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200. The breath in zazen

A familiar instruction many of us have received is: keep returning the attention to the body and the breath.

This instruction is helpful providing you don’t imagine it’s your body, your attention, your breath, because to imagine this is simply to reintroduce the self, and the familiar dualities.

Returning the attention to the breath means that we are aware of this dynamic moving space within us. Which is the same space as that around us and beyond us. Hence, Emptiness is actualised.

Returning the attention to this body is to clearly see that this body is part of the great body, the body of everything. Hence, Being is actualised.

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199. Do not stagnate in Emptiness

At the end of the Heart Sutra we chant Gya tei Gya tei…. – which means together we go beyond, across the river, to the far Shore. The far shore in this context means Nirvana.

What we need to understand is that zazen is the entire ground; this shore, the far shore, the ground beneath the river.

Therefore do not stagnate in emptiness. Wear neither the mask of the self nor the mask of false equanimity. Just allow everything to flood through you, like light.

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Book of Serenity, Case 91 (adapted)

The Case:

A person said to Master Nansen, “Heaven, Earth and the self have the same root. All things, including the self, are one person”

Nansen pointed to a flower and said, “These days, people see this flower as if in a dream”

Commentary:

In a lot of the koan stories, a person will state what they believe to be Buddhist doctrine, and the Master will respond in an apparently bizarre way: with laughter perhaps, or a non sequitur. Why?

Ordinarily, we start off with a belief, and then try to make our experience correspond with that belief. So, we may believe that everything is empty, and then try to discern that emptiness, as if our actual experience is a dream. Or, we may, idiotically, aspire to personal enlightenment, and then keep checking our experience as it is against what we believe it should be.

But what we need to understand is that Buddhism isn’t a matter of belief, but a matter of experience. The experience when our sense of self, our sense of separation, is cast off. Actual people – people like you – experience something and try to describe it. A picture, not a key, not a dogma. But over time, the language fossilises into doctrine. We always need to say something from our actual experience. Then, and only then, there is expression.

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198. Entangled

If we see trees in a field, to the human eye, they are separate. However, their roots are completely entangled. So, if one of them is stricken, the others will support it, they will not let it fall.

In wide, open awareness, the mind flows into the body and so the body flows: into the ground, into the sky.

So all things are lifted up.

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Book Of Serenity, Case 18 (adapted)

The Case:

A monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have Buddha Nature?”

Joshu said, “No.”

The monk said, “All beings have Buddha Nature, how come the dog doesn’t?”

Joshu said, “Karmic Nature”

Commentary:

This is the best known of all the koans. It’s the quintessential koan. And so, it exemplifies how we misunderstand these teaching fragments.

I don’t believe the monk is really asking about a dog, or a dung beetle, or any other random thing; he’s really asking about himself: does this dog have Buddha Nature?

And Joshu says no because the monk’s framework is confused. There isn’t a fixed thing called ‘monk’ and there isn’t a fixed thing called ‘Buddha nature’, one concealed within the other. Because there are no fixed and separate things at all, there is Buddha Nature.

In most translations, such as Cleary’s, the ‘karmic nature’ is that of the dog. My teacher would say that the ‘karmic nature’ is that of the monk. That is, it’s the monk’s karma to get confused and ask questions in this way. But I like to think that Joshu is saying that it’s our karmic nature – as teacher and student, as human beings- to keep getting tangled up like this, untangling ourselves or the other, or both, getting entangled again… endless.

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Posture Instructions: How to breathe in zazen

My first teacher said that we should have a long, deep, complete exhalation, pushing our belly out as we press down, and a short natural inhalation. I am sorry to say that I believe these instructions to be completely mistaken.

Dogen said hardly anything about the breath. He just said to let a short breath be short and a long breath be long. At first glance, these instructions aren’t exactly comprehensive, but I think the import is clear: we shouldn’t try to control our breath.

Sometimes this is rendered as an instruction to just breathe naturally. Note the word. Not breathe normally, as you would when slumped over your computer, or slouching in a chair, but naturally.

Naturally for the zazen posture. When we are balanced, it is as if there is a vast cavern of breath inside us. There is nowhere it doesn’t reach. Sometimes it is breathing the bones of our pelvis. Sometimes our belly. Sometimes our intercostal muscles. Sometimes our clavicle. Sometimes our head. This natural breath breathes us, and as long as it does so, the body is no longer ‘the body’. It is no longer an object in our consciousness. It – everything – is free.

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197. Point to your mind

“A teacher and his student were standing by the shore. In the distance was a boat. The teacher said to the student ‘forgetting about your mind for the moment, point to the boat’. The student pointed to the boat. The teacher then said ‘forgetting about the boat for the moment, point to your mind’. The student pointed to the boat again”

In dualism, we imagine the mind comes first, occupying an unspecified space, within which the world then appears. But truly, mind and world are the same illumination. But it is not the great illumination.

Dogen said that when we see water, fish see shimmering palaces. Demons see blood. Gods see strings of pearls. But the eyes seeing ‘water’ are without limit, and so the powers of expression of ‘water’ are without limit. This is the great illumination. Likewise, ‘mountains’. Likewise, ‘thinking’.

Artwork by Blair Thomson
Artwork by Blair Thomson
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196. Everything matters

When we chant form is emptiness, we don’t mean that things are illusory. We mean that everything is both particular and universal, like the waves and the ocean. So everything matters.

When we touch one person, we are touching that person, not someone else. But, at the same time, we are touching all beings. Likewise, when we are touched by one person, we are touched by all beings. EveryThing matters.

So, when the birds of our thinking arise, whether their plumage is radiant or dowdy or as black as pitch, we should not cage them in our love or hate but

give them the sky

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195. This great person

In the Avalokiteshvara chapter of the Shobogenzo, there is a famous exchange between Master Ungan and Master Dogo about how best to describe the bodhisattva of compassion.

When asked by Dogo, Ungan describes Avalokiteshvara in a particular way. Dogo then says “your words describe the situation nicely, but only about eighty or ninety percent”, and then gives his own description.

Dogo’s description seems better, but if we think that he’s described the situation perfectly, or at least better than Ungan, we’re missing the point.

There’s always something missing. And because of that, the Dharma will not perish.

It is not that there aren’t teachers and students, but we need to understand what a teacher is.

He’s not someone who shares his knowledge. That’s a scholar. Neither is he someone who shares his wisdom. That’s a guru. It’s not that there isn’t a difference between teacher and student, but only in function, not essence.

They are like 2 points, which delineate a whole person, a great person. This real person fully occupies the Buddhist space, moving forward and backward, according to circumstance. Sometimes he is the teacher and student. Sometimes the sangha. Sometimes the whole world.

The teacher is not a great person, but sometimes he is part of a great person. The responsibility of a teacher is to teach with great vigour for the rest of his life. Not from his own vigour, which is puny, nor from the vigour of his student, which is likewise puny, but from the vigour and expression of this great person, which is inexhaustible.

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Shinji Shobogenzo, Book 2, Case 91

The Case:

One day, Master Tenno Dogo asked Master Sekito Kisen: What is the fundamental principle of Buddhism?

Master Sekito said: It isn’t obtainable. It isn’t knowable.

Master Dogo said: Is there a more realistic expression?

Master Sekito said: The wide sky does not hinder the flying white clouds

Commentary:

A familiar instruction we’re given for zazen is to let thoughts come and go, like clouds in the sky. By “thoughts” we don’t just mean intentional thinking of course, but the full range of what we would ordinarily call mental phenomena: snatches of pictures, body sensations, auditory or visual hallucinations, feelings, waking dreams; the whole works.

But the implication in the instruction isn’t quite right, because the suggestion is that, with equanimity, these ‘thoughts’ will gradually fade away, and we’ll be left with a wide, empty and infinite sky.

It’s to counter that implication that Sekito answers as he does. Dependent origination isn’t just mountains and trees and waters and birds; it’s everything, including ‘thoughts’. And our task isn’t to uncloud the sky, but to actualise vast space, within which everything has its own expression, its own life.