Zen Transmission: If Words and Letters are Shallow, Twirling a Flower is Shallow

 

If the words the World-honored One used were really something superficial, then His holding the flower aloft, with His eyes atwinkle, would also be something superficial. Were anyone to consider what He said to be merely name and form, that person is not ‘such a one’ who has learned what the Buddha Dharma really is. Those who consider what is spoken to be no more than names and forms have not yet comprehended that the World-honored One was beyond the use of language as merely ‘names and forms’. They have not yet let go of the confused, emotional attitudes of ordinary, worldly people. What permeates the Body and Mind of Buddhas and Ancestors is the dropping off of self, Their giving expression to the Dharma, and Their using language to voice It, that is, Their turning the Wheel of the Dharma. There have been many indeed who, having witnessed and listened to It, have greatly profited from It. Those whose practice is based on faith, as well as those whose practice is based on understanding the Teaching, are cloaked in Its influence in places where there is an Ancestor of the Buddha, or partake of Its influence even in places where there is no Ancestor of the Buddha...

 

How does that other bunch understand ‘Makakasho’s face breaking into a smile’? Let them try to put that into words. If it were as those folks say, they would have called that smile ‘a secret communication’. But to call it ‘his not concealing anything’ would be piling foolishness atop foolishness. Later, the World-honored One said, “I have the Treasure House of the Eye of the True Teaching, which is the Wondrous Heart of Nirvana, and I have transmitted It to Makakasho.” Is His speaking in this way using speech or not using speech? If the World-honored One had a dislike for spoken language and preferred holding a flower aloft, He surely would have also held up a flower on this occasion. And then, how could Makakasho fail to understand and how could the assembly fail to hear? Do not rely on the tales of those folks who talk this way.
Shobogenzo, Mitsugo, Trans. Hubert Nearman)

The Normal Mind is the Tao (ken-sho, ken-butsu)

The Normal Mind is the Tao (ken-sho, ken-butsu)

 

 

Enlightenment – discerning the true nature of the self – is an experiential activity, not a static condition or state of attainment. Enlightenment does not bestow Zen mastery (or teaching credentials), supernatural power, superior intelligence, or sainthood, much less freedom from moral obligation, causation, or delusion. The initial experience of enlightenment (ken-sho; seeing true nature) reveals, for the first time, the normal perspective. Ongoing practice-enlightenment (shusho) means to be continuously attentive to that perspective (ken-butsu; seeing Buddha) and thereby foster the actualization of normality in the here and now of existence-time.

 

An accurate view is not in itself an accurate understanding, but rather a view from which an accurate understanding becomes possible. Upon a mountaintop surrounded by clouds, one’s perspective is naturally limited by the clouds. When the clouds clear, one’s perspective naturally expands, increasing the possibility for understanding one’s true location in the world. Similarly, practice-enlightenment, being unhindered by the clouds of literalism and conceptualization (presuppositions, fixations, and biases), simply means being provided with a normal perspective, a perspective from which one can think, speak, and act in a manner appropriate to one’s actual situation.

 

One of the many things accounted for by the Zen doctrine of “Dharma transmission” is the Buddha-Dharma’s intrinsic capacity of eternal endurance and infinite elaboration. In harmony with the continuous self-generation inherent to the metaphorical nature of the self, the “Dharma” (i.e. the enlightened wisdom initially realized by Shakyamuni Buddha) is metaphorically portrayed as a “transmission” from the self to the self with traditional images of master and apprentice. As a master craftsman passes on his knowledge and skills to an apprentice, so the (universal) Buddha mind transmits the wisdom of enlightenment to the (individual) Buddha mind. Presenting this activity of “Buddhas alone together with Buddhas” in metaphorical images of “master and apprentice” reveals the nature of transmission with a clarity that is much easier to envision than that of more abstract expressions like “mind to mind,” “self and self,” etc.

 

[Note: Metaphorical expressions of “Dharma transmission” have long been distorted into objects of literalism and idolatry based on vulgar misunderstanding. While superficial (literal) interpretations of transmission have a long history, the true metaphorical significance of the Zen doctrine has never been as absent as now – contemporary discussion is almost exclusively limited to formal ceremonies, certificates, and rituals related to institutional succession, i.e. the official sanction or establishment of sectarian teachers.]

 

The Zen doctrine of transmission portrays the “self-generating” aspect of the metaphorical nature of the self as a process in which new metaphors (expressions of truth) are actualized by the ceaseless interaction of expression (self-expression) and response (self-response) among “Buddhas alone together with Buddhas.” The “response” (self-response) of the Buddha-mind to the expression of the Buddha-mind is the natural functioning of normal hearing (i.e. enlightened hearing, seeing, feeling, etc.; the experience of dharmas as they are). In this sense, then, “seeing” with the Dharma-eye (or Dharma-ear, nose, body, etc.) is “fashioning” or “making.” In other words, when dharmas (expressions of Buddha) are experienced as they are, the self that sees resonates with the self that is seen in a manner that rings out through space and time as the ceaseless actualization of the universe (genjokoan).

 

Thus, language becomes ascesis, instead of gnosis or logos—‘seeing things as they are’ now means ‘making things as they are.’ In this light the indexical analogy of ‘the finger pointing to the moon’ is highly misleading, if not altogether wrong, because it draws on a salvifically inefficacious conception of language.

~Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking, p.64

 

Zen practice-enlightenment is the self seeing its true nature – its all-inclusiveness and its fathomless infinity. The totality of existence-time, then, is seen as only and always a particular form here and now (this dharma here and no other). Moreover, in seeing particular forms (this cup, that flower here and now) as a specific instance of total existence-time the self recognizes its fathomless infinity as infinite delusion.

 

 

Guts and blood...

 

Ted

Dogen: Existence-Time and Dharma-Transmission

Existence-Time and Dharma-Transmission

To fully appreciate of Dogen’s view of Dharma-transmission it needs to be understood within the context of the nonduality of the temporal and the eternal as presented by the essential doctrine of “existence-time” (uji). “Uji” or “existence-time” is Dogen’s uniquely dynamic vision of the nondual nature of existence (ontology, being, place [space, location]) and time (temporality, chronology, temporology).1

Many, if not most Zen students are familiar with the Dogen’s unique teaching about existence-time due to the fact that the Shobogenzo fascicle of the same name – “Uji” – was one of the earliest, and has proven to be one of the most numerous, translations made available.2 “Knowing of” Dogen’s teaching on existence-time, however, is not the same as accurately understanding it, much less verifying it in experience and incorporating it in practice-enlightenment.3

Briefly then, the significance of “existence-time” (uji) is given a central position in Dogen’s vision of Zen cosmology. This means, for one thing, that all of the implications of Dogen’s view of existence-time are presupposed as intrinsic to all his teachings.

Now, the point we want to get at is this; Dogen’s teaching on “Dharma-transmission” – when seen from within his view of existence-time – presents a remarkably dynamic vision of the universe as an ever-present activity of becoming Buddha. In short “becoming Buddha” is not something limited to the present time, not something that will cease in the future, nor something that will vanish in the past – becoming Buddha now (i.e. in the present) is not independent of becoming Buddha then (i.e. in the past or future). For Dogen then, “Dharma-transmission” describes the coordinating activity of becoming Buddha as the inherent “virtue of ascending and descending” (the up and down, or forward and back flow of “time”) of each and all things, beings, and events (dharmas) exist.

In short, the Dharma is not merely something that Buddhas and ancestors “pass on” from the past, to the present, and into the future; Dharma is also transmitted from the present to the past, and from the future to the present and the past. Thus Dogen is able to express this astonishing vision for instance:

The succession of the Dharma by ancestral patriarchs is forty patriarchs from the Seven Buddhas to Sokei and forty buddhas from Sokei to the Seven Buddhas. Because each of the Seven Buddhas has the virtue of ascending and of descending, they extend to Sokei and extend to the Seven Buddhas. Because Sokei has the virtue of ascending and of descending, he receives the authentic transmission from the Seven Buddhas, he receives the authentic transmission from Sokei, and he passes the authentic transmission to later buddhas. But it is beyond only former and later. At the time of Sakyamuni Buddha, all the buddhas of the ten directions are present; at the time of Seigen, Nangaku is present; at the time of Nangaku, Seigen is present; and so on—at the time of Sekito, Kozei is present. Their not hindering each other may be different from having no connection. We should investigate the presence of such virtue. Each of the forty Buddhist patriarchs mentioned above is an eternal buddha. At the same time, each has a mind, a body, a state of brightness, and a national land. Each has passed away long ago and has never passed away at all. It may be that both never having passed away, and having passed away long ago, are equally the virtue of an eternal buddha. Those who learn in practice the truth of eternal buddhas realize in experience the truth of eternal buddhas; they are the eternal buddhas of each age. Although the “eternal” of “eternal buddhas” is exactly the same as the “old” in “new and old,” [eternal buddhas] have completely transcended past and present; they belong directly in eternity.

Shobogenzo, Kobusshin, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross

Notes

1.      “Temporology” is the term applied to the “science of time” inspired by Dr Kozyrev and under active investigation at Moscow State Univeristy, which offers this brief definition on their website: “In our understanding, the ‘nature’ of time is the mechanism [that brings about] appearing changes and occurring newness in the world. To understand the ‘nature’ of time is to point to … a process, a phenomenon, a ‘carrier’ in the material world whose properties could be identified or corresponded with those of time.”

2.      The “Uji” fascicle of is probably second in popularity only to “Genjokoan” – the other popular Dogen work, “Bendowa” is not a Shobogenzo fascicle.

3.      Even the first step of incorporating the reality of existence-time (i.e. achieving an accurate understanding) cannot really be accomplished with the “Uji” fascicle alone – for “Uji” is but one chapter (fascicle, part, section) of a single, complex, literary expression consisting of (at least) seventy-four other chapters.

Peace,

Ted

Zen Treasury: Subtle Clues To Dogen's Shobogenzo

To Dogen, mind was at once knowledge and reality, at once the knowing subject and the known object, yet it transcended them both at the same time. In this nondual conception of mind, what one knew was what one was—and ontology, epistemology, and soteriology were inseparably united. This was also his interpretation of the Hua-yen tenet “The triple world is mind-only.” From this vantage point, Dogen guarded himself against the inherent weaknesses of the two strands of Buddhist idealism: the advocacy of the functions of mind (shinso) by the school of consciousness-only and the advocacy of the essence of mind (shinsho) by the school of tathagata-garbha—both of which were vulnerable to a dualism between phenomena and essence. Thus, philosophically speaking, Dogen maneuvered between monistic pantheism and reductionistic phenomenalism.

Hee-Jin Kim, Eihei Dogen: Mystical Realist, p.117

The obvious (surface) meaning of this is clear enough; for Dogen, to exist is to know (to sense, feel, perceive, experience, etc.), to know is to exist, and to know Buddha (enlightenment, liberation, nirvana, etc.) is to exist as Buddha. While this is profound in its own right, I would like to suggest there may be some subtler clues we might come away with.

Consider closely the implications of Kim’s assertion about Dogen making no division between existence, knowledge, or the Buddha Way (ontology, epistemology, and soteriology). If Dogen does not regard ontology, epistemology, and soteriology, as being three different things, as Kim contends, then clearly, Dogen’s expressions on any one of these must also apply to the other two.

It is this, that I would like to suggest can serve as a kind of key in approaching Shobogenzo. That is, it serves as a key insofar as it neutralizes Dogen’s obligation to confine his expressions to the specific terms and doctrines appropriate to any one of these three, as would be necessary if the three were treated as different things. This means, for example, that if Dogen could not accurately transmit some Buddhist truth on knowledge within the terms and teachings of Buddhist epistemology he could appeal to the terms and teachings available within Buddhist ontology or soteriology – he could even combine terms and teachings from these “three” realms of Buddhist thought, thus vastly increase the degree of subtlety with which his expressions could be refined.

In other words, Dogen’s view of the inseparability of ontology, epistemology, and soteriology vastly increases Dogen’s capacity to transmit wisdom by increasing the terms and teaching available for so doing. The possibilities available to a painter limited to a single color are not simply doubled with the addition of one more color, but pushed to the brink of infinity – a third color and the brink is transcended; this same reasoning applies to musicians, poets, and Zen masters.

If you have followed the significance of this, you will also be able to appreciate that, just as Hee-Jin Kim provides these clues to Dogen’s teachings on “ontology, epistemology, and soteriology,” Kim points similarly to “language, thinking, and reason,” as well as “activity, expression, and understanding.”

By assimilating the significance of these clues, we rid ourselves of obstacles by dispensing with limitations imposed by arbitrary divisions, thus expanding our capacity for receiving Dogen’s transmission.

Please, dig into Dogen’s treasury and enjoy its profound richness…

Peace,

Ted

Dharma-Transmission Vs. Established Buddhism

There are two primary manifestations in this world that are identified as “Buddhism” – one that is “established” (instituted) and one that is “transmitted” (revealed). The established version portrays Buddha nature as it has been established and developed by the intellect of the common human being. The transmitted Buddha Dharma is the vision of Buddha nature that has been transmitted by enlightened Buddhas and ancestors. From Dogen’s perspective, the established version of Buddhism is, of course, not Buddhism at all. Because ordinary beings are unable or unwilling to trust, practice, and verify their own identity with Buddha nature as portrayed by the expressions of Buddhas and ancestors, the established form of Buddhism continues to endure.

Do you know where the disease lies which keeps you learners from reaching true understanding? It lies where you have no faith in your Self. When faith in your Self is lacking you find yourself hurried by others in every possible way. At every encounter you are no longer your master: you are driven about by others this way or that.

All that is required is all at once to cease leaving your Self in search of something external. When this is done you will find your Self no different from the Buddha or the patriarch. Do you want to know who the Buddha or patriarch is? He is no other than the one who is, at this moment, right in front of me, listening to my talk on the Dharma. You have no faith in him and therefore you are in quest of someone else somewhere outside. And what will you find? Nothing but words and names, however excellent. You will never reach the moving spirit in the Buddha or patriarch.
The Zen Teachings of Linchi, Burton Watson

Why do people find it so difficult to accept the revealed Dharma transmitted by Buddhas and ancestors? To ask it another way, why do people reject, out of hand, the very notion that they are, as they are, Buddha? In short, people deny their own Buddhahood because of their attachment to abstract conceptual views – (consciously or not) people are unwilling to trust immediate experience more than the conclusions of abstract speculation. When Dogen says, “Buddhas are enlightened about delusion; ordinary beings are deluded about enlightenment,” he means, in part, that ordinary beings are attached to false notions about enlightenment. Like everything else, apart from actual experience in a particular place at a specific time, “enlightenment” is merely a concept. The taste of a pineapple may be described, but until an individual actually experiences that taste at a specific place-time, the taste of a pineapple is a mere idea for that individual – not a real dharma. Likewise for the “taste” (experience) of enlightenment; and while the idea or concept about the taste of a pineapple may actually have some fairly accurate qualities about it (due to the individual’s experience with other fruits), concepts about enlightenment are never even in the same ballpark as the actual experience.

When we perfectly realize it, while still as we are, we would never have thought previously that realization would be like this. Even though we had imagined it, it is not a realization that is compatible with that imagining.
Shōbōgenzō, Yui-butsu-yo-butsu, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross

This is hardly a new or radical teaching, Buddhist masters have been insistent on the need to grasp the true significance of this from the beginning of Zen history. For example, in an early Zen record attributed to Bodhidharma, the first ancestor of Zen in China, we read:

People who don’t see their nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are liars and fools. They fall into endless space. They’re like drunks. They can’t tell good from evil. If you intend to cultivate such a practice, you have to see your nature before you can put an end to rational thought. To attain enlightenment without seeing your nature is impossible.

Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming karma doesn’t exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is empty, committing evil isn’t wrong. Such persons fall into a hell of endless darkness with no hope of release. Those who are wise hold no such conception.
The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, Red Pine

The Buddhas and ancestors advise beginning practitioners not to aim for “enlightenment” or aim “to become Buddha” in their pursuit of the Buddhist goal for good reason; those that have not yet experienced the reality of enlightenment cannot envision it – aiming for some conceptual notion of enlightenment can only lead in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, people have a tendency to ignore this constant refrain of Buddhist masters and aim for conceptions of enlightenment anyway. While not as ridiculous as “aiming” to have no goals at all – which is inane as well as futile – aiming for speculative concepts of “enlightenment” is ineffective and it can become a serious hindrance. Those that have yet to experience it typically concoct ideas about enlightenment as consisting of undifferentiated oneness, pure consciousness, undefiled goodness, and similar concepts equally impossible to envision or imagine.

Fellow believers, I tell you there is no Dharma to be found outside. But students don’t understand me and immediately start looking inward for some explanation, sitting by the wall in meditation, pressing their tongues against the roof of their mouths, absolutely still, never moving, supposing this to be the Dharma of the buddhas taught by the patriarchs. What a mistake! If you take this unmoving, clean, and pure environment to be the right way, then you will be making ignorance the lord and master. A man of old said, ‘Bottomless, inky black is the deep pit, truly a place to be feared!’ This is what he meant.
The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi, Burton Watson

Let go of emptiness and come back to the brambly forest.
Riding backward on the ox, drunken and singing,
Who could dislike the misty rain pattering on your bamboo raincoat and hat?
In the empty space you cannot stick a needle.
Cultivating the Empty Field, Dan Taigen Leighton

Intellectual conceptualization leads many to theorize that if there is any “bad,” “suffering,” “wrong,” etc. in human existence, it cannot have its source in Buddha nature, thus, it must arise from human weakness, imperfection, etc. Convinced of the “rationality” of such speculative theories, many practitioners unawares adopt dualistic presuppositions. If practitioners are ever to see beyond the ego-self, they must, at least tentatively, be willing to seriously consider the possible validity of the Buddhist teaching that all beings truly are, as they are, Buddha nature. As long as this is rejected, dismissed, minimized, or ignored there is no way to verify its truth in experiential realization. The need to see through deluded views that conceive of enlightenment in terms of abstract qualities like “goodness,” “purity,” etc., is one reason Zen masters sometimes utilize skillful means and turning words that appear to outsiders as shocking or irreverent.

A monk asked Joshu, “What is the pure land?”
Joshu said, “A puddle of piss.”
The monk asked, “Can you show it to me?”
Joshu said, “Don’t tempt me.”
...

Joshu and a city official were walking together. A rabbit they happened across instantly darted off when it saw them. The official said, “You are a greatly enlightened being, why did the rabbit run for its life?”
Joshu said, “I like to kill.”
...
A monk asked Yunmen, “What is Buddha?”
Yunmen said, “A dry turd.”
...

All this is simply a Buddha, when doing His practice, wriggling His toes in His straw sandals. There are times when His singular way of putting the Matter will be the sound from His breaking wind or the smell from His emptying His bowels. Those with Nostrils will get a whiff of It.
Shōbōgenzō, Gyōbutsu Iigi, Hubert Nearman
...

A monk said, “In the day there is sunlight, at night there is firelight. What is ‘divine light’?”
The master said, “Sunlight, firelight.”
The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu, James Green
...
The moment we actually succeed in ceasing such conceptualization the truth of “transmitted” (revealed) Buddhism and falsity of “established” (instituted) Buddhism becomes self-evident. The term “nirvana” literally means “extinction” and we can see by its etymology that one of its traditional meanings is “the end of the world.” Like the term “apocalypse” (Greek; “revelation”), the “end of the world” symbolized by the term nirvana informs us that along with “arising” and “abiding,” time possess the quality of “perishing.” Also like “apocalypse,” this sense of “nirvana” possesses the connotation of a “new beginning” or the actualization of a “new realm of reality” – a realm of perfection or eternal peace. This is the same image portrayed in the Zen expression about the “great death,” and the more usual term in Mahayana literature, “annutara samyak sambodhi” (full and perfect enlightenment). What all of these terms commonly convey is that the end (destruction, death, end, perishing, etc.) of the present world or life is simultaneously the beginning of a new world or life.

To experience an establishment or institution is to experience indirectly, to receive an interpretation or explanation; to experience a transmission or revelation is to experience directly, to perceive or sense immediately – establishments convey units of information (abstract ideas, concepts); transmissions reveal unified formations (dharmas; actual, particular instances of existence-time). The products of establishments are conveyed circuitously and discursively through hearing and learning; the products of transmission are revealed directly and wholly through seeing and perceiving. Transmission or revelation does not occur through faith or understanding, it does not require the acceptance of anything concealed or beyond human experience – to receive transmissions or revelations is to see “face to face.” This is the true significance of the Zen tradition of “mind to mind” or “face to face” transmission. The transmission of the Buddha Dharma is the transmission of enlightened wisdom (bodhi prajna) from the Buddha mind to the Buddha mind. Clear seeing is prajna itself; to see “face to face” is to see Shakyamuni face to face – not to see Shakyamuni face to face is not to see Shakyamuni at all.

By bowing down in respect to the Face of Shakyamuni Buddha and by transferring the Eye of Shakyamuni Buddha to our own eyes, we will have transferred our eyes to the Eye of Buddha. Ours will be the very Eye and Face of Buddha. Without even one generation’s break, that which has been conferred face-to-face right up to the present by the mutual Transmission of this Buddha Eye and Buddha Face is this very Face-to-Face Transmission.
…
Be very clear about it: when someone Transmits face-to-face the Treasure House of the Eye of the True Teaching by saying, “You have realized what my Marrow is,” this is plainly an instance of conferring the Face-to-Face Transmission. At that very moment when you let go of your everyday notions of what ‘bones and marrow’ means, there will be the Face-to-Face Transmission of the Buddhas and Ancestors. The Face-to-Face Transmission of the great Full Enlightenment and the Mind seal will involve a particular moment in a definite place.
Shobogenzo, Menju, Hubert Nearman

Clear seeing (prajna) is both the method (means) and goal (end) of Buddhist practice-realization. “Realization” (nirvana, full enlightenment) is the “great death,” the end of the present world, it is the transference of our ordinary, mundane eye, for the Dharma-Eye which sees clearly. “Practice” denotes the ceaseless, ongoing actualization of clear seeing which ever-advances the total exertion, casting off, total exertion, casting off that is the actualization of the universe (genjokoan). Zazen-only is the standard systematic skillful process through which the Buddha Dharma is accurately transmitted and revealed; Zazen-only is the function of “practice” and it is the essence of “realization.” The Buddhist sutras and ancestral records are the vehicle of Dharma Transmission, the body or form of the Buddhist expression of the unified vision of the “great matter of life and death.”

...

Peace,

Ted