Shobogenzo Maka-hannya-haramitsu 2: Right Explanations/ Free From Thought and No-Thought

 

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 effect of one who has entered the stream, the effect of [being subject to] one return, the effect of [not being subject to] returning, and the effect of the arhat. There are also understandable explanations of [people of] independent awakening, and [people of] bodhi. There are also understandable explanations of the supreme right and balanced state of bodhi. There are also understandable explanations of the treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. There are also understandable explanations of turning the wonderful Dharma-wheel to save sentient beings.” The Buddha, knowing the bhiksu’s mind, tells him, “This is how it is. This is how it is. The profound prajna-paramita is too subtle and fine to fathom.”

Master Dogen employs this passage from the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra to indicate that, although the fundamental nature of things is basically ungraspable by our intellect ('no appearance and no disappearance') yet there are valid ways to understand our ideas and conceptual models of things, and the categories of people who actually practice Buddhism as defined by the real results of their practice (stream enterers, once returners, non-returneres, arhats... the traditional grades of the various degrees of practice-experience people achieve).

Master Dogen continues his theme of affirming that there are right views and values and designations on these real things, as can be contrasted with emphasising the negation of them as concepts or as 'empty'.

 

The bhiksu’s secretly working concrete mind at this moment is, in the state of bowing in veneration of real dharmas, prajna itself—whether or not [real dharmas] are without appearance and disappearance—and this is a venerative bow itself. Just at this moment of bowing in veneration, prajna is realized as explanations which can be understood: [explanations] from precepts, balance, and wisdom, to saving sentient beings, and so on. This state is described as 'being without'. Explanations of the state of being without can thus be understood. Such is the profound, subtle, unfathomable prajna-paramita. 

 

Things come forward and are experienced and realised 'whether with or without appearance and disappearance'... this affirms things coming forward as they actually are, as they spring free into our experiential reality beyond philosophical notions as to whether they appear or not: The whole of reality is manifesting just as it is here and now regardless of what we think about it, or don't think about it.

A venerative bow is a real action that also jumps free of our thinking or lack of thought when we actually do it. It's an expression of all of reality. It is 'being without' because our actions, like every single thing else, happen but are ultimately instantaneous and ungraspable - it's gone, disappearing even as we're doing it. Our actions, and the person that acts, can therefore be understood directly in this way through zazen, and our explanantions of this, based on our direct experience of it, are of the nature of prajna itself in that they are in keeping with the real nature of things being expressed originally unhindered by our thinking or our selves or their selves, or anything at all.