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116. Anatta

The foundation of Buddhism is Anatta, no self. Dogen’s way of expressing this in our practice is ‘dropping off body and mind’. Dropping as we would drop off a cloak. But a cloak that we keep finding ourselves wearing again.

We might imagine that this dropping off reveals a purer self, but that would be a mistake. This dropping off, the activity of non fabrication, non talking the self into existence, doesn’t reveal a purer self. Rather, it uncloaks this one piece zen, where everything, including the activity of the karmic mind, is an unbroken whole. Everything is as it is, which is nirvana.

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Book of Serenity, Case 98

Book of Serenity, Case 98

The case:

A monk asked Dongshan “Among the three Buddha Bodies, which one does not fall into any category?”

Dongshan said, “I am always intimate with this.”

Commentary:

In Mahayana Buddhism, the three bodies of the Buddha are the dharmakaya, which is identified with all existence, the sambhokaya, which is identified with practice and the fruits of practice, and the nirmanakaya, which is the body of the historical Buddha. It is quite conceptual, and the monk’s question seems be be enquiring into the relationship between the conceptual (“category”) and the ineffable.

What should be make of Dongshan’s reply? What is the ‘this’ that he is always intimate with?

Frequently in Chinese Buddhism, words like ‘this’ or ‘what’ or ‘that’ refer to ineffable reality, reality before thinking. So we might imagine Dongshan’s response means something like ‘unlike you, with your conceptual question, I am always intimate with the ineffable’. But I don’t think that is what he means. Dongshan is making a point about practice. So, when we sit, often we imagine that thinking is bad; but that feeling sensing, being-ness is good. The ineffable is good. But somehow we can’t stop thinking. We could say that Dongshan’s intimacy is with both the conceptual, exemplified here by the schema the monk is putting forth, and also ineffable reality. And that the conceptual and the ineffable are intimate with each other.

This is a very important point about practice. The head is not suspended in mid-air, and practice is not nullified by the natural movements of the karmic mind. But, as it were, we see the smoke of our thoughts through the flames of our being.

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Kusen

115. Zazen is Activity

Master Dogen describes Zazen as dropping off body and mind. That is, dropping off this sense of a me and things that belong to me. It is his way of describing anatta.

He doesn’t say that dropping off body and mind is a preliminary to the real activity of Zazen, but that Zazen is the continuous dropping off of body and mind. The activity of Zazen is this continuous activity of dropping off. It is an activity, not a state. It is an orientation, not an attribute.

He also says, although he attributes this to his teacher, Nyojo, that when body and mind are dropped off, we are free of the five desires and the five hindrances. The five desires correspond to the desires of the sense organs. The five hindrances are desire, ill-will, laziness, restlessness and doubt. If we think that practice is the vehicle for our own aggrandisement, we are full of these hindrances. But if there is no me and nothing belonging to me then where can these hindrances attach?

Hence, Zazen is the dharma gate of ease and joy.

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Kusen

114. Shiho

Zen is transmitted I Shin Den Shin. ‘Shin’ is mind, or heart. So, from one real person to another. But how many is the real person? One, or many, or both?

‘Mind’ doesn’t mean the personal, karmic mind, obviously. And, likewise, heart.

In the Shiho, the document of transmission, the whole lineage is written out, one name after the other. And all the names are connected by a single red thread. A heart thread. So all the names are an expression of that heart.

This heart.

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Kusen

113. Suffering Is Not Inevitable

Master Dogen said that Zazen is the dharma gate of ease and joy.

To understand what he meant we need to consider the fundamental Buddhist insight that we suffer because we believe there is a self and that there are things which belong to the self. And because we think that in our ordinary life we constellate our experience around this. Like wrapping a bandage round and round a non-existent head.

Dogen also said that Zazen is casting off body and mind, and one of the things he specifically means is that when we sit, we cast off this sense of me and mine. So experience is unwound, fills everywhere. And we can understand that suffering is not inevitable.

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112. Having No Head

The whole Zen literature is a commentary on practice. Actual practice. Your practice.

Before spiritual language degenerates into religion, it is always the effort of a real person, using what is available, to describe their actual experience.

Always the effort of a real person to describe their actual experience. And because we too are that real person, it describes our experience. Not the experience of some far distant moment after decades or lifetimes of practice, but this moment, when we drop the familiar dualities of self and world, mind and body and so on. The language is often shocking and startling because it needs to be, to knock us out of our habitual configuration of experience around a ‘Me’.

For example, the writer Douglas Harding describes Zazen as being like having no head. He doesn’t mean that cognition, sensation and so on disappears. But rather that we lose the sense of this experience as mine. So rather than locating this aliveness within a space called me, there is just this aliveness, which fills everywhere.

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111. The Particular and the Universal

More On the Heart Sutra:

The Bodhisattva of Compassion….

Buddhists have a persistent difficulty with the Particular and the Universal. When we consider Avalokiteśvara/ dynamic full functioning/ dependent origination, we tend to make a picture of something vast, and lurch between that and our particularity now.

It was for this reason, I suspect, that Okumura said that practice was the five skandas seeing the emptiness of the five skandas.

We start with this experience, this particularity, this now, and it floods out everywhere, because it is unconstrained by the bell jar of the self.

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110. The Sickness of the Self

Buddhism is a medicine for the sickness of the self.

It takes us a long time to realise it. What drives us to start to practice is a sense that something is missing. That we may be caught in the in breath of narcissism, or caught in the outbreath of depression. We may feel like there is dirt on our face which we can’t wash away.

But rather than something missing, something is not yet missing: the deep belief that there is a Me.

The fundamental belief in Buddhism is anatta, no self. In Zen we express this as emptiness. This belief is the foundation of everything else; Interdependence, total dynamic functioning and so on. It is why when we chant the Heart Sutra we chant that the Bodhisattva of Compassion, practicing Zazen, sees the five skandhas as empty and thereby relieves all suffering.

The oscillation, the breath, is not between the inflation and deflation of the self but between the five skandhas and everything, seen as vast compassionate space. We cannot lift ourselves, yet we are lifted up.

The sickness never really leaves us. But nonetheless, everything is illuminated.

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Kusen

109. Prajñāpāramitā

The bodhisattva of compassion practicing Prajñāpāramitā (Zazen) sees the five skandhas as empty and thereby relieves all suffering.

So, the practice is seeing the emptiness of the five skandhas. Not as a preliminary to something else. Not in order to experience emptiness per se, or to experience something else. Not you seeing. The practice is seeing the emptiness of the five skandhas. That’s it.

That’s the practice. The five skandhas are form, sensation, perception, fabrication and consciousness. Form, this is my body. Sensation, my body is feeling something. The feeling is mine. Perception, that something I am feeling is sadness. Fabrication, I am feeling sad because…. Consciousness, ah there I go again.

Seen through emptiness, consciousness becomes compassionate vast space awareness. Fabrication is set aside and in that non doing is nirvana. Perception is set aside and the world is released from our mind. Hence Prajñā appears. This sensation, this body is part of an unbroken whole; the body of the whole world.

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108. The Ghost Cave

In Zen, the fixed self is sometimes referred to as the Ghost Cave.

We can see our practice as a kind of dynamic coming and going. From this place out into the illuminated universal and back again into the apparent personal, and so on, endlessly. The metaphor of cave, an opening in the mountain, is worth paying attention to.

The self is not characterized as a prison, something we are trapped within. Or something to be annihilated. Rather, it is to be understood. It is a Ghost Cave because we do not understand it. The ghosts are restless because they do not understand themselves.

This cave is part of the Great Mountain of all things. It is our only way inside this mountain. Dynamic, compassionate awareness pacifies the mind. Pacifies the whole mountain.