—Eihei Dogen,
SHOBOGENZO ZUIMONKI
SOME PEOPLE THINK THAT our practice in the Soto tradition is just-sitting. I feel fortunate that I had a chance to study koans. In this passage Dogen Zenji does not say just sit. What is the difference between physically sitting on a cushion and sitting in shikantaza? Shikantaza is often translated as “just sit!” Shikan means “wholeheartedly” or “just,” za is the verb “to sit,” and ta is an emphatic, an exclamation point. Even to concentrate on sitting wholeheartedly is not enough. Dogen Zenji does not say just wholeheartedly sit on a cushion. If you believe in just doing that, place a rock or a piece of wood on a cushion and let it sit. It sits better than we do. Is that enlightened life? We should not fool ourselves.
Some of you ask, “What am I supposed to do during zazen? Should I just be aware of what is going on around me and observe carefully?” Let’s look at shikan once more. Dogen Zenji emphasizes the shi part. What is shi? Stop! Stop the conscious mind from going on and on and on and on, from one subject to another, unceasingly. And kan means seeing, observing, or being aware. These may seem contradictory, but both are important, do you see? If you can stop the conscious mind from going on and on, then you can be aware of what is truly going on, what to do, and how to do it.
In Shobogenzo Bendowa, Dogen Zenji talks about the content of shikantaza and about clarifying this great matter. He uses this expression, “clarifying this great matter,” twice even in this short passage. What is the great matter? This is the koan. The Lotus Sutra also asks, “Why do buddhas appear in the world? It is because of this one grave, important matter.” The great matter is your true life. Is there a false life? It is your true self. Is there any false self? Is your life a fake? It cannot be. Is your life true? How is it true? This is the great matter: how to clarify your life. In a way, this has nothing to do with sitting. But so far, zazen has proven to be the best and surest way to clarify it.
Shakyamuni Buddha guarantees us that we all have the wisdom and the virtuous aspects of the Tathagata Buddha. What does this mean? This is the great matter! Clarify it and see it as the treasury of the true dharma eye and subtle mind of nirvana. Confirm for yourself that the wisdom and virtue you have are the same as the Buddha’s. When your zazen becomes the zazen of Tathagata Buddha, then you are doing shikantaza. Otherwise you are doing something else.
Dogen Zenji says that reading is unnecessary, even studying is unnecessary. In fact, any kind of practice is unnecessary. He says just sit and clarify this great matter. He does not say that we should not study. He himself studied many things. It is said that he read the entire Tripitaka, a collection of early Buddhist texts, three times through. We can all benefit from study, but at certain periods of time it may be wise not to read much. This is what Dogen Zenji is talking about here.
You might feel that being Christian could be a hindrance to practice, or being a woman, a monk, a layperson, being young or old, smart or dull. These might become hindrances as much as reading literature or poetry or the sayings of the masters. Ultimately, it does not matter whether you are Jewish, Christian, European, American, yellow, white, or black, whether you read or don’t read. Buddha himself was Hindu. As a Hindu, he became buddha. Buddha wants you to become buddha, awake, whether you’re Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant, whether reading or not reading. Why not?
Do you see the problem? You say, “I am doing shikantaza.” No, you are not. This is the problem. You say, “I am working on koan.” No, you are not. As soon as you objectify it, as soon as there is any separation between you and shikantaza, between you and koan, there is the problem. Reading books is not the way to solve the problem. Not reading books is not the way to solve the problem. It has nothing to do with working on koan or not working on koan, with doing shikantaza or not doing shikantaza. If you say it does, then you should truly practice koan or truly practice shikantaza. Shikan is the koan; taza is the case. Koan and shikantaza are the same. We should not be blinded by words. Realize the grave matter! Integrate it! This is why the buddhas appear.
Clarifying the grave matter is more important than simply reading the sayings of the masters. Rather, we should deal with koans, which are the sayings of the old masters, in such a way that our life is one of great intimacy, of shikan. In that way our life will be the same as the sayings and doings of the masters. The masters’ sayings manifest as the realization of our lives. This is how we should deal with koans and with shikantaza. How you do it and how much you do it is your practice. And along with your practice, the realization of your life manifests. Your life is nothing but the Way.
This so-called realization or enlightenment is not something that you add to yourself; it is not something outside your life. It already is your life. It is also the life of Shakyamuni Buddha himself and of all the masters, including Dogen Zenji. When we realize this, we will see ourselves hand in hand with all the masters. And furthermore, my life, your life, becomes the life of the buddhas and ancestors. This is the transmission. That is the meaning of shikantaza and the meaning of koan. Realize it! Your life is already this fact. Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment guarantees it.
SAVE ALL SENTIENT BEINGS
THE FOUR BODHISATTVA VOWS
Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them;
Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them;
The dharmas are boundless, I vow to master them;
The Buddha Way is unsurpassable, I vow to attain it.
WHEN I REFLECT UPON THE VOW of saving all sentient beings, I am actually reflecting about saving myself. Saving oneself is the fulfillment of the vow to save all sentient beings. Oneself has a double implication. The first refers to this limited self, this individual life; the second refers to Oneself, this whole life as One. This expresses the very basic premise of Buddha’s teaching: one is all, all is one. One Mind is all dharma, everything. This One Mind, body and mind, is anything, everything.
We usually divide our life into two. There is usually me and my life, and then there is some other life that is separate from me, or not-me. But in fact, this is not so; there is no other life that is separate from you. When you live your life in this separate way, the vow to save all sentient beings becomes nonsense.
How can I save all sentient beings? The bodhisattva is one with the Way, one with bodhi. Sattva is “person” and bodhi is “enlightenment,” or realization of the Way. So to some degree the bodhisattva is the one who truly realizes and understands what the Way is, what life is, and then just lives that life.
We have another general definition of bodhisattva as the one who, instead of taking care of herself, does something for others. For the bodhisattva, self and other are the same. In doing for others, the bodhisattva knows that he is doing for himself, too.
How do we save all sentient beings? We say that the bodhisattva’s job is selling water by the river. Isn’t this unnecessary? There is plenty of water in the river for everyone. In fact, we are the water itself, true nature itself! No one needs to buy it. But we don’t believe that our life is the Way just as it is.
We also have a saying: In order to take care of poison, use poison. A bodhisattva uses everything, including intellectual ideas and discriminative thinking, in order to save all sentient beings from their attachment to their ideas and discriminative thinking.
The bodhisattva does all these things in order to take care of certain situations. In a sense, you live in a dualistic way because you are confused and do not trust yourself, and for this reason the bodhisattva has to sell water by the river. But duality itself is also absolute. So are the bodhisattva’s actions. We talk about things as if one thing is relative and another is absolute, but in fact, there is no such thing as absolute or relative. Such distinctions exist only in our thoughts.
So when we have pain or struggles, our suffering itself is absolute. All our actions are absolute. But when we talk about something as being absolute, then it is relative to something else. This is not the abso
lute; it is just an idea. Ideas are always relative, dualistic in subject and object, in opposition to this I, my, me.
Who is the bodhisattva? Each of us is the bodhisattva. And each moment of our life includes all sentient beings. This was the starting point for Shakyamuni Buddha. When he attained Buddhahood, he exclaimed, “I and the great earth, all beings, have simultaneously attained the Way.” Can you see the relationship between Shakyamuni’s I and all beings? Does I attain the Way simultaneously with all beings, or do all beings simultaneously attain the Way with I? The bodhisattva’s vow to save all beings is vowing to realize what this I is. This is our practice. Regardless of whether we realize it or not, our life is this one is all, all is one. Realization is nothing other than becoming aware of this fact.
So this general vow of the bodhisattva can be examined literally as well as from different perspectives. We should closely examine who the bodhisattva is and what bodhi is. What is meant by all beings and by I? This I is always the key point. “I and the great earth, all beings.” Are these separate or one? And how do we all accomplish the Way simultaneously? This is the task of the bodhisattva; this is our vow.
The next vow is: Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them. Dharmas, all phenomena, are also inexhaustible, so in a sense, desires and dharmas are not much different. As a matter of fact, these desires also include the bodhisattva’s desires to save all beings, and in doing so, he himself or she herself is saved. This is a greedy desire. Usually we think that we should not have desires, that they are somehow bad. Bon no, which we translate as “desires,” is also “caring.” We care about all sorts of things, and there are different kinds of caring.
On a commonsense level, if your caring is right caring, then do it. If it is wrong caring, then stop it. What makes it right or wrong caring? We come back to separation, duality. If we do not see things as one, we fall into the dichotomy that creates the relative world, the right and wrong, the good and bad. Then caring is no longer true caring. When our caring is creating the problem, it should be cut off. So in other words, in seeing the whole, in seeing everything as one life, we eliminate the desires or the causes for our troubles; we eliminate the deluded life.
We have all kinds of dharma principles. In koan study the Five Ranks of Master Tozan1 express the state of oneness from five different perspectives. In the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures,2 our life is seen from ten perspectives. In other words, this one life is appreciated from many different perspectives. This leads to the third vow: The dharmas are boundless, I vow to master them. It is always one dharma, and this one dharma is boundless. Indeed it is! It is not one, three, or ten, but literally anything, everything. It is the life of each of us! How do we master these dharmas? The way to master them is to truly see what this life is. The Buddha Way, the enlightened Way, or the life of the bodhisattva is the best way. The Buddha Way is unsurpassable, I vow to attain it. So let us realize the Way together. This is the fourth vow.
Our life is the Way to begin with. So who is the bodhisattva? Having abundant water as your life, who needs to buy water? Just be yourself as the Way itself. This is the best way to be a bodhisattva, living this seemingly small individual life in relationship to all surroundings as the mutual exchange of energy, as a whole, as one life.
One of you said to me, “I know my life is wrong.” When I heard this, I thought that this person must have a very clear understanding! Usually we do not realize that our life is not quite right. And this person said further, “I know my life is wrong because I am so selfish.” So he knows the reason, too! This is a wonderful place to start. He knows that discriminating between I and other creates problems. Unfortunately, we all do this and so we invite the problems of separation. It is easy to talk about this, but how do we actually take care of it?
I quite often recall the koan “Zuigan’s Master.” My father also loved this koan. I believe it was a guideline for him. When I was very little, I vividly remember my father speaking to my brothers and me about this koan. It was a good lesson. Master Zuigan calls to himself, “Is the master in? Is the master in?” And Zuigan answers himself, “Yes, I am.” And Zuigan asks further, “Are you really awake?” Then he answers himself, “Yes, I am.” Then Zuigan says, “Do not be deceived by others.” Zuigan replies, “No, I won’t.”
This is a marvelous koan. My father asked us, “Who are the others?” From time to time we complain about all kinds of things about other people, and we feel that we are being deceived. My father told us that these others are not living outside ourselves. The more I reflect on this teaching, it has double, even triple meanings. Just an amazing thing, those others inside myself. How true it is!
There should not be divisions. Everything is always happening now. We may feel that something happens in the future, but in fact, each moment is now. We may realize certain things more distinctly in certain moments, but it is always now. When we do not see this, when we create divisions, we are this much deluded.
Please really appreciate yourself! This life of each of us is most precious. If you disagree, you are the one who must buy water by the river. This is a very clear-cut, straightforward issue. How can we realize this fact of our life and live it?
1. The teachings of Master Tozan, or Tung Shan, the cofounder of Soto Zen in China in the tenth century—Eds.
2. A series of ten pictures originally created by a twelfth-century Chinese Zen master depicting the various stages of Zen practice and realization—Eds.
KOANS OF ZAZEN
DOGEN ZENJI’S Universal Promotion of the Principles of Zazen1 is a fundamental text relating to the practice of zazen. The Soto master Harada Sogaku Roshi picked certain phrases from this text and worked with them as koans.
For me there is basically no diiference between koan and zazen. What is the most important point of both koan and zazen? Needless to say, it is our life. We call our life Buddha nature. Mountains and rivers and the great earth all depend on this nature. Strictly speaking, everything is no other than this nature. What is this Buddha nature? It is the absoluteness of life, it is our life. This is what all the masters in different times and places have dealt with. And now that is what you are dealing with, too. This boundless life is the true life of each of us, do you see?
How can zazen be practiced by anybody, everybody? How can koan be practiced in this way? A koan is not solving a puzzle or playing some kind of game. No! What is important is how you are taking care of your life. Sometimes this life is a shit stick, sometimes a true man of no rank, sometimes a wheel, a dog, a cat, trees, flowers, mountains and rivers, and the great earth. All of these appear as Buddha nature.
The first koan that Harada Roshi picked from this Universal Promotion of the Principles of Zazen is, “The Way is basically perfect and all-pervading.” And it goes with the next line, “The dharma vehicle is free and untrammeled.” What is the dharma vehicle? How does it function freely? How can we appreciate life as perfect and all-pervading? We say that life is a manifestation of one thing, and it is also a manifestation of everything. That is also the nature of our life. It has no limit, it is free and untrammeled. If we think we are limited, we think so in our head. This life is limitless!
The second koan is, “If there is the slightest discrepancy, the Way is as distant as heaven from earth.” Dogen Zenji says later on, “When you take one misstep, right there you fail.” This is true, isn’t it? In order to go somewhere, if you go in even a slightly different direction, the distance becomes wider and wider the farther you go. So we should be careful about even the slightest discrepancy. Relating to our zazen, what creates this discrepancy? How does this discrepancy arise? This is a most important point to consider, especially because of how much trouble this discrepancy causes us.
The third koan is, “One is making the initial, partial excursions about the frontiers.” What are these “initial, partial excursions”? Then along with that line, “It is still somewhat deficient in the vital Way of total emancipation.” What is the
Way of total emancipation? What is the relationship between partial excursions and total emancipation?
Then the fourth koan. “Learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself.” What does this mean? I do not mean as an explanation, but actually, as a matter of fact, how do you illuminate yourself inwardly, and how do you step backward? How do you look at yourself?
The next koan follows: When you take that backward step, then “body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest.” How does your original face manifest? How does your body and mind drop away? Isn’t it a wonderful koan? I am quoting exactly what Dogen Zenji says. Each sentence is a beautiful koan.
What is this original face? In Buddhism we do not separate the essence from the appearance or reality. The intrinsic nature and relative reality of this body all together are Buddha nature, the original face. This very flimsy, clumsy life itself is none other than Buddha nature, do you see?
What is prior to all our intellectual knowledge and discriminative functions of our mind? There is a famous koan of the Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng, who was an illiterate newcomer to the monastery but his realization was profound. Much to the shock of the monks who had practiced long and hard at the monastery, he was recognized by the Fifth Patriarch as his dharma heir. So when Hui-neng received dharma transmission from the Fifth Patriarch, his life was in danger, and he went into hiding in the mountains. Monk Myo, a former general, chased after him. When Myo caught up with him, the Sixth Patriarch said, “Without thinking good or evil, show me your original face.” In other words, prior to this or that, prior to right or wrong, good or bad, prior to all these discursive thoughts, what is there? What is the original face? What is your original face?
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