We vow, together with all beings, from this life on throughout numerous lifetimes, not to fail to hear the true Dharma. Hearing this we will not be skeptical, and will not be without faith. Directly upon encountering the true Dharma, we will abandon the law of the world and uphold and maintain the Buddha Dharma. In time, together with the great earth and all animate beings, we will accomplish the way.
Although our previous evil karma has greatly accumulated, producing causes and conditions that obstruct the Way, may the Buddhas and Ancestors who have attained the Buddha Way be compassionate to us and liberate us from our karmic entanglements, allowing us to practise the Way without hindrance. May they share with us their compassion, which fills the boundless universe with the virtue of their enlightenment and teachings.
Buddhas and Ancestors of old were once as we. We shall come to be Buddhas and Ancestors. Venerating Buddhas and Ancestors, we are one with Buddhas and Ancestors. Contemplating Awakening Mind, we are one with Awakened Mind. Because their compassion reaches everywhere, we will attain Buddhahood and let go of the attainment.
Accordingly Longya said, “What in past lives was not yet complete must now be complete. In this life save the body coming from the accumulated lives. Before enlightenment, ancient Buddhas were the same as we. After enlightenment we shall be exactly as those ancient ones.
Quietly explore the depths of this karmic connection, as these are the exact words of a verified Buddha. If we repent in this way, we cannot fail to receive the inconceivable help of Buddhas and Ancestors. Confessing to Buddha with mindful heart and dignified body, the power of this confession will eradicate the roots of wrongdoing. This is the one colour of true practice, of the true mind of faith, of the true body of faith.
Our sutra book contains a number of very helpful pieces of scripture: sutras, poems, prayers and chants. I’d like to spend some time with a few of them in these talks to try to shed some light on the terms and concepts which appear in them. I’d like to start with Dogen Zenji’s Hotsugan Mon, which is essentially Dogen’s expression of the Mahayana bodhisattva vow. Let’s look at it line by line and paragraph by paragraph.
First Paragraph
We vow, together with all beings,
In “together with all beings” is implied not just our unity in fundamental emptiness with all beings, but also the Bodhisattva vow, the deferring of one’s own Buddhahood until all beings are saved, which is the natural and inevitable corollary to the realization of oneness in the “Vast and Void”, and which therefore is the hallmark of genuine awakening.
Does this mean that Buddhahood is something we may attain in the infinitely distant future? The answer would be yes if we were thinking merely dualistically in linear time. But not only is all one, but one is all; as one goes, so goes the whole. All time and space are nothing other than this moment and this place right now and right here. Remember what the Buddha exclaimed upon his own awakening: “All beings have at once opened their eyes.” You and I are, right now, intrinsically Buddha. Zen is the practice of realizing and living this fundamental fact.
from this life on throughout numerous lifetimes,
It used to be that people with a Christian background, whether practising Christians or not, were made uncomfortable by a phrase like this. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls was declared a heresy early on by the Christian Church, but these days it seems as commonly accepted as any other notion of what happens after death.
Consider that Buddhism does not accept the existence of a permanent self, a soul; so what could Dogen, other masters, and Buddhist scripture be talking about?
The belief in reincarnation was commonly accepted by a variety of faiths in the India of the Buddha’s time, and though it is not central to Buddhist doctrine it seems to be assumed by it. Robert Aitken asks an interesting and pertinent question: “What is it that is reincarnated?” A good question! It doesn’t simply ask for a metaphysical answer, but throws us back immediately onto our essential, existential question: “The Great Matter”. Who am I? What is this? And at that, all such metaphysical speculations melt away as inconsequential distraction.
not to fail to hear the true Dharma. Hearing this we will not be skeptical, and will not be without faith.
This brings to mind the saying that what the Zen practitioner needs is great faith, great doubt, and great determination; if she has all three she will find it easier to miss the ground with a stamp of her foot than to miss awakening. I think that in the context of Zen practice, both “faith” and “doubt” need some clarification.
Dogen’s emphasis here is on great faith; but faith in what? In most religions, we are asked to put our faith in a story, a person, a deity, or a set of propositions, and told essentially that to doubt them is sin. Buddhism likewise sets forth a proposition — that we are at one with all time and space in essential emptiness — but Zen, uniquely among religions, embraces the doubt arising from the apparent contradiction between our faith in our own fundamental wholeness, and the suffering that we experience and that we see around us. Zen harnesses the tension arising from this dichotomy as the driving force behind the practice of zazen, the Way by which we can resolve the contradiction, and experience the reality of this wholeness for ourselves. So in Zen we put our faith both in the principle of our essential wholeness, and in the process, zazen, by which we come to realize it as existential fact. It seems to me that this process is so closely akin to the essential practice of science — hypothesis; testing; verification — that it is no wonder that Zen has been adopted by so many Westerners as their spiritual practice.
Directly upon encountering the true Dharma, we will abandon the law of the world and uphold and maintain the Buddha Dharma.
What is the law of the world that we vow to abandon? Essentially the dualistic law of a separate self opposed to an exterior world, and all the implications of that law.
In time, together with the great earth and all animate beings, we will accomplish the way.
In other words, the fulfillment of the Bodhisattva Vow.
Second Paragraph
Although our previous evil karma has greatly accumulated, producing causes and conditions that obstruct the Way
This is so for all of us, as Dogen graciously acknowledges. Harmful ways of thinking, ways of behaving, ways of viewing others, and also the life conditions that these ways have helped to shape, and that are simply the situation in the world that we are living in at this moment; these are all karma, and all apparent obstacles to the Way.
When thinking of karma, it is important to remember a few things. First, the common usage of the word in English, and in the West in general, implies reward and punishment, part of the heritage of the Abrahamic religions. Karma in Buddhism is not at all like that. There is no one to mete out reward and punishment, and fundamentally no one to whom it is meted out. Karma is intrinsic to the nature of the universe, merely the natural law of cause and effect. While “previous evil karma” may indeed throw up what appear to be obstacles to our practice, let us be grateful for the good karma that has brought us to this point.
I’ve mentioned before the Net of Indra, the image of all phenomena in the universe united in an infinitely vast net, each phenomenon a node of the net, and the whole net an image of infinite karmic inter-relationship. We’re not only all in this together, we are all and each the Net itself, karma itself. Once we see that everything that is, is the Dharmakaya, the Dharma body, our own fundamental nature, those habits of thought and behaviour, together with the conditions they have fostered, which have been obstacles to our practice, are revealed as purity itself, no longer obstacles. This is not fanciful or wishful thinking; it is simply the fact. It is expressed in myth in the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment, when Mara, the personification of delusion, somewhat akin to the Christian devil, makes a last-ditch attempt to prevent the Buddha’s awakening by sending his daughters, personifications of temptation and vice, to distract him. In the end, not only does the Buddha successfully resist, but because of his compassion Mara and his daughters end up converting to the Buddha Way. In another version, Mara shoots arrows at the Buddha, which the Buddha embraces, and by so doing converts them into flowers. In either version, temptation and vice themselves are transformed into, or more accurately revealed as, purity itself.
may the Buddhas and Ancestors who have attained the Buddha Way be compassionate to us and liberate us from our karmic entanglements, allowing us to practise the Way without hindrance.
The compassion of Buddhas and ancestors is always with us in their stories and teachings. But more importantly, they are with us as the Dharma itself, our primary teacher, what Thich Nhat Hanh calls “the living Dharma”, the fundamental fact of our essential nature. By the light of this fundamental fact we see that indeed the hair of our eyebrows (as Mumon puts it) is entangled with those of the Buddhas and ancestors who have gone before. In this entanglement is the compassion that Mumon and Dogen speak of.
As for liberation, it is, as I said, a matter of seeing that these apparent obstacles are nothing but the Dharmakaya itself, our essential nature itself. When once we see this, “Where are all the dark paths then?” as Hakuin Zenji says.
May they share with us their compassion, which fills the boundless universe with the virtue of their enlightenment and teachings.
Sharing with us their compassion means not only that they have compassion for us, but that their compassion and our compassion are the same compassion, the natural functioning of the Dharmakaya in which we are one, “vast and void”.
Third Paragraph
Buddhas and Ancestors of old were once as we. We shall come to be Buddhas and Ancestors. Venerating Buddhas and Ancestors, we are one with Buddhas and Ancestors.
I think this line is self-explanatory.
Contemplating Awakening Mind, we are one with Awakened Mind.
In our zazen practice, contemplating, or meditating on, “Mu”, or “Who”, or the breath, or on nothing-and-everything, as we do in shikan taza, we are contemplating our own awakening mind, and at the same time are perfectly and completely manifesting our own Buddha nature. This is Dogen’s doctrine of the identity of practice and realization. While the Great Way can be said to be an endless progression towards Buddhahood, a far more important truth is that at every step we are already home, already at our destination.
Because their compassion reaches everywhere, we will attain Buddhahood and let go of the attainment.
Who is the “they” of “their compassion”? The Buddhas and ancestors referred to here are one with, and inseparable from, the Buddha Dharma, of which compassion is the natural function. Kensho is always experienced as a marvellous, unlooked-for gift, having nothing to do with one’s own efforts, however great they may have been, and this is why Dogen attributes it to the compassion of Buddhas and ancestors. One feels such profound gratitude on the occasion of one’s kensho, one naturally wants to give it some direction, so the Christian may direct it to God or Jesus, and the Buddhist to Buddhas and ancestors, but this does not mean that we believe Zen enlightenment is somehow the particular gift of celestial saints, whether Buddhist or Christian.
Fourth Paragraph
Accordingly Longya said,
Longya is Dongshan Langjie in Chinese, or Tôzan Longya in Japanese, revered as the founder, along with Sôzan, his disciple, of the Sôtô tradition of Zen, the tradition brought to Japan by Dôgen.
“What in past lives was not yet complete must now be complete. In this life save the body coming from the accumulated lives.
In delusion we consider our dualistic world as reality, a reality we are caught up in and which we struggle to transcend, longing for another reality, “the Pure Land”, a state we describe as “emptiness”, and “oneness”, where we will finally be free. Tôzan is saying, “Enough already! Life after life you have wandered the dark paths. It’s time to stop! Look! This is it! Right now right here; the glass of water in your hand, the sound of a truck on the road, these are exactly empty oneness! There is no other reality but this! Once you stop looking for some imagined pure land of Buddha nature, once you simply stop looking anywhere but at what is right in front of you — in fact, once you stop looking altogether, and just “be”, you’ll find that the clouds of delusion will lift and you will attain the “marvellous enlightenment” that Mumon refers to in his teisho on Mu.
It sounds so simple, but it’s because it’s so simple and so intimate that it is so difficult for our busy minds, obsessively searching outside ourselves for “salvation” of one sort or another. And this is why it requires such dedicated practice.
Before enlightenment, ancient Buddhas were the same as we. After enlightenment we shall be exactly as those ancient ones.
This line touches on the ultimate paradox of Zen Buddhism. In fact right at this moment there is no difference whatsoever between us and those ancient ones, and yet we must practise and practise to experience this as a fundamental existential truth, and not just doctrine. What is the difference between “ancient buddhas” and us? Ancient buddhas see that there is no difference. That is the difference. A monk asked Baso, “What is Buddha?” Baso said, “Ordinary mind is Buddha.” Whose ordinary mind do you think he was talking about?
Fifth Paragraph
Quietly explore the depths of this karmic connection,
The Denkoroku, the Transmission of the Light, put together by Keizan, who was the fourth generation dharma successor of Dogen, traces a single ancestral line of Zen masters from the Buddha right up to Dogen, a line of very direct karmic connection which extends to this very day. But of course, as we’ve seen before, karma is literally infinitely more than a single line of causal connection, and is infinitely more subtle. I’m sure you remember the wonderful image of the Net of Indra.
Dogen asks you not only to consider and appreciate your karmic connection with Great Master Tozan, but also to consider the subtle web of karmic causes and conditions that has brought you to this practice and its promise of awakening to the freedom of your own essential nature.
In my year of graduation from Trent University, at something of a loss as to where to go and what to do, and suffering from borderline depression, a chance letter from a childhood friend whom I hadn’t heard from in years set me on a path that took me, six months later, to Tokyo, and, step by step, eighteen months after that, to my first zazenkai with Yamada Kôun Rôshi in Kamakura.
That initial letter came completely out of the blue, and once the connection was made and my path set, my childhood friend dropped entirely out of the picture, as if he had had a purpose to serve, and once done he simply faded from my life once more. As my zen practice developed over the years I began to make connections with other moments in my childhood and youth which in retrospect were very clearly karmic stepping stones to that Sunday morning in 1973 when I first walked through the gate of San Un Zendo.
I’m certain there are similar events in your own life, causal connections, sign posts and fateful coincidences, that have contributed to your encountering and beginning Zen practice. Dogen, with his “quietly explore”, encourages us to turn our attention to and appreciate these karmic connections.
as these are the exact words of a verified Buddha.
Essentially we are all intrinsically Buddha, but this line refers to those rare individuals who have completely awakened to that fact.
But what about this word “verified”. By whom? Is there some Buddhist academy that gives its imprimatur to a newly minted Buddha? If so, by whom was the original Buddha approved when he declared, “Above the heavens and below the heavens, only I, alone and exalted!” and “At this moment all beings have simultaneously opened their eyes.”
So this is another paradox, in a tradition that is happily full of them. On the one hand a genuine kensho is self-verifying. As it is said, “It’s like meeting your brother at the crossroads; you don’t have to ask who it is.” On the other hand, it is possible to fall for fools’ gold — an imagined kensho of images and concepts — taking it for the real thing. It’s the teacher’s job to assess which one a student is presenting to him in dokusan, and to approve the real thing, or to encourage further work if the kensho is not genuine, as the case may be.
In Tozan’s case he had already left his teacher, Ungan, when he had his daigotettei, his great enlightenment experience. So how is it that Dogen calls him a verified buddha? I imagine that, other than self-verification, Dogen sees his verification in the long line of authentic zen masters that he engendered with his teaching, right up to Dogen himself and beyond.
If we repent in this way, we cannot fail to receive the inconceivable help of Buddhas and Ancestors.
To repent means literally to turn away from one thing and towards another. This refers back to the first paragraph: “Directly upon encountering the true dharma we will abandon the law of the world and uphold and maintain the Buddha Dharma.” As I said earlier, the law of the world is essentially the dualistic law of a separate self opposed to an exterior world, and all the implications of that law; and the inconceivable help of Buddhas and ancestors is with us as our primary teacher, the Dharma itself.
Confessing to Buddha with mindful heart and dignified body, the power of this confession will eradicate the roots of wrongdoing.
In zazen we sit with all that is, exterior and interior. Sooner or later this means acknowledging and accepting yourself in your entirety, including weaknesses, past mistakes and foolishness. And — another paradox — in accepting, acknowledging and owning, we also let go. In coming to an awakening of our own transcendent nature, we see that these things are nothing — not nothing as in “comparatively unimportant”, but “empty”, with no substance, as we see that we ourselves are “empty” and in our emptiness at one with the entire universe. It’s in this emptiness that the roots of wrongdoing — the delusion of a separate self opposed to an objective world — are eradicated.
This is the one colour of true practice, of the true mind of faith, of the true body of faith.
This is what true practice is, what true faith is, in principle and function, the faith that is far more and far deeper than just belief, but is a kind of knowing, bringing us to and undergirding our practice, and growing with it, blossoming and deepening as kensho, and finding greater and greater authentic expression in our lives.
