of looking away from suffering and ignoring where it comes from.  They also imply that we’re powerless to do anything about our suffering, and that we’re simply at the mercy of a cruel world.  Everything would have been fine if only THEY hadn’t said this or done that.  Well, yes, what they did might have been out of our control.  What’s not out of our control is our response to the discomfort we feel.

Now, that’s easy to say.  Maybe at some time in your life you’ve heard someone say that we can choose whether or not to be happy, or that no one else can make you feel a certain way.  The natural response is: I can’t help how I feel!  Without some guidance about how to understand how suffering arises—and how contentment arises—we continue to get tossed around by emotions.  Because we forget that the self is empty and it’s just five skandhas clinging to five skandhas, we feel threatened and get defensive—and then we look for someone else to blame.

Instead, if we can commit to seeing what’s arising for us, seeing that it’s based on delusion about the nature of self, we can cut off an unskillful response at the roots.  Why do we feel the need to blame someone else?  What’s the fear that’s at the bottom of that?

Also, there are myriad causes and conditions for everything that arises and everything that happens.  The person or circumstance we’re blaming is in the midst of countless dynamics.  We’re only seeing the affect on ourselves, but there’s much more going on than that and we need to keep the broadest view.  I’m one small piece of the total picture of this moment.  That doesn’t mean that I and my suffering are not important.  They’re just not the whole story.

Now, what does this mean in the context of our individual practice?

In this dharma family, the approach has been that we are responsible for our own practice.  As Uchiyama Roshi just said, Ultimately, development and backsliding depend only on you.  We can find lots of excuses not to practice: we’re too tired, too busy, too old, whatever.  We’re kind of blaming our circumstances.  

When I was leading the Milwaukee Zen Center, sometimes sangha members would apologize for not attending regularly and give some reason, as though they were injuring or insulting me somehow by not being around!  I always said two things:
1) I’m not taking attendance or keeping score.  Be here as your life permits . . . but 
2) We make time for the things we think are important.  When your practice becomes important to you and you’re committed to it, you will have time to practice.  The responsibility is yours.

Okumura Roshi has often told the story of his ordination with Uchiyama Roshi, who said he never encourages anyone to ordain because being a monk is difficult and there are a lot of meaningless people already in robes.  However, if Okumura Roshi wanted to be a true practitioner of zazen, he would do the ceremony.  Okumura Roshi said. “I still appreciate his reply to my request—it left me no room for making excuses or shifting blame.”  No one had talked him into this, so when things got tough, that wasn’t someone else’s fault.

And after that, when Okumura Roshi’s father met with Uchiyama Roshi on the day of the ordination, he said, by way of a standard Japanese expression of gratitude, “Please take care of my son.”  Uchiyama Roshi said he couldn’t do that and that the young man had to practice by himself and walk on his own legs.

To this day, in this dharma family, during zazen the teacher sits facing the wall like everyone else.  Uchiyama Roshi said he never faces his disciples: he faces the Buddha and walks in that direction as his own practice.  If others want to practice with him they should also face the Buddha and go in the same direction with their own feet.  Okumura Roshi has always tried to follow his example by relying on the teachings and not on the teacher.

However, what about when a few of those living beings really, really seem to be at fault for what’s wrong in our lives or in the world?  It’s not easy to just turn on our loving-kindness is it?  That’s because blame is related to anger.  Trying not to blame others for our suffering is not the same as expecting them to take responsibility for their actions.  We can work on discerning the causes of suffering without doing that in the midst of anger and ill will, though this is not easy.

We can start by remembering that the real problem is ignorance.  When people don’t understand how the world really works and what the self really is, they take unskillful action.  That action and the resulting conflict is frequently based on the three poisons of greed, anger and ignorance.  We all fall prey to the three poisons sometimes, and we all make mistakes.  

Myriad unknowable causes and conditions have resulted in a person resorting to unwholesome action and perpetuating suffering for others.  There are responses wired into the primative parts of the brain having to do with craving and fear and agression.  Those things may be amplified by our temperaments, our families of origin and our culture.  The person we’re blaming didn’t choose any of that.  These universal challenges of the human condition don’t belong to any one person.  The person we’re blaming is not the sole instance of craving and aversion.  It’s not his/her/their ignorance or greed, it’s the ignorance and greed of the human condition.  

Maybe we can cultivate a bit of compassion for someone hijacked by his delusions and acting out of fear.  If so, then we can still have benevolence toward him and wish him well.  In a previous week, we said that for a bodhisattva, wishing someone well means wishing him liberation from suffering and the three poisons.  We can wish for anybody that he/she/they will wake up and see clearly, even if this isn’t someone we personally like.

We can also remember that we don’t always know someone’s motivation.  We’ve heard many times that something done with the best of intentions can go awry and cause harm.  As bodhisattvas, we take responsibility for what we do; this is why we have vow and repentance.  That’s how we take care of this dynamic; people outside of the sangha may not have a way of understanding about this and we need to be patient.

Again, blaming someone and holding him accountable are not the same thing.  Blame comes with ill will, or at least with ignorance.  Holding someone accountable doesn’t cut off the relationship.  Blame says I want to be separate from you.  Accountability says we’re interconnected because we can’t help it and now we have to figure out how to work together.  That’s working for living beings

So, rather than blaming others for things, maybe we can point to ignorance as the real culprit.  If we do that, there aren’t human enemies, there are only a lot of confused people in the world who need help.  That’s where our bodhisattva vows come in.  We can continue to work for living beings even if we don’t agree with what they do.

No self-deception is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not praise ourselves.
報恩是法明門、不欺負他故.

You may recognize “praising ourselves” as one half of the seventh precept against praising self and disparaging or slandering others—and sure enough, next week’s gate is about not blaming others.

The Bonmokyo says about this precept: If a bodhisattva boasts of his own virtue and conceals the good works of others, thus causing them to be slandered, the person thereby commits a bodhisattva parajika offense.  You are getting something for yourself in a less than honest way that puts someone else at a disadvantage.  

We made a start on considering self-deception several weeks ago when we considered Gate 25:  Truth is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not deceive ourselves.  We saw that when we really see truth, or when we really see the world through the lens of Buddha’s teaching, we can’t deceive ourselves.  Sometimes we’d like to believe that things aren’t the way they are, that the things we love will never leave us, that zazen will turn us into people we like better, or that we are separate from others and what we do doesn’t affect other people.  However, if we’re really seeing clearly, we know that these ideas aren’t sustainable, and that if we live and act on the basis of them, we and others will suffer.

We’ve seen here the difference between acceptance and approval.  As bodhisattvas, we have to accept that there is suffering and what the cause of that suffering is.  That doesn’t mean suffering is OK or that we condone unskillful behavior.  To ignore suffering or any part of our lives is self-deception.

Today’s gate says that one of the things that happens when we deceive ourselves is that we praise ourselves.  The Sanskrit term for pride, arrogance or conceit is Māna.  It creates the basis for disrespecting others and for the occurrence of suffering.  Sometimes the three poisons of greed, anger and ignorance are referred to as the five poisons or five kleshas when they include pride or arrogance, as well as envy or jealousy.   Māna is usually translated as pride, but the basis of the word is about measuring.  The problem is comparing ourselves with others, whether we come out on top or not.

This gate is not saying that we shouldn’t have healthy egos.  There’s nothing wrong with being happy that you got an A on your final or gave a great performance or won the game.  When your friends and family say congratulations, it’s not necessary to be falsely modest or diminish your accomplishment.  Pride becomes an issue when it becomes the basis for demeaning others.

The teachings in these two gates are about competition.  To compete is to get something for yourself by establishing that you’re better than other people who want the same thing.  The teaching here is not that competition is never necessary or always bad.  There’s plenty of competition in nature for food, mates or territory; that’s how species survive.  People need to compete sometimes for jobs or scholarships.  Resources are limited and there has to be a way to establish the best fit.

The problems start when we are caught up in competition based on self clinging and separation.  If we’ve fallen prey to these two things, we don’t understand the nature of self, or we’re choosing to ignore it.  In other words, we’re deceiving ourselves.  In an unskillful competition, we have to build ourselves up while at the same time tearing others down.  That’s why today we’re dealing with praising self.

Buddha tells us that there are three things that are true about existence:
1) that everything is part of the network of interdependent origination­— nothing arises on its own, but because of causes and conditions
2) that everything is impermanent because those causes and conditions are constantly changing, so what arises from them has to be changing too
3) there is no fixed self-nature because we’re subject to the same interdependence and impermanence as everything else

No fixed self nature means that the self is empty.  The self is simply a collection of elements that comes together for some finite period of time.  We give it a name and believe that we are the same people from birth through today to our eventual death.  However, there is nothing we can point to and say this is my permanent self.  We aren’t the same people that we were five minutes ago or five years ago.  We’ve had experiences, learned things and created memories.  Some breaths have gone in and out and some blood moved around.  We’ve digested some food and created some waste.  What part of this shifting, impermanent collection of five skandhas can we point to and say, this is me?  The same is true of all conditioned things; they have no fixed and permanent self-nature.

On one hand, we need to feel that there is some continuity in our state of being so that we can function in the world and be psychologically healthy.  On the other hand, in the universal sense, there is no self.  Understanding this is crucial to our zazen practice and it’s written into Sanshin’s practice vision in the Six Points.  The first one is the study of the meaning of zazen in the context of Buddha’s teachings, understanding the common thread that runs from the teachings of Shakyamuni through the Mahayana tradition, the teachings of Dogen Zenji, Sawaki and Uchiyama Roshis, down to Okumura Roshi and the practice of shikantaza at Sanshin today.

When Shakyamuni realized awakening under the bodhi tree, he knew directly that clinging is the cause of suffering.  He saw that we try to gratify sense desires by grasping at things we think are desirable.  That’s dangerous because the loss of that desirable object is inevitable and we suffer.  The escape from this cycle of greed and fear is in taking up the Eightfold Path.

One of the things to which we cling most readily is the five skandhas or aggregates that make up the concept we call “me.”  In the Pali Canon, the Buddha talked about the five skandhas as they relate to praising self: 
If one regards himself superior or equal or inferior by reason of the body that is impermanent, painful and subject to change, what else is it than not seeing reality? Or if one regards himself superior or equal or inferior by reason of feelings, perceptions, volitions or consciousness, what else is it than not seeing reality? If one does not regard himself superior or equal or inferior by reason of the body, the feelings, perceptions, volitions or consciousness what else is it than seeing reality?

The five skandhas aren’t a reliable basis for comparing ourselves with others.  One aspect of seeing clearly is to understand the nature of self, and thus the need to praise ourselves doesn’t arise.  Somehow we need to understand how five skandhas can be released from clinging to five skandhas.  Again, as we saw a few weeks ago, with the three marks of existence Buddha taught that all conditioned things are empty of a fixed and permanent self nature because of both interdependence and impermanence.  Everything arises because of causes and conditions; nothing comes into being by itself, so nothing can be separate from everything else around it (interdependence).  Because these causes and conditions are changing all the time, the things that arise from them must also be changing (impermanence).  If everything is connected to everything else and changing all the time, there’s nothing we can identify as a permanent self-nature or essence—and Buddha’s teaching about emptiness must include this group of five skandhas called “me.”  

This is also the teaching of the Prajna Paramita literature in the Mahayana tradition.  The Heart Sutra says, “Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajna paramita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering.”  The five skandhas being free from clinging to five skandhas on the basis of emptiness is the equivalent of Dogen Zenji’s shinjin datsuraku (dropping off body and mind), Sawaki Roshi’s “zazen is good for nothing,” Uchiyama Roshi’s “opening the hand of thought,” and Okumura Roshi’s “1=0=∞ (infinity).”  This is what we actualize in shikantaza, which has been handed down to us directly from generation to generation.  This is zazen in the context of Buddha’s teachings

In zazen we give up clinging to the five skandhas because we only do four things in zazen: take the posture, keep eyes open, breathe deeply and let go of thought.  That means we let go of all thought, including ideas about who we are and what the self is.  There’s no room to hold into ideas about the five skandhas because those four things we do in zazen take up the entire space.  Zazen is the five skandhas ceasing to cling to the five skandhas.

If we’re not clinging to ideas about self, we can’t deceive ourselves.  Sawaki Roshi said that “Religion” is to live out the ever fresh self, which is not deceived by anything.  If we’re seeing clearly, we can’t help but see that this heap of five skandhas that arises fresh moment by moment is no better or worse than any other heap of five skandhas.  We don’t need to brag about ourselves in order to impress other people or impress ourselves.  When we do that, we’re reinforcing the idea that there is a fixed self that needs to be defended or enhanced.  That’s when we start to compete for stuff.  I want to get more things to prove that I’m better than you or at least good enough, and I do that to defend or enhance this idea of self.  It’s a vicious circle: I want to get more stuff so I look good so I can get more stuff so I can look good.

That kind of competition, greed and clinging is based on fear—fear that somehow this small self isn’t enough or is in danger of being annihilated.  I need to take up the biggest possible space so that people will either admire me or be afraid of me, but in any case no one will attack me.  It’s a self-esteem issue.

Even when we feel successful, we still keep comparing ourselves to others.  Even when we feel pretty good and are praising ourselves, that’s a temporary circumstance because all things are impermanent.  Then have to look for another way to shore up sense of self.  It’s not a basis for lasting content or peace.

Comparing is a natural human tendency, and it’s pretty deeply rooted in our psychology.  We don’t have to be ashamed of it, but we do have the opportunity to watch it arise and decide whether it’s the skillful response to this moment.

Now, of course, there’s also an absolute view of this problem of praising self.  The self can’t be annihilated because there is no self with a beginning and an end.  Within this one unified reality, nothing is separate from anything else.  If so, then you can’t separate out something to praise which is more or less valuable than anything else.  If you’re drinking a cup of coffee, it’s pretty hard to say, well, this section of the coffee in my cup is better than that one.  There’s just coffee, beyond any comparison.

When we talked about kindness, we said it was about wishing well to all beings equally.  We can’t make distinctions between wishing well for these folks but not for those folks, because we’re not really separate.  If we really understand our nonseparation, then there’s no comparing or measuring, and desire to praise self doesn’t arise.  Okumura Roshi says: 
There is no gate, no entrance, and no way to come in or go out.  From the time of the Big Bang, nothing is added and nothing is taken out.  Within time and space, things are coming and going, arising and perishing, but nothing is coming from outside and nothing goes out from this universe.  

In my case, I was born in 1948 and now I am 71 and I may disappear sometime in the future.  This is my lifetime from birth to death, but my life is not limited to this time.  My life is a continuation from my parents’ lives and, spiritually, my life is a continuation from Shakyamuni Buddha and my teacher.  My life will continue even after my death.  In that sense, I never came in through the gate and I will never go out through the gate.  I am always here, and all beings are the same.  There is no separation between ourselves and others.  When we really awaken to that reality, there is no way to praise only this collection of five skandhas and look down on other collections of five skandhas. 

Sawaki Roshi said we need to give up our tendency to compare ourselves with others and just return to our actual selves in zazen.  Sit firmly in the place beyond any question of whether you are great or not.  This is what happens when we let go of thought.  The yardstick disappears and we can’t measure ourselves against others.

The yardstick can be very subtle and we don’t always notice when we’re praising ourselves.  Sometimes we just do it internally when we’re not trying to compete with others.  I did a good deed, and therefore I’m a good person; I feel good about myself, or, I’m really doing great practice, saving a lot of beings!  I’m joining online zazen every morning and memorizing Dogen quotes and I’ve created a whiz-bang home altar!

That’s all great, but we don’t need to say so.  We have to watch our motivations for our actions, because we can do good things partly so we can praise ourselves.  Then on the basis of doing a wholesome thing, some unwholesomeness can arise

Okumura Roshi wrote: When we create twisted karma with our good deeds, people are usually happy and praise us, and we in turn are proud of our actions. In these cases, perceiving the deep and subtle self-centeredness within our benevolence can be very difficult. This is why our practice of zazen as repentance is significant. In zazen, we cannot hide from ourselves. As the Kan-fugen-bosatsu-gyo-ho-kyo says, “If you wish to make repentance, sit upright and be mindful of the true reality.”

In zazen, we can’t hide from ourselves or deceive ourselves.  We let go of thoughts about who we are and how great we are.  We stop trying to perpetuate the stories about our own importance.

Repayment of kindness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not cheat and disregard others.
報恩是法明門、不欺負他故.

Now that we’ve considered recognition of kindness, we’ll consider repayment of kindness.  Last week we said that on an individual level, kindness was wishing wellbeing for others.  More universally, it’s about the support we receive from all beings or the universe just to live and go about our daily activities.  Recognizing kindness means we have to know what kindness is in ourselves and others so that the unfolding of that kindness can come to fruition.

I also introduced the idea that recognizing and acknowledging debts of kindness is a critically important aspect of Asian culture.  This is repaying the debt of gratitude.  In Confucan cultures, everyone has duties to everyone else: your parents, children, boss, employees, society, the state.  When Buddhism arrived and encouraged people to leave home, cut ties and join the sangha, it created real conflict: who was going to take care of your responsibilities if you became a Buddhist and left home?

There was also a sense that the current family, business or state of the world was a connection between past and future.  People now had an obligation to take on the heritage that they received from their ancestors, take care of it, and hand it on to the next generation.  Thus arose the problem of disconnection when people left home to join the sangha.  How were they to repay their debts?

In response, Buddhists began to emphasize teachings about filial piety.  Practice was not for oneself, but to liberate all beings, including all those to whom one had responsibiilties.  Becoming a monk was positioned as beneficial for one’s family and for society, and as an acceptable means of repaying the debt of gratitude.  Within Buddhism, practice was also a means of repaying one’s debt to the Three Treasures.

This was relevant for lay practitioners as well.  While monks were concentrating on practice, laypeople were carrying out their occupations.  That daily work was a means of repaying the debt to Buddha and all living beings.  Last time I mentioned Suzuki Shosan’s teachings on how each occupation is Buddha’s work.  Much of his written teaching is about how everyone owes a debt of gratitude to each of the four classes of society—samurai, artisans, farmers and merchants—and also how engaging in each of these occupations is Buddha’s work and repays one’s debt to Buddha.

Samurai’s work is practice because they get to study death.  The courage they needed to face death was the same courage needed to enter the Buddha Way.  They had the opportunity to become aware of their fears about death and to see how those come about.  Being fearless because you understand the nature of death is not the same as being fearless because you’re not acknowledging that death is coming,

Being an artisan is Buddha’s work when it’s done with sincere attention and the understanding that it’s a complete manifestation of buddha nature.  To do that, you have to have faith that buddha nature already exists, so that’s not as easy as it sounds.

Merchants traditionally were a low-ranking class, even though they were necessary to society.  Shosan says it’s fine to be a merchant and make a profit, and that being a merchant is practice to the degree that it’s done without greed.  Buying and selling without clinging reinforces understanding, and that reinforces wholesome behavior.  If you make a lot of money, good for you—as long as it’s being done ethically.

Finally, he says farmers have been entrusted by the universe to feed everybody, even though it’s physically difficult work.  To grow food, you have to be patient and calm and see clearly what’s happening with your plants and animals, so this is Buddha’s work as well.

One way to say "please" in Japanese is お願いしますonegaishimasu, literally something like "please do me a favor."  There’s some subtlety about this that implies that it’s not enough to recognize that we’ve received kindness or support and to feel grateful.  We’re obligated to repay it—but we can’t possibly repay this huge debt, so it’s like the four vows in that it’s a lifelong practice.  There’s one unified reality within which causes and conditions enable the arising of individuals and what they do.  We’re indebted to the universe for our birth, and simply living our lives and doing our jobs to the best of our ability is a means of repayment.  When things change and we get better jobs or more comfortable circumstances, that’s fine—we just do those thing with the same heart and mind.

In the Shushogi, Dogen says: In our continuous day-to-day practice and moment to moment study, simply following the Buddha Way is the true way of fulfilling our filial piety . . . We should see that our debts of gratitude to all living beings are as important as [the debt to our own parents]. (3-15)

It’s easy to see how we owe a debt of gratitude to our parents, even though our personal relationship may or may not be good.  It’s easier to forget that we’re supported by beings and circumstances that are farther removed and that we don’t know about.  These are as important to our circumstances as our parents, and need the same kind of attention.  However, by simply doing our best to be wholehearted in each moment, we begin to take care of our debt to all beings.

Another more concrete way that repaying the debt of gratitude shows up in our practice is the making of offerings.  We put flowers, candles and food on the altar, and we also offer the merit of our good deeds to others. 

The bodhisattva recognizes debt of kindness to all beings and thus aspires to liberate everyone.  One way is to give away the beneficial results or karmic fruits of the good things we do.  We cultivate prajna, sila and samadhi, or wisdom, morality and concentration, and dedicate the merit to all living beings.  Traditionally you can accumulate merit in your practice by:

• chanting sutras and dharanis
• mindfully reciting buddha names
• circumambulating stupas
• making prostrations and offerings to buddhas on altars
• anything that either expresses gratitude to Buddha or spreads the dharma

During liturgy we give that merit away by reciting an eko 回向, or verse for the dedication of merit.  Ekos have a structure in which they (1) state how the merit was generated, (2) name the recipient(s) of the merit, and (3) explain the hoped-for outcome of the merit transference.  For example:

Having chanted the Maka Hannya Haramitta Shingyo, in gratitude for receiving boundless 
compassionate gifts, we reverently offer the merit of our chanting to:
The Great Founding Teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha;
our first ancestor in Japan, Great Teacher Eihei Dogen;
the Eminent Ancestor, Great Teacher Keizan Jokin;
the successive ancestors who transmitted the light of Dharma, and to the eternal Three Treasures in the ten directions.
We also offer it to the guardian deities of this temple and to all Dharma-protecting devas and good spirits.
May the true Dharma flourish in the ten directions, may all nations dwell together in harmony, may peace and tranquility pervade this sangha, and may all beings live together joyfully.
 
Here’s another example.

May the Three Treasures illuminate our awakening in practice.
Having chanted the Dai Hi Shin Darani, we dedicate this merit to the deceased monks throughout the Dharma realm; and to— [names of those who have died];  may they know rest and attain Buddhahood;
to— [names of those who are ill]; may they know comfort and peace;
to the founding patrons of this temple, and to sentient beings throughout the Dharma Realm.
May they perfect awakening in Buddha’s Way.

It may seem a little strange to us as Westerners to be offering merit to buddhas and ancestors.  These folks lived hundreds or a couple of thousand years ago, and now they’re dead.  They’re not here to know what we’re doing, and it feels worshipful.  And yet, without them, we wouldn’t be practicing today.  We wouldn’t know how to sit, and we wouldn’t have teachings.  Whether or not you believe that something has been transmitted from teacher to disciple and that I’m literally 84th in line from Shakyamuni, we have instructions and guidance in the practice from somewhere.

In the Shushogi, Dogen says: That we are now able to see the Buddha and hear the dharma is due to the blessings that have come to us through the practice of every one of the buddhas and ancestors. If the buddhas and ancestors had not directly transmitted the dharma, how could it have reached us today?

In talking about debts of kindness, in the largest sense, there is no person in debt, no offering to be made and no debtor.  None of these things can be separate from each other because they’re all part of an interconnected system.  We’re offering ourselves to ourselves.

Whatever we’re accumulating and giving away is already part of the functioning of the same universe that gave rise to us in the first place.  Does the wave owe a debt of gratitude to the ocean?  In one way yes, because the ocean gave rise to the wave.  In another way no, because the ocean is just doing what its causes and conditions lead it to do.  That’s the view we take when we can see past our delusions of being separate.  On a moment-to-moment basis, however, we forget that we’re not separate.  Repaying the debt of gratitude helps us to remember and to see more clearly.  We don’t disregard our connections with other beings.

How do we cheat others when we ignore our debts of kindness?  To cheat is to behave dishonestly in order to gain an advantage.  We’re doing something that’s not in accord with reality, and the result is that someone else has some unfavorable circumstance.  The opposite of that is our old friend dana, or generosity.  Okumura Roshi says: Dana is a practice that allows us to be free from self-clinging based on the three poisonous minds. This practice benefits both giver and receiver, and the gift is also free from the three poisonous minds. Thus, our activities simply become one with the circulation of the myriad dharmas that are always coming and going within the Dharma world. We simply refrain from blocking such a circulation by ceasing to create a wall between ourselves and all others.

We could say that when we ignore our interconnections and our debt of kindness, we create an artificial roadblock that disrupts the flow of things within this reality.  We create separation that keeps all beings from receiving what they need from us.  In other words, we cheat them and put them at a disadvantage, thinking we’re gaining something or at least not losing something.

Imagine the blood flow in your body between your organs.  Each organ does something that benefits the body.  If the heart believed that it was separate and didn’t owe anything to the other organs or to the body as a whole and it stopped the flow of blood, the other organs would be cheated of nourishment they need.  The heart would also suffer because the blood wasn’t being purified or oxygenated elsewhere in the body.  We can choose to ignore our interconnections, but then everybody suffers.

When we’re free from greed, anger and ignorance, we’re free from selfishness.  That benefits the being that’s giving and the being that’s receiving.  Because we’re always engaged in a mutual exchange with all beings, that means our unselfishness benefits everyone.  If we disregard others, as this gate says, we fail to recognize kindness, so there’s no way we can repay our debt.  We already know we can’t repay all our debts of gratitude in this lifetime, and it’s even more impossible when we disregard them!

Thus in order to repay our debts of kindness, we have to be free from greed.  Maybe we usually think about greed and generosity as related to giving something to someone who needs help, someone who is less fortunate than we are.  We think about giving to charity, or giving to the local dharma center.  Maybe we think about sharing what we have with people we love, our family and friends.  In all those cases, we’re in the superior position.  We have something, and we’re giving to someone who doesn’t have whatever it is.  Maybe we even give because we want to impress, gain love or even greater debt for someone else.

How about giving when we’re the ones who owe something?  Now we don’t have the upper hand.  We don’t think of that as giving, but as obligation.  If we repay a debt grudgingly, we resent what we owe and that we owe.  Can we repay kindness with openheartedness?  Can I freely offer my daily work to the universe simply because the universe is supporting me?  Can I sit shikantaza and chant and bow and offer the merit simply because Buddha gave me this practice to do?  Can I accept that I will always owe a debt of kindness to all beings, and then freely work for their liberation as a bodhisattva?

If I can recognize kindness for what it is and repay my debts of kindness, then I actively participate in the reality that is the network of interdependent origination.  If I choose to ignore the network, it doesn’t go away; I just become an obstruction to the way it functions.  Okumura Roshi says: Each and every action we perform as a practice of the bodhisattva vows is connected to everything in the past, present and future. Therefore, even our small offerings given with sincere hearts have a connection with all beings in all the six realms, including heaven realms, human realms, and the realms of all sages such as buddhas and bodhisattvas. Each and every action, no matter how small, resonates with all beings in the past, present and future. This is what Dogen means when he says, “Whether we give or receive, we connect ourselves with all beings throughout the world.” When either giving or receiving, by letting go of egocentricity and being giving or receiving, we go beyond the separation of self and all other beings. We then actively participate in the network of interdependent origination.

Here, Okumura Roshi and Dogen are reiterating that what we do connects with all beings throughout space and time.  What we do resonates with all beings in the past, present and future.  We need pay attention to our place in that chain.

A few minutes ago I pointed out that traditionally there was the feeling that we’ve inherited what we have from the past, and we’re responsible for handing that off into the future.  Thus everyone has a responsibility to maintain our lineage and tradition, whatever form that takes in our lives.  We need to preserve the legacy.  When it comes to practice, you don’t have to be a teacher to play a part in passing on the legacy of the dharma.  The Kataññu Sutta says the debt we owe our parents is too large to be paid back in material ways.  If children were to carry their parents on their backs their entire lives, or let them be kings and queens of the country, it wouldn’t be enough.  Buddha says it’s only possible to repay one’s gratitude by teaching them Buddhism through spiritual qualities.  He’s not saying we should teach them how to practice, or convince them to become Buddhists.  He’s saying we should set a good example for parents and everyone by living in a wholesome way and demonstrating good qualities that arise from your practice: wisdom, morality, generosity, compassion, concentration, diligence, contentment, etc.  If we’re going to be good examples, we need to practice ourselves to enable that.  Again, doing our practice is in itself repaying our debt of kindness to Buddha and all beings.

The recognition of kindness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not throw away good roots.
三歸是法明門、淨三惡道故.

This week we look at recognition of kindness, and next week it’s repayment of kindness.  These two gates are related.

We’ve got three elements to talk about in this gate: kindness, the recognition of kindness, and connection with good roots.  Metta, or the perfection of loving kindness, is one of the ten perfections in the Pali canon.  The list looks different in the Mahayana tradition, but still includes loving-kindness: giving, morality, renunciation, wisdom, diligence, patience, truthfulness, determination, loving-kindness, and equanimity.

As a side note, kindness is subtly different from compassion.  Compassion is entering into someone else’s suffering and feeling with that person.  As bodhisatvas, we want to liberate all beings because we feel their pain.  Kindness is wishing happiness and wellbeing for others.  As bodhisattvas, we show benevolence to all beings without any thought of reward or gain for ourselves.

This isn’t the first time we’ve considered a gate related to kindness.  When we were talking about the bramaviharas or four divine abodes, the one covered by Gate 14 was benevolence or loving-kindness: Benevolence is gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] good roots prevail in all the situations of life.  Buddha says loving-kindness reverses anger and greed, but that this will take some time because anger and ill-will are pretty deep-seated.  The three poisons are basic to our delusion.

Even when we aspire to kindness, have trouble sustaining it.  We get it intellectually, we know what we want to do, but gosh, we keep falling off the wagon.  There’s an dismaying element of limitlessness associated with kindness.  Buddha says we have to have loving-kindness for all beings, not just our friends and people we like.  In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Buddha says we haven’t reached great or limitless loving-kindness until we experience it equally for everyone:  If one does not feel anger even towards a single being and prays to give bliss to such a being, this is loving-kindness.  It’s easy to experience for ourselves and our loved ones, and harder for strangers and impossible for people we hate!  In the sutra, Buddha says we are really practicing loving-kindness when we don’t see wrongs and anger doesn’t arise.  We stop seeing what others do as personal affronts to ourselves or attacks on our egos.  If we don’t take stuff personally, we don’t get angry.

Both Gate 14 and this gate associate kindness and roots:
14) Benevolence is gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] good roots prevail in all the situations of life.
[28] Recognition of kindness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not throw away good roots.
I’m guessing these are connected to the line in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra that says, If any person asks about the root of any aspect of good, say that it is lovingkindness.

All the wholesomeness in the world is based on kindness.  Whatever good is happening is because of wishing happiness and wellbeing for others.  For bodhisattvas, kindness can intersect with compassion; we’re wishing wellbeing for others and that means wanting them to be able to liberate themselves from suffering.  For the bodhisattva, wishing others well is not hoping their cravings for diamond rings and cherry pie are fulfilled.  It’s wishing they have wisdom, compassion and insight so they can cut through delusion and wholesome circumstances can arise.  This is how we talked about kindness back at Gate 14.

This week’s gate says we have to recognize kindness so we don’t throw away those good roots.  We have to know what kindness is in ourselves and others so that the unfolding of that kindness can come to fruition.  

Recognizing and acknowledging debts of kindness is a critically important aspect of Asian culture.  It’s not so important in Indian Buddhism, but started to become important when Buddhism arrived in China and then Japan.  Confucianism was already there in China, and one of the central virtues was filial piety.  That meant that children had to take care of their parents as they got older and after they died.  They also had obligations to social superiors and to the state.

In a Confucian society, everyone had duties to everyone else: parents and children, bosses and employees, older or higher rank to younger or lower rank.  It started in the home and reached outward to larger and larger rings of social groups, and all behavior was determined by mutual obligations.  It was the source of the culture’s ethical system.  Every day one lived, one accumulated more debts of gratitude.  

Then Buddhism arrived and encouraged people to leave home, cut family ties and join the sangha.  This was a big problem.  If a son becomes a monk, who takes care of the parents?  If your family had a trade or business that had been going on for generations, who was going to carry that on and continue to improve and expand those activities?  Who carries out all the social obligations, one of which was to have children who would continue to keep society going?

There was also a sense that everyone owed his identity to the family or business or social group that had been created by previous generations.  Your worth wasn’t based on your personal achievements or accomplishments, but on the reputation of your group.  You were able to function in the world because of your parents’ wealth or social class, or because you had been appointed to a particular job.  You were indebted to others for your sense of self.

Thus there was a real conflict: Buddhism looked to the Chinese like an irresponsible foreign religion because the sangha cut ties with society.  The general belief was that if individual households were run properly, then ultimately the state would be run properly.  Peace and prosperity for the entire country rested on the condition of the family household.

Buddhist practitioners started to emphasize teachings on debts of gratitude.  They said that it wasn’t that monks were abandoning their responsibilities, but that their practice was for the liberation and wellbeing of all beings, including their parents and the emperor.  They also generated merit that they dedicated to dead relatives and ancestors.  They were taking care of their social obligations, but in a different way.

As Buddhism continued to develop in East Asia, some additional teachings arose that helped to resolve the conflict.  One was that because of interconnectedness, all beings have been our parents at one time or another.  Our practice is to liberate all beings, and if all beings have been our parents, then we recognize that we owe all beings a debt of kindness.  Dogen wrote a poem that said, Those fellows who stray around in delusion here and there, within the six realms, are actually my fathers and my mothers.

Those fellows who stray around in delusion here and there are us—everyday people who get caught up in our stuff and pulled around by our desires and our suffering.  Because of that, we wander continuously around the six realms of samsara.  Dogen says that all average normal people are actually his fathers and mothers, and maybe this felt really important to him because he lost both his parents when he was a young child.  

In the Bonmokyo or Brahma Net Sutra, which is one of our source texts for the precepts, it says that if we don’t recognize our debt of kindness to our parents, we break a minor precept:

A disciple of the Buddha should have a mind of compassion and cultivate the practice of liberating sentient beings. He must reflect thus: throughout the eons of time, all male sentient beings have been my father, all female sentient beings my mother . . . On the day his father, mother, and siblings die, he should invite Dharma Masters to explain the Bodhisattva sutras and precepts. This will generate merits and virtues and help the deceased either to achieve rebirth in the Pure Lands and meet the buddhas or to secure rebirth in the human or celestial realms. If instead, a disciple fails to do so, he commits a secondary offense.

This is a reference to what still happens today at a funeral or memorial for a layperson.  Among other things, we chant the Shushogi, a compilation of Dogen’s teachings that includes how and why we should receive the precepts, and at the end, officiant gives a few minutes’ dharma talk.  All that is based on this precept and the teaching that we owe our parents for their blessings even after they die.

Dogen says that we should treat all beings the way we treat our parents, and that’s the basis of our bodhisattva work.  He says that laypeople respect and care for their parents while they are alive and hold services for them after their death, but:

Monks abandon their debt of gratitude and enter the realm of non-doing (mui). Within the family of non-doing, the manner [of paying off the debt of gratitude] should not be limited to one particular person. Considering that we have debts of gratitude to all living beings just as we do to our own fathers and mothers, we must transmit all the merits of our good deeds throughout the dharma-world. We don’t limit [the dedication] specifically to our own parents in this lifetime. This is the way we do not go against the Way of non-doing.

Depending on place and time and what sutra you’re reading, Buddhism says we owe a debt of kindness or debt of gratitude to four benefactors.  There are various lists of who or what these are, including parents, all sentient beings, rulers, Three Treasures; mother, father, Buddha, teacher; and, in the first list I ever learned, parents, teachers, leaders and homeland.  We recite the list in the formal meal chant when we make a food offering.  First this is for the Three Treasures, next for the four benefactors, finally for the beings in the six realms; may all be equally nourished.

As an aside, last week we talked about the three devotions, which was about taking refuge in the three treasures.   We said that this idea of taking refuge goes back to India before Buddha. and that originally it meant declaring allegiance to a powerful person, like a patron.  You did what the patron told you to do in exchange for receiving protection from various dangers.

In the early years of the Buddha’s teaching career, his new followers adopted this custom and express their allegiance to the three treasures in a similar way.  It’s easy to see how the three treasures were included in these later teachings about debts of kindness in cultures that operated based on mutual responsibility.  People in medieval Asia were used to having lords, masters or patrons.  You were expected to be loyal, and in return you received protection.  It makes sense that the three treasures or your Buddhist teacher took on a similar role.

Anyway, the point is that we say that we’re indebted to four benefactors because we can’t exist without the support of other things and people.  Everything is dependent on causes and conditions.  This is why we keep hearing about no-separation.  Nothing exists on its own; it arose from something else, and it’s interconnected.  

Recognition of kindness is another way of saying recognition of interconnectedness.  There was a Japanese monk called Suzuki Shosan who lived in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.  He had an interesting, eclectic Buddhist life after being a samurai warrior.  He practiced in various Buddhist traditions, was a close friend of a Soto Zen monk, and established about 30 Soto Zen temples, but was ordained in another tradition.  He developed his own style of practice unlike Soto Zen.

Much of his written teaching is about how everyone owes a debt of gratitude to each of the four classes of society—samurai, artisans, farmers and merchants—and also how engaging in each of these occupations repays one’s debt to Buddha.  

The one Buddha, the Tathagata originally awakened, benefits the world by dividing himself into countless millions of parts.  Without blacksmiths, carpenters, and all the other artisans, the needs of the world would never be satisfied. Without samurais, the world would not be governed.  Without farmers, it would not be fed, and without merchants, nothing in the world would circulate freely.  Any other occupation, as soon as it appears, begins to serve the world. There are men who have discussed of Heaven and Earth, there is the man who invented written language, and also the man who invented medicine, having differentiated five principal organs.  Although these achievements that have emerged in great multitude, exist for the benefit of the world, they are nothing but the manifestations of the grace of one Buddha in action.

Again we see the recognition of kindness as a recognition of interconnectedness.  There are individuals that are both receiving support from others and providing support through their daily activity, and there is also one unified reality or the Buddha way within which the individuals and their activities function, and that makes that functioning possible.  There’s one unified reality within which causes and conditions enable the arising of individuals and what they do.  We’re indebted to the universe for our birth in this form, and simply living our lives and carrying out our functions is a means of repayment.

When we look broadly at how causes and conditions and gratitude work, we get to see how things we didn’t really want in our lives actually sometimes turn out to be helpful.  Recognizing that we were suffering brought us to practice.  Social distancing during the pandemic resulted in Sanshin increasing its virtual programming ability more quickly than we planned.  Maybe you just took a wrong turn on your way somewhere and discovered a beautiful view or a shop you never would have seen otherwise.

Somehow the dharma, or the functioning of the universe, resulted in something good through no intention of our own.  We can’t take credit for that; it’s not a reward for the small self.  It’s a gift from the universe.  Now, what are we going to do with it?

We need to be on the lookout for kindness so we don’t throw away the good roots.  Out of the kindness of others or the support of the universe, something good and wholesome happens.  Recognizing that interconnection with all beings is both an opportunity to see clearly how things actually work and an expression of our understanding.

Next week we’ll talk about repaying all the kindness we receive from the universe.  We need to close the loop.

The Three Devotions are a gate of Dharma illumination; for they purify the three evil worlds.
三歸是法明門、淨三惡道故.

As always, first let’s look at the nature of the three devotions and then at their relationship to the three evil worlds.  The three devotions are about taking refuge in three treasures: Buddha, dharma, and sangha.  Buddha is the historical Buddha, but is also awakening itself.  Dharma is what Buddha taught, but is also the way things are or the way the universe works.  Sangha is the community of people who practice together, but also all beings.  Sometimes these are also called the three jewels or the three gems.  Gems are valuable and precious, but in ancient India they were also thought to have protective powers.  

When we hear the story of Buddha’s life, we hear that he attained awakening under the bodhi tree and then went to look for five men he’d practiced with before in order to share the dharma with them.  They accepted these teachings and became Buddha’s students.  This is when we can say that the three treasures were established—now there were a Buddha, the dharma and a sangha.

Dōgen Zenji says we take refuge in Buddha because Buddha is a good teacher, we take refuge in dharma because it’s good medicine, and we take refuge in sangha because it’s a group of good friends.  We need these things.
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The expression “to take refuge” is kie 帰依.  Ki 帰 means to return or go back and e 依 means to depend on.  Taking refuge means we take the three treasures as the main guide for how we live.  This idea of taking refuge goes back to India before Buddha.  Originally, it meant declaring allegiance to a powerful person, like a patron.  You did what the patron told you to do in exchange for receiving protection from various dangers.

In the early years of the Buddha’s teaching career, his new followers adopted this custom.  They expressed their allegiance to the Buddha, dharma and sangha, but in the Buddhist context this custom took on a new meaning.  Taking refuge in the Buddhist sense is not asking for the Buddha personally to intervene to provide protection, although we still face dangers from the three poisonous minds and we want freedom from those.  We’re committing to the three refuges and to our practice because we recognize that we create our own suffering.  We’re committing to cultivating wisdom and skillful intentions that keep suffering from arising, and following the teachings helps us do that.

During ceremonies like ryaku fusatsu, we chant the three refuges:

I take refuge in Buddha together with all beings, immersing body and mind deeply in the Way, awakening true mind.
I take refuge in dharma together with all beings, entering deeply the merciful ocean of Buddha’s Way.
I take refuge in sangha together with all beings, bringing harmony to everyone, free from hindrance.

We could spend a lot of time just taking apart this chant, but let’s look at it briefly.  Immersing body and mind reminds us that awakening is only manifested when we enact it moment by moment.  It’s not enough just to study intellectually what Buddha said and agree with it.  We have to completely embody it and completely awaken to this reality.  When we do that, our wisdom and compassion naturally manifest and we take skillful action.

We study the teachings not only in the form of what Buddha said but also in the form of the way the universe works or the way things are.  Yes, sometimes we study sutras or books, but we also pay attention to reality and immerse ourselves in that reality.  The reference to the ocean is a pointer toward taking the broadest possible perspective, letting go of thoughts and views that limit our ability to see clearly.

The words translated as “bringing harmony” actually mean “unify.”  We’re unified by the dharma, and that makes a collection of individuals into a community.  We don’t lose our individuality, but we see how we’re 
connected and functioning together.  If there’s no separation, then obstacles and hindrances don’t arise—or at least, they get resolved.

In taking refuge, we return to zazen and the three treasures when we lose our way; we can rely on them.  However. the three treasures aren’t something outside ourselves that we worship.  We’re simply recognizing that the three treasures and ourselves and all of reality are not separate.  The three treasures are absolute reality, and this is where we live—this is our shelter, because there’s nowhere else to go.  Dogen asks why we should have faith in the three treasures and answers that it’s because the three treasures are our final refuge.

All the same, it’s easy to lose sight of that and to turn to other things for comfort or refuge when we’re fearful.  There are lots of things we might look to to save us from misfortune or suffering.  Okumura Roshi has written that he thinks religion arises from two needs: to deal with our fears, and to figure out how to live together.  People two or three thousand years ago were no different.  Dogen points us to a very old Buddhist text called the Abhidharma-kosa which says:

Many people, fearing misfortune, take refuge in the ghosts enshrined in various mountains and forests.  This refuge is not genuine or respectable. By such refuge we cannot be released from suffering.  When we take refuge in the Buddha, dharma and sangha, we observe our life with wisdom, based on the Four Noble Truths. We know suffering, the cause of suffering and going beyond suffering forever.  We also know the Holy Eightfold Noble Path and go to the peacefulness of nirvana.  This taking refuge is most superior. This refuge is most respectable.  By this taking this refuge, we will surely be relieved from various sufferings.

People of that time turned to ghosts and other fantastic beings because they seemed to provide some way to have power over nature.  Folks wanted control over things they couldn’t control.  Buddhism says that if we take refuge in the three treasures instead, we learn about the real cause of our suffering and what to do about it.  We bring about our own suffering, and we can’t look to someone or something else to end it.

Okumura Roshi says: Not by simply worshipping something but by accepting this teaching, we know how suffering is created and how it can stop. That’s why taking refuge in Buddha, dharma and sangha is superior to worshipping a ghost.

It might seem like our suffering isolates us from others: I feel pain, and you don’t feel the same pain I do.  Sometimes it seems like no one is suffering except me, or that I’m alone in my suffering.  This individual self that’s suffering is part of the universal self, and that’s where we go for refuge.  We’re not actually alone, even when we’re in quarantine in our houses and we don’t see anyone else for weeks.  We’re always interconnected with this one unified reality and with the three treasures.

One aspect of the three treasures is ittai sanbo  一體三寶, or one body-three treasures.  It means that the three treasures aren’t actually separate; we can say that they’re three expressions of awakening.  However, it also points us back to interconnection and the reality that we and the three treasures are connected across space and time into one body.

We’re born, we live and we die within this one reality.  This reality is our home, so taking refuge in the three treasures is returning home and taking shelter there.  We’re giving up being pulled around by our ideas and delusions and returning to the way things actually are.  According to Uchiyama Roshi, taking refuge in the three treasures is how we come to have a settled life.  As we know, the great question of his life was how we balance peace and progress, how to have a settled life in the midst of the need for progress and development in modern times.

Because everything is always changing, we can’t rely on conditioned things forever.  We’d like to feel that having things, people or circumstances in our lives make our lives settled and stable, but of course they will all disappear eventually.  The three treasures that make up this one reality are all we can really rely on.

We do many things to protect the small self and enhance our self-concept, but all we can really do is take refuge in the three treasures and give up trying to protect the self.  Taking refuge implies that we stop revering the self and look instead to the three treasures.  Dogen says: What the Buddhist ancestors have authentically transmitted is reverence for Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. If we do not take refuge in them, we do not revere them and if we do not revere them we do not take refuge in them. (1)

Last week’s discussion of Gate 26 on dharma conduct pointed out that Dogen taught that having grandmotherly mind isn’t just about being kind to other people and taking care of them.  It’s about taking care of the three treasures by understanding that all actions—all our conduct—is the buddha dharma.  Dogen said: Be mindful of the Three Treasures as a parent would be mindful of an only child.  We have to pay attention to all of our actions as practice.

Dogen taught that practice and awakening are not two.  There is no awakening which is outside or of separate from our day to day activity, so because the three treasures are important to us, we handle them carefully.  In the Bonmokyo it says, Whenever a bodhisattva hears non-Buddhist or evil minded person direct even a single slanderous word at the Buddha, he experiences pain like that inflicted by three hundred spears piercing one heart.  The tenth precept is about not slandering the three treasures.  On one hand, we vow not to say bad things about them, not to say they’re evil or mistaken or harmful.  On the other hand, Okumura Roshi reminds us that it’s also an act of slandering the three treasures if we’re practicing for ourselves:

Even if we are trying to be good students of Buddha, if we try to do so for our own sake, even slightly, we slander the Three Treasures.  Still, if we stop practicing and sharing dharma with others, again we slander the Three Treasures.  We must examine what’s there inside of ourselves, what makes us behave, practice or act in this way, and if we find some defilement we have to let it go and make repentance.  That’s how our practice continues and our awakening ripens.

Even though we make vows and intend to do the right thing by the three treasures, we can still fall into delusion when we stop paying attention to our actions and motivations, or when our day-to-day activity becomes all about our craving and aversion and not about taking care of the three treasures.

Those three evil worlds in this week’s gate statement are the sanakudo 三惡道, or three lower realms of the rokudo 六道.  In this world of delusion or samsara we transmigrate constantly through the six realms (2).  The three lower realms are hungry ghosts, hell, and animals, or our old friends, the three poisonous minds of greed, anger and ignorance.  In the Ekottaragama Sutra it says, Beings who take refuge in Buddha do not fall into lower rebirth.  They cease from excess and dwell with humans and gods, and will arrive at nirvana.

Taking refuge in the three treasures, doing our practice, doing shikantaza, study and beneficial action, allows for our wisdom and compassion to manifest.  We see clearly what’s happening and act skillfully in the world.  We get to see how our craving and attachment create suffering for ourselves and others and push us into the three lower realms.  

In the hungry ghost realm,  we want stuff and we’re incredibly frustrated because we never get it (greed).  In the animal realm,  we simply try to avoid pain and make ourselves comfortable—we’re just complacent and dull (ignorance).  In the hell realm, we can’t escape from our anger and hatred, and feel claustrophobic and extremely hot or cold (anger and ill will).  These three poisons and their attendent hell realms are the root souce of our suffering and the suffering we perpetuate for others.  They aren’t something that comes from somewhere else and strikes us randomly.  We put ourselves there in those realms and we can get ourselves out by taking refuge in the three treasures and doing our practice.

Dharma conduct is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we follow the conduct that is the Dharma.
法行是法明門、隨順法行故.

This week’s gate sounds like it’s giving a simple direction.  Maybe it sounds like minding your manners in the zendo, carrying out forms properly.  Maybe it sounds like following Buddha’s teachings, following the precepts, and paying attention to what you’re doing.  That’s not wrong—we should indeed do all those things—but this simple phrase “dharma conduct” opens up a larger discussion about cause and effect and good and evil.

We can understand dharma conduct as behavior that arises from prajna or wisdom.  Wisdom includes compassion because compassion arises naturally when we see the nature of reality.  When we see the universe and ourselves clearly, we act skillfully for the benefit of all beings.  We also begin to purify our twisted karma, because our actions move us toward wholesomeness and away from unwholesomeness.

One of Dogen’s most important teachings is that practice and awakening are not two.  Without action, awakening is not realized, so paying attention to what we do and the way we conduct ourselves is necessary; we can’t just think about the dharma.

In our tradition, good and evil isn’t something abstract and separate “out there;” it’s about our moment to moment activity and what we’re doing with this body and mind.  The six realms of samsara through which we transmigrate also aren’t something “out there.”  Where we find ourselves is related to what we’re doing right now.  Seeing clearly and acting in accord with reality is the way to keep ourselves out of the lower realms.

In the animal realm, we’re just complacent and dull. trying simply to avoid pain and make ourselves comfortable.  Of the three poisons, this is ignorance,  In the hungry ghost realm, we want things and we’re incredibly frustrated because we never get them.  This is the poison of greed.  In the hell realm, we can’t escape from our anger and hatred.  It feels claustrophobic and extremely hot or cold.  This is the poison of anger and ill will.

These three poisons and their attendent hell realms are the root souce of our suffering and the suffering we perpetuate for others.  They aren’t something that comes from somewhere else and strikes us randomly.  This is the point of teachings about cause and effect.  Belief in cause and effect is one of the most important teachings in Soto Zen and Dogen addressed it several times in the Shobogenzo.  One of his most important points was that we may not see the result of our conduct right away, and it might not look the way we expect.  I conduct myself according to the dharma, but my life doesn’t go well.  My neighbor does whatever he wants and gets away with it.  It might seem to us that what we do and what others do is disconnected, or that what we do is our own business and no one else should care, or that our actions and the results of our actions are separate.

Of course, another of Dogen’s main teachings is that the things we usually separate in our minds are actually one reality.  He makes two points about this: 1) that we may not see or recognize the effects of what we do, and 2) that we and our actions are completely interpenetrated with everything else in the universe.

First, we may not see or recognize the effects of our conduct.  That makes it hard to believe in cause and effect.  Dogen thought this was a big problem; he wrote:

Noble and lowly, pain and pleasure, right and wrong, gain and loss, are all effects of wholesome and unwholesome actions.  People who believe in spontaneous origin do not understand individual karma and collective karma.  As they do not clarify past and future lives, they are ignorant of the present life.  How can their views be equal to buddha dharma?

This “past and future lives”  is what he writes about in Shobogenzo Sanjigo.  We might see the results of our conduct in this current life, in the next life, or in a subsequent life.  If we don’t understand this, he says, we can fall into false views and end up in one of the three lower realms and have a lot of suffering.

Whether or not you believe in literal rebirth, the point is that we don’t know the outcome of our conduct.  If we’re operating purely on the basis of immediate reward or punishment, we’re going to make mistakes.  When we take some action and don’t see an immediate consequence, we can decide there’s no such thing as cause and effect.  We decide that the things we do don’t matter and that whatever happens is determined by something outside of ourselves.  Both of these are mistaken views in our tradition, because they ignore interdependence.  Dogen says that if we don’t believe in cause and effect, we can’t escape the consequences of our conduct.  We never see clearly what’s going on, and we can’t make wholesome choices about what we do.

Dogen’s second point was that we and our actions are completely interpenetrated with everything else in the universe.  In Bendowa, he writes:

If a human being, even for a single moment, manifests the Buddha’s posture in the three forms of conduct, while [that person] sits up straight in samādhi, the entire world of Dharma assumes the Buddha’s posture and the whole of space becomes the state of realization.

The three forms of conduct are actions of the body, speech, and thoughts.  He’s saying that in zazen and outside of zazen, if we’re seeing clearly and manifesting awakening, then the whole world becomes awakening.  Thus  because the only things we have to work with are this body and mind, and this time and place, we have to practice right here and now.

Of course, dharma conduct fills everthing we do all day long.  There are myriad opportunities moment by moment to work with our dharma conduct.  Sawaki Roshi says our practice is to constantly ask ourselves what we can do for the buddha dharma right now.  He says, Even in the case of putting down a teacup it makes a big difference if you simply let it fall or if you lower it carefully with your hand.  The basis of all actions is to follow through to the end.  If your mind is absent even just for a moment, you’re no different from a corpse.

He goes on to say it’s about becoming a person without gaps.  Where are the gaps?

• between me and my conduct
• between my actions and the rest of the universe around me
• any kind of separation between subject and object

Dharma conduct is exactly the interpenetration of Uchiyama Roshi’s individual self and universal self.  We conduct ourselves as individuals, taking our own action, and at the same time, causes and conditions lead us to act as we do, and also we’re part of the causes and conditions of someone else’s actions.  We have a form or body, and also emptiness is right there.

At one time we had an important demonstration of these points in our sesshin and retreats.  People routinely left early, before the sesshin was over, because they had a drive ahead of them and were anxious to be on their way.  It resulted in up to 50% attrition.  Folks sometimes think coming to a practice event is like going to the theatre, when you buy your ticket, take your seat and enjoy something that is performed around you by others.  No one minds if you sneak out of the show early; there’s simply an empty seat in the audience and show goes on. 

Sesshin and retreat are not like this at all.  You are not a spectator or a consumer.  Participants are the material of the retreat, and without them there is nothing going on.  When people start fading away, the integrity of the structure is weakened for everyone.  Somehow participants really didn’t understand this, and I had to start explaining that there are three problems:
1) All the cleanup work falls to the few people who remain, so I and a couple of others end up cleaning up after everyone.
2) We buy food based on registration headcount, so when people start skipping meals that’s a waste of temple resources, both the food itself and the effort to cook it.
3) The bigger problem is that as people begin to silently disappear one by one, the energy built up by the community over the course of the sesshin or retreat trickles away.  The event goes flat and ends with a whimper for those who are still around rather than everyone ending strong and together with attention and intention.  The message the early leavers send is, “Now that I’ve gotten everything I want out of this shindig, I’ll be on my way and leave it to the rest of you to wrap things up.  I have better things to do.”  Nobody means to be unkind or disrespectful; they just don’t realize that their conduct affects everyone else in the sesshin.

As Sawaki Roshi said, the basis of all actions is to follow through to the end.  Make your commitment and then carry it out completely.  See the larger picture, and care enough to see things through.

The previous two gate statements addressed truth telling and truth itself.  One of the points was that on one hand there is breaking a precept by speaking falsehood, and on the other hand even telling a lie is a complete manifestation of the truth of this moment.  This same kind of setup is related to how we consider our conduct.  It was a real puzzle for Tettsu Gikai, who was an important student of Dogen.  Several times, Dogen told Gikai that he needed to work on developing grandmotherly mind, or roushin 老心, one of the Three Minds (sanshin  三心).  Dogen writes about roushin in the Tenzo Kyokun, and Gikai had served as tenzo himself.  He tried to make the connection and understand why Dogen was telling him this, but it took some time before he got it.  

There were some monks from a sect called Darumashu who taught that all actions encompassed Buddhism.  Lifting a hand or moving a leg in a natural way was itself enlightenment.  Gikai rejected this teaching.  At the same time, Dogen was teaching that all the day to day tasks in the temple were expressions of true Buddhism.  Gikai finally realized that there is a difference between “Buddhism encompasses all actions” and “doing every action as Buddhism.”  The Darumashu monks were saying that we don’t need any rules, because all of our actions arise from inherent enlightenment.  However, Dogen said that all our actions express our inherent enlightenment and there can’t be any Buddhism apart from our day to day activities.  Buddhism isn’t something seperate that gives rise to activity, in the same way that without any participants, there is no sesshin.

What Dogen was trying to get Gikai to see was that grandmotherly mind isn’t just about being kind to other people and taking care of them.  It’s about taking care of the three treasures by understanding that all actions—all our conduct—is the buddha dharma.

Dogen said we should be mindful of the Three Treasures as a parent would be mindful of an only child.  We have to pay attention to all of our actions as practice.  When he taught that practice and awakening are not two, he was saying that there is no awakening which is outside or of separate from our day to day activity.  Later, Gikai’s successors tended to deemphasize text study for their own students; he felt that Buddhism was best expressed by actions rather than words.

Of course, our daily actions are an important ground for practice.  Traditionally, there are four postures: sitting, standing, walking and lying down.  These are also a metaphor for all of our activities, everything we do at all times.  

The kanji used here for “posture” is 威儀 igi, sometimes translated “deportment.”  This has to do with maintaining the proper attention and conduct at all times because we’re never not practicing.  As I pointed out at the beginning, when we hear words like conduct and deportment related to Zen practice, we often think of zendo forms: bowing, holding a chant book, doing shashu or isshu, etc.  Practice forms are indeed a great place to pay attention to what our bodies, mouths and brains are doing.  One of the things people notice about the style of our particular family is that we don’t do a lot of ritual.  Our forms are simple and we don’t do a lot of ceremonies.  This is not because Okumura Roshi doesn’t think these things are important.  Our forms are simple so that we remember how they’re connected to shikantaza and how they express our practice.

When we start coming to a zendo, we can be intimidated or get frustrated because it seems like there’s a “proper” way to do everything.  Without the context for these things, they can seem like empty gestures or antique rituals.  On the other hand, some folks fall in love with this exotic, special kind of conduct and deportment and they get really precious about it.  Both of those attitudes miss the mark.

Okumura Roshi says our forms should express our respect and gratitude, which is a direct outgrowth of wisdom,  seeing clearly how things work.  When we really understand interdependence, we naturally feel grateful.  However, having said that, forms are good for nothing in the same way that shikantaza is good for nothing.  We don’t do them to get something out of it.  We’re not using them to train ourselves in humility or selflessness, and yet humility and selflessness are probably there.

Forms are an interesting practice of interdependence in a community.  We do a lot of communicating through forms during silent sesshin.  Formal meals completely served and eaten according to forms.  Outside of sesshin, during morning practice or liturgy, the bells tell us what to do.  We have to pay attention to the forms going on around us so we can be in alignment with the rest of the practice.  It’s not just imitating; we have to be more open and aware than that.  It’s about sharing a space with others, and not just literally—sharing a practice experience and nonseparation.

Returning a bow, turning the same direction as others, putting your hands in isshu with everyone else—not paying attention to these things is not respectful to others and perpetuates separation.  It doesn’t matter who the others are; you can like them or not.  The deal we make is to encounter each other completely and not discriminate.  However, even if we’re alone, paying attention to deportment is a good practice.  When we’re sleeping in the zendo, we don’t point out feet toward Buddha.  During soji, we don’t sweep dirt toward Buddha, and we don’t blow wind toward Buddha when folding a zagu or blow out altar candles with our breath.  Watching our dharma conduct is an opportunity to see where our attention is, what the body is doing and what we’re thinking.  It’s real opportunity to see how there’s no “me” “doing” a “form.”  I’m acting together with all beings without a boundary.

Truth is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not deceive ourselves.
眞是法明門、不誑自身故.

Last week we investigated telling the truth and not deceiving gods.  This week we investigate what truth is and not deceiving ourselves.

We aspire to tell the truth, but we have to know what that is.  In a way, we have to be clear ourselves about reality before we can represent that to others, although, as we saw last week, in another way whatever we’re doing expresses the truth of this moment, even if we’re deluded and telling lies.

In his text called Comments on teaching and conferring the precepts (Kyojukaimon), Dogen says, “When a drop of sweet dew moistens things, Reality and Truth become revealed.”  This “drop of sweet dew” is Buddha’s teaching.  In other words, when we see with the eyes of Buddha, or when we see things through the lens of Buddha’s teaching, we see truth.  That truth is the three marks of existence:
1) Everything is part of the network of interdependent origination, and nothing arises on its own but because of causes and conditions.
2) Everything is impermanent because those causes and conditions are constantly changing, so what arises from them has to be changing too.
3) There is no fixed self-nature because we’re subject to the same interdependence and impermanence as everything else.

These three things are true no matter what we think about them and no matter what we want to be true.  We’d like to talk ourselves into believing that the things we like will never go away or that there is something called “me” that is separate from everything else.  If we do that, we’re setting ourselves up for suffering because these things aren’t true or sustainable.  We’re going to keep tripping and stumbling and stubbing our toes because we’re not seeing the whole picture, and we can’t escape these three marks of existence.

If we really see truth, we can’t deceive ourselves in this way.  One of the most important teachings in our dharma family is “zazen is good for nothing.”  It comes from Kodo Sawaki, my dharma great grandfather.  The reason we do dharma study in this family is to deeply understand this point.  It’s the center of everything.  When a drop of sweet dew moistens things, when we study what Buddha and our ancestors taught, we see the truth of the three marks of existence and we understand that zazen is good for nothing.

Kodo Sawaki had lot to say about how we deceive ourselves, particularly how we deceive ourselves about zazen.  In our modern times, we see mindfulness and zazen being used for various personal outcomes: stress management, productivity, better relationships, improved daily functioning.  Sawaki Roshi saw this happening too—people trying to use zazen to cultivate various personal qualities—and said that if you think that’s going to work, you’re fooling yourself, because you won’t get any results from zazen.  Why?  Because zazen is not about you.  As soon as you inject your own stuff into it, it misses the mark.

Sawaki Roshi says: If it’s even the slightest bit personalized, it isn’t pure, unadulterated zazen. We’ve got to practice genuine, pure zazen, without mixing it with gymnastics or satori or anything. When we bring in our personal ideas – even only a little bit – it’s no longer the buddha-dharma.

Shikantaza is about nothing extra, and piling your own expectations and attachments on top of the three marks is something extra.  We deceive ourselves and lose sight of the truth in our shikantaza.  Instead, we just take the posture, keep the eyes open, breathe deeply and let go of thought.  Anything else is extra.

We can spend a lot of time on the cushion, but unless we’re doing only these four things and nothing else, we’re not really doing shikantaza, though we can deceive ourselves that we are.  If we’re thinking, we’re not doing shikantaza.  If we’re sleeping, we’re not doing shikantaza.  This is why there’s no way to measure our shikantaza and decide whether we’re getting better at it.  Either we’re doing true shikantaza, or we’re not.  As soon as there’s anything extra, we’ve stopped doing it.  As Dogen says in the Fukanzazengi, “As soon as the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.”

Sawaki Roshi goes on: If we don’t watch out, we’ll start believing that the buddha-dharma is like climbing up a staircase. But it isn’t like this at all. This very step right now is the one practice which includes all practices, and it is all practices, contained in this one practice.

There’s nowhere to get to with zazen; we don’t get better at it.  Either we enter into that same space with everyone else, or we don’t.  

“Zazen is good for nothing” is a simple phrase, but in order to understand it, we have to understand the reality of how the universe works.  That’s why we do dharma study in this family.  Sanshin’s main practice is to do a lot of zazen, by sitting sesshin as well as every weekday morning plus a couple of evenings and Sundays.  Doing that much zazen can lead to trouble if we don’t put equal emphasis on understanding that there’s no personal gain from it.  If we don’t understand reality, we don’t understand “zazen is good for nothing,” and then we fall prey to the “Zen sickness” that Dogen describes in Shobogenzo Zazenshin.

Okumura Roshi says: Even though our practice of zazen based on Buddha’s teachings is a treatment of this sickness, zazen itself can be a poison and cause sickness. If our motivation to practice is influenced by the three poisons, that is, if we practice for the sake of making this person more important, more powerful, more enlightened or for anything else, then it is motivated by greed, ‘I want to get this or that.’ It may not be for wealth or power that we practice, but for something spiritual. If we practice in order to get something desirable, however, our zazen is generated by greed.

When we practice for certain lengths of time we find that our motivation itself is influenced by poison. Then we often have doubts about our practice and whether or not it works to lessen the suffering caused by the three poisons. Sometimes we might even quit because we feel it doesn’t work.

Dharma study keeps our shikantaza from becoming a poison and keeps us from deceiving ourselves about what we’re doing.

For Uchiyama Roshi, this question about what truth is was a real driving force in his life.  He tried studying Western philosophy, but it felt abstract and disconnected from his actual life.  In Buddhism he found the teaching that we’re living both an individual life and a universal life.  It’s true that we have individual bodies and minds and we’re not interchangeable.  We have agency and take our own actions and make decisions.  It’s also true that because of the three marks of existence, we’re not separate from our lives.  

As Uchiyama Roshi said, Everything I encounter is my life.  For him, truth was completely living out both individual and universal self.  Living one or the other is not complete truth.  This teaching goes back to Nagarjuna’s two truths: relative and absolute.  Chinese Tiantai said there was a third truth in which we see everything from both sides at the same time.

In the Genjokoan, Dogen describes the moon and the whole sky being reflected in a single drop of dew on a blade of grass.  The moon is emptiness, the drop of dew is form, and these two are interpenetrated and arise together.  Thus there is the truth of the individual, the truth of the universal, and the truth that goes beyond individual and universal.

One of the most important aspects of this teaching is its relation to the self.  To understand truth and not deceive ourselves, we need to understand the nature of self.  Sawaki Roshi had a lot of interesting images for this.

• You can’t hold on to your self.  The very moment you give your self up, you realize the self which is one with the universe.  
• Precisely that self which I haven’t thought up is who I really am.
• The entire universe radiates the light of the self.  So I fill the entire universe. I’m not that fool playing with his pocket change.

Shikantaza is where we get to really experiences the truth of no-self.  Sawaki Roshi says: Non-self means that “I” am not a separate subject. When “I” am not a separate subject, then I fill the entire universe. That I fill the entire universe is what’s meant by “all things manifest the truth.”

When I don’t make a distinction between myself and the rest of reality, then there’s no part of reality that isn’t me.  All things are manifesting the reality of nonseparation without the covering of my thoughts about what they are, whether I like them or not, and whether they’re useful to me.  Usually, we think our thoughts are the truth.  I like this thing, therefore it’s good and has value.  I agree with this person, and therefore he’s right.  I want things to be like this, and therefore that’s the way things should be.

Uchiyama Roshi says: Once we think of something we want or like, we assume that the simple fact of thinking we want it or like it is the truth.  Then, since we think this idea is the truth and is worth seeking, we proceed to chase after it everywhere and our whole world becomes a world of greed.  On the other hand, once we think of something we hate or dislike, we assume again that the simple fact of thinking we hate it is the truth.  Thinking that this idea is the truth so we ought to follow it, we chase after it until our whole world turns into anger.

Sometimes we just lose touch with the truth.  Then we have ignorance, one of the three poisons (greed, anger, ignorance).  Staying in touch with truth is wisdom, seeing through Buddha’s eyes and seeing the reality of our lives.  We might not like the truth we see.  We have to watch what’s happening when those preferences come up and start coloring what we’re seeing.  We can’t take skillful action unless we have a clear picture of what’s going on and we don’t look away.

Last week’s gate was about deceiving others, and this week it’s about deceiving ourselves.  Setting aside any actual intention to fool other people or ourselves, sometimes we just get caught up in what Sawaki Roshi called group stupidity.

We live in group stupidity and confuse this insanity with true experience. It is essential that you become transparent to yourself and wake up from this madness. Zazen means taking leave of the group and walking on your own two feet.

There are a lot of things we assume are true and never question.  We may never question the values we inherit from our culture or family, even though they cause us suffering.  We may never question things that are common knowledge or shared beliefs.  Nobody means to fool anybody with this stuff, but sometimes it turns out not to be true, even though everyone accepts it as truth.  Time was when everyone accepted that the earth was flat, or that the sun revolved around the earth.  That’s what it looked like, and common sense said it was so.  At one time, everyone accepted that certain kinds of people should be marginalized in society.  In Uchiyama Roshi’s time, he saw a lot of people who valued wealth and luxury over everything else and seemed to believe that development and progress were always good.  Our psychological makeup says there is a self that is born with us and dies with us and remains constant in some way.  You can come up with other examples yourself.

Sometimes our framework comes from culture and society, and sometimes from just doing what humans do.  We come in contact with something, we decide immediately whether we like it or not, and that’s the basis of a whole complicated story.  We feel like we have a consistent existence over time.  We do what’s being done and adopt the beliefs of society or the habits of humans until something happens that causes a major shift in our thinking.  Wait—I did what society or my values told me to do, but this bad thing happened!  I did everything I could to get ahead at the office and my health failed.  I met someone from a cultural group I was uncomfortable with and it turned out that we got along well.  I took for granted that this or that would always be part of my life and it went away and now I’m suffering.  Now we’re asking ourselves: What is true, really?  Who am I?  How can I know?

Awakening from self-deception can be disorienting.  Somehow, the self is deceiving and being deceived at the same time.  How can that be?  There are things about ourselves and our lives that we don’t want to acknowledge.  We can decide that our fantasy is easier to live with.  It’s easier to go along with the crowd than to be considered different or challenge the norm.

The reality is that our self-deception happens all the time.  We deny that we and our loved ones are going to die.  We don’t like to think or talk about death, yet we know it will happen.  We don’t like to think that buying the things we want won’t bring us lasting happiness.  We’d rather assume that our worldview is true.  We don’t even want to acknowledge our suffering.  Maybe you’ve told someone about your practice and the Four Noble Truths, and that person’s immediate response was, Well I’m not suffering!

Shikantaza is checking all our assumptions at the door, sitting down, only doing the four things, and seeing what happens.  Now we’re walking on our own two feet in zazen rather than relying on opinions and suppositions.  We might find that some of our conclusions about ourselves and our lives are dead on, but some might not be, and those might be deeply held beliefs.  That’s hard, and practice takes courage.

The search for truth in this practice means accepting both individual and universal truth and everything they contain.  We can only describe universal truth in terms of individual truth.  We can’t read a book and memorize it and say, There--now I know what truth is about and it’s an abstract thing out there.  Truth is in unfolding of our own lives moment by moment.  

Truth contains our delusions, mistakes, and limitations.  The truth is that we don’t see completely or clearly.  We get caught up in our stuff and in the imitations of language.  The truth is that we deceive ourselves every day in our practice and in our daily lives outside of the zendo.  And even so: truth is right here.  It’s not an abstract something “out there” that requires mental gymnastics.  We can’t help but express truth completely in every moment.

Our practice of vow and repentance is a practice of understanding that we are limited and also truth is right here.  If we didn’t believe that truth was right here, it would be difficult to keep making the vow and keep practicing.  Our practice is to continually aim for truth so that we don’t deceive ourselves and therefore don’t deceive others.

Veracity is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not deceive gods and human beings.
實是法明門、不誑天人故.

Veracity means telling the truth.  (Next week we’ll take up truth itself.)  Buried down at #4 in the list of precepts is not speaking falsehood.  It’s interesting that it’s buried in the middle of the list, because breaking other precepts probably also involves breaking this one.  Breaking this precept means deceiving others for the sake of ourselves.  The kanji for “falsehood” 偽 (ishiwari) has one piece that represents a person and another that means benefit or serve.  We lie to serve ourselves.

Society says lying is a bad thing; depending on the severity of the falsehood, you could go to jail.  However, it’s not really that simple.  What about the white lie of kindness and compassion?  What about when your friend asks you, “Do pants make me look fat?” or when someone says “How are you?” and you say “I’m fine” when you’re not?  If this isn’t someone you know well, it’s not appropriate to spill all your issues on him.  “How are you?” is a social convention, not a question.

The earliest version of this precept is not about lying in general, but a particular kind of false speech.  A natural disaster happened and many monks didn’t have enough food, but a particular group of monks had plenty, which they got by telling the laypeople that they were enlightened and had superhuman powers.  Thus this precept was originally about not saying you’re enlightened.  Even today, someone who says he or she is enlightened is going to get funny looks, and apparently Kodo Sawaki was still running into this problem.  He wrote:

Nowadays, all zazen groups or masters who transmit the law have signs indicating their presence.  A long time ago in India, large banners were put up. And even now, in certain regions, flags of all colors hang and fly in the breeze, a souvenir of ancient times.  In our language nowadays, hanging flags indicating Dharma, and establishing true doctrine, means expressing one’s own experience relating to satori. Those who speak of Dharma without ever having experienced it are like parrots. They quote words and expressions of others, just like a dictionary. Teaching the Dharma means relating your personal experience.

I want to come back to this in a few minutes, because I’ve struggled with this myself and I think it’s relevant to all of us, not just dharma teachers.

Not saying that you’re enlightened is a very particular aspect of the precept about not speaking falsehood.  There’s an absolute view of this precept as well that says that any use of language is speaking falsehood.  After all, the word isn’t the thing; the word fire**  won’t burn anything.  There’s also the old problem of words creating duality.  As soon as we say “emptiness,” we imply there’s something that’s outside of emptiness, reality or the Buddha Way.  That’s why we have stories about teachers remaining silent when asked a question.  Bodhidharma said that whatever you say is falsehood—so don’t speak.  Don’t say anything, because nothing can truthfully be said about reality.

Dogen brings both of these perspectives together.  He says yes, language is a problem, but we need to use it in our daily lives, and also, in an absolute sense all language is false.  So, we’re stuck.  What do we do now?  Dogen turns the whole thing inside out and says that even in our falsehood, we can’t help but express reality.  The reality is that I’m using language and it’s false.  The reality is that someone is telling a lie for his own benefit.  The reality is that someone is trying to deceive others.  We’re all expressing the reality of ourselves and our delusion, which may be an intent to mislead or do harm, or not.  

Even telling falsehood reveals reality.  We can step back and step back, but we can’t step out of reality.  In that sense, veracity or truth-telling is always happening, and false speech is an expression of the dharma.  

Okumura Roshi says: Within reality, there is the fact that human beings are telling lies. It’s a part of reality, the turning of the dharma wheel.  Still, we don’t see that reality, so we think we can tell a lie and deceive others.  Sometimes we even say that we can deceive ourselves, but actually we can’t deceive others or deceive ourselves.  We can’t deceive reality or the dharma wheel.  If we really see that we can’t tell a lie even though we are telling a lie, we are showing our reality.  There’s no place to escape, and no place to hide ourselves.  When we really awaken to that reality, there’s no way to tell a lie.

Thus there are three dimensions to this one precept about not telling a lie.  In our daily lives, we need to make choices; we try not to tell lies and instead to speak truth.  From the absolute point of view, whatever we say is false.  Finally, when we let go of our small self, whatever we see and whatever we say is reality or truth.  These three aspects together make a dynamic whole.

Now I want to go back to Sawaki Roshi and his quote about about dharma teaching:  
Those who speak of Dharma without ever having experienced it are like parrots. They quote words and expressions of others, just like a dictionary. Teaching the Dharma means relating your personal experience.

Some of us practicing at Sanshin are preparing to be dharma teachers, but all of us are expressing our own practice because we can’t help it.  One of my peers once called me a dharma technician -- and it wasn’t a complement.  She felt that I wasn’t self-revelatory enough in my dharma teaching.  For instance, I have an academic writing style, concerned mainly with Sanshin’s functioning and the processes of practice.  I'm trained as a journalist, and we don't insert our opinions into our reporting.  ​She said, “I know you have strong feelings about the dharma, but we don’t see that.”

I let that percolate.  When you get feedback like that, you need to see if there’s something there to investigate.  My initial response was: I don’t see the problem.  I don’t know that I do have strong feelings about the dharma.  I have strong feelings about how we should practice, but who cares what I think about the dharma?  Dharma doesn’t care!  Dharma is the dharma.

Our expressions of the dharma are always true and complete because they can’t come from anything but our own lives.  One one hand, Sawaki Roshi is so right when he says we can’t just parrot our teachers’ words.  I wrote a handbook for shusos (1) that includes help and suggestions for writing and giving talks, since by nature many shusos are inexperienced with these things.  It makes the point that you have to use your own voice and talk about your own understanding rather than just stringing a bunch of quotes together.  I’ve heard far too many dharma talks that amount to book reports: I found this book on [something] and it says . . .  OK, tell us what you read, but tell us why we should care.  Bring something new and original to the discussion.  Shusos are sometimes afraid of me because they know that following the talk I may ask, “Why is all this important for you or us?  What's your take on this topic?"

I do sometimes quote my direct ancestors because they are the source of our style of practice, and I want to know what they have to say on a topic and to share that with the sangha.  Rather than just filling space in the talk, including them in the conversation brings their words alive for us.  I’m expressing my own practice by sharing what our ancestors had to say.  This is how I study, and that makes the expression true and complete in this moment.  In that way, it’s impossible for my dharma teaching not to be a true expression of my personal experience no matter what I say -- and yet, it’s a lie because I’m using words.

This is true also for practitioners who don’t teach formally.  Maybe we can’t really explain to others what our practice is about, but how can your life not be a true and complete expression of your practice?  We all hear the shuso acknowledge this every June at the end of the hossenshiki when he or she lowers the head and says, "Please forgive my mistakes; they fill heaven and earth, leaving me no place to hide."

We’ve talked about veracity related to language, but of course we can lie with actions as well as with words.  Depending on motivation, we can look completely sincere on the outside and really be doing things for our own profit, including our practice.  We can turn our practice into a lie.

Kodo Sawaki wrote this :
Depending whether we believe in religion for personal profit or let go of this gaining mind for the sake of faith, the meaning of our practice changes completely.  The former is a heretic who exploits God or Buddha, while the latter is a truly religious person.  When someone prostrates before God or Buddha and prays devoutly, it’s impossible to tell from the outside whether his faith is true or false.  It depends whether we’re seeking benefit for ourselves, others or Buddha.  Even a holy person respected by many could be driven by a subtly selfish motive.

Attitude and motivation are everything.  We’re going for transparency so that what we’re transmitting is our most authentic self. the self before the delusion of separation and subject and object come into it.  Because of interdependence and interpenetration, what we do colors the entire universe.  Okumura Roshi said in Living by Vow that when we’re angry the whole universe is anger; when we’re happy the whole universe is happy, etc.  Thus it follows that if the entire universe is supporting our being, and if we’re perpetuating falsehood, then we turn all the things that support us into engines for breaking the fourth precept.  We can use our karmic conditions for veracity or for lies.  We can use them to create wholesomeness in the world or unwholesomeness.

Sawaki Roshi again:
If our attitude is false and then all those who have fed us and taught us, all those we have met and known, have acted solely in order to produce that falseness. If our attitude is right, whatever they have done they did solely in order to produce that rightness. The limits of the Self are truly beyond any imagining, and fill the sky, earth, and the whole universe.

This gate about truthtelling becomes even more important when we see that it affects so much more than just us, and even more than the people we may intend to deceive.  The whole universe becomes veracity or falsehood in this moment depending on what we choose to do.

Notes
​
(1) The shuso is the head novice during an ango, or practice period.  Serving in this role is an opportunity for leadership development on the way to becoming an authorized dharma teacher.  At Sanshin, among other things the shuso is asked to prepare and deliver about eight Sunday dharma talks.

Humility is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] eternal malevolence vanishes.
羞恥是法明門、外惡滅故.

As usual, let’s look first at humility and then at the relationship with eternal malevolence.  To understand humility, we need to understand the teachings about no-self.  Emptiness in our tradition means that all conditioned things are empty of a permanent self-nature.  That’s because everything comes into being because of causes and conditions.  There has to be a cause for something to arise and the conditions have to be favorable.  If we try to plant a seed on a rock, it won’t grow; the cause is there, but the conditions are wrong.  If we put a container of fertile soil in the sunshine and water it but it doesn’t contain any seeds, then again, nothing will grow.  The conditions are good, but there’s no cause.

Causes and conditions are changing all the time, so the things that arise from causes and conditions are also changing all the time.  This is the teaching of impermanence.  However, interconnection is important here too, because nothing arises from nothing.  Nothing can exist on its own by itself; everything is connected to other things and dependent on other things.

All of this is certainly true of the self.  The self is changing all the time. We aren’t the same people we used to be before we learned the things we know now, before our bodies grew and aged, or before we had our various experiences and memories.  

The self is also dependent on causes and conditions,  It’s said to be made up of a heap of aggregates or skandhas: form, feeling, perception, formation and consciousness.  These things come together for some period of time and we can provisionally point to something called the self, but there’s no permanent element there that will always be “me.” 

The Christian tradition says humility means our worthlessness or imperfection before God, and the need to admit our entire dependence on Him.  The Zen teaching about humility is a little different.  As we saw last week, our practice will always be incomplete because of the nature of bodhisattva vows.  This is why we also need repentence, the recognition that we’ll never reach the end of our practice.  However, this isn’t worthlessness, and we still make effort.  Dependence, however, is important.  Our tradition includes the teachings of dependent arising, that we are indeed dependent on the universe for everything and can’t exist alone.  Humility is about putting aside self-importance and arrogance in favor of modesty and the ability to look outward to others.

It’s important to know what humility is not.  In Soto Zen, humility is not the same as humiliation or low self esteem.  If we really feel unworthy or have self-esteem issues, those are ideas about the self too that need to be examined.  The idea that we’re special in any way—especially slow, especially deluded, or especially anything— goes against the grain of our practice.  Teachings about not being special don’t mean we aren’t distinct from each other and don’t have individual qualities.  Everyone has them, and everyone is better or worse at something.  However, to decide that I’m especially unworthy is an idea about the self which is just as deluded as arrogance and pride.

When I was training in Japan and was expected to do my job just as well as everyone else, I took it as encouragement.  I wasn’t special because I was a Western female who had just arrived there.  The message was that my superiors saw no reason why I didn’t have the ability to do things properly, and I got to give up my idea of self.

Humility is not about being a martyr.  Ideas like “I’m a good or strong person because I deny myself the things I need” are ego trips because martyrdom is based on an idea of self.  Humility is not about being servile.  Maybe you’ve encountered a practitioner who is overly obsequious with Zen teachers.  Respect is fine, but ostentatious displays are just ego trips.  Humility is not false modesty.  The person who constantly refers to herself and her activities as humble, unworthy or undeserving is pointing to her own humility so that other people will be impressed.  If you have to point out your humility so others will notice, you’ve missed the mark somewhere.  There’s nothing made-up or put-on about genuine humility.  It arises genuinely and sincerely when we understand the nature of self.  If we’re trying to demonstrate how humble we are, we’ve certainly not put aside our self-importance.  In real humility, we give up ideas about self and ideas about humility; otherwise, we become conceited about not being conceited!  Modest deportment happens naturally.  It’s a reflection of our understanding about our relationship to the universe and all beings.  It’s not necessary to put ourselves forward in ways that shore up our ego.

There are several places in our tradition to which we can turn to help us work with humility.  There’s the precept about not praising self and blaming others; on a day to day basis we can see why this is important in maintaining good relationships.  What we do affects others, so reducing egocentrism makes it easier to get along.  Humility fosters harmony.  We can also see how this precept helps our practice of seeing beyond the demands of the small self.  However, there’s also the absolute version of it, and that’s about non-separation:

Buddhas and ancestors attain realization with the whole sky and the great earth. When the great body is manifested, there is no inside and outside in the sky. When the dharma body is manifested, there is no inch of ground on the earth.  --  Dogen Zenji's Kyōjukaimon

Within the non-discriminating dharma, not distinguishing oneself from others is called the precept of not praising oneself nor slandering others. -- Bodhidharma’s Comments on the One-Mind Precepts

If I understand that you and I are not separate, then I have no need to build myself up at your expense; the need for jealousy, arrogance and pride doesn’t arise.  As soon as there’s something I can get from you, I’ve created separation, and that gap is the space for craving and aversion to come up.  

Pride is a big obstacle to humility.  This isn't the feeling of being proud of your kids when they get good grades, or pleased when you’ve achieved something for which you’ve been working hard.  It’s the pride that goes with an outsized ego, when all the space is taken up with self and ego so that there’s no room for anything or anyone else, even dharma teachings.  Interestingly, the near companion of pride is usually insecurity.  Puffing myself up is my attempt to keep you (or myself) from seeing how unworthy or incapable I really am.  It’s also connected with anger and ill-will because I feel threatened.

So now we should take a look at this phrase “eternal malevolence vanishes.”  Malevolence is bearing ill will, but this is about more than just wishing ill on someone.  There are two important sets of kanji here: 滅ぼす (horobosu), which means to overthrow, destroy, wreck or ruin, and 悪事 (akuji), doing an evil deed.  Cultivating humility overthrows our impulse to perpetuate suffering by engaging in evil acts.  Aku here immediately makes me think of Shobogenzo Shoaku Makusa, or Not Doing Evil; shoaku contains the same aku.  Dogen says that when we avoid evil actions based on our understanding of reality, that’s awakening.  It’s not something we’re doing for ourselves and it’s not something we’re doing on our own.  However, because of beginningless greed, anger and ignorance, the reality of our Buddha nature gets covered up by our unwholesome actions.

Another way to think about this gate statement, then, is that deeply understanding the nature of self means that arrogance, pride and anger don’t arise, and that allows awakening or buddhanature to manifest.  We don’t harbor ill will towards others or feel compelled to commit unwholesome actions against them, and that circumstance is itself nirvana.

In the Dhammapada, Buddha says we need to give up anger and pride; they’re based on craving and aversion, which are the basis of suffering.  We gain some liberation when we see these things and let go of them.  Understanding no-self, emptiness and non-separation will naturally dissolve pride, which we need to do in order to manifest awakening, and in manifesting awakening we naturally dissolve pride.  Humility, like all virtues, is both the cause and result of practice, and Dogen says practice and awakening are not two.

In place of pride we can cultivate gentleness, modesty, patience, tolerance, and love.  We just have to be careful not to fall into thinking that by cultivating humility we’re especially good practitioners, or we’re right back where we started.  We have to keep letting go of our desire to show off; otherwise we set up a hindrance with our own practice.

So while we’re engaged in the long term practice of cultivating wisdom, what can we watch out for on a day to day basis?  We can watch our motivation for our actions.  Habituated thinking is strong.  We’ve developed these habits because they seem to work in protecting the self.  We can ask ourselves, Am I doing this in order to impress people or because I want to show someone else up?  Instead, can I show genuine interest and sympathetic joy for others without trying to create a particular self-image?

We can also continue to be as honest as possible with ourselves about our own strengths and weaknesses.  There are things we can do well and things that others can do better.  This human body is frail and there are things we could do more easily when we were younger, or, there are things we will be better able to do when we’re more mature.

We can continue to practice putting aside the small self, doing forms as instructed or following the schedule rather than doing as we want.  Every time we’re tempted to say to ourselves, everyone else is doing this or that, but it doesn’t apply to me, we can ask, are you sure?  What’s the yardstick that determines that?

We can look beyond our immediate goals that may be tied up with self-centeredness.  When caught up in need for praise, it’s hard to see what’s really happening and easy to miss what others are experiencing.  We may miss opportunities to do something else that's more effective.

In addition to moving away from the individual self, how about moving away from anthropocentrism?  Reality includes more than human beings; we’re not the only valuable element, but we can forget that.  Not only can we do harm that way by disregarding the lives of other beings, but we’re ignoring a large part of universe.  All sentient and insentient beings are preaching the dharma.

We can learn thusness from everything we encounter.  There is no time or place where thusness is not available to us.  Uchiyana Roshi says we can learn about humility from flowers:
The flowers blooming in the field do not feel with pride that they should win first prize in a beauty contest; they do not feel that they are in competition with other flowers.  The violet does not develop an inferiority complex, thinking “The roses are big and beautiful, but a little violet like me is useless.  It doesn’t say with greed and impatience, “I’ve got to become more efficient."  It simply manifests its own life force with all its might.

The point is that looking outward can help us cultivate humility by reminding us that there’s something beyond our ideas.  We don’t know it all, and simple things around us can show us the dharma if we pay attention.  How we handle everyday objects is a lesson in humility.  When doing formal meals, we handle oryoki with care.  When ringing a bell, handling a sutra book, or caring for a zafu, we do it all with attention.  We can do that with anything we’re using.  The arrogant point of view is that this thing is here to serve me and it only has value as long as it fulfills that function.  If not, I throw it out or disregard it.  It doesn’t matter how I treat it, because it’s subservient to me.  The humble point of view is that we’re partnering to achieve a task, and there’s no reason not to show this thing some respect.  Dogen says we should put things in the right place, high or low.  It helps us to see the wider world.

We have to realize that we are in a dance with the rest of the universe, turning things and being turned by them.  We’re functioning together with everything else.  Humility says my small self is no more or less important than yours.  You can’t function without me, but I also can’t function without you

There is a famous section of Shobogenzo Zenki:
Life is just like sailing in a boat. You raise the sails and you steer.  Although you maneuver the sail and the pole, the boat carries you, and without the boat you couldn’t sail. But you sail the boat, and your sailing makes the boat what it is. Investigate a moment such as this.  At just such a moment, there is nothing but the world of the boat.

We look at a boat and think a human being made it to serve a purpose for people and the world of people is the only important thing—or even that the world of people is the only world there is.  Dōgen says the boat has a world too, not to mention the universe of completely interconnected functioning.  Humility lets us see that our point of view isn’t the only one or necessarily the most effective one for preventing unwholesome action.  In that moment, we can put aside self-importance without negating ourselves.  We can accept that our practice will always be incomplete.  We can accept that we are completely dependent on causes and conditions.  We can accept that we are supported by the entire universe and don’t exist on our own, and we do that without injuring our self-esteem in any way.  We can have humility and still be mentally and spiritually healthy.

Repentance is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] the mind within is stilled..
慚愧是法明門、内心寂定故.

Having finished our discussion of the four seals, we move next to a group of five gates that I suspect is designed to keep us from becoming icchantikas, beings who have so far destroyed their wholesome roots that they have no hope of awakening. (1)  I confess that it’s not entirely clear to me that this is the nature of the list because the words have come from Sanskrit through Chinese to Japanese, and there are any number of ways to interpret the translation. (2)  However, in any case these five gates have something important to say and are worth our consideration.  This week, let’s look first at repentence and then at the relationship with the mind that’s stilled.

Repentance is one of a pair of activities; the other is vow.  We can’t really talk about one without the other.  Our bodhisattva vows say that we’re going to liberate all beings from suffering, end all our delusions, take every possible opportunity to practice and thoroughly experience and understand Buddha’s way, and yet it’s not actually possible to do all this stuff in one human lifetime.  Thus at the same moment that we take vows, we have to repent.  As fast as we make the promise, we already have to acknowledge that in this limited human form, we’re not up to the task, and as fast as we make repentence, we vow all over again to do all these impossible things!

In our tradition, repentence isn’t about saying that we fell off the wagon and asking for absolution.  The core meaning of English “repent” is to creep or crawl on the ground, and in the West we immediately get a picture of someone groveling in fear and shame and begging forgiveness.  However, when you think about getting down on the ground in our tradition, you might think about full prostrations.  When I teach people how to do full bows, I tell them that the Japanese word for prostration is gotai tochi 五体投地, literally casting five parts of the body to the ground: right knee, left knee, right hand, left hand and head, in that order.  There’s a sutra (3) that talks about the repentance of the five parts of the body, and it turns out to be these same five, so we might think about how full bows to Buddha and repentance are related.

However, in Zen we’re not undertaking seeking absolution from a person or deity.  Absolution is made up of the Latin ab (away) and solvere (to loosen) -- in other words, to set free.  It usually means to set someone free from blame or responsibility, and in that context, one repents in order to be cleansed of guilt.  Our repentance is different.  Yes, we acknowledge that we’ve not been perfect bodhisattvas as we’ve gone about our daily human lives.  We also acknowledge that this practice is endless and we need to keep at it moment after moment because we’ll never be done.  

Buddhist repentence changes across time and space.  In India, the emphasis was more on confession and asking the forgiveness of the sangha.  In China, the emphasis was on repentence as the cause of the confession.  There are multiple kinds of repentance activities across Japanese Buddhism, and in Soto Zen today we have two kinds of repentance: formal and formless.  

The formal kind is where we realize we’ve been unskillful and may have taken some harmful action.  Maybe you’ve broken a precept or perpetuated some kind of suffering for yourself or someone else.  It’s natural to feel uncomfortable about this.  If you’re a healthy person, you realize that others have feelings and they want to live peacefully and happily just like you do.  Repentance practice gives us the chance to reflect on our actions, to bear in mind that everything we do is practice and everything we do has consequences for ourselves and others because of the truth of interdependence.

When we realize we’ve done something unwholesome, it’s natural to feel some regret.  Maybe an apology or other kind of restoration is in order, but maybe we simply need to acknowledge that what we did wasn’t optimal and we need to try not to do it again.  This is what we’re doing when we do the ryaku fusatsu ceremony at Sanshin every month.  It’s the oldest Buddhist ceremony that we still do.  Traditionally, the entire sangha got together to hear from each other how they might have gone off the rails and to recommit to following Buddha’s teaching.  Here, we listen to instructions about following the precepts, and then say something if we want to about what we may be practicing with at the time.  We do that in the presence of the other practitioners who come and we also invoke a lot of Buddhas and bodhisattvas.  In that way, the ceremony is about more than what’s going on for the small self.  It’s the whole universe is doing the ceremony together.

That brings us to formless repentence.  For that, we don’t just repent of our unskillful actions, we repent of all of our actions.  Why?  As long as there’s a “me” doing an “action,” there is duality.  The actual nature of the universe is also non-duality.  This is why zazen is an act of repentence.

What we’re doing here is noticing where our activity is motivated by some idea about the self.  As long as we cling to the delusion of a fixed self-nature and that drives our actions, we’re missing the mark.  That doesn’t mean that the action itself is bad; we could certainly do some good action that also has a bit of self-clinging.  That doesn’t negate the good, but we do get chance to see what’s happening and vow to do something else next time.

Formless repentance doesn’t need to wait for some actual action.  It’s the acknowledgement that we carry delusion about the nature of reality, and as human beings, we will always carry that delusion.  Thus we need to keep doing repentance practice and renewing our vows.  Maybe this turns around our misunderstanding that we do repentence because we’re bad people and need forgiveness.  That’s not what’s happening.  This is not about feeling guilty.  Clinging to guilt can be as much of an ego trip as clinging to doing good deeds because we’re using guilt as a means of writing a story about the self.

Since we’re talking about things like absolution, we should also consider the meaning of purification.  Repentence is not a means of purification as in getting rid of defilement.  We could say that purity is about nonduality.  If there is nothing outside the Buddha way, then even those things we might consider defiled are included.  Where is the line between purity and defilement?  To move toward purity is to deeply realize that samsara and nirvana are already not separate.  It’s not about getting rid of anything; it’s about seeing and acknowledging that the universe is already or originally undefiled.

Formal repentence deals with our karmic activity, the stuff that happens because causes and conditions resulted in our taking this human form and moving through the world.  Formless repentence deals with the point before there is separation and duality and delusion.  Formal repentence supports us in our zazen practice because it helps us settle down and let go of wrestling with the unhelpful things we did, including our responses to what others did to us.  Formless repentence is zazen itself, being in the space before separation and subject and object so we can see how these things go together and why repentence is essential in a practice style like ours here at Sanshin where zazen is central.

One of the elements of Sanshin’s practice vision is to enable the practice of shikantaza in the style of Uchiyama Roshi.  What does that mean?

• The study of the meaning of zazen in the context of Buddha’s teachings.
• Letting go of extra activities or formalities in an effort to focus on zazen. 
• Finding the significance of zazen and study in modern daily life.
  
  

If we equate zazen with repentance, we can see how that works in Sanshin’s particular practice style.  Working backwards, we might say that formal repentence is about our investigation of our modern daily lives, the concrete stuff we do.  Zazen is the experience of opening up space so we can see clearly what’s going on and not be dragged around by habituated responses that may or may not be skillful.  In zazen, we can become intimate with our own patterns and become aware of their affect on others.  We get the space to choose a response rather than just react, and we can also see how our practice is always incomplete.  Thus, finding the significance of zazen and study in modern daily life may be equated with formal repentence.

On the other hand, studying the meaning of zazen in the context of Buddha’s teachings might be about formless repentence.  One of the Buddha’s most basic teachings is that all things are interconnected because of dependent origination.  Nothing arises from nothing; everything is dependent on causes and conditions, so there is no separation, and in zazen we get to enact or embody that.  It’s the repentence of returning to a point before duality where there’s no “me” taking an action, just activity.

This is a good point at which to turn to the second part of the gate statement about stilling the mind.  There are two things to point out here.  The first is that the statement says “the mind within.”  The word here is naishin 内心: deep down in the heart-mind.  It’s not a case of doing repentance in order to make ourselves feel better on the surface, or to quiet our guilt or shame.  We’re talking about getting down to the deep roots of the origins of our karma and delusion.

The second thing to point out is related to last week’s gate: Reflection on stillness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not disturb the mind.  We equated the stillness in that statement with nirvana  The stillness in today’s statement is the same seijaku 静寂, sometimes translated silence, stillness or quietness.  The kanji are 1) silence/stillness/peace/tranquility + 2) silence with connotation of nirvana, blowing out the flames of suffering and affliction that happen when we don’t see reality clearly, or at least, not feeding those flames if we can avoid it.

We could reword today’s statement to say that repentance is a dharma gate because it puts us in touch with nirvana.  That makes a lot of sense in the context of both formal and formless repentance.  In our daily activity we try to understand that samsara and nirvana are not separate.  Sometimes we make mistakes because we’re trying to get to some better place or situation for the small self, not understanding that nirvana is already right here.  That’s formal repentance.

At the same time, sitting zazen and being in that place before duality is the formless repentance; that place before duality is nirvana.  If there’s no separation between subject and object, then I don’t need to break precepts to get what I think I need.

So how do we actually do repentance and walk through that gate to nirvana?  Like so much of Buddhism, it’s not linear; there’s no “do this and then this.”  However, as a piece of groundwork, we need to understand that it’s important and why it’s important.

Repentance isn’t just a ceremony or ritual.  As we’ve seen, it’s not really optional in this tradition.  The more we engage with it, the more we understand how necessary it is, and if we can let go of the idea that it’s about humiliating ourselves, then the ego can get out of the way.

The traditional words for repentance carry connotations of both disclosure and correction.  That means we have to be really honest with ourselves.  We start by not hiding our unskillful actions from ourselves, and then perhaps we disclose them to others.  It can be easy to rationalize our behavior and not take responsibility for what we do.  It’s difficult to accept that we’ve caused suffering or done something unwholesome, but as bodhisattvas we have to accept the suffering of the world and not look away, even when we’re the cause.  We can’t sincerely take vows until we first acknowlege where we’ve gotten in our own way and gotten tangled up in hindrances.  That’s why we chant the verse of repentence before taking precepts.

All my past and harmful karma,
born from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion,
through body, speech, and mind,
I now fully avow.

Unless we accept and take responsibility for our previous actions, we can’t promise to do the next one.  We’ve got to start by looking closely at our own habits and assumptions.  The verse refers to body, speech and mind, the three places where we create karma, so we also have to look at what we’re doing with our thoughts and how skillful we’re being there.  That includes understanding why we believe what we believe.  Where did those things come from, and are they helping or not?  Our thoughts lead to speech and action.  If I’m vowing to liberate all beings but on a daily basis I’m acting based on my need to feel important or my anger at the way my life is going, I’m not going to be effective.

There’s a fair amount of self-awareness work to do here.  We need to deeply investigate Buddha’s and the ancestors’ teachings on interdependence in order to get that what we do has consequences for ourselves and others.  Sometimes identifying exactly what we regret doing helps us clear up vague feelings of unease we may have about ourselves.  I don’t feel good about myself, but I don’t really know why.  We don’t want to look at these things, but eventually we can come to see that there’s a difference between I did something unskillful and I’m a bad or unworthy person.  We might be able to explode some ideas we’ve created about ourselves and may have been carrying for years.

Once I’ve stopped hiding my unskillful actions from myself, it might be helpful to disclose them to others in appropriate ways.  I might need to apologize to someone and explain what was going on for me (which is not the same as making an excuse).  I might want to talk to a sangha friend or get some advice from a teacher.  There’s much encouragement to be found in participating in ryaku fusatsu with a friendly group of practitioners who are all engaged in the same repentance practice.  

As part of repentence, we can practice giving up our reliance on the small self alone and turning toward the three treasures and, of course, so much of acknowledging past harmful actions and reversing the course of habituated thinking is about cultivating wisdom.  There’s a part of the Lotus Sutra that says: “If one wishes to carry out repentance, sit upright and ponder the true aspect. Then the host of sins, like frost or dew, can be wiped out by the sun of wisdom.”  We make mistakes because of our ignorance.  We can’t always see clearly the reality of our lives.  We can’t see past our ideas about how things are or how they ought to be, and our Buddha nature gets obscured by our deluded thinking.  Practicing sincerely and doing our best to deeply understand emptiness and manifest our Buddha nature is real repentance.  

Notes

(1) We must acknowledge here that the existence of beings classified as icchantika has been controversial within the Mahayana traditions, which hold that all beings have (or are) buddha nature and cannot be excluded from awakening.  See this short paper about buddha nature from Sotoshu.

(2) The next five gates that I suspect may be the direct antidotes to being an icchantika are repentance, humility, veracity, truth and dharma conduct.  Icchantikas are described as refusing to repent or admit wrongdoing because they have no sense of shame; denying both cause and effect and suchness, and thus creating a false view of reality; and selfishly breaking precepts without regard for others.

(3) See Ancient Buddhism in Japan: Sutras and ceremonies in use in the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. and their history in later times by M. W. de Visser, Paris, 1928.