Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Products of Our Mind Alone - Dogen on Zen Study

Two components of Zen study and the products of our mind alone
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According to Dogen there are two components to Zen study:
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There are provisionally two ways to learn what the Buddha’s Way is: namely, to learn by means of our mind and to learn by means of our body.
Shobogenzo, Shinjin Gakudo
, Hubert Nearman
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For Dogen, enacting the component of learning by means of “the body” is done with zazen (seated meditation). In spite of the continuing tendency to stereo type Dogen as an unflinching champion of zazen, his writings on this aspect of Zen study are sparse relative to those on learning with “the mind.” The handful of writings that Dogen did compile, however, are precise, lucid, and easy to understand.
I find myself in basic agreement with Hee-Jin Kim on the reason for Dogen’s relative silence concerning zazen. Kim writes:
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Dogen’s instructions on seated meditation were brief and minimalist. He did not elaborate on meditation techniques or meditative experience in any detail, nor did he attempt to guide his disciples through graduated stages of meditative and spiritual progression, as we often see in some religious traditions within and without Buddhism. I do not attribute his peculiar instructional style to any insensitivity toward his disciples’ soteric welfare. Rather, his approach emerged from his foremost desire to provide them with fundamental principles—spelled out in terms of language, thinking and reason—with which each could grapple with his/her individual soteric project, thereby realizing his/her own Zen. Dogen demonstrated this himself by writing the fascicles of Shobogenzo.
Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen On Meditation and Thinking, p.122
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I would only add that the actual “physical” (body) performance of zazen is pretty simple and there is little to say about it beyond describing how to do it.

However, the component of Zen study by “means of the mind” is profound in its range and scope. In Buddhism, nature and dynamics of “mind” are numerous and complex. And according to Dogen, the aspect of Zen study with “mind” includes all of the various “sorts of minds”:
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To learn by means of the mind is to learn by all sorts of minds. Those minds include the discriminative mind, the mind of feelings and emotions, and the mind that sees the oneness of all things, among others.
Shobogenzo, Shinjin Gakudo,
Hubert Nearman
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Besides all the “ordinary” sorts of mind, Dogen also proclaims that we “have given rise” to bodhicitta (the mind of enlightenment; bodhi: enlightenment; citta: mind) we also study the “daily functioning” of that mind too:
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Also, after we have established a spiritual rapport with a Master and have given rise to the mind that would realize full enlightenment, we take refuge in the Great Way of the Buddhas and Ancestors and explore the daily functioning of the mind that seeks full enlightenment.
Shobogenzo, Shinjin Gakudo
, Hubert Nearman
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Even before we have awakened bodhicitta, he expects us to study and become familiar with the “methods of the Buddhas and Ancestors of the past” and to “imitate” them, evidently to arouse bodhicitta.
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Even if we have not yet given rise to the mind that truly aspires to realize full enlightenment, we should imitate the methods of the Buddhas and Ancestors of the past who gave rise to the mind that seeks enlightenment.
Shobogenzo, Shinjin Gakudo
, Hubert Nearman
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To encourage us in our efforts, he reminds us of the fundamental tenet of Mahayana Buddhism: all the myriad dharmas throughout space and time are products of our mind:
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This mind is the mind that has resolved to realize enlightenment; it is the manifestation of a sincere heart moment by moment, the mind of previous Buddhas, our everyday mind, and the three worlds of desire, form, and beyond form. All of these are the products of our mind alone.
Shobogenzo, Shinjin Gakudo
, Hubert Nearman
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Peace,
Ted

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