Glasgow Zen GroupA lot of Dogen’s dharma discourses in the Eihei Koroku consist of him quoting someone and then “after a pause” expressing something.
We imagine that he knows what he’s going to say. We imagine this because we always do. But we’re wrong. True expression has nothing to do with the karmic mind. It comes from a completely different position.
Dogen said that zazen was not learning meditation. Rather, it was simply the Dharma gate of ease and joy.
But almost always, people coming to zazen do think it is meditation. That is, it is an effort – in which we can progressively succeed – to control the mind. To put down thought and to pick up stillness. To put down noise and pick up silence.
Except, both thought and noise seem inordinately sticky.
So, we need to make an effort to understand what Dogen is saying. First, we should understand that the desire to make our ‘mind’ different is just the continuation of the habitual activity of the self. There’s nothing spiritual about it. We may as well aspire to be beautiful, or rich.
Second, we need to understand that zazen is making a complete effort with all we are; our ‘body’, our ‘mind’. It’s not something restricted to the mind, or consciousness. It’s not psychological. It’s not mindfulness. That’s one of the reasons we emphasise the posture so much. If the posture is balanced then the breath is free. If the breath is free we can start to feel a kind of pleasure, or easefulness when we sit, and that’s very important.
Master Dogen’s poem ‘Special transmission outside the scriptures’ (adapted)
The Dharma, like an oyster,
Thrown, onto the cliff peak
Waves crashing against the wall of bone
Like words
May reach but cannot wash it away
In the common usage, Zen is:
A special transmission outside the sutras
No reliance on words or letters.
When we are sitting, sometimes we are like a cliff. And in that way, sometimes we experience vast space, sometimes tranquillity. Sometimes storms, sometimes faraway birds. Sometimes, as if the weight of the whole ocean pushes against
this faith cliff, this practice cliff.
Master Dogen’s poem ‘Zazen Practice’:
The moon mirrored
By a mind free
Of all distractions;
Even the waves, breaking,
Are reflecting its light
We have a primitive idea what a symbol is. Usually, we think it’s like a code. So, in this case, ‘Moon’ will mean ‘Enlightenment’, or ‘Buddha Mind’, something like that. But a symbol is like a real person: it has infinite expression.
In his commentary on the Heart Sutra, Dogen said that “the bodhisattva of compassion, practicing zazen with the whole body, sees the five skandas are empty, and relieves all suffering”
So, we can see that one face of the symbol of the moon is Avalokitesvara, whose ‘whole body’ is the whole Universe, whose hands are the moonlight, whose eyes are the space above and the ground below, both holding the mind waves, enabling each wave to break, not through stillness but
through light
Zazen Practice:
at peace
within the heart
the clear moon
even the smashing waves
reflecting light
(trans. Shogen)
This life is described as being like a dewdrop in The Diamond Sutra, and Dogen elaborates on this image in his poem:
To what should I compare this life?
Dogen
Dewdrops, thrown from a crane’s bill.
We imagine dewdrops, thrown into empty space, reflecting the moon, still, in the same vast space.
But what we need to understand is that if there were no dewdrops, there would be no moon. The sky really would be empty. There is no Buddha waiting in Tusita heaven, or anywhere else. There is no preexisting moon, no preexisting world. Both are born together with this dewdrop person. Both exist in this dewdrop eye. When the dewdrop falls, the world falls.
The image of each dewdrop reflecting the moon, reflecting everything, is reminiscent of Indra’s Net, but with two differences. Indra’s net is still, but the dewdrop is thrown; it’s dynamic and temporal. And Indra’s net is in a galaxy unknown to us, but Dogen’s dewdrop is this person in this world, re-created.
Fujita described Zazen as ‘one piece’ Zen.
The one piece is everything.
The difficulty with this perspective is that we tend to oscillate between the individual and the universal.
And between self abnegation and self inflation.
Unless we challenge the individualistic assumption that is as natural to us as breathing. More, even.
But we should try:
Examine our actual experience. Our experience now is not that we are practicing with others, but we are practicing together.
Each of us with our sincere effort within this body of practice.
Master Dogen described zazen as walking at full speed over the heads of demons.
Note the imagery carefully. The demons don’t belong to someone else; they belong to you: their heads live in your head, and you don’t need to be rid of them to be free of them. Yet, they enable the Way to be walked.
Because they don’t live in the vigorous body of practice. Beware the demon of acquisition. Beware the demon of wisdom.
It’s an odd inversion: the body walking over the head. Your head, obviously, but not your body. Rather, the body of the whole universe, expressed through this body.
In the Mountains and Waters chapter of the Shobogenzo, Dogen talks about how various different beings see what human beings see as water.
When we see water, fish see palaces. Gods see strings of pearls, hungry ghosts see blood or pus.
Dogen didn’t say that the fish, the Gods and the hungry ghosts are all mistaken, that they are mis-seeing water.
What we see as water is just one window, and there is an infinity of windows.
But for us, just one window. But looked through with which eye?
The eye that gives life, or takes it?
In Uji, Dogen said that being is time.
‘Time’ isn’t quite right. Perhaps ‘moment’ is better. So beingmoment, momentbeing-
He has a wonderful image of a person going up into the mountains. And, from the top of the mountain, looking out and seeing an infinity of other peaks. Moments in this life, moments in all lives
The beauty and majesty of Dogen’s teaching is that the image is alive and infinitely faceted; from the perspective of the Mountains there is just this moment. The mountain is not hovering in mid air. Mountains are the waves of the great earth, they are part of this living ocean of earth. All these mountains. So in this moment Zazen Mountain, Birdsong Mountain, Buddha Mountain, Sky Mountain, Samsara Mountain. Mountain Mountain.
Dogen said that the five skandhas (form, sensation, perception, mental formation, consciousness) are five pieces of Prajna; before thinking.
It is easier to see with the first two.
With the first skandha, when we sit, we don’t think, I am a man, I am a woman, this is a wall and suchlike, we just sit, right in the middle of our raw experience.
Likewise with sensation. We just feel what is there. We don’t label it.
With perception and mental formation, it’s a little harder to see Dogen’s point, but it’s very important that we do.
We just need to see the incessant urge to understand this flood of experience. This constant ‘What is this?’
It is as if we are in a room with a storyteller. The point is not to get caught up in the stories, nor to speculate if they’re true, nor to get annoyed because they’re not, but just to see the aliveness of the storyteller and, seeing this, the aliveness of everything.