Dogen Zen Belfast

  Shobogenzo Shoji ('Life and Death') begins:  Because in life-and-death there is buddha, there is no life and death. Again, we can say: Because in life-and-death there is no “buddha,” we are not deluded in life-and-death. [This] meaning was expressed by Kassan and Jozan. [These] are the words of the two Zen Masters; they are the words of people who had got the truth, and so they were decidedly not laid down in vain. Master Dogen employs his version of the words of previous Zen masters here. The first statement affirms the state of 'buddha', and the second negates the concept 'buddha'... he often does this when looking at a subject - he both affirms it and negates it as a concept. To the logical western mind it looks like a contradiction... something 'is' and 'is not' at the same time? That's not cricket! We can say there is buddha, but it's not a static thing nor a thing nor an idea we 'get'. It's a manifest but dynamic s...

'Shoji' means 'life and death' but, in the Buddhist sense, it also suggests samsara, the realm of constant birth and death and rebirth that foundational Buddhism saw as being the cyclical existence of suffering from which it sought to provide escape. Many Zen teachers have expressed the centrality in Zen practice of 'the great matter of life and death', and in this short, pithy chapter of Shobogenzo Master Dogen addresses the theme quite directly. Generally speaking, Zen Buddhism doesn't claim to know exactly what happens to us at death nor after death. Rather, in keeping with Buddhist doctrines with regards to 'no-self' (anatman) it radically reframes the question of our death by indicating directly that there is no self born in the first place that can die... In Zen this is not a doctrinal truth or belief but a direct mind-body seeing into the nature of our existence: In zazen, when we 'drop body and mind' allowing thoughts and feeling to c...

  Master Dogen has been exploring the image of prajna, direct intuitive knowledge of our reality, as space: This refers to the practice of zazen as we can experience it ourselves when we sit down and allow all thoughts of 'inside' as opposed 'outside', 'self' as opposed 'other' to drop away. Our thinking clarifies and clears and we are in an open, unhindered state not chopped up and dominated by our usual thinking activities. The chapter continues with this short verse about it from Master Dogen's own teacher, Master Tendo Nyojo, where he likens himself in practicing zazen to a wind chime:   My late Master, the eternal Buddha, says:    Whole body like a mouth, hanging in space; Not asking if the wind is east, west, south, or north, For all others equally, it chatters prajna:  Chin Ten Ton Ryan Chin Ten Ton.      This is the chattering of prajna [transmitted] by Buddhist patriarchs from rightful successor to rightful successor. It is prajna as the ...

  Master Dogen continues his reworking of, and commentary upon, the traditional prajna-paramita literature with another passage from the  Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra ...     The God Indra asks the venerable monk Subhuti, “Virtuous One! When bodhi sattva-mahasattvas want to research the profound prajna-paramita, how should they research it?” Subhuti replies, “Kausika! When bodhisattva-mahasattvas want to research the profound prajna-paramita, they should research it as space.”. So researching prajna is space itself. Space is the research of prajna. The God Indra subsequently addresses the Buddha, “World-Honored One! When good sons and good daughters receive and retain, read and recite, think reasonably about, and expound to others this profound prajna-paramita that you have preached, how should I guard it? My only desire, World-Honored One, is that you will show me compassion and teach me.”  Then the venerable monk Subhuti says to the God Indra, “Kausika! Do you...

  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 ...