Things and Their True Nature - Two? Not Two?

Appearance & Reality - Form & True Nature

Those who greatly realize delusion are buddhas. Those who are greatly deluded about realization are ordinary beings.

~Shōbōgenzō, Genjō-kōan, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross

 

This passage from Shobogenzo, Genjokoan, perfectly presents Zen’s response to the basic question, “What is the true essence of the things, beings and events we experience as objects appearing in and as the world.” That true essence is, “The very forms of the things, beings, and events precisely as they appear (i.e. exactly as we experience them).” A “Buddha” is a Buddha by the very fact of being aware that (awake to) the “true nature” of things, beings, and events is not other than, and nowhere else but in and as those things, beings, and events as they are (as they exist, hence, as they are experienced).

 

True, this conclusion directly contradicts the assertions of many contemporary Zen teachers that contend the “true nature” or “reality” of the world is beyond our capacity to experience, or other than the world we actually perceive. That it contradicts popular Zen notions, however, does not mean it is inaccurate, or that Dogen misspoke or was erroneously edited, etc. This message, which is only one of many wherein Dogen and contemporary Zen often diverge widely, is not only repeated throughout Dogen’s works, it is a central characteristic of it. The repeated emphasis, almost a refrain, in the works of Hee-Jin Kim on the priority of the “reconstructive” rather the “deconstructive” element of emptiness in Dogen is reason enough to insist that the fact that this aspect of Zen continues to be largely ignored in the contemporary discussion is unjustified to the point of gross negligence. Setting aside any question about right or wrong, when contemporary Zen teachers proclaim that the reality or true nature of the world is not the world we perceive, they are asserting a view that is diametrically opposed to Dogen’s Zen. In fact, according to Dogen, even the view that the real world is something other than the world as it is, is itself is a mistaken view of the real world as it is.

 

The triple world is as the triple world is seen, and a view of something other than the triple world is a mistaken view of the triple world…

Great Master Śākyamuni says, “It is best to see the triple world as the triple world."

This view is the triple world itself. This triple world is just as it is seen.

~Shōbōgenzō, Sangai-yuishin, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross

 

In Dogen’s Zen, the true nature of any and every form is “just as it is seen” – mountains, stars, and fences, dreams, illusions, and spots in the air – are, as they are, the true nature of reality as it is. As a Buddhist master, Dogen was particularly concerned with the significance of this truth in connection to Buddhist forms, especially Buddhist expressions. Some of the most colorful language of Shobogenzo appear as repudiations of views suggesting that the reality of Buddhist expressions might exist independently of their forms. According to Dogen, the expression of a Buddha is nondual with the form of that Buddha, the very body-mind of that Buddha; thus, such suggestions are not only delusional, they are slanderous. It is no wonder, then, why Shobogenzo heaps such intense scorn on notions suggesting that Buddhist expressions are “merely provisional,” and often goes so far as to identify the advocates of such views as demons and beasts.

 

Dogen’s colorful, often humorous repudiations of “little shavers,” “bands of demons,” “wild beasts,” and the like provide not only good entertainment, they provide us with the assurance that the lifeless “Zen” of charlatanism and institutional formality so prevalent today is not a new phenomenon. Moreover, Dogen’s frequent technique of clearly articulating deluded or wrong views and approaches common to quacksalvers and deluded teachers offer a wealth of guidance on spotting them in our own day, thus avoiding being mislead by distorted views and teachings. In this connection, there are a variety of popular notions about Zen enlightenment suggesting that “true nature,” “reality,” or “Buddhahood” has to do with something immanent in the things, beings, and events of the world, something concealed within, behind, or underlying the forms ever-appearing before our eyes here-and-now – as if these very “forms” and “appearances” were mere forms and appearances, rather than the actual manifest forms and appearances of reality itself, the Tao as it is, the very face of God, the actual voice of Buddha. In Dogen’s Zen, such views are the very epitome of the unenlightened condition, the common denominator of those bound by the shackles of ego-centricity.

 

Their state is such that they deludedly imagine that after the triple world and the ten directions which we are experiencing in the present have suddenly dropped away, then the Dharma-nature will appear, and this Dharma-nature will be other than the myriad things and phenomena of the present. The true meaning of the Dharma-nature can never be like that. This universe of things and phenomena, and the Dharma-nature, have far transcended discussion of sameness and difference and have transcended talk of disjunction or union. Because they are beyond past, present, and future; beyond separation and constancy; and beyond matter, perception, thought, action, and consciousness, they are the Dharma-nature.

~Shōbōgenzō, Hōsshō, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross

 

The only “dilemma” as to the difference or sameness between the true nature or Dharma nature of things, beings, and events and the forms in which things, beings, and events appear is, it turns out, only a “dilemma” for those that make it a dilemma by “adding legs to a snake,” to use the Zen phrase. In other words, a thing, being, or event is – as it is – a thing, being or event. It is only by attempting to divide a thing, being, or event into a “true nature” and an “appearance” that we come up against a dilemma.

 

To clarify, consider an actual dog, manifest before us here-and-now; this dog is the true nature of this dog, this dog is the very form appearing as this dog. Take away the true nature, and you take away this dog; take away the form, and you take away this dog – this dog’s form is nondual with this dog’s Dharma-nature, not even a laser-scalpel can cut them in two. The division of a dog’s (or anything else’s) appearance from its true nature can only be accomplished by the conceptual capacity of abstract speculation; the result of such a division gives rise to (actualizes; begets) a new, real, existent thing or dharma, this new element of reality is called a mistaken view, a deluded notion, a hindrance, or, as in the present case, a dilemma.

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From the Zen perspective, the very appearance “of things and phenomena” and the true nature of things and phenomena are far beyond speculative “discussion of sameness and difference” and transcend conceptual hypothetical “talk of disjunction or union.” The actual things, beings, and events manifest right here, right now – as right here, right now – are “beyond past, present, and future,” thus “they are the Dharma-nature.” Because this dog is this appearance (and no other), the form of this dog and the true nature of this dog are “beyond separation and constancy” and beyond divisions of “matter” (from mind), and of “perception, thought, action, and consciousness” (from appearance, substance, agent, and phenomenon), “they are the Dharma-nature” as it is.

 

Please treasure yourself,

Ted

(Pre-"Soto") Soto Style Koan Introspection in Dogen's Zen

(Pre-"Soto") Soto Style Koan Introspection in Dogen's Zen

The final exceptional passage in the Goyuigon concerns the content of Zen enlightenment and its relationship to koan training. Gikai prefaces this conversation with Ejo by stating: “During the prior meditation period, I was aided by our former teacher’s great enlightenment situation, the shinjin datsuraku words.” …in this passage… the words “shinjin datsuraku” represent a stock phrase or device (i.e., an “old example,” kosoku or koan) for contemplation during meditation. This use of shinjin datsuraku as a formal meditation device is confirmed by the fact that Ejo then tested Gikai’s understanding by asking him to present an “appended phrase” (jakugo, i.e. a passage… summing up the meaning of a koan.) Their dialogue is as follows:

 

Gikai: I have attained an insight based on our former teacher’s saying, “shinjin datsuraku.”

 

Ejo: Good. Good. What do you understand?

 

Gikai: I understand “datsuraku shinjin.”

 

Ejo: What is the meaning?

 

Gikai: I had thought only (my) barbarian beard was red, but here is another red-bearded barbarian.”

 

Ejo: Among the many permitted [answers to] shinjin [datsuraku], there is this kind of shinjin.

 

This conversation has been quoted in full because it reveals three practices usually thought to be incongruous with the method of Zen practiced in early Soto. It implies that Gikai had been occupied with Dogen’s words during his meditation; that Ejo used koan instruction as part of the dharma succession process; and that formal quotations of stereo-typed expressions were used to test the understanding of the koan. Modern Soto scholars cannot accept the Goyuigon account at face value, because to do so would force them either to revise their usual interpretation of Dogen’s Zen as a religion of unmediated meditation or to attempt to argue that both Ejo and Gikai had failed to understand Dogen’s teachings.
William M. Bodiford, Soto Zen in Medieval Japan, pp.55-56

The Dharma-Eye: Seeing Clearly, Clearly Seeing

Our world view is not simply the way we look at the world. It reaches inward to constitute our innermost being, and outward to constitute the world.

~Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche, p.16

So life is what I am making it, and I am what life is making me.

...

What has been described like this is that life is the self, and the self is life.

~Dogen, Shobogenzo, Zenki, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross


Peace,
Ted

Thusness, Normality, and the Reason (dori) of Dharmas

Thusness, Normality, and the Reason (dori) of Dharmas

The notion of thusness is the Buddhist recognition and acknowledgement of the normality of all dharmas. The normality of things is the Buddha-nature of things; to see the normality of a thing is to see its thusness, that is, to see Buddha.

“I shall pursue the problem of reason… specifically with respect to dori (or kotowari), one of Dogen’s most favorite concepts, that connotes “truth,” “reason,” “reasonableness,” “justice,” “naturalness,” and so on. Broadly speaking, our concern has to do with reason and rationality in Dogen’s soteriology, which has been grossly neglected in Dogen studies. We may ask why we should bother with the subject in the first place when the issue is in such disrepute in this day and age of postmodernism?  …whatever the merits and demerits of postmodernism may be, I am deeply convinced more than ever that no age in human history calls for the genuine understanding and re-vision of reason more urgently than ours.”

Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking, pp.100-101

Because in reality all dharmas are Buddha, all dharmas possess intrinsic value, even ultimate value. The ultimate value intrinsic to dharmas (their thusness, or normality) is found in and treated by Dogen according to his notion of the reason, reasonableness, or rightness of dharmas – that is the intrinsic “dori” of dharmas. The term “dori” combines “do” (tao, way, path; also, to speak, to express) and “ri” (Chinese, li; principle, pattern, order; also, to arrange, to regulate).

As the works of David L. Hall, Helmut Wilhelm, Roger T. Ames, and others demonstrate, the significance of “dori” (reason) has a profoundly subtle and wide ranging capacity. In all his works, the preeminent scholar of Dogen studies, Hee-Jin Kim, has eloquently emphasized and illumined the profound significance of dori in Dogen’s Zen. Thus, to convey the primary significance of dori as it relates to Dogen’s Zen we can do no better than offer some quotes by the grand-master himself.

It is noteworthy that the notion of do in the East Asian traditions has a single common thread, namely, the meaning of walking, journeying, or movement along a path. The Way is never extricated from the processes of phenomena themselves.

Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking, p.101

All things considered, the li constitutes those patterns, rhythms, and regularities which humans discern as meaningful in carrying out their day-to-day activities, by participating in the dynamics of the natural, and according to their personal, historical, and cultural conditions and forces. Rationality is never regarded as an immutable, self-contained truth or essence transcendentally existent in a hierarchical, teleological world order, but is grasped in an ever-shifting process of human affairs in relation to nature, history, and culture.

Considered in the Buddhist context, li, like tao, attains enormous complexity in its significance: The word is employed to denote siddhanta (fundamental principle/law) and, hence such Buddhist notions as thusness, emptiness, equality…”

Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking, p.102

“…li is also used to signify, for example, pramaha (to arrange, to regulate, to rectify). It is particularly noteworthy that in Hua-yen thought li (“principle”) is paired with shih (“phenomena”), and their relationship is conceived in such a way that the non-obstruction of li and shih (li-shih wu ai; rigi muge) is further refined as “the nonobstruction of shih and shih” (shih-shih wu ai; jiji muge)—in other words, the interpenetration and harmony of all phenomena.  

…Dori is broad and fexible enough in its capacity to embrace logos, mythos, ethos, and pathos; cognition, affection, and conation; nature and culture; fact and value; theoria and praxis; the self and the universe. …dori is practically oriented, enabling humans to participate in its countless configurations, rhythms, and regularities in life and the world as they discern meaningful …dori regulates, arranges, and manages, as much as it challenges, surmounts, and subverts.

Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking, p.103

Peace,

Ted

The True Nature of Mind Forms...

The True Nature of Mind Forms...

Remember, to receive and retain, to read and recite, and to think reasonably about [prajnā] are just to guard prajnā. And to want to guard it is to receive and retain it, to read and recite it, and so on.

~Shobogenzo, Maka-hannya-haramitsu, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross

To think about prajna (the wisdom of enlightenment) is to experience a mental image of prajna and to experience a mental image of prajna is to think about prajna.

Now, where is prajna apart from the mental experience of prajna?

Investigate this and you will personally verify the truth that the very substance of prajna is mind as it is.

Prajna does not exist independent of the mind as if waiting to be discovered. Pursuing this in practice brings realization that the true nature of all things, beings, forms, etc. (dharmas) is mind.

All dharmas (things, beings, etc.) are expressions of Buddha nature, expressions of the one mind, outside of which nothing exists. Dogen calls these expressions of mind, “the real form of all dharmas.” Thus Dogen describes, illumines, and clarifies the significance and implications of their true nature as mind –  mental images, pictures, visions, expressions, paintings and the like.

Peace,

Ted

Dogen, Shakyamuni, & Dualistic Views of Language, Thinking, & Reason

Our Highest Ancestor in India, Shakyamuni Buddha, once said, “The snowcapped Himalayas are a metaphor for the great nirvana.” You need to know that He is speaking metaphorically about something that can be metaphoric. ‘Something that can be metaphoric’ implies that the mountains and nirvana are somehow intimately connected and that they are connected in a straightforward manner. When He uses the term ‘snow-capped Himalayas’, He is using the actual snowcapped Himalayas as a metaphor, just as when He uses the term ‘great nirvana’, He is using the actual great nirvana as a metaphor.
Shobogenzo, Hotsu Mujo Shin, Hubert Nearman

Without seeing through the dualism of instrumentalist views of language, an accurate understanding of Zen remains impossibly out of reach. Any presuppositions (conscious or not) about words being mere signifiers, pointers, surrogates, or substitutes for “real things” (non-words) apart from themselves is inherently dualistic, thus prohibitive of the nondual experience of Zen practice-enlightenment.

The “blue sky” does not exist apart from the human mind. Even if we admit, for argument sake, that “waves” of certain lengths and frequencies exist independently of human beings, the actual experience (thus existence) of a “blue sky” could only arise if such waves interact with a human mind through a human eye. Thus, the reality of the blue sky and the words blue sky, are both produced by the exact same process with the exact same material: human experience. All “dharmas” (things, beings, events, etc.) are real particular things insofar as they are distinguished as particular things through human perception; the more distinctly they are perceived, the more real they are. We only perceive a blue sky insofar as we distinguish “blue sky” from “not-blue sky” (or “other than” blue sky). The words “blue sky” (and all their verbal and symbolic equivalents) are actualized simultaneously with the human perception of the “blue sky.”

Dogen says that Shakyamuni is speaking “about something that can be metaphoric” to emphasize that words are only significant insofar as they both contain, and are contained by (intimately connected) the real dharmas they describe (depict, portray, present). When Shakyamuni “uses the term” he is using “the actual snowcapped Himalayas” and “the actual great nirvana.” In the same way, we can only say “blue sky” meaningfully if we use the actual blue sky – the actual blue sky only becomes “actual” by being distinguished (thus, marked, or “named”) with the words “blue sky” (and their equivalents). Thus, the words (“blue sky,” “Himalayas,” and “nirvana”) are the actual dharmas (“blue sky,” “Himalayas,” and “nirvana”). For Dogen, any word that signifies or points to “something else” or “other than” is not an actual word (a real dharma); it is only a conceptual construct, an abstract notion. “A finger pointing to the moon” is not the same as “a finger pointing to something else,” nor is “the moon being pointed to by a finger” the same as “the moon not being pointed to by a finger.” The “actual moon” of “a finger pointing to the moon” is real insofar as it is “the moon” that is “pointed to by a finger.”

The term, or name of a dharma is its nature, its life; a dharma becomes a dharma (is actualized) by its being distinctly perceived, distinguished (described, discerned, marked, named, etc.). This is one of the reasons that Shakyamuni is the expression of Buddha nature in Dogen’s works; Dharma (truth) is expression (e.g. understandable explanations). That Dharma is “expression” means that Dharma is, only and always, “intelligible” (knowable, or comprehendible to the mind); the Buddha or ancestor is the being that “enlightens delusion,” “forms, emptiness,” or “fashions intelligibility” from the chaotic stream of ceaseless experience. The Buddha ancestor utilizes enlightened vision to transform general randomness, to actualize this particular thing from “thusness,” that particular meaning from “suchness.”

The view that the significance or meaning of a word exists somewhere outside of the word itself is based on the same kind of dualism that divides emptiness from form, mind from body, existence form time, and appearance from reality. Like all the myriad dharmas, the true “form” and the true “essence” of a word are never construed as two different things in Dogen’s Zen. True words, like all expressions of truth, are only and always fashioned by the creative force of the true human being (Buddha nature). The significance of a word, then, does not, and cannot exist in some “external world” apart from itself. For Dogen, a word (form) and its meaning (essence) constitute one and the same dharma (thing, being, event, etc.) as nondualistically as body-mind, existence-time, and practice-enlightenment.

Advocates of “correspondence” theories conceive of words as mere artificial (or provisional) “representatives” or “surrogates” of “real dharmas” that exist in the outside world (e.g. things, beings, events, etc.) or in the mind (e.g. ideas, concepts, thoughts, etc.). For such theorists, a word can have only one definite meaning, the one meaning that “corresponds” to a reality that exists “objectively” apart from the word. Dogen (and Buddhism) denies the nondual basis of such theories; for him the meaning or significance of a word is totally unique to its dharma-position. That is to say, the meaning of a word is unique to each actual instance of its appearance, depending on its particular context as well as the particular hearer or reader.

The speculative theorist that fails to see that the “dictionary meaning” of a word is an abstraction, and therefore general, and approximate, will fail to perceive the significance of Dogen’s (hence, Zen’s) expressions. For Dogen, a real word is a real dharma, and like all dharmas, its reality (in existence-time), and thus its meaning, is unique to each and every actual instance of its occurrence. Also like all dharmas, each word is a particular manifestation of the totality of existence-time – when one word is illumined, the rest of existence-time is darkened (thus present, potent). Herein lies the reason for the centrality of language in Dogen’s Zen; to Buddha ancestors a word, as a dharma-position, is a focal point of existence-time to which all sounds, forms, voices, expressions, and meanings radiate out from and return to – in short, a true word encompasses and is encompassed by the infinite potential of Buddha nature, and is therefore charged with an infinite potential of meanings.

Words, then, like all real forms (dharmas), display the attributes of real existents (a temporal form, or body) insofar as they are actually perceived (experienced) by human beings. True “perception” being synonymous, in Dogen’s Zen, with true activity, expression, and understanding, to perceive a word is to actualize the koan (genjokoan) here and now – “I” make the word what it is, the word makes me what “I” am. Thus, we can sense the wonder and urgency of Hee-Jin Kim’s words in, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking, as he forcefully reiterates one of the central principles resonating throughout his works; listen again to Kim’s refrain that so often goes unheeded:

Language, thinking, and reason constitute the key to both zazen and koan study within Dogen’s praxis-oriented Zen. The koan’s and zazen’s function is not excoriate and abandon the intellect and its words and letters, but rather to liberate and restore them in the Zen enterprise. In short, enlightenment is not brought about by direct intuition (or transcendent wisdom) supplanting the intellect and its tools, but in and through their collaboration and corroboration in search of the expressible in deeds, words, and thoughts for a given situation (religious and secular). Zazen and koan in this respect strive for the same salvific aspiration of Zen. The language of the old-paradigm koan (kosoku koan) becomes a living force in the workings of the koan realized in life (genjo koan). With their reclaimed legitimacy in Zen, language, thinking, and reason now enable practitioners to probe duality and nonduality, weigh emptiness, and negotiate the Way. Method and realization, rationality and spirituality, thinking and praxis, go hand-in-hand in Dogen’s Zen. Such is “the reason of words and letters” (monji no dori).
Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking, p.78

Please note that Kim does not deny the significance of satori or kensho (direct intuition) or suggest it be replaced by the “intellect and its tools” (i.e. language, thinking, and reason), but that the two need to collaborate and corroborate. Indeed, one obvious inconsistency of views asserting the nonessential or provisional role of “words and letters” is that the very “reason” of such assertions, which implicitly posit the irrationality of Zen (hence Buddhism), deny the possibility of their own validity.

Now, it is the infinite potential of meaning inherent to words that necessitates, and makes possible, the “search” and “striving”, in Kim’s terms, for the expressible and salvific expressions (deeds, words, and thoughts) of Dogen’s “praxis-oriented Zen.” As long as words are confined to the general meanings of dictionaries, they remain abstract potentials, possibilities so broad (infinite) that any significance they may have could only be considered vague at best. This is exactly similar to the state of sense experience in the absence of any organization or arrangement. And, just as the Buddha ancestor “fashions a universe” and “fashions a self” with the selection and arrangement of “bits and pieces” of existence-time, so she fashions expressions of truth with the selection and arrangement of words. Just as “bits and pieces” of existence-time only become real, particular things (dharmas) when they are actually fashioned, formed, or pictured, so the infinite potential of words only achieve real, specific meaning when they are actually fashioned, formed, or expressed.

Dogen’s profound insight into the infinite potential of words and letters would also helps to account for his apparent disfavor of systematic or formulaic classifications and devices. As mentioned previously, Dogen’s lack of any explicit use of Zen devices (e.g. Five Ranks, Positions of Host and Guest, etc.) in his own works probably has less to do with his rejection of their validity as expressions of truth and more to do with his view of the infinite potential language, and the absolute uniqueness of every true expression of Buddha nature.

Peace,
Ted