Genjokoan: A Skeleton Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo

Genjokoan: A Skeleton Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo

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A Study of Genjokoan and the Commentary in The Flatbed Sutra of LouieWing by Ted Biringer

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PART 3

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The next lines of the Genjokoan read:

When all things are seen as empty of self, there is no delusion and no enlightenment, no buddhas and no ordinary beings, no life and no death.

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These lines acknowledge the truth of the universal or empty aspect of reality. “When all things are seen as empty of self” refers to another way of perceiving the buddha-dharma (reality). The experience of reality from this perspective is the experience of absolute oneness. In the experience of oneness, there are no separate individual things; the buddha-dharma is totally undifferentiated. From this perspective, all things (the myriad dharmas) cease to appear as distinct entities (empty of self) and are therefore not distinguishable as things. That is to say, oneness is truly oneness, without anything left over. When there is no-thing that can be distinguished from any other thing, “there is no delusion and no enlightenment, no buddhas and no ordinary beings, no life and no death.” There are no people, no animals, no houses, no stars, or any other particular things.

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In the Shobogenzo, Dogen reveals the meaning of this aspect of reality in some startling and ingenious ways. Without resorting to innuendo or “mystical” language he exposes the truth of the universal nature of emptiness, or the void, excepting nothing, not even emptiness itself. Dogen, perhaps more than any other Zen master, makes rational the profound rationale of the truth of emptiness, making the emptiness of emptiness as self-evident as the emptiness of form.

The Genjokoan continues:

Buddha’s truth includes and transcends the many and the one, and so there is life and death, delusion and enlightenment, ordinary beings and buddhas.

The Buddha’s truth is not in reality divided into the many (the myriad dharmas) and the one but includes and transcends both. Since the Buddha’s truth (true nature of reality) is all-inclusive, there is “life and death, delusion and enlightenment, ordinary beings and buddhas.” There are people, animals, houses, stars, and all the other particular things.

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The point Dogen makes in this short line, forms the topic of thousands of pages of Buddhist literature. It is also the subject of the most popular Mahayana Buddhist scripture, The Heart Sutra. The Heart Sutra was the subject of the very first commentary Dogen wrote for the Shobogenzo: Shobogenzo, Maka-Hannya-Haramitsu, the second or third thing he wrote upon his return from China. Though commentaries on emptiness are myriad, the profound implications of this sublime doctrine are extremely subtle and difficult to penetrate. Dogen’s illumination on the topic of emptiness is extraordinarily clear, provocative, and evocative.

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Dogen’s expressions in the first three sections of Genjokoan are a succinct overview of the nature of the universe; first as perceived from the contrasting perspectives of the universal and the individual, then as transcending those perspectives. Transcending these opposing perspectives is sometimes referred to as the mutual interpenetrating and non-obstruction of the one and the many where each thing and event, and all things and events, contain, and are contained by, each other. This is expressed in the Buddhist literature by the doctrines of form and emptiness, the particular and the absolute, the universal and the individual, and so on. This mutually inclusive aspect of the one and the many is expressed in Zen koans in an intimate and direct manner; for instance, in the classic koan, Two Monks Roll Up the Blinds:

Master Hogen raised his hand and pointed to the blinds. Two monks went and rolled them up in the same way. Hogen said, “One gains, one loses.”

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Upon resolution of this koan, you will intimately realize that master Hogen’s words “One gains, one loses” apply to each of the two monks. Indeed, his words apply to every thing and event in all of time and space.

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~The Flatbed Sutra of Louie Wing: The Second Ancestor of Zen in the West by Ted Biringer

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To be continued...

[Click Here for Part 1][Click Here for Part 2]

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Peace,

Ted