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Shinji Shobogenzo Book 3, Case 19.

Koan Commentaries

When Master Kyozan Ejaku was master of Tohei Temple, Master Isan Reiyu sent him a letter along with a mirror.

The package arrived at the temple and Master Kyozan took it with him to the Lecture Hall, held up the mirror and said to his assembly: Students, Master Isan sent this mirror and it has arrived here. Now I would like you to discuss this for a while. Is this mirror Isan’s or is it Tohei’s? If you say this mirror is now Tohei’s, I will say it is a present from Isan. If you say it was sent from Isan, I will say it is now in the Master of Tohei’s hand. If you can show me the truth I will keep the mirror, if you cannot show me anything I will smash the mirror at once.


He repeated this three times. None of the assembly could answer so the Master smashed the mirror into pieces.

Commentary by Nishijima
When Master Kyozan Ejaku received a letter and mirror from Master Isan he used it to test his disciples on the difference between a subjective viewpoint and an objective viewpoint. He asked his disciples whether the mirror belonged to Isan or Tohei.

If we think about the situation objectively the mirror is now Tohei’s, but if we think of it abstractly the mirror was a present from Master Isan. Master Kyozan asked his disciples to show him what the real situation was, but no one could reply, so in the end he smashed the mirror.

Reality is neither objective nor subjective. Smashing the mirror, even though a somewhat melodramatic action, was Master Kyozan’s real act in the present moment.

Commentary by John Fraser
This story is about wholeness and differentiation, personal and universal; both, together. Not part one and part other but both, together.

In Kokyo, Dogen collects a number of koan stories where a mirror is used as a metaphor for dependent origination. Each of us “is” dependent origination [the mirror] and at the same time we occupy our own dharma position.[the person]. So, when Kyozan holds the mirror, Kyozan doesn’t disappear, yet the mirror is the same mirror as was held by Isan.

Kyozan smashing the mirror is illusory. The mirror can’t be destroyed. When smashed into a million billion pieces, each piece is the mirror, and at the same time a particular dharma position.
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67. The Eight Characteristics of a Great Person

The last teaching given by the Buddha was ‘The Eight Characteristics of a Great Person’. Master Dogen’s last teaching was a commentary on this teaching.

1. The first of the eight is ‘have few desires’.

A misunderstanding of what the Buddha meant by desire engenders an entirely false perspective of the whole buddhist endeavour, and so it is crucial that we understand this correctly.

He didn’t mean ‘have few feelings’. He didn’t mean ‘don’t feel’.

Underneath our random mental noise is our momentary feeling state, and as practitioners we become very familiar with this. Our indeterminate vitality and aliveness enables us to understand the vitality and aliveness of the whole Universe, because its the same. It is the ground of being. It is our home and our heart.

However, our delusive tendency as human beings is always to ask ‘What is this?’, re-ordering our momentary feeling state as an emotion, which is a kind of thinking, and around which thoughts cluster, giving an explanation: what we must gain, what we must lose, and this is desire.

2. The second characteristic is variously translated as ‘knowing how much is enough’ or ‘to know satisfaction’.

A first response on hearing this is to hear it as an anodyne buddhist piety. We should be happy and content, whatever the circumstances, even if our life is filled with conflict and lack.

But we should ask: satisfaction with what?

In the Shinji Shobogenzo, Book 2 Case 92, Master Chokei Eryo asked Master Hofuku Juten: When we look at matter we are looking directly at mind. Now, can you see that boat?

Master Hofuku said : I see it

Master Chokei said : Forgetting about the boat, where is the mind?

Master Hofuku pointed at the boat again

In this story mind [shin] doesn’t mean our thinking mind, but something more fundamental, which includes our thinking mind. Shin also means heart. So, the story demonstrates that mind, heart and world are not separate.

Taking that to be so, we need to understand the whole circumstances of our life, including emotions thoughts and feelings as the scenery of our life. So, being dissatisfied or in conflict is as it is, and is satisfaction. We don’t need to keep trying to cut off our own arm.

3. The third characteristic is to enjoy serenity.

The Buddha said “..if you want to have the joy of serene nondoing, you should be away from the crowds and stay in a quiet place. If you are attached to crowds, you will receive suffering, just like a tree that attracts a great many birds and gets killed by them. If you are bound by worldly matters, you will drown in troubles, just like an old elephant who is stuck in a swamp and cannot get out of it. This is called ‘to enjoy serenity in seclusion’

We should understand that we do not necessarily leave the crowds behind when we shut the door.But we can separate ourselves from the crowds inside of us. The birds kill the tree; they don’t kill the sky.

4. The fourth characteristic is to practice diligence.

The example the Buddha uses is a constantly flowing trickle of water which gradually wears away rock.

Of course, the water doesn’t intend to wear away the rock, it is just fully expressing its nature. Similarly, if we imagine that we are being diligent, we are simply being dualistic. When we are diligent, there is no observer, and everything is natural.

The Chinese compound for diligence is Shojin. The first character means purified. That is, not two, non-dual. The second character means to make effort. So our diligence, and the diligence exerted by the whole Universe, which constantly causes it to leap out of nothingness, is the same.

5. The fifth characteristic is not to lose mindfulness.

The Buddha said : If people possess the ability not to lose mindfulness, the robbers of the five senses are unable to invade them. For this reason, you constantly should regulate thoughts and keep them in their place in the mind…even if you go among the robbers of the five senses you will not be harmed by them – it is like entering a battlefield clad in armour and having nothing to fear.

Sekiso said that enlightenment was like a thief breaking into an empty house. The five senses are robbers because there is a ‘you’ separate from them.

The place that thoughts should be kept in the mind is vast space. The regulation which they should be subjected to is their complete expression.

6. The sixth characteristic is to practice meditation.

The Buddha said “…if you gather your mind, it will abide in stability..When you have stability, your mind will not be scattered. It is like a well roofed house or a well built embankment, which will help you maintain the water of understanding and keep you from being drowned…”

There are three elements to the simile: water, structure and the space created by structure. And it’s highly noteworthy that the Buddha identifies water -which is almost universally associated with feeling – not with ignorance, or delusion, or desire, but with understanding, when it is somehow ‘contained’ within space, within emptiness.

7. The seventh characteristic is to cultivate wisdom.

The Buddha said : Monks, if you have wisdom, you will be free from greed..you can deepen understanding through the wisdom of listening, contemplation and practice”

Wisdom is Prajna, which isn’t intentional knowing. ‘Pra’ means ‘pre’ and ‘jna’ is knowing, hence pre-knowing, that state of intuitive wisdom and wholeness prior to division into thinker and thought. And each of ‘listening, contemplation and practice’ is an aspect of this wholeness.

8. The eighth and last characteristic is not to be engaged in hollow discussions.

The Buddha said: “Monks, if you get into hollow discussions, your mind will be scattered”

When we sit, it is often as if our head is surrounded by our thoughts, and it is as if we are engaged in discussion with our thoughts. But given that there is no head of the self, what is this if not hollow discussion?

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66. No Gain

We are told that we should sit without expectation of gain. That isn’t wrong, but it’s incomplete.

It is our karmic self which decides to practice, and which gets us to the Zendo, but the ‘person’ who sits without expectation of gain is not ‘I’.

We are double aspected. One aspect is our karmic self, the other is our universal self.

Universal self isn’t the personal self inflated by ‘enlightenment’, it is the whole shebang, dependent origination.

The karmic self occupies a position within dependent origination: universal self – no self – is dependent origination. Each thing is everything.

Zazen is dropping off the karmic self, endlessly. We don’t pin medals on it as it falls.

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65. The Jewel of Experience

1. Master Dogen said that we should not regard our body and mind as our personal possession. There isn’t an ‘I’ to possess. Self, mind and consciousness arise itching experience, not the other way round.

If this is so, we do not need to fret about purifying the mind. This erroneous aim inadvertently strengthens the mind/ world dualism, and all the suffering which flows from it

2. If everything occurs within the jewelled net of Indra ( dependent origination), how can it make any sense to talk of relative and absolute truth? Isn’t it better to describe delusion not as falseness – because nothing is false – but as clinging to or rejecting faces of the jewel? Hence, compassionate activity is liberating the myriad dharmas from my anger, greed and ignorance, and the dream of personal liberation is simply a pernicious and disguised example of delusion.

3. Each morning we wake to the dream of the self. But even so, we are born this day. We are born this day

4. Master Dogen said that we must arouse bodhi mind.

Our primary error as practitioners is to confuse this with our personal mind.

We then imagine that we must make our minds quieter, cleanse from it what we don’t want to be there.

Dogen said that bodhi mind is the mind that sees the impermanence of all things. All things. Not just rocks and trees, but all things, including your personal mind. And for him, as for Nagarjuna, impermanence is a synonym for dependent origination. The pulse of your mind and the pulse of the world is the same pulse.

If we can understand this, then we can understand how bodhi mind, the mind of practice, is the mind which is at one with all things.

If we can understand this, there is nowhere for dualism to cling

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64. The Bodhisattva Vows

1. The first bodhisattva vow is:

All living beings, I vow to save them

We need to understand the dual meaning of I (Jiko). It means both the personal I, the ego, but it also means the I which is not separate from all of existence.

Taking the ‘I’ in the second sense, the vow is a simple statement. ‘Vow’ and liberation ( ‘save them’) are simply facets of non duality

2. The second bodhisattva vow is:

Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them

We should not understand this as meaning that by great effort, sometime in the distant future we will have no more delusions forever after. That would be a wrong understanding.

We should understand that liberation and delusion, Buddha and Mara, are the two poles of our nature as human beings. We can get rid of neither.

However, when we practice Zazen, when we allow our delusions to freely arise in vast space; to live, to change, to disappear, then is this not ending them? Not forever, because time is a delusion too, but just for this moment

3. The third bodhisattva vow is:

Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them

Because dharma gates are boundless, they are innumerable. And so, they are all dharmas.

If our mind makes each thing a word picture, there are two things, and they can never become one. If each dharma is a dharma gate, then we can ‘enter’ it, and dualism falls away. The vow is also a statement, a statement of non duality.

Because dharma gates are boundless, each dharma is vast beyond measure, and cannot be grasped. Each dharma is thusness

Because dharma gates are boundless, there is no boundary, no separation between each dharma. So, to enter one dharma is to enter all dharmas. To fully encounter one thing is to fully encounter all things.

4. The final bodhisattva vow is:

The Buddha Way, unsurpassable, I vow to realise it

What is the Buddha Way? It is dropping off body and mind. That is, it is decentering our sense of separateness, affirming the whole ness, the dynamic wholeness of everything, which we variously call emptiness, dependent origination, impermanence.

But our sense of self, and of the world as something out there, pleasing or obstructing us, is like a coat which, no matter how often we drop off, we still find around our shoulders again. It is our nature as human beings to clench the fist of the self. And so it is our vow as Buddhists ( to use Uchiyama’s phrase) to open the hand of thought, endlessly, for the rest of our lives.

If we think we have surpassed this, that we are enlightened, this is the most dangerous delusion.

5. Master Dogen said:

When human beings see water, fish see palaces, gods see strings of pearls, demons see blood, or pus.

He doesn’t say that the fish are mistaken, or that the gods are mistaken. But we want to.

The dead weight of the self pushes the world flat, into an image. To then fret to what extent the image is true or false is to miss the primary repression

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Shinji Shobogenzo Book 3, Case 49.

Koan Commentaries

Master Shakkyo Ezo asked Master Seido Chizo: Do you know how to grasp space or not?

Master Seido said: I know how to grasp space.

Master Shakkyo said: How do you grasp it?

Master Seido made a gesture of grasping the air with his hand.

Master Shakkyo said: You don’t know how to grasp space!

Master Seido said: Elder brother monk. How do you do it?

Master Shakkyo grasped Master Seido’s nose and pulled it.

Master Seido was hurt and cried out in a loud voice: It is very rude to pull someone else’s nose. However I have become free of all things and matter at once.

Master Shakkyo said: You should grasp space directly like this.

Commentary by Nishijima

Buddhism has a clear philosophy, and Buddhists often discuss philosophical matters. In this story the two masters discussed space. To grasp space, Master Seido grasped the air with this hand.

This behavior suggests that space is not only a concept, but real. To grasp space, our action should also be real. Master Shakkyo’s method was even more direct; he pulled Master Seido’s nose. And on becoming the object of this violent act, Master Seido realized what space is.

This story also teaches that Buddhist theory is not just concept; it points to reality here and now.

Commentary by John Fraser

The immediate meaning of the story appears to be that Seido has an intellectual understanding of space, unrelated to his actual experience. Shakkyo’s vigorous action brings him back.

We can also see this as being about emptiness. The ‘ku’ in ‘koku’ [space] is the same ‘ku’ [emptiness] as we encounter in the heart Sutra. A point is being made about space and emptiness; their relationship, and a world re-envisioned by that relationship.

We carelessly imagine the space between us as dead space; the permanently dead space between the precariously alive things. But if both ‘space’ and ‘things’ are empty, then the distinction disappears, and the whole fabric of the world becomes dynamically alive. And so, there is no ‘space’. We can call this Indra’s Net, or Interdependence, or the body of the Buddha. But if we do, we should expect to get our nose pulled.

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Shinji Shobogenzo Book 2, Case 94.

Koan Commentaries

One day a monk asked Master Sozan Honjaku: I heard that you said in your teachings that the Great Sea has no place for lifeless bodies. What is this sea?

The Master said: It is something that includes the whole of existence.

The monk said: Then why does is have no place for lifeless bodies?

The Master said: Because things that are lifeless do not belong there.

The monk said: But if it includes the whole of existence, why don’t lifeless things belong there?

The Master said: The whole of existence is beyond that sort of function; it is beyond [the concept] “life.”

Commentary by Nishijima

The Great Sea is a metaphor for reality, the whole of existence. In Master Sozan’s teaching, he said that just as the sea does not accept dead bodies (they are usually washed up on the shore), so reality does not accept anything without value or significance. In other words, there is nothing in the Universe that is without value.

However, the monk was caught by the Master’s metaphor and wanted to know why reality as the sea doesn’t accept dead bodies. The Master told him that it is because dead bodies do not belong in the sea; things without value do not belong in reality. However, the monk was still caught by the words of the master’s metaphorical teaching. He wanted to know why reality doesn’t contain everything including dead bodies. The Master replied that reality does not function like the monk’s image of the sea; it is beyond that sort of categorization. It is beyond concepts like “dead” or “alive.” It is something inclusive and ineffable that exists here and now.

Commentary by John Fraser

In this story, Master Sozan uses the metaphor of the ocean for the whole of existence. The monk asking the question takes the metaphor slightly too concretely. Just as the real ocean yields up lifeless bodies, yields up debris, he imagines that Sozan’s statement that “the Great Sea has no place for lifeless bodies” means that there are ‘lifeless bodies’ and that somehow they are excluded. But Sozan’s meaning was that in the whole of existence there are no lifeless bodies. In other words, everything has absolute value, but also, if we perceive’ lifeless bodies’ then we can’t see ‘the Great Sea’. That is, the total dynamic functioning of the whole universe. We are perceiving instead the world of samsara, where isolated things continue provisionally for a while in empty space, falling toward the ground of death.

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Shinji Shobogenzo Book 2, Case 82.

Koan Commentaries

One day Master Hyakujo went with Master Baso Do-itsu for a walk. As they walked along they saw a group of wild ducks flying in the sky.

Master Baso said: What are they?

Master Hyakujo said: Wild ducks.

Master Baso said: Where are they going?

Master Hyakujo said: They have flown away.

Master Baso grasped Mater Hyakujo’s nose and twisted it. Master Hyakujo could not tolerate the pain and cried out: Aagh! Aagh!

Master Baso said: Although you said they have flown away, you are always at this place.

Master Hyakujo immediately broke out in a sweat, and just then he experienced a reflection of the truth.

The next day Master Hyakujo attended an informal teaching given by Master Baso, where a few monks had gathered. Master Hyakujo stepped forward, rolled up Master Baso’s prostration mat and put it away.

Master Baso got down from the lecture seat and went back to his personal room, followed by Master Hyakujo. He then asked Master Hyakujo: I went to the Lecture Hall, but why did you put away the prostration mat before I had preached anything?

Master Hyakujo said: Yesterday I was caught by the tip of my nose by the Master and it was very painful.

Master Baso said: Yesterday, where did you concentrate your mind?

Master Hyakujo said: Today the tip of my nose is not painful any more.

Master Baso said: Now you know the profound matter of this very moment.

Then Master Hyakujo prostrated himself and went out.

Commentary by Nishijima

Master Hyakujo Ekai was walking out with his Master, Baso Do-itsu, when a flock of wild ducks flew overhead. Master Baso asked what they were, and Master Hyakujo answered that they were wild ducks. Master Baso asked where they were going, and Master Hyakujo replied that they had already flown away. Although this was the fact, his answer sounded somewhat arrogant, so Master Baso twisted the tip of his student’s nose, causing him to cry out in pain. Master Baso pointed out that although the ducks had flown away, Master Hyakujo was just at this place. Hearing those words, Master Hyakujo realized the true situation.

Next day, Master Hyakujo went to Master Baso’s informal preaching but before the lecture began, he put away the Master’s prostration mat so that Master Baso couldn’t prostrate himself in front of the Buddha image – the usual custom before a lecture. Master Baso returned to his private room where he asked Master Hyakujo why he had behaved like that. Master Hyakujo did not answer his Master’s question, because his mind was still focused upon the previous day, when his nose had been tweaked. Remembering the event, he said that it had been very painful. Master Baso wanted to point out that Master Hyakujo’s mind was concentrated on a past event today, just as it had been yesterday.

Master Hyakujo noticed the meaning in his Master’s words, and replied rom his present state, that the tip of his nose no longer hurt. Hearing these words, Master Baso recognized that Master Hyakujo had grasped the truth, that his consciousness was always in the present, and he affirmed this to Master Hyakujo.

The story shows how these two masters studied the concrete situation here and now. And this attitude – to focus on the concrete reality in front of us – is the Buddhist attitude.

Commentary by John Fraser

Where have the birds flown? Where has your life flown?

The ‘you’ in Baso’s answer is not Hyakujo’s ego consciousness alone. ‘This place’ is not just the part of the great earth on which they were standing at that moment.

Jiko [Self] is both the small self and the self that is connected to all things. That is, dependent origination. Every place is this place.

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Shinji Shobogenzo Book 2, Case 62.

Koan Commentaries


Master Unmon said to the assembly; Say a true word based on the hundreds of miscellaneous things in the world.

No-one in the assembly had an answer.

Then Master Unmon himelf spoke up for the assembly: Both!

Commentary by Nishijima

Mater Unmon’s question can be divided into two parts: one is to demonstrate a word that represents the truth. The other is the matter of things and phenomena – literally, “hundreds of grasses on the head.” However, the monks he was preaching to could not answer. Master Unmon answered for the assembly.

Both” here suggests a word that represents the truth and the multitudinous phenomena often mentioned in Buddhism. The word and miscellaneous things are combined into one reality. Master Unmon simply said, “Both” to demonstrate this understanding.

Commentary by John Fraser

Some people say that everything is one, but if that is so, how do we explain the obvious differentiation that we see? If we say that everything is one, the temptation is to think that there is a true world standing behind this world, which we need to get to. And so we recreate the Ego, this time as a battering ram. Or, we take the familiar metaphor of clouds and sky, and imagine that the sky is somehow behind the clouds, that the clouds are an obstruction. But where does the sky begin, or end?

Our practice is not the eradication of anything. It is not breaking down the door of an empty house. It is the actualisation of space.

In vast space, each thing can have its own place.

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Shinji Shobogenzo Book 2, Case 51.

Koan Commentaries


Master Keisho of Mount Sekiso preached to Master So-ho Ko: So-ho Ko, when we doubt, there is something different. When we affirm, there is a gap. Also our understanding should not be based on non-doubt or non-affirmation. There is no way to know reality except by throwing away our knowledge of existence.


Commentary by Nishijima

Master Sekiso Keisho explained to Master So-ho Ko about doubt and affirmation. Master Keisho stated that neither doubting nor affirming are perfect. Then he insisted that our understanding cannot be relied upon even when we feel we have no doubts or no confidence.

Master Keisho denied the ultimate value of intellectual thinking. Of course, intellectual thought and scientific knowledge have their value and place, but they are only part of our picture of the world. Only by throwing away our attachment to thoughts and ideas can we really ‘know’ reality. In one sense, the most important function of the brain is to help us recognize the existence of reality.

Commentary by John Fraser

What does it mean to throw away, to cast off the self? It doesn’t mean to make it disappear, but rather, to decentre it, to no longer see the great matter through the prism of the self, but rather to see ‘self’ and ‘prism’ as part of the great matter, the full dynamic functioning, only one aspect of which is the universe.