Dogen Zen Belfast

  In his bold rewriting of the Heart Sutra, Master Dogen has affirmed the myriad things (every thing we experience or encounter) as instances of prajna, or direct experiential wisdom, rather than just negating them as the concepts or identities or names that we place on them with our thinking... and this is how we experience things in a clear state of sitting zazen - things come and go freely in our experience when our thoughts and likes and dislikes etc concerning them have calmed down. Now Master Dogen draws on the wider literature to pursue this point:    In the order of Sakyamuni Tathagata there is a bhiksu who secretly thinks, “I shall bow in veneration of the profound prajna-paramita. Although in this state there is no appearance and disappearance of real dharmas, there are still understandable explanations of all precepts, all balanced states, all kinds of wisdom, all kinds of liberation, and all views. There are also understandable explanations of the effec...

One idea that comes up around Zen practice is that Zen Buddhists shouldn't have views and opinions about things... we should be completely without values and judgements. This leans to a somewhat extreme view of Zen practice, and can amount to nihilism if taken too far. Zen practice isn't really about not having views on things like the direction that society is going, and racism, war, politics etc etc - it's just that in Zen practice, in our daily practice of 'dropping off body and mind', we see those thoughts and views as what they are. We become unbound by them and no longer make the mistake of accepting them as being exterior reality. They're just thoughts and conceptual models of reality we make ourselves. We drop off all that in sitting zazen of course, but the point in doing that is to see thoughts and views directly as what they are, and not to be duped by that sense of 'self' that may be implied by how we may attach to thoughts and feelings. The ...

  Twelve instances of prajna paramita are the twelve entrances [of sense-perception]. There are also eighteen instances of prajna. They are eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind; sights, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations, and properties; plus the consciousnesses of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. There are a further four instances of prajna. They are suffering, accumulation, cessation, and the Way. There are a further six in stances of prajna. They are giving, pure [observance of] precepts, patience, diligence, meditation, and prajna [itself]. One further instance of prajna-paramita is realized as the present moment. It is the state of anuttara-samyak-sa bodhi. There are three further instances of prajna-paramita. They are past, present, and future. There are six further instances of prajna. They are earth, water, fire, wind, space, and consciousness. And there are a further four instances of prajna that are constantly practiced in everyday life: th...

Image by Frettie: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en I was very lucky to fall in with a Zen grouping that emphasises lay practice - our teacher Nishijima Roshi and his students were/ are largely lay people living and working in the world and practicing and studying zazen mostly at home and at occasional retreats. There wasn't a big emphasis on all the cultural trappings of Japanese Zen, although it was there for people to go into if they wanted to - the robe and the rakusu were considered important, as tangible expressions of the transmission of the practice-realisation of zazen, but you didn't have to dress like a Japanese monk if it didn't seem right. You can just wear the kesa or rakusu over everyday western clothes. Some people will be more drawn to the rich forms and trappings of monastic or temple Zen of course, and that's fine, but in our lineage at least you don't have to be into that. The practice is essentially about meeting our life direc...

Master Dogen famously said that 'to study the buddha-way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualised by every single thing'. So what constitutes 'self' is very important in his teachings, as it is in other perspectives and philosophies. The Buddhist theory of self is called paṭicca-samuppāda in Pali, which is generally translated as 'dependent origination'. Dependent origination presents a twelve-fold chain of stages whereby things come into being interdependent with everything else. The theory itself is quite detailed, but the Buddha summed it up like this: When there is this, that is.  With the arising of this, that arises.  When this is not, neither is that.  With the cessation of this, that ceases . Basically, dependent origination points to the fact that our sense of self arises (or doesn't!) with every single thing in our experience - what we are perceiving here and now, and what we are thinking...

Kyo-i asks, “What is the Great Intention of the Buddha-Dharma?” Dorin says, “Not to commit wrongs. To practice the many kinds of right.” Kyo-i says, “If it is so, even a child of three can express it!” Dorin says, “A child of three can speak the truth, but an old man of eighty cannot practice it.” Thus informed, Kyo-i makes at once a prostration of thanks, and then leaves . Master Dogen concludes his discussion of this koan and his talk on 'not doing wrongs, doing right'... A master of the past says, “Just at the time of your birth you had your share of the lion’s roar.” “A share of the lion’s roar” means the virtue of the Tathagata to turn the Dharma-wheel, or the turning of the Dharma-wheel itself. Another master of the past says, “Living-and dying, coming-and-going, are the real human body.” So to clarify the real body and to have the virtue of the lion’s roar may truly be the one great matter, which can never be easy. We are born and die with a body with which to clarify th...