Dogen Zen Belfast

Master Dogen continues with some very direct and insightful comments regarding ' learning the backward step of turning light and reflecting'... Body and mind will naturally fall away, and the original features will manifest themselves before us. If we want to attain the matter of the ineffable, we should practice the matter of the ineffable at once. Our 'original features' suggests the Zen koan 'show me your original face before your mother and father were born', or our life experienced here and now before we split things up into 'this' and 'that' with our thinking and our naming of things. It sounds grand, but actually we can experience this in sitting zazen from early on, even if only momentarily at first. At such times we experience our life more directly than we do when we're thinking about it - it's 'ineffable', already existing fully and manifestly before we divide it up with our thoughts and feelings about it. 'Body and...

  Moreover, we can [still] see the traces of the six years spent sitting up straight by the natural sage of Jetavana park.We can still hear rumors of the nine years spent facing the wall by the transmitter of the mind-seal of Shaolin [temple]. The ancient saints were like that already: how could people today fail to make effort? In his instructions for zazen, Master Dogen has emphasised the tangible, physical nature of practice/ conduct, ' the vigorous road of getting the body out ', and here he affirms it as the standard of Buddhist practice by indicating that this is what the historical Buddha ('the natural sage of Jetavana park') practiced, and also what Master Bodhidharma practiced, the first ancestor of Zen Buddhism who is said to have brought the authentic transmission of the practice from India to the east via Shaolin temple. Therefore we should cease the intellectual work of studying sayings and chasing words. We should learn the backward step of turning light a...

Master Dogen posed an important question at the start of Fukan-Zazengi: Here we are living in reality, and every part of us arose from and is a part of this reality, so why do we have to practice to realise this fact? His answer might be summed up like this: Because we tend to think too much to the contrary, and to mistake our own thinking for reality, separating things out like the 'gap between heaven and earth' in doing so... If there is a thousandth or a hundredth of a gap, the separation is as great as that between heaven and earth; and if a trace of disagreement arises, we lose the mind in confusion. Proud of our understanding and richly endowed with realization, we obtain special states of insight; we attain the truth; we clarify the mind; we acquire the zeal that pierces the sky; we ramble through remote intellectual spheres, going in with the head: and yet, we have almost completely lost the vigorous road of getting the body out.  Master Dogen focuses particularly here ...

Now, when we research it, the truth originally is all around: why should we rely upon practice and experience? The real vehicle exists naturally: why should we put forth great effort? Furthermore, the whole body far transcends dust and dirt: who could believe in the means of sweeping and polishing? In general, we do not stray from the right state: of what use, then, are the tip-toes of training? Master Dogen begins Fukan-Zazengi by posing a Big Question - if we are already living in reality, and every single part of us is a part of reality (which is already complete and real), then why do we have to practice at all to realise this? This is the same question addressed by the 'Master Hotetsu's Fan' koan at the end of Genjo-Koan. It's said to be a question that Master Dogen carried with him from his first experience of Buddhist training with the Tendai sect, a Japanese school of esoteric Buddhism. 'Dust and dirt' and 'sweeping and polishing' refer to the Si...

Image by Dr Joan Fortunate https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en The next text from Master Dogen I'll have a look at is his zazen instruction as written down soon after his return from China -- unsatisfied with Buddhist teachings in his home country, Master Dogen had taken the perilous sea voyage from Japan to seek out and study with a genuine teacher, so as to find the 'authentic transmission' of Zen and bring it back to Japan. The text actually draws quite heavily on earlier Zen texts, which is an interesting area of study in itself, but I'll be looking at it more from the practical point of view, from the perspective of directly practicing it. Nishijima/ Cross translate the title 'Fukan-Zazengi' as 'Universal Guide to the Standard Method of Zazen'. Fukan-Zazengi is 'Universal' in the sense that Master Dogen believed that everyone everywhere could practice zazen to directly realise the truth of our lives, and that is why he com...

To conclude Genjokoan, Master Dogen provides a short commentary on Master Hotetsu's response in the fan koan story. He says that direct action-realisation like this is the authentic transmission of the Buddha-Dharma... The real experience of the Buddha-Dharma, the vigorous road of the authentic transmission, is like this. Someone who says that because [the air] is ever-present we need not use a fan, or that even when we do not use [a fan] we can still feel the air, does not know ever-presence, and does not know the nature of air. Because the nature of air is to be ever-present, the behavior of Buddhists has made the Earth manifest itself as gold and has ripened the Long River into curds and whey.  Master Dogen is generally very straightforward, grounded and direct, but he also acknowledges that there is a mysterious mutuality to Buddhist practice whereby our own practice effects broader reality. He ends Genjokoan with a vast, cosmic vision of Buddhist practice ripening and renderin...

  Zen Master Hotetsu of Mayoku-zan mountain is using a fan. A monk comes by and asks, “The nature of air is to be ever-present, and there is no place that [air] cannot reach. Why then does the Master use a fan?” The Master says, “You have only understood that the nature of air is to be ever-present, but you do not yet know the truth that there is no place [air] cannot reach.” The monk says, “What is the truth of there being no place [air] cannot reach?” At this, the Master just [carries on] using the fan.  Master Dogen concludes Genjokoan with a short commentary on this great koan encounter from Zen tradition. The monk understands the nature of Buddhist practice-realisation, but only as a principle -- 'air is everywhere'. It's true that we're living as a part of manifesting reality all the time - how could it be any other way? And yet we often don't directly realise this fact or principle, being caught up in our habitual thoughts and narratives and feelings... Maste...

  When a human being is practicing and experiencing the Buddha’s truth in this state, to get one dharma is to penetrate one dharma, and to meet one act is to perform one act. In this state the place exists and the way is mastered, and therefore the area to be known is not conspicuous. The reason it is so is that this knowing and the perfect realization of the Buddha-Dharma appear together and are experienced together. Do not assume that what is attained will inevitably become self-conscious and be recognized by the intellect. The experience of the ultimate state is realized at once. At the same time, its mysterious existence is not necessarily a manifest realization. Realization is the state of ambiguity itself. Master Dogen moves from the vast view of life as endless oceans and skies with birds and fishes to the direct experience of practicing the Way in life. Even though our life is vast and diverse we experience it one unique situation, or one unique thing, at a time. We just me...

Photo by Hein Waschefort: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en It may be that life is birds and that life is fish. And beyond this, there may still be further progress. The existence of [their] practice-and-experience, and the existence of their lifetime and their life, are like this.   Master Dogen continues to explore a vast view of our reality, our life, as can be realised in practicing zazen. It is manifest as a great active diversity of beings and things. This being so, a bird or fish that aimed to move through the water or the sky [only] after getting to the bottom of water or utterly penetrating the sky, could never find its way or find its place in the water or in the sky. Even though we can realise our life as vast and limitless, we have to start to practice right where we are in our life, with all its distractions and messiness and annoying personal issues...   When we find this place, this action is inevitably realized as the Universe. When we...

  Other qualities of the ocean are inexhaustibly many: [to fishes] it is like a palace and [to gods] it is like a string of pearls. But as far as our eyes can see, it just seems to be round. As it is for [the ocean], so it is for the myriad dharmas. In dust and out of the frame, [the myriad dharmas] encompass numerous situations, but we see and understand only as far as our eyes of learning in practice are able to reach. Master Dogen continues to discuss the view of a vast, round ocean - a vision of wholeness or one-ness. Somewhat unusually in Zen philosophy, Master Dogen often emphasises the multiplicity of things and experience, as opposed a homogenous philosophical view of 'oneness' or 'emptiness', the Buddhist idea of shunyata. He indicates that the expressions of reality present in each single thing are vast and that our view of this is limited by the extent of our realising them in practice-experience - so our views of the vastness of reality will differ as views ...

Genjokoan continues: When the Dharma has not yet satisfied the body-and-mind we feel already replete with Dharma. When the Dharma fills the body-and-mind we feel one side to be lacking. For example, sailing out beyond the mountains and into the ocean, when we look around in the four directions, [the ocean] appears only to be round; it does not a to have any other form at all. Nevertheless, this great ocean is not round, and it is not square. When we first get a glimpse in practice of the not-separateness of self and the universe we might think 'this is it, I've gotten it!' Master Dogen points out however that this experience of being 'replete' is not the end of practice -- we might find that there is much more to do in every new situation in life, that practice is ongoing and endless. The 'roundness' (not-separateness) of everything is not the only feature of 'the myriad dharmas', or every single real thing that we encounter.