Category: Kusen

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Kusen

80. Nothing is Mine

The Bodhisattva of Compassion, practising zazen, sees that the five Skandha are empty, and relieves all suffering.

Okumura said that it is not me seeing that the five Skandha are empty, it is the five Skandha seeing that the five Skandha are empty.

That is, the five Skandha are not the property of the self. This body and mind does not belong to me. That being so, I cannot do other than care for it, as it is not mine. Because nothing is mine, I can take care of all beings.

So it is that the Bodhisattva of Compassion appears when Emptiness appears, when the seeing of the five Skandhas appears: everything jumps out at the same time, and always at this time. And he is the whole world.

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Kusen

79. All Things Unblurred

I believe in life after death.
Your life. All life

Although each death I am alone
At each birth you’re always there;
All things unblurred

We imagine that we are born, we endure, we die. But it isn’t true. From moment to moment we are born and we die, within this body.

We invent other bodies, other worlds because we don’t understand our experience in this body, in this world.

Everything that becomes religion is rooted in our actual experience as human beings. We gather together and experience and later, to explain, we might say: “It was as if a God had entered me.”

And someone later goes looking for the God. Duh.

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Kusen

78. Mind is World

Master Baso famously said, “Mind Is World”

We’re apt to take this to mean that we create our world.

But he didn’t say that, he said Mind Is World.

When we carefully observe the mind, what remains ours? Isn’t it the case that everything comes from ‘outside’? Isn’t what we call Mind a vivid exemplar of dependent origination? And if that is so, what is there to clear? What is there to settle?

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Kusen

77. The Body of the World

Sanskrit has distinct and separate words for Enlightenment (bodhi), the path from delusion to enlightenment (marga) and the six realms of Saṃsāra (gate).

The Chinese translated all three as Dao, Way. In Japanese, ‘Dao ‘ is ‘Do’ as in, for example, Dotoku, Expression. Toku means to attain, to be able, to say.

For us, that seems extraordinary, and for us to understand requires a huge shift in perspective, from the personal to the universal.

It was not that the Chinese had a shortage of words, or were careless. For them Way is primary because it is a description of the full dynamic functioning of everything.

In a similar fashion, the original meaning of Dharmakaya, the universal body of the buddha, was his teachings. When his body of flesh had gone, his body of words would remain. The Chinese universalised that to mean The Body Of The World, Everything.

To every thing a voice

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Kusen

Mujo

Mujo (Impermanence)

To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops
Shaken from a crane’s bill

Although at first glance Dogen is expressing familiar themes within Japanese poetry of the poignancy of transient beauty, the sadness inherent in the awareness that all things are impermanent, his real intention in the poem is to show the wholeness of everything. There is no Nirvana, no Being (Moonlight) except within Samsara, within beings. The Moon is reflected in the clouds, in the rain, in the dewdrops, in the river, in the ocean, in the eye, in the mind, in the heart. And apart from this reflection, there is no moon.

Cranes were said to live for a thousand years, and the poem can also be seen as a poetic response to Case 3 of The Blue Cliff a Record. In that case, Baso is unwell ( in fact, he is dying). The Temple Superintendent asked him how he was and he replied ” Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha”

The reference is to the Sutra of the Buddhas Names. According to the sutra, the lifespan of the Sun Face Buddha is 1,800 years, while the lifespan of the Moon Face Buddha is just a day.

Baso was alluding to the double aspect of beings. We occupy a particular momentary dharma position, and at the same time each being is all being, eternal. Momentary and eternal. Dogen radicalises the momentariness, and so emphasises the unity of all being. Although the dewdrops are transient, the water of life does not go.

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Kusen

Dogen’s Poem ‘Kyoto’

Kyoto
Is surely still ablaze with autumn.
In this deep mountain
It hailed this morning
It hails this evening
(Adapted)

In this poem, Dogen contrasts the secular life – Kyoto- with the life of Zazen.

The image of the white hail falling on the white mountain, gives a sense of monotony, of sameness, of time passing slowly. We would rather be somewhere else, but we choose to be here.

Very often, it is the same familiar state that we keep returning to during Zazen, and it’s usually disagreeable: boredom, anxiety, disappointment, pain. Hail.

The ego is the membrane between the noise and this familiar state. But it is within this state, which we always wish vainly away, this darkness, that what we are seeking is concealed, concealed in plain sight.

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Kusen

76. With Our Listening

A pernicious and invisible delusion for practitioners is that there is an inside and an outside to experience: We should cleanse inner experience by eradicating thoughts and noise, and our experience of the world will be transformed.

But of course, there isn’t an inner and an outer, there’s just this experience, within which there is inner and outer, self and world, mind and body, and all the other familiar created dualities.

Our task isn’t to change this experience, but to listen to it. Really listen. Listen with our ears. Listen with our eyes. Listen with our skin. Listen with our breath. Listen with our listening.

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Kusen

Dogen’s Poem ‘Everyday Life’ [adapted]

Poetry Dogen’s ‘Everyday Life’ [adapted]

On Unseen Mountain
A scarecrow is
Not in vain

Commentary:

The scarecrow standing over a small rice paddy would often be dressed in black, like a monk. He protects that which feeds all beings. So, Dogen is talking about the practitioner and the dharma, and the relationship between them.

Because the scarecrow is fully expressing himself, the rice, the birds, the mountain and all things can fully express themselves. Likewise the bird. Likewise the mountain.

Because the mountain is unseen, the eyes of duality are closed. Because this is so, all being leaps out of a picture and is whole, not fractured.

The scarecrow does not eat yet all things are fed

Since, unlike a Hungry Ghost, the scarecrow is not

smeared across time

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Kusen

The Gateless Barrier, Case 1, Joshu’s Dog

The Gateless Barrier, Case 1, Joshu’s Dog

The case:
A monk asked Joshu “Does a dog have Buddha Nature?”
Joshu said “Mu” [no]

Commentary:

Case 18 in The Book of Serenity has a longer version of this story. In that version, Joshu is asked the same question by two monks. To the first he answers ‘Yes’. To the second, he answers ‘No’.

You can see in this a characteristic way of talking about Emptiness, similar to the apparent negations that appear in the Heart Sutra.

In early buddhism in India, Buddha Nature, the potential to become enlightened, is restricted to human and similar beings. Dogs don’t have it. When buddhism develops in China, there’s a change. All living things have Buddha Nature, and, eventually, all things have Buddha Nature, which is taken to its logical end point in Dogen’s reworking of ‘All things have Buddha Nature’ to ‘All existence is Buddha Nature’. Enlightenment ceases to be a personal quality or possibility, and becomes universal. Every window springs open.

On the one side people, insects, birds and grasses. On the other, the Universal Body of the Buddha. On the one side your karmic consciousness, on the other side Buddha. On the one side form, on the other side emptiness. On the one side the complete exertion of a single thing, on the other the complete dynamic functioning of all things.

And although these two sides are the same, they don’t encounter each other. When one side is illuminated, the other is dark.

So, the dog doesn’t have Buddha Nature.

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Kusen

Case 47 of The Blue Cliff Record

Case 47 of The Blue Cliff Record is usually rendered as follows:

A monk asked Master Yunmen: What is the Buddha’s Dharma Body? Yunmen replied ” The six (senses) cannot grasp it”

However, it can also be rendered as an exchange between the two, the monk making a statement “The Buddha’s Dharma Body Is What (Suchness)” and Master Yunmen, by implication, affirming the statement.

The temptation is for us to think that the Dharmakaya is ‘real’ and that the world of sensory grasping, the one we immediately recognise, is illusory. And, because we find contradiction and paradox difficult to bear, we imagine that to get the one, we must exclude the other. And because we never can, we suffer.

That is why the most common Buddhist metaphor is space, because it accommodates everything.

If someone asked you “Does the birdsong fill the space, or not?”, you wouldn’t answer yes or no, you would tell them to re-frame their question.