Shobogenzo, Genjokoan, Eihei Dogen - Skeleton Key Part 6

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

PART 6

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]

Continuing on, the Genjokoan states:

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Those who are enlightened about delusion are buddhas.

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In the Shobogenzo, being “enlightened about delusion” means awakening to the reality of delusion. That is, realizing what delusion truly is. It is like when, for example, a person is shown the cause of a magician’s illusions: mirrors, wires, hidden compartments, and so on. The person can then grasp the reality of the illusion. The reality of the illusion, the mirrors, wires, hidden compartments, is existent, and the illusion is a real characteristic of its existence. Similarly, when you realize the cause of delusion: misperception or partial perception, of true nature, you realize the reality of delusion. The reality of delusion, misperception or partial perception of our own true nature is existent, and delusion is a real characteristic of its existence. Those who are “enlightened about” this are called “buddhas.”

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Next, the Genjokoan says:

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Those who are deluded about enlightenment are ordinary beings.

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To be “deluded about enlightenment” is to view enlightenment as being something outside or apart from you or the everyday world. This is not a judgmental statement; it is a simple observation. When you are aware of your true nature, you are called buddhas; when you are unaware of your true nature, you are called ordinary beings. Flowers fall, weeds flourish; cocks crow, dogs bark. The Genjokoan goes on:

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There are people who continue to realize enlightenment based on enlightenment.

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Dogen’s emphasis on post-kensho practice and enlightenment is rarely matched in Zen literature. He insists that attaining enlightenment is just the beginning of genuine practice and enlightenment. In fact, enlightenment for Dogen is only authentic as practice and enlightenment. In all his works, he repeatedly urges you to realize enlightenment based upon enlightenment, often using the Zen ancestors of the past as examples of how to approach the lifetime process of deepening and refining your realization. The Genjokoan continues:

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There are people in the midst of delusion adding to delusion.

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Dogen is not simply repeating his previous point but indicating something else. In Shobogenzo, Keisei-Sanshiki, Dogen uses the same phrase in a manner that suggests its deeper implication…

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…To Be Continued…

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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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[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]

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Peace,

Ted

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

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

 

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

A Skeleton Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo: Genjokoan

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 2

[Click Here for Part 1]

The opening lines of Genjokoan outline the fundamental aspects of reality: the interdependence and interpenetrating aspects of the one and the many, the individual and the universal.

 

When all things are seen as the buddha-dharma, then there is delusion and enlightenment, there is practice, there is life and there is death, there are buddhas and there are ordinary beings.

This line affirms the relative aspect of reality. Here, “the buddha-dharma” denotes all-inclusive reality. “When all things are seen as the buddha-dharma” indicates one way of perceiving the buddha-dharma (reality). In this way of perceiving the buddha-dharma, “all things” (the myriad dharmas) are seen. That is, reality appears as a multitude of separate individual things. From this perspective of reality, there is “delusion and enlightenment, there is practice, there is life and there is death, there are buddhas and there are ordinary beings.” There are people, animals, houses, stars, and all the other kinds of things.

Dogen, more than most Zen masters, delves deeply into the implications of this aspect of reality. While many Zen masters and Buddhist texts give short shrift to the relative aspect of experience, often simply dismissing it as the experience of delusion, Dogen methodically articulates how this aspect of reality affirms the ultimate significance of every particular thing. The Shobogenzo repeatedly directs us to this truth; because everything is the buddha-dharma, the buddha-dharma is every thing. For Dogen, every thing has ultimate significance as the buddha-dharma; including even such things as broken tiles, pebbles, dreams, illusions, and doubts.

~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]

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Peace,

Ted

Genjokoan: A Skeleton Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo

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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 1

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The celebrated Genjokoan is one of the most widely known and highly praised essays of the thirteenth-century Japanese Zen master Dogen. There is a very good reason for this; Genjokoan, literally meaning “actualization of the fundamental point,” is a masterpiece of Zen expression.

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One thing that places Dogen in the company of the greatest of Zen masters is his magnificent skill for Zen expression. Few masters before–and none since–have matched his skill for expressing the profound and subtle wisdom of the enlightened mind. Two of his early predecessors, Tozan and his disciple Sozan, earn their inclusion among these few through their elucidation of the classic Zen teaching of the Five Ranks.

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The doctrine expressed as the Five Ranks is one of the most influential Zen expressions of all time. The subject of that doctrine–the function and essence of the enlightened mind–is, and has always been, the summum bonum of Buddhism. Every genuine Buddhist expression is grounded on this central principal. The presentation of this principal by Tozan, further refined by Sozan as the Five Ranks, marks one point where the expression of the central truth of Buddhism evolved.

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Dogen’s Shobogenzo marks another such point.

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Dogen’s genius for expression is displayed nowhere better than in Shobogenzo, Genjokoan. His views, on every major aspect of the buddha-dharma, are revealed, either explicitly or implicitly, in this extraordinary essay. Genjokoan is a skeleton key that can be used to unlock the Shobogenzo, literally “Treasury of the True Dharma-Eye.”

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

…To be continued…

Peace,

Ted

Letting Things Be vs Wholehearted Effort

Practical experience tells us that some aspects of our experience (hence, our existence) are subject to our control while others are not. We feel that we can choose to sit, stand, walk, or lie down, but not that we can choose to breathe, digest our food, circulate our blood, or grow new skin cells. In fact, the real “us,” that is, our “true self” does actually manage all of this and more; but the point we want to get at here concerns a frequent target of Dogen’s criticism: the presupposition that the “natural” or “unintentional” processes of experience are inclusive of our thoughts, speech, and actions. The worshiper of emptiness presupposes that hearing, for instance, occurs unconsciously as random sounds impress themselves upon the mind through the ear, rather than, as Dogen contends, that hearing is actualized by the mind conducting itself through the ear to the “objects” of sound. The former (false) view is based on the same principle that divides “appearance” from “reality” or “form” from “emptiness” – such a view “presupposes” that the mind is uniform, passive, pure, unmoving “consciousness” or “essential nature,” and that hearing (and seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and thinking) are automatic, involuntary processes. Such distorted views lead to dead end doctrines and practices advocating “having no goals,” “letting things be as they are,” “just sitting in pure awareness,” etc. – of such notions Dogen says:

As to the phrase ‘when the right moment arrives’, folks in both the past and the present have frequently held the view that this means one simply waits for some future time when Buddha Nature will manifest before one’s eyes. They believe that while doing their training and practice in this way, the time will arrive when Buddha Nature will spontaneously manifest before their eyes. They say that until that time comes, It will not manifest even by visiting one’s Master and inquiring into the Dharma or even by doing one’s best to practice the Way. Looking at the Matter in this manner, they uselessly return to worldly ways, vainly waiting for It to fall down upon them from the heavens. Folks like this, I fear, are that type of non-Buddhist who believes that things just happen to happen, independent of any cause.

Shobogenzo, Bussho, Hubert Nearman

Here Dogen clearly illustrates the ordinary (unawakened) inactive mind of “letting things be.” Realizing the reality of Buddha nature is not something that just happens. Authentic liberation requires wholehearted, accurately directed, intentional effort. Those that “just sit” and passively experience whatever happens to “spontaneously manifests” before their eyes cannot even see the true nature of grass and trees, much less Buddhas. Truly, it is immediately accessible to all, but none access it without informing themselves of the details concerning how to access it – and wholeheartedly applying themselves to it. On the significance of this Dogen quotes the Buddha’s words, then comments that we “need to be clear” that to give rise to this intention is to “wholeheartedly seek enlightened wisdom.”

The Tathagata said in the Avatamsaka Scripture:

When Bodhisattvas give rise to the intention to realize Buddhahood and make birth-and-death the foremost issue, they wholeheartedly seek enlightened Wisdom and, being steadfast, they will not waver. The meritorious functioning of that single-mindedness is deep and vast, knowing no bounds. If I were to analyze and explain it, I would be unable to exhaust the topic, even if I had eons to do it.

You need to be clear about this: using the issue of birth-and-death to give rise to your intention to realize Buddhahood is to wholeheartedly seek enlightened Wisdom.
Shobogenzo, Hotsu Mujō Shin, Hubert Nearman

Peace,
Ted

New List of Zen Books With Links

New List of Zen Books With Links

Posted on sister blog (Flatbed Sutra Zen Blog)

More coming soon...

Peace,
Ted

The Homeland of the Self

There has never been any real division

Nic asked, “How do we cease conceptualization and become one with the unnamable void?”

Louie Wing said, “First of all, you do not ‘become one with the void’. You are the void. Awakening is just realizing the fact. The unnamable void is your own mind. When you conceptualize, you are abstracting partial aspects from the whole. That is, you are dividing the one true reality into this and that, self and other. This can be done skillfully only when you realize that in reality, there are no such divisions.

“When you cease conceptualizing, you realize that your own awareness is pure, clear, and luminescent, that it is the unnamable void. You then grasp the fact that all the myriad things are not separate from the void, but are in fact the void itself. All the myriad things are nothing other than your own miraculous awareness, which is infinitely vast and eternally present.

“Once you realize your own identity with the unnamable void, you realize that there has never been any real division between things and times, self and other-than-self. All such divisions are merely delusions based on conceptualization. Then, knowing your own unity with all things and events, you enter any environment and participate in any activity without ever leaving what Dogen called, ‘the homeland of the self’.”

~The Flatbed Sutra of Louie Wing Peace, Ted

Essential Books for the Dogen Student

Essential Books for the student of Zen Master Dogen
(From the September edition of The Flatbed Sutra Newsletter)

By far, the best two books available in English on Dogen and his teachings

-Eihei Dogen: Mystical Realist, by Hee-Jin Kim
-Dogen: On Meditation and Thinking, by Hee-Jin Kim

Two complete translations of Shobogenzo essential for all Dogen students

-Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo (Complete translation in four volumes), by Gudo Nishijima & Mike (Chodo) Cross
-Shobogenzo (Complete translation), by Rev. Hubert Nearman

Essential works with selected translations of Shobogenzo

-Flowers of Emptiness: Selections From Dogen’s Shobogenzo, by Hee-Jin Kim
-The Heart of Dogen’s Shobogenzo, by Norman Waddell and Masao Abe
-Rational Zen, by Thomas Cleary
-Minding Mind, by Thomas Cleary
-Shobogenzo, by Thomas Cleary
-Moon In A Dewdrop, by Kazuaki Tanahashi
-Enlightenment Unfolds, by Kazuaki Tanahashi
-How To Raise An Ox: Zen Practice as Taught in Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo, by Francis H. Cook
-Sounds of Valley Streams: Enlightenment in Dogen’s Zen, by Francis H. Cook
-Dogen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation, by Carl Bielefeldt
-Flowers Fall: A Commentary on Zen Master Dogen’s Genjokoan, by Hakuun Yasutani

Essential translations of some of Dogen’s works other than Shobogenzo

-The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Three Hundred Koans, by Kazuaki Tanahashi (includes Dogen’s preface)
-Shobogenzo Shinji (Dogen’s Koan Collection), by Gudo Nishijima (does not include Dogen’s preface)
-Dogen’s Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Koroku, by Taigen Dan Leighton and Shohaku Okumura
-Dogen’s Formative Years in China: An Historical Study and Annotated Translation of the ‘Hokyo-ki’ by James Kodera
-Record of Things Heard: The Shobogenzo Zuimonki, by Thomas Cleary
-The Zen Poetry of Dogen, by Steven Heine

Two Classic Zen Records related to Dogen’s Zen

-Cultivating the Empty Field: A Translation of the Record of Honzhi, by Taigen Dan Leighton (An influence on Dogen)
-Transmission of Light, by Thomas Cleary (Influenced by Dogen)

Essential scholarly studies on Dogen

-Dogen and the Koan Tradition, by Steven Heine
-Impermanence Is Buddha Nature: Dogen’s Understanding of Temporality, by Joan Stambaugh
-Did Dogen Go to China? What He Wrote and When He Wrote It, by Steven Heine
-A Study of Dogen: His Philosophy and Religion, Masao Abe

Essential scholarly studies related to Dogen

-Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism, by Jacqueline I. Stone
-Soto Zen In Medieval Japan, by William Bodiford
-How Zen Became Zen: The Dispute Over Enlightenment and the Formation of Chan Buddhism in Song-Dynasty China, by Morten Schlutter
-The Other Side of Zen: A Social History of Soto Zen Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan, by Duncan Ryuken Williams

Other notable works related to Dogen

-Zen Classics, by Steven Heine and Dale Wright
-Zen Ritual, by Steven Heine and Dale Wright
-The Zen Canon, by Steven Heine and Dale Wright
-Zen Skin, Zen Marrow: Will the Real Zen Buddhism Please Stand Up?, by Steven Heine
-Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, & the Question of Nationalism, by James W. Heisig and John C. Maraldo

Peace,
Ted