Sit

by Taisen Deshimaru

  In Shobogenzo Genjo Koan it is written that the ego joins the cosmic order. This is mayoi, illusion. Then we have the opposite: the cosmic order certifies, makes shine the ego. This is satori.60

  In the Agama sutra, it is written that shiki, consciousness, arises before everything. That everything consists of thinking. Thinking manages everything. So if we talk or act with evil thinking, it is like someone who runs after the tracks of a car. And so surely suffering comes.61

  But if we talk, if we act with pure thinking, then at this time joyfulness, happiness, comes. The shadow follows the form.

  AUG. 31 / 7 A.M.

  THE 180-DEGREE CHANGE

  This is the last day of this forty-day sesshin. Everybody is happy.... Those who have come here for the ten-day sesshin- you must change your mind. You must make contact with your true deep mind. This is sesshin. Ses means to touch, and shin means true mind.

  And those who received the ordination yesterday, they too must change. They must stop taking drugs and return to original mind. Drugs are of no use. Drugs are special mind.... For those who took drugs and who have completely stopped taking them, this is satori.

  I began the kusens of this camp by comparing Soto and Rinzai Zen. Dogen criticized Rinzai Zen, calling it zusan, negligent....

  Both Soto and Rinzai are, I think, continuing to be practiced in Continental China. Dogen, however, brought Soto Zen to Japan, to an island, and a more delicate mind developed.

  (Master Deshimaru again recounts the story of Rinzai and Obaku. Rinzai asked Obaku what was the essence of Buddhism, and Obaku gave Rinzai thirty blows; so Rinzai left the Obaku dojo to join master Taigu. The same incident was repeated with Rinzai and Taigu, the same question and the same reply-and Taigu hit Rinzai in the same fashion; but this time Rinzai got satori.)

  The essence of Buddhism is very simple. And Rinzai understood what was satori.... But Rinzai made a little mistake. His Zen is a little zusan, a little negligent; so it is not so simple.

  (Deshimaru, who is presently comparing the crucial moments, the respective awakenings, of Rinzai and Dogen, goes on to recount the story of Dogen and Nyojo. As recorded earlier in this text, Nyojo became angry with a monk sleeping in zazen, and he hit the monk several times with his wooden shoe. Dogen, who was sitting beside the monk at the time, received a big shock.)

  The characteristics of Rinzai and Dogen differ on this point. Dogen at the time was younger; he was more pure, more delicate than Rinzai. When Dogen received his shock he did not escape, nor did he become angry.

  So, after hitting the sleeping monk, Nyojo said: "I stop zazen today, I stop the education, I stop the sesshin," and he returned very angry to his room.

  Dogen followed the master to his room and did sampai. Dogen was completely impressed. "Shin jin datsu raku, " he said. "Today, master I received a big shock. My body and mind have completely changed. It has changed by 180 degrees."

  Master Nyojo's inside mind was completely satisfied. "My education has reached the mind of a disciple." He smiled, just a little smile, and said: "Datsu raku shin fin. " He was telling Dogen to continue to throw down body and mind. Nyojo was a great master.

  Rinzai people claim that Dogen got satori at this moment. But Dogen, himself, never said this. Dogen only wrote that he was impressed, shocked. Nyojo never said: "I give you the shiho, you got satori."62 Nyojo only smiled. Shin jin datsu raku, datsu raku shin fin. More, more, encore more, until death. The way is not finished. This is Soto Zen.

  What is mayoi, what is illusion? Mayoi is a strong self-consciousness, a strong personal consciousness. So the ego is transported (i.e., by one's own proper consciousness) to the side of manpo, to the side of all existence, the cosmic order. And the cosmic order causes the ego to progress-it changes the ego. Mayoi is the ego which turns the Dharma.

  BE LIKE A DONKEY

  The Shobogenzo is the text for Soto Zen.

  However, it is not necessary to speak of "Soto" or to speak of "Zen." The essence of Buddhism is only one. Without zazen there is no essence. Shikantaza, this is Dogen's conclusion. With zazen, hannya haramitsu, wisdom, arises. Automatically, naturally, unconsciously. This is Dogen's opinion.

  Practice, the hidden practice. This is not show, not demonstration, not decoration. It is only practice hidden inside, hidden inside mind. The secret practice.

  Soto Zen is not very demonstrative. It is like the big fool, like the donkey. You must practice like the fool, so it is written at the end of the Hokyo Zan Mai. This means that you must practice sincerely, honestly. Do not show your cleverness, your intelligence. Hide them.

  Be like a lion and people will be scared. So it is better to be like a donkey (not a real donkey) and people will not be frightened. Too beautiful a flower: people will immediately cut it. A big ugly tree with many knots: nobody will cut it down (except maybe, in the end, for wood).

  This is the wisdom of life. Too intelligent, too beautifullater this becomes dangerous. You must hide it. Be like the donkey, the fool. A great and intelligent person is like the Great Fool....

  Kaijo.

  AUG. 31 /10.30 A.M.

  ALL CIVILIZATIONS, ALL RELIGIONS PASS ON

  This is the last zazen. Concentrate.

  In Zen Buddhism compassion and wisdom are very important. Hannya haramita, the perfect wisdom, Buddha's wisdomthis and compassion are like the two wings of a bird. With them you can arrive at the true truth. In Buddhism the true truth is itself these two wings.

  Humanity today is in complete crisis. Communism cannot solve it or cure it-for they only try to resolve the problem through economics and through materialism. Socialism cannot solve it, nor can nationalism, science, ecology. They are in duality.

  So each of us must find peace in his own mind. One must sublimate one's desires. Running after the material, running after money.... Decrease egoism, this is necessary.

  Therefore all religions are important. The religious person must practice, not imagine.

  I think that this forty-day meeting, which has assembled over a thousand people in the practice of zazen, is a great historic event.... Your existence is utterly necessary for the future of civilization.... Relative to world population the people assembled here are very few. In Christ's time, too, very few people assembled around him, but it spread.

  The so-called exchanging of civilizations has been occurring since the First World War. The intellectuals, the intelligentsia, say that this East-West exchange is essential and indispensible to world peace.63

  Christianity and the European civilization came to Japan during the Tokugawa period,64 about three-hundred years ago. It was accepted by the Japanese, and so it developed and its influence spread. And after the Meiji Revolution65 even the emperor changed his clothes: from a kolomo to a western suit.

  Before then everyone, even the men, wore their hair long. Now they cut it. And today all Japanese people receive a western education. If a Japanese does not learn English while in secondary school, he does not receive a diploma.... The whole of Japanese life has changed. One hundred years ago the Japanese did not know milk, butter, cheese or bread. They did not even know what an apple was. And so too with knives, forks and houses. Houses are now built in the western style.... China also has changed. Mao changed it Marx and Lenin: the Russian style.

  Since my arrival in Europe, I have noticed that Europeans do not much accept Asiatic culture. Very few speak Chinese or Japanese. At the Sorbonne, some study orientalism-but I looked into the matter: they think of orientalism as an antiquity.66

  Some westerners think that Japanese art is important. As with the No theater. But not at all. Japanese art is antiquity. Western art has completely developed and its art is better than that in Japan.

  So zazen is the complete essence of Asiatic culture. Traveling from India, to China, to Japan, zazen has become today the essence of Japanese culture. What is left of Japanese culture is but western culture.

  Everyone has a good posture. Please don't forget this posture when
you leave here.

  There will be no mondo today. It is not necessary to ask any more questions.

  Three children will be receiving the ordination after zazen. This has a deep meaning.

  The emperor changed his style of dress, and so did the military. They have changed to the French style. The hat and the uniform and even the sword has changed. The sword they use is no longer Japanese. This is very funny.

  And now you, here, have changed to the black kolomo-and to the kesa! The highest!

  The Japanese have forgotten the black kolomo and the kesa. And the Japanese monks, they have forgotten the true kesa. Japanese monks, in modem times, only wear the kesa for ceremony and for funeral services. They wear the kesa only while in the temple. When traveling, and while in daily life, one does not see many kesas. So it is in Japan and so it is, too, in Europe. This is why everyone who sees me, dressed in the true kesa of the transmission, are surprised.... But now this kesa is spreading in the West.

  Socrates too wore one. All the great philosophers in that time in Greece word the kesa. Imitation kesas. At that time, Asia was an influence on Greece, and Greece on Asia. There was an exchange of cultures.

  Nagarjuna wrote that to understand true Buddhism, true religion, the kesa is most important. The kesa, he wrote, is the essence of Buddhism.... You must study the true kesa. Nagarjuna, near the end of his life, studied only the kesa; he abandoned all his books to this study. And Dogen wrote that all the great patriarchs did likewise.67

  If you practice zazen, and if you wear the kesa, it will influence all the West. And so, too, it will once again influence the Japanese.

  Those who were ordained yesterday are the treasures of this East-West exchange; they are historical treasures. Since two or three thousand years, right up until today, the transmission of the kesa has continued.

  All civilizations change, and so too do the religions; they pass on like water in a stream. Mujo. Like bubbles on the water. But zazen and the true kesa have continued until today, from patriarch to patriarch; from China and Japan, and now to Europe. Zazen and the kesa have again become fresh.

  I thank you for your good postures, and for the good sesshin....

  BASO (Ma-tsu 709-788). Great chan master of the Tang dynasty. Disciple of Nangaku and master of Hyakujo. Certified 139 disciples in all, many of whom became celebrated masters in their own right: Hyakujo, Nansen, Daibai Hojo and Layman Pang. Baso was the first to use the rough-method technique of shouts and blows (zusan) to awaken his disciples. However, he was also known for his never-ending gyoji, his strong samu, and for his unremitting zazen which he practiced on a large stone. Baso set up his dojo at Kosei, west of the river Yangtse. At the same time Sekito set up his, south of the lake Toung-Ting, and the disciples often traveled between the two dojos. So you have the expression, "west of the river, south of the lake. " Here perhaps are the true origins of the two schools (later named Rinzai and Soto respectively), Baso and Sekito being their actual forefathers. "From the river to the lake," goes a line in an ancient poem dedicated to both of them, "how many times have they gone, how many times have they stayed?"

  BODAI-SHIN (Bodhi-citta in Sanskrit). The mind which aspires to the way, which aspires to the highest Buddhahood. The mind which observes mujo, the impermanence of the world, which observes birth and death.

  BODHI or BODHIDHARMA (Sanskrit). First Zen Patriarch and 28th in the line from the Buddha. Indian monk from Ceylon, disciple of Hannyatara and master to Eka. Spent the last decade of his life in China, where he died at the age of one-hundred fifty. After arriving in China, and after a brief and discordant, though celebrated, mondo with the emperor, Bodhidharma headed north to the Yellow River. Traveling thousands of miles by foot, he arrived in the northern mountains where he occupied a cave, later called Shorinji temple on Mount Su-zan (Sho-lin on Mount Sung in Chinese). Known in his own time simply as the Brahmin-whofaces-a-wall, he sat in this cave, facing a wall, for nine years.

  BODHISATTVA (Sanskrit). Either a human or a celestial being. His basic characteristics are compassion and perseverence. He who dedicates his life to helping others by participating in the social reality. Nothing distinguishes him from others, yet his mind is Buddha. In fact a Bodhisattva is a living Buddha. His essence is bodhi, that is, the wisdom resulting from direct perception of truth. With the advent of Mahayana, the Bodhisattva ideal came to replace the older arahat ideal of Hinayana, and thereby brought in a whole new scope, a new goal, to Buddhism; for while the arahat aims at self-enlightenment alone, the Bodhisattva aims at leading all people to enlightenment. Like a house on fire, the Bodhisattva stays on until the last man is out of the flames before he himself steps out.

  BONNO (Klesa in Sankrit). For lack of a better word, bonno can be translated as "illusion. " It is existence in obscurity, confusion and suffering. (Bon means trouble some, and no means suffering.) Bonnos are created when a person thinks with his personal, subjective mind. The basic bonnos from which stem all other bonnos are: ignorance, anger, pride, doubt, grasping and wrong views.

  BONNO SOKU BODAI. Bonno becomes satori.

  BUDDHA. A Sanskrit word containing many meanings:

  1. as the legendary Buddhas of the past, present and future

  2. an enlightened person

  3. simply enlightenment or awakening

  4. The fundamental cosmic power and/or the true nature of the universe

  5. and more commonly the Buddha Shakyamuni, the man who was born in Kapilavatthu in 536 B.C. and who died in Kuchinagara in 483 B.C.

  Shakyamuni was known in his youth as the Prince Siddhartha Gautama, being that he was the son of the king of the Shakya, a small kingdom in the Himalayan foothills of present-day Nepal; and later in his life-time he was known as the Buddha or the Awakened One; or more simply as Shakyamuni, which means the Silent Sage of the Shakya Clan. The life of the Buddha was very simple. He left home at the age of twenty-nine, had his satori under the Bodhi-tree at Bodh-Gaya at the age of thirty-five, and spent the rest of his life teaching his disciples. He died in the woods near the river Kushinagara, at the age of eighty.

  Shakyamuni Buddha is regarded neither as a god, nor as a savior, but rather as a fully awakened, fully perfected human being. Again, on another dimension, he is regarded as no different than the five human Buddhas before him, or to the Buddha Maitreya to follow. In the latter case, Shakyamuni Buddha is regarded as one of the links in a chain of Buddhas which extends from the remotest past into the immeasurable future.

  BUDDHISM. The name given to the teachings of the Buddha Shakyamuni (563-483 B.C.). It is the teaching of ku or sunyata which means emptiness. Buddhism is sometimes called the Middle Way, that is, a middle without extremes, which is ku or existence without noumenon (substance).

  Buddhism is grouped under two main branches, Hinayana and Mahayana, and together they make up the dominant religion of the world numbering over three hundred million followers. Hinayana, or Theravada as it is more accurately called, arose in southern India and spread to Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Mahayana meanwhile spread from northern India to Tibet, Mongolia, China, Korea, Japan and also Vietnam where both branches are firmly implanted.

  Buddhism is above creed, color, dogma, ideology and racial barriers, discord, religious fundamentalism and fanaticism. On the contrary, it preaches compassion, selfless service, incessant good and happiness to one and all. Buddhism teaches man to free himself from the three root causes of suffering (greed, hatred and delusion), and it offers solutions to the timeless problems of human existence and personal growth. "Buddhism," says Kodo Sawaki, "is the question of how to live this life for the highest good, to live it with meaning." (see Mahayana and Hinayana).

  BUDO (bu: war and do: the way). The way of the samurai, the way of combat. The martial arts. And bushido (bushi: warrior) is the warrior's code of honor.

  BUSSHO KAPILA. The mealtime sutra chanted before breakfast and lunch; but not before supper, the reason being that the Buddha did not eat aft
er mid-day. The sutra begins with a brief history of the life of the Buddha:

  Bussho Kapila (Buddha was born in Kapila)

  Jodo Makada (he got his satori in Makada)

  Seppo Harana (he taught in Harana)

  Nyumetsu Kuchira (he entered nirvana in Kuchira)

  In the next verse are mentioned the names of the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas, and a small wooden clapper is struck after each name. In one of the closing verses it is said that when eating the first spoonful we cut all the bad karma, with the second spoonful we create all the good karma, and with the third we save humanity.

  CHAN (Chinese for Zen, dhyana in Sanskrit). Established in China by the Indian monk Bodhidharma in the sixth century, Chan (or Zen) is the teaching of Buddhism in its most naked, bare, unclad, pure sense. The Buddha's teaching transmitted from master to disciple.

  After the death of Eno the 6th and last official Patriarch (713), Chan spread rapidly, breaking up into two major branches, the Northern and the Southern. In the succeeding centuries a variety of schools developed (Unmon, Honen, Igyo, Rinzai and Soto, or the Five Schools of Chan), but by the twelfth century all five schools became pretty much reabsorbed into two major teachings, that of Rinzai and Soto.

  CHUKAI! Expression used by the master and directed to the kyosakumen. It means to stop the kyosaku (the stick). When the master says "chukai," the kyosakumen replace the kyosakus on the altar below the statue of the Buddha.

  DAICHI (1290-1366). Disciple of Soto masters Meiho-Sotetsu and Keizan. Traveled in China for eleven years and spent one year in Korea. Daichi had no disciples, and he died alone in his temple in Kyushu (later burned to the ground by the Jesuits). Famous for his numerous and original poems on zazen.

  DAISHI (see Genkaku).

  DALE SOKO (Ta-Hui in Chinese, 1089-1163). Chinese rinzai master, and great champion of the koan method. He perfected this method with the explicit vow to save Chan from the "Soto blockheads who only sit upright with their eyes closed, neglecting enlight enment altogether. " Hailed by his disciples as the reincarnation of master Rinzai, and four hundred years later Rinzai master Hakuin writes, of Daie's teaching method, that it "was the supreme upwardstriving Zen. "