A teaching by the great Zen Master Dogen.
Fukanzazengi
Universally recommended instructions for Zazen
The Way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be
contingent on practice and realization? The true vehicle is
self-sufficient. What need is there for special effort? Indeed, the
whole body is free from dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it
clean? It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of
traveling around to practice? And yet, if there is a hairsbreadth
deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least
like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. Suppose you are
confident in your understanding and rich in enlightenment, gaining the
wisdom that knows at a glance, attaining the Way and clarifying the
mind, arousing an aspiration to reach for the heavens. You are playing
in the entranceway, but you still are short of the vital path of
emancipation.
Consider the Buddha: although he was wise at birth, the traces of his
six years of upright sitting can yet be seen. As for Bodhidharma,
although he had received the mind-seal, his nine years of facing a wall
is celebrated still. If even the ancient sages were like this, how can
we today dispense with wholehearted practice?
Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words
and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the
light and shines it inward. Body and mind of themselves will drop away,
and your original face will manifest. If you want such a thing, get to
work on such a thing immediately.
For practicing Zen, a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately.
Put aside all involvements and suspend all affairs. Do not think “good”
or “bad.” Do not judge true or false. Give up the operations of mind,
intellect, and consciousness; stop measuring with thoughts, ideas, and
views. Have no designs on becoming a Buddha. How could that be limited
to sitting or lying down?
At your sitting place, spread out a thick mat and put a cushion on it.
Sit either in the full-lotus or half-lotus position. In the full-lotus
position, first place your right foot on your left thigh, then your left
foot on your right thigh. In the half-lotus, simply place your left
foot on your right thigh. Tie your robes loosely and arrange them
neatly. Then place your right hand on your left leg and your left hand
on your right palm, thumb-tips lightly touching. Straighten your body
and sit upright, leaning neither left nor right, neither forward nor
backward. Align your ears with your shoulders and your nose with your
navel. Rest the tip of your tongue against the front of the roof of your
mouth, with teeth and lips together both shut. Always keep your eyes
open, and breathe softly through your nose.
Once you have adjusted your posture, take a breath and exhale fully,
rock your body right and left, and settle into steady, immovable
sitting. Think of not thinking. Not thinking—what kind of thinking is
that? Nonthinking. This is the essential art of zazen.
The zazen I speak of is not meditation practice. It is simply the Dharma
gate of joyful ease, the practice-realization of totally culminated
enlightenment. It is the koan realized, traps and snares can never reach
it. If you grasp the point, you are like a dragon gaining the water,
like a tiger taking to the mountains. For you must know that the true
Dharma appears of itself, so that from the start dullness and
distraction are struck aside.
When you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and
deliberately. Do not rise suddenly or abruptly. In surveying the past,
we find that transcendence of both mundane and sacred, and dying while
either sitting or standing, have all depended entirely on the power of
zazen.
In addition, triggering awakening with a finger, a banner, a needle, or a
mallet, and effecting realization with a whisk, a fist, a staff, or a
shout - these cannot be understood by discriminative thinking, much less
can they be known through the practice of supernatural power. They must
represent conduct beyond seeing and hearing. Are they not a standard
prior to knowledge and views?
This being the case, intelligence or lack of it is not an issue; make no
distinction between the dull and the sharp-witted. If you concentrate
your effort single-mindedly, that in itself is wholeheartedly engaging
the way. Practice-realization is naturally undefiled. Going forward is,
after all, an everyday affair.
In our world and others, in both India and China, all equally hold the
buddha-seal. While each lineage expresses its own style, they are all
simply devoted to sitting, totally blocked in resolute stability.
Although they say that there are ten thousand distinctions and a
thousand variations, they just wholeheartedly engage the way in zazen.
Why leave behind the seat in your own home to wander in vain through the
dusty realms of other lands? If you make one misstep you stumble past
what is directly in front of you.
You have gained the pivotal opportunity of human form. Do not pass your
days and nights in vain. You are taking care of the essential activity
of the buddha way. Who would take wasteful delight in the spark from a
flint stone? Besides, form and substance are like the dew on the grass,
the fortunes of life like a dart of lightning—emptied in an instant,
vanished in a flash.
Please, honored followers of Zen, long accustomed to groping for the
elephant, do not doubt the true dragon. Devote your energies to the way
that points directly to the real thing. Revere the one who has gone
beyond learning and is free from effort. Accord with the enlightenment
of all the Buddhas; succeed to the samadhi of all the ancestors.
Continue to live in such a way, and you will be such a person. The
treasure store will open of itself, and you may enjoy it freely.
Eihei Dogen [21]
Related, see article in Pure Awareness
(Tejananda)
My experience with rigpa / pure awareness is of ‘stepping back’ to
use Dogen’s evocative phrase, where Awareness or Suchness is
‘self-known’, the sense of ‘me here’ disappears and everything that
appears is appearing in / as a field of sort of equal awareness
everywhere with no ‘inside’ or ‘outside’. I first noticed this after a
period in which ‘the watcher’ became very evident and seemed to have a
quasi-location just behind my head. At some point, the watcher simply
disappeared, and has never returned, and there was just the availability
of this field of equal awareness as I just described. As far as I can
ascertain, the dropping away of believing in ‘me’ as a fixed ‘self’ came
in the wake of this becoming ‘available’. I’m not absolutely certain
though – I just thought to ‘check’ one day and noticed it wasn’t there.
It’s possible it hadn’t occurred to me to check in this way before. I
made the connection with the first 3 fetters & sure enough there was
no doubt and a clarity as to what was or wasn’t the effective path,
together with a much clearer sense ‘from inside’ of how all the
different wisdom teachings and perspectives in different Buddhist and
(to the extent I’m aware of them) non-Buddhist traditions were in
harmony with each other. That said, my habit energies (sankharas) still
give me a very rough ride and my predominant experience of life tends to
be rather painful.
I like the Dogen article, thanks.
Anyway, just recommending a book to any who are interested,
Maura O' Halloran, "Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind: The Life & Letters of An Irish Zen Saint"
Maura is an Irish lady who went to Japan to study under a renowned Zen master and attained the level of a Zen Master in just 3 years. She later died in a car accident and was revered in rural Japan as an emanation of Kannon Bodhisattva. She was praised by the Zen master as being his best disciple ever. I find this book very interesting for her perspective on dealing with difficult people, hard work- difficulties in life in general and practice. It also broke down some of my preconceptions and expectations.