Reflection on stillness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not disturb the mind. 寂定觀是法明門、不擾亂心意故. The last of our dharma seals is silence, stillness or nirvana. It’s a mark of existence because this is the complete freedom from duality. We need to work with forms and objects in order to live in the world, but it’s also true that all those things are not separate from emptiness or nirvana. The word for stillness here is seijaku 静寂, sometimes translated as silence, stillness or quietness. The first kanji is silence, stillness, peace or tranquility. The second is silence with a connotation of nirvana. When we compare the kanji for seijaku to the kanji for nirvana (jakumetsu 寂滅), we see that jakumetsu is written with the same kanji for silence plus the kanji for extinguishing, like extinguishing a flame. The roots of the word nirvana are about blowing something out, in this case, the flames of suffering and affliction that happen when we don’t see reality clearly. Or, at least we don’t feed those flames if we can avoid it. In the Lotus Sutra, there’s a parable about a father trying to save his children from a burning house. It’s another way to depict the Buddha trying to help us experience nirvana by dealing with the fires of our delusion. Another translation of the gate statement is: Investigating peace is a gateway to the light of the Dharma, for it dampens the flames of passion. This isn’t saying we should never have strong feelings about something. It’s referring to the flames of the burning house, the flames of craving and aversion that keep us trapped on the wheel of samsara. Thus the stillness in the gate statement is the stillness or silence of nirvana, the stillness that happens when we’ve let go of craving and aversion and delusions about the self. However, blowing out the flames doesn’t mean we become inert, that we’re still and silent because we’re dead and there’s nothing going on. One of the places that seijaku shows up is as a Japanese aesthetic that’s about tranquility in the midst of activity. Maybe you’ve heard of wabi-sabi, the beauty of things that are “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.” Something that’s incomplete, like a flower bud that’s not open yet or something that’s falling apart, suggests impermanence. This coming and going is considered beautiful. It can be so subtle that it takes a quiet mind and real attention to be aware of it. It’s said that there are seven principles of wabi-sabi (1); the seventh is seijaku: tranquility in the midst of activity. It’s not a lifeless stillness; it’s an energized stillness. This is the stillness of zazen. We’re not moving about and we’re not actively engaging with thoughts but there’s still plenty happening. When we turn that around, we can also be physically very active and busy, but inside we can be calm, tranquil and concentrated. This is taking zazen mind off the cushion and out into the world. Tranquility in the midst of activity can look like either tranquility or activity, but both are there. There are lots of Japanese arts-related or cultural activities that live in this intersection of stillness and activity. One is the tea ceremony. Tea master Sen Rikkyu in the 16th century taught that jaku 寂 is one of the four main principles of the Way of Tea. (The others are purity, respect and harmony.) Rather than being a dreamy psychological state, it’s the dynamic concentrated energy of one’s innermost being that comes out in the actions of the ceremony. Of course, we can apply this to our own liturgy and forms, to our zazen, to the way we cook and eat meals during sesshin—and to the way we cook and eat meals at home. So how do we get to that point of stillness within activity? We’ve said that seijaku is the stillness of nirvana. In nirvana, we’ve extinguished the fires of craving and aversion and the suffering that results from that kind of delusion. As a result, we’re able to settle down and concentrate on the here and now without being distracted by chasing after things and running away from things. Without distractions, we can see things as they really are and live in an authentic way. One of the biggest delusions and distractions is the attachment to a concept of self. Last week we saw that no-self is one of the marks of existence, and yet we create all kinds of trouble for ourselves by ignoring that reality. A scholar named Theodore Ludwig wrote an article about religious aesthetics in the tea ceremony. In a section about seijaku, he said: Since there is disturbance as long as the “I am” idea persists, tranquility is the expression of the artist’s selflessness. The “I am idea,” or attachment to self, is one of the biggest mind disturbances there is. As soon as we disturb the mind, it’s like throwing a stone into a calm pond. It makes ripples, we can’t see to the bottom anymore, and we also can’t clearly see the reflection of the sky. We can think of seijaku or stillness within activity as an expression of no-self. Once we can let the small self get out of the way, we see clearly right to the bottom of reality and we also clearly reflect that reality back out no matter what we’re doing. That’s why our teachers say things like zazen is doing zazen. There’s no “I” that’s doing zazen (or dancing or cooking or whatever). If attachment to self is one of the biggest causes of our suffering, then letting go of that attachment must be one of the most important things we can do in manifesting awakening. Stillness in the midst of activity is how we concretely experience the teaching that samsara and nirvana arise together and can’t be separated. We’re manifesting stillness right here, not waiting to get to somewhere else called nirvana where everything is perfect. As bodhisattvas, we use this imperfect, impermanent body and mind as the ground of our practice. It’s all we have. Delusion, forms and everyday activity exist in the middle of absolute peace. All that’s going on, and yet the mind is not disturbed. My dharma great-grandfather Kodo Sawaki had this to say: Fundamentally we can walk in any direction: east, west, south or north—whichever way we wish. Each and every activity permates the entire ten-direction world. We simply practice manifesting eternity through our action in each moment. Once Sen no Rikyu needed a carpenter to drive a nail into an ornamental alcove post in a teahouse. After looking here and there, Rikyu decided on the best spot. The carpenter marked it and then took a break. Afterward, he couldn’t find the tiny mark. He asked Rikyu to search again for the best location. After a while, the tea master decided on the spot and indicated to the carpenter, “Right there!” When the carpenter looked carefully, he found it was the very place he had marked the first time. Don’t you see? There’s always clear aim right in the midst of emptiness in which nothing is fixed. We must have a decisive direction. (2) He’s showing how form and formlessness are interpenetrated. Formlessness or stillness doesn’t mean we don’t have a direction in our day to day lives. If that was the case, we couldn’t carry our our bodhisattva vows and we might never get on a cushion. We don’t stop moving; we just stop being disturbed. Kosho Uchiyama made some comments about what his teacher Kodo Sawaki said: East, west, south or north, whichever way we go, we just live the self that is only the self, and fortunately there’s no direction forbidden us. So it’s okay for us to stride majestically wherever we go as the self that is only the self, with peace of mind. But at the same time, in the midst of formlessness, which demands no particular direction, there must be a decisive aim. No matter what we do, we should do it so each of our actions expands throughout the entire ten-direction world. Eternity is manifested in each moment. Because I live a lax and unsophisticated life, I would simply drive a nail into the post in a haphazard way, without asking a carpenter. But for someone like Sen no Rikyu, who sees into emptiness, there must be a way of driving a nail as an expression of formlessness. We human beings may stride in any direction: east, west, south or north—whichever way we like. Only when we actualize the self that permeates the entire ten-direction world and practice manifesting eternity moment by moment will the peace of the self that is only the self no matter what ripen. (3) There’s an example of inner tranquility leading to skillful action in the world. When the mind is not disturbed and we have clarity, we can let go of the small self and still have direction. Sen no Rikyo could act with precision in the midst of formlessness. Stillness leads to wholesome, skillful action. Dogen says the opposite is also true: skillful action leads to inner stillness. It’s just another version of his famous teaching that practice and awakening are not two. In the beginning of the Bendoho, he writes about the teaching of dojo daishu ichinyo: In activity and stillness, together with the community. Interestingly, the kanji are: 動静大衆一如, literally activity - quiet - great - the people - one - suchness. Of course, it’s always true that we’re all together within one suchness or one reality, but sometimes we forget. Dogen says: All buddhas and all ancestors are within the Way and engage it; without the Way they would not engage it. The dharma exists and they appear; without the dharma, they do not appear. Therefore, when the assembly is sitting, sit together with them; as the assembly lies down, lie down also. In activity and stillness at one with the community, throughout deaths and rebirths do not separate from the monastery. Standing out has no benefit; being different from others is not our conduct. This is the buddhas’ and ancestors’ skin, flesh, bones and marrow, and also one’s own body and mind dropped off. He’s talking here to novices in a training temple, but we can see how what he’s saying applies to us in our practice with the sangha. Doing things together with others and following a schedule is a great way to free ourselves from selfish clinging. If you’ve ever done sesshin or residential practice, you’ve seen what a great practice it is for letting go of ego. It’s actually a good demonstration of what we can live without. Usually, the demands of the ego seem imperative: we think we can’t live without determining for ourselves how we spend our time, being recognized for our specialness, or doing things the way we expect to do them. During my very first sesshin, during orientation the teacher explained the daily schedule and said that the time for taking showers was during the break after work period. A new participant said, “But we can take showers when we get up in the morning, right?” No, the teacher repeated, the time for that was during the break. She had no ability to imagine that a) there was a world without morning showers and b) she didn’t get to decide when to take one! Not only does acting with others help us let go of clinging and picking and choosing, but it becomes a clear manifestation of Buddha nature in a non-discriminative way. In other words, all of our actions are a reflection of awakening. We don’t think, Well, I’ll be on my best behavior in front of the teacher or my sangha friends, and in front of others I don’t care. We just do what’s being done, maintain the same stillness and zazen mind, and don’t change our behavior based on who’s watching. Maintaining the harmony of the community is activity within stillness. Someone who shows off, wants his own way, is looking for a reward or doing some other ego-based thing is breaking the harmony of the sangha. That’s not activity within stillness, because the mind is disturbed by self-clinging. Giving up the ego is an important part of seijaku. In his instructions for temple officers, Dogen keeps pointing out that that work is for the sake of the public or the community, not for one’s own gain. Doing for the sake of others is being in accord with the Way. Dogen goes so far as to say that practicing on our own makes us vulnerable to demons, while practicing in a community protects us from them. The demons he’s talking about are things like laziness, or going astray in our practice and misinterpreting teachings to match our own ideas. Also, on our own without a community we’re vulnerable to self-clinging. Being in a sangha reminds us over and over again that we’re not the only ones affected by what we do. As soon as we lose stillness or tranquility, we’re liable to do something unskillful. Without teachers and sangha friends to reflect that back to us and point out that we’ve gone off the rails, we might never know. We can see that the teachings of this gate are like a wheel. Giving up ego and craving and aversion helps us settle into silence and tranquility. On the flip side, if we’re in a place of stillness, no matter what we’re doing, we are not troubled by craving and aversion and we’re not separate from nirvana. It’s a very direct way into Dogen’s teaching that practice and awakening are not two. He says we can’t separate stillness and activity; they arise together. There is always activity in the midst of the stillness he’s talking about. Historically in both Buddhism and Christianity there have been those who’ve criticized “mystical” practice as being about withdrawing from the suffering of the world. Jesuits who encountered Buddhism two or three hundred years ago thought that Western philosophers wanted answers to the problems and scandals of the world, while we just wanted to go into a happy blissful state of our own, like animals, and escape from everything. This is not what our teachers are teaching. Stillness is not about barricading ourselves in and enjoying our own peace. It’s about being able to take meaningful action in all aspects of our lives, action that corresponds with how things really are, not based on our own ideas. Yes, quieting the mind will likely reduce our own suffering, but as bodhisattvas we turn that around and give it back to the universe. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) The seven aspects of wabi-sabi are: fukinsei (不均斉): asymmetry, irregularity; kanso (簡素): simplicity; koko (考古): basic, weathered; shizen (自然): without pretense, natural; yugen (幽玄): subtly profound grace, not obvious; datsuzoku (脱俗): unbounded by convention, free; seijaku (静寂): tranquility, silence. (2) Uchiyama Roshi, Kosho. Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo. United States, Wisdom Publications, 2014. p. 71. (3) Ibid. p. 71-72
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Reflection on there being no self is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not taintedly attach to self. 無我觀是法明門、不染著我故. This week we take up the next of the four dharma seals: no-self. Our gate statement is telling us is that if we look closely at the nature of self, we will see that there is no fixed, permanent self and on that basis we will loosen our attachment to our ideas about what it is. There’s nothing there that we can grasp and hang onto, and if we think so, that’s delusion (this gate uses “taint”). Understanding the attachment to self is really important in our tradition. The Japanese word bonno 煩悩 refers to our delusive desires, things that drive us to take unwholesome action. The second bodhisattva vow, bonno mu jin sei gan dan 煩惱無盡誓願斷 (delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them) includes the same bonno. There are four kinds of bonno or basic delusions: - gachi: ignorance of the dharma - gaken: egocentric views based on our ignorance - gamon: arrogance - ga-ai: attachment to self Not understanding no-self is one of the most basic delusions we have. It’s at the root of a lot of our suffering. If I think the self is permanent, I need to make sure it’s as good as or better than all the other selves around. This fiction of a self becomes a yardstick for measuring my life—but that makes no sense, because there really is no yardstick and nothing to measure. So why do we say that there is no self? After all, we encounter a variety of people every day. We’ve seen each other here before, we recognize each other and remember things we’ve done together. However, the teaching of no-self doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to have personalities or some particular characteristics. Teachings about no-self are not saying that we as individuals don’t exist. Buddha taught that the self is simply a collection of elements that come together in this moment based on causes and conditions. Causes and conditions are always changing because all things are impermanent; therefore the things that arise from causes and conditions are also impermanent, and there’s nothing we can point to as a self that persists in a fixed way through time. Because everything arises from causes and conditions, nothing has an independent existance. Everything, including the self, is dependent on other things. It doesn’t arise from nothing or exist independently. We might think we’re separate from all other beings or dharmas, but we can’t be. If that’s true, then where is the boundary between self and other? I’m here today because my ancestors got on boats from various European countries and came to the US. Myriad workers over the last 62 years have grown my food and sold me stuff and treated my illnesses. Japanese Zen teachers left Asia and brought practice to North America and made it possible for me to practice. I’m here in this moment exactly like this because of all of these people. They’re part of the causes and conditions of this moment for me. So where is the boundary between my life and theirs? Where is the self? It truly doesn’t exist. At the same time, it’s also true that we inhabit individual bodies and have individual experiences, skills and interests. These individual bodies are the ground of our practice and without them we couldn’t do zazen or help other beings. No one can really trade places with anyone else. We can’t negate ourselves as individuals with bodies and minds, but we also can’t cling to the self as a fixed, unchanging and independent entity. To cling to one side or the other is delusion. Uchiyama Roshi says that we live simultaneously as a personal self, an individual taken up with everyday affairs, and as a universal self that is inclusive of the entire universe. He ought to know, because he said that the question of what is the self was the overarching theme of his life! So what is this universal self as distinct from the small self or personal self? The personal self is made up of all our ideas, feelings and constructions about who we are, who other are and how things work. The universal self is the life force that continues to play out even when we’re not thinking about who we are and clinging to some idea about self. Uchiyama Roshi points out than when we’re asleep, we continue to live; our lives go on outside of our ideas about it. When we’re sitting zazen and letting go of thought, our lives go on as well. When we can let go of the small self and let it get out of the way, interesting things can happen—probably something more interesting than the fixed ideas we’re clinging to, something fresh and new that is a clear manifestion of the universal self. When he talks about art practice, my dharma brother Hosshin Shoaf shares a useful quote attributed to John Cage: You know, when you enter your studio, everyone is there—the people in your life, other artists, the old masters, everyone. And as you work, they leave, one by one. And if it is a really good working day, well, you leave, too. Maybe when we arrive on the cushion, there’s also a lot of subject and object happening—me and a lot of other people and my relationships with them, what they think of me, what I need to do for them, and how I compare to them. If instead we can sit in the middle of nonseparation, where there is no small self to manifest, then we can leave too. When we do, then the things we think we want from our practice arise naturally. We usually come to practice wanting something out of it, like peace, stability or wisdom. If we sit so we can learn to act that way, it’s still an act, and we’re still stuck on an idea of who we should be. When we put small self aside, the real peace, stability and wisdom show up. It’s no longer about how practice can benefit me; it’s now the universe doing what the universe does. We’re seeing our lives from the broadest possible perspective and manifesting that very broad perspective in our day-to-day activities. Okumura Roshi says that studying the self means studying how to walk with others. That’s a good summary of how we need to carry these two aspects of self. How do we take care of ourselves and carry out our individual responsibilities, and also not forget that the self is empty and doesn’t need to be defended? He says this is why we need sangha: so we can learn to walk together with others while we hold both of these aspects. Buddhism says that self-clinging is one of the most basic delusions. That means it’s pretty deeply rooted, which is a problem. Okumura Roshi says that almost all of our actions, wholesome or unwholesome, are based on self-centeredness. The three things we use to create karma are body, speech and mind, and that’s because they’re the three things we use to take action. That puts self-clinging at the center of our karma. It influences all of our actions, and potentially the outcomes of those actions. Seeing our self-clinging doesn’t mean we don’t take action. We need to see clearly what’s happening and still take the most skillful action we can. We can’t wait for some state of purity that’s somewhere other than right here, or we can’t do our practice or our bodhisattva work. Okumura Roshi says we have to try to become aware of our self-clinging even while we’re trying to do something wholesome in the world. How do we gain some insight into the nature of self so we can be free from self-clinging? Ironically, the idea that we need to study or acquire something in order to get rid of this delusion about self is itself a problem. We might imagine that we need to correct our mistaken thinking about the self, or get rid of our delusion about the self. All we really need to do is get out of the way. Dogen says that practice and awakening are not two. When we take the zazen posture, we aren’t controlled by delusive thoughts. His teacher Tendo Nyojo used the expression shin jin datsu raku 身心脱落, dropping off body and mind, to describe being freed from the karmic self. He first heard this expression from his teacher when he was 25, and he didn’t get it. What is this dropping off body and mind? Nyojo said that dropping off body and mind is zazen! Dogen later taught that practice without self-centeredness is itself awakening. The way to understand the self and be able to let go of it is to sit zazen. It’s not that we’re going to learn something new about the self that we’re then going to use to be free from it. It’s that zazen is itself dropping off body and mind, which is being free from the karmic self. Uchiyama Roshi describes someone sitting in zazen as simultaneously being pulled around by thoughts about desires and also letting go of thoughts. He says this is an ordinary person living out universal self. In zazen we open the hand and let thoughts come and go by themselves. This is non-thinking. Even so, the mind keeps functioning by itself in each moment. The stream of consciousness is like a waterfall; it constantly flows but has no permanent nature or self. Even though thoughts are coming and going, we don’t take action based on those thoughts, so we don’t create karma. This is what Dogen meant in Shobogenzo Zuimonki when he said zazen is the true form of the self: Sitting itself is the practice of the Buddha. Sitting itself is not-doing. It is nothing but the true form of the Self. Apart from this, there is nothing to seek as the buddha-dharma. True self here means the self before discrimination between self and other, delusion and awakening, etc. Uchiyama Roshi has a great description for this non-separation of beings: you exist within my universal self. If you exist within me, how can we be separate? How can I want to cause you suffering by breaking precepts or doing something unwholesome? I’m just hurting myself. In zazen, we begin to see that relying on small self alone is ultimately unsatisfactory because it’s impermanent and we can’t hang onto it. The idea of a fixed self is an illusion, so it doesn’t make sense for us to build our entire world around it. In the Sutta Nipatta, the Buddha said, Live in the world relying on the Self alone as a foundation, be freed from all things, depending on no thing. The self here is universal self, the self that is not separate from all beings and not our own personal property. When we rely on universal self rather than small self, we don’t get caught up in self-clinging. We see that the small self is a manifestation of universal self. Small self is real and we can’t ignore it, but it’s not the whole story and it’s not the basis for anything. When we let go of small self, what a relief! We’re freed from all things and depending on no thing. Buddha says the same thing in the Dhammapada: Take refuge in Self, take refuge in Dharma, take refuge in nothing else. Again, this is big Self or universal self. Uchiyama Roshi struggled to come up with the right term for this big Self. He tried things like “the actual reality of life” but people didn’t make the connection that this was all about them. There’s me here and the actual reality of life out over there. In the end, it makes sense to call this thing the universal self, because what’s more intimate to us than that? You exist within my universal self. When we can let go of the small self we can start to explore the universal self because, after all, it’s our own life. The whole world is our universal self. Whatever is happening in the world is my own life playing itself out—those things exist in my universal self. The joy and suffering of others is my life. Wholesome and unwholesome things in the world are my universal self. It puts our bodhisattva vows into new perspective. To say My small self or my life are a part of a larger whole still misses the mark by creating separation. My small self is the entirety of my universal self, Chinese Zen master Hongzhi was asked, “What is the self before discrimination?” He answered, “A toad in a well swallows the moon.” A tiny being in a narrow well contains the whole universe. This universal self is beyond what we think about it, so talking about it is kind of pointless. It comes down to how the universal self lives out the universal self through the small self. It’s the day-to-day things we do when we do them without self-clinging, because we’re paying attention to the hindrances that come up when we’re stuck on our ideas about self. If we look closely at our suffering when it arises, we often see that it’s happening because some aspect of our self-concept is being challenged. We have taintedly attached to self. What can we do? We can drop expectation. Our ideas about how things “should” be are only our ideas and have no bearing on what the universe is actually doing. Struggling with how things “should” be is a recipe for suffering. There is no guarantee that we will be healthy, comfortable, popular or even safe. In the midst of that, contentment still arises, and it arises because we are without attachment. As soon as we go chasing after something we don’t have and running away from things we don’t want, the most basic kind of suffering has set in. We also need to drop our fixed ideas about self and others. The human condition is that we evaluate everything we encounter for its usefulness to ourselves. When the government, the sangha, the family or any other human group doesn’t give us what we’ve decided we want or need, our habituated thinking says that we’ve been personally wronged. In fact, no contract has been broken. The universe never agreed to abide by our preconceptions. We’ve let our delusions about self calcify into something we’re using as a yardstick to measure the worth of ourselves and others. Instead, as bodhisattvas we move through the world making our best effort to ameliorate the suffering of beings without being attached to the outcome of those efforts. There is no entitlement and no reward. We simply offer what we have, and if others can take it up and make use of it, fine. If not, so be it. This is the universal self living out its life through us. Questions for reflection and discussion
Reflection on suffering is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we cease all aspirations. 苦觀是法明門、斷一切願故. This week we continue the discussion of the four dharma seals: inconstancy or impermanence, suffering, no-self and nirvana. Last week we talked about the first seal in Gate 18 (Reflection on inconstancy is a gate of dharma illumination; for [with it] we reflect upon the desires of the triple world) and we saw that the triple world was made up of the worlds of desire, form and beyond-form. In this gate we again have the triple world, although it’s not mentioned directly. The Japanese for the second seal is sangai kaiku 三界皆苦: all beings in the three worlds are suffering. Last week we saw that the three worlds of desire, form and beyond-form contain beings who have not permanently moved beyond suffering, despite being able to let go of sense experiences and the craving and aversion that arise from them. It’s the first noble truth: life is characterized by suffering. These three worlds contain beings who have not reached Nirvana; they’re still suffering because they’re still attached to something. There’s a Japanese proverb that says: A child is a neck-shackle for the Three States of Existence (or the three worlds). In other words, love or attachment to a child will impede your spiritual progress through not only this world but the other two! It’s difficult to be a parent. This gate asks us to deeply consider the reality that all beings everywhere have suffering, and further suggests that if we really understand this, we will stop chasing after things. Even aspiring to move to a higher celestial realm will not end our suffering. Does that mean we should have no goals in life? Should we give up all of our plans? And how do we make the daily choices necessary to get along in the world? Do we just drift at the mercy of whatever comes along? The good news is that this is not what our ancestors taught. The element of the Eightfold Path known as Right View is all about truly understanding the Four Noble Truths, which explain the nature of suffering, how it arises and what we can do about it. Here’s what Uchiyama Roshi had to say about sangai kaiku, all beings are suffering: Suffering is not something that comes to attack me periodically; my whole life, as it is, is suffering. Nevertheless, I go around fighting with people, loving them, ignoring them, without every being able to truly see that suffering. Actually, suffering in the deepest sense is all of that. In other words, as long as this matter of death remains unclear, everything in the world suffers. That is the meaning of the idea that all sentient beings are suffering. It is something that isn’t talked about much simply because most people wouldn’t have any idea of what it’s about. (1) When he says that as long as this matter of death remains unclear everything suffers, he’s talking about impermanence, the first dharma seal: everything dies. Intellectually, we can understand what the Buddha taught fairly easily. The life of all beings is characterized by suffering, and that suffering is the result of our cravings and aversions that cause us to chase after things we want and run away from things (like death) that we don’t want. There is a way to liberate ourselves and all beings from suffering, and that’s to engage in the practice of the Eightfold Path. However, just knowing what the words mean isn’t the same as deeply understanding that this path is a better means to a wholesome life than simply being led by our desires and delusions. It’s not an academic or intellectual exercise. Buddhism is a practice, something we do. The way to get to grips with Right View and to reflect on suffering is to get onto the cushion. Settling down in zazen, we can begin seeing through our ideas and cravings, and understand that even though we fall off the path, living a life of practice is a good thing for ourselves and all beings. Now, we might ask: But isn’t aspiring to live in Buddha’s Way still an aspiration, something the gate statements warns us against? Recognizing that we’re working with a translated text, we need to understand what “aspiration” means in this gate statement. Interestingly, the root of the word “aspire” is about breathing—breathing into or breathing on. These days we think of “aspiring” as aiming toward a worthy goal, but the earliest historical sense of it is “panting with desire!” However, grasping and craving for things that shore up the small self is different from arousing bodhicitta and intending to walk Buddha’s path for the sake of both self and others. Without some direction or intention we couldn’t practice. Our understanding of bodhicitta and the direction of our practice changes throughout our lives as we get better at seeing the reality of ourselves and our existence. The focus of our dharma study, the particular practice schedule we carry out, the specifics of our bodhisattva work may change, but our determination to live in Buddha’s way remains constant, supported by vow and repentance and not based on our personal desires. Of course, as limited human beings we sometimes become attached to results or outcomes of our practice. We may find ourselves trying to get something from zazen or dharma study in order to make ourselves feel accomplished, important or wise. There’s a fine line between personally getting something from our practice and practicing for the good of the world. The Buddha Way doesn’t leave anyone out, including ourselves. We certainly share in the wholesomeness manifested by engaging in zazen and the Eightfold Path, but underneath it all, what’s our motivation to practice? For many of us, it was our individual suffering that led us to make that first contact with a dharma center, read that first dharma book or seek out that first dharma teacher. Something felt like it was out of whack and we were in search of some means of lessening that discomfort. Maybe we’d already tried other spiritual traditions, various wellness activities or latest psychological method. Maybe we’d resorted to the distractions of addiction to make our pain go away, resulting only in making it worse. All else has failed, so let’s try Buddhism as the next spiritual technology. Originally, we may have climbed onto the cushion looking for a reduction in the stress of our personal lives, but after awhile it likely became clear that there was more to this than our own circumstances. Healing ourselves can’t help but change the things around us if we are not separate from the rest of reality. Our actions of body, speech and mind—the three places where we create karma—affect ourselves and others now and give rise to the conditions of the next moment. The understandably self-centered approach we originally brought to the cushion starts to expand, and we realize that it’s not actually possible to practice for ourselves alone. We go from panting with desire for some kind of personal results to seeing the larger and more balanced worldview, and that happens when we see our true nature as bodhisattvas. Even so, there are few human actions that don’t contain some degree of delusion and defilement, however small. We may begin taking some pride in our practice: how many Dogen quotes we can spout, our experiences practicing abroad, how many chants we’ve memorized, the age of our rakusu, our intimate knowledge of things kept at the dharma center, our membership in the Buddhist in-crowd. The basis of all of this is our engagement with the Three Treasures, and yet it’s resulted in self-aggrandizement. It’s just another example of the need for lifelong moment-by-moment practice—as well as the need for good sangha friends willing to wisely and compassionately point out that we’re making some mistakes. When we truly understand that suffering arises from craving and aversion, we stop chasing and avoiding. We can keep ourselves aimed at manifesting awakening, but we’re able to accept and respond skillfully to things that happen along the way that we can’t predict. We can make course corrections as our insight deepens, holding our goals loosely, finding new and helpful ways around obstacles without getting caught up in anger and discouragement when our ideas don’t match reality. We can’t possibly know the totality of the ways in which causes and conditions will play themselves out, so we can’t possibly control everything about our lives. Without flexibility, it’s hard to keep our intention alive and pointed in the right direction. Discouragement leads to giving up when it seems that goals aren’t achievable. That’s when it’s time to examine our ideas and assumptions about what we’re trying to do. There may be a better plan for getting where we’re going or a different way to frame the goal. Maybe we have misperceptions about the way things work, or maybe something is more possible with the help of others. Cultivating clarity lets us remain firmly on the path while letting go of the fixed ideas that lead to suffering. There’s an Iowa poet named Robert Tremmel who’s clearly been reading Opening the Hand of Thought. In 2016 he published a poem called Power Outage, and before the poem he includes a quote from Uchiyama Roshi: Truth must consist of living out our lives in accord with certain inescapable realities. “Inescapable realities” is Uchiyama Roshi’s way of saying Four Noble Truths, and this is the inspiration for the poem. Power Outage Candlelight is not enough light to read by any more than bluegills circling blindly beneath the ice can lead anyone to salvation or even mere enlightenment. Outside, the wind groans on, branches heavy with snow twist and creak, small feet curl into fur. In Japanese there are words for this shogyō mujō the nature of the wick sangai kaiku the suffering of the wax. We can imagine being inside during a power outage. It’s dark and the lights don’t work, so we’ve got a candle, but the light isn’t very bright and it’s not enough to read by. We’re not going to get anywhere with whatever we’re reading and going on with it is kind of pointless, just like the fish swimming around under the ice in the lake outside are not going to lead anyone to salvation. They don’t know where they’re going, and they can’t save anybody. Blindly rushing around isn’t going to solve all our problems, and it’s not even going to lead us to mere enlightenment, seeing the undeniable realities of life. Outside, we can hear the sound of the wind and the creaking of the branches. Small animals have taken shelter somewhere and they’re doing what they need to do to ride out the storm. These things are going on regardless—wind and snow are coming and going and small animals are living their lives. The universe is doing what the universe does. In Japanese, there are words for this / shogyō mujō / the nature of the wick Shogyō mujō is the first dharma seal: all conditioned things are impermanent. The wick provides a condition for the flame of the candle; without the wick, the candle cannot burn. Yet, the wick is changing, and as a result, the flame is changing. sangai kaiku / the suffering / of the wax. Sangai kaiku is the second dharma seal: all beings in the three worlds are suffering, as is the wax while the universe functions, the candle burns, and wax is consumed in the fire. Each is completely filling its dharma position. To return to Uchiyama Roshi for a moment: The first undeniable reality (shogyō mujō or impermanence) is that every living thing dies and the second undeniable reality (sangai kaiku or suffering) is that we suffer throughout our lives because we don’t understand death. The truth derived from these two points is the importance of clarifying the matter of birth and death. (2) Because of impermanence, the wax changes shape, melts into a liquid and gets drawn up into the flame and burned. Because of impermanence, we are born and live and die. The light that comes from our burning desires isn’t enough to read by; it’s not going to get us to an understanding of reality. The delusion that hinders our ability to find liberation for ourselves and others is like the ice that covers the lake and traps the fish. We spend our lives moving about aimlessly, and again it’s not going to get us to an understanding of reality. And yet, impermanence and suffering are not separate from reality. Just like the house with the power outage is sitting in the midst of nature doing what nature does, and we can hear it, there’s a candle of our burning senses there on the table and it’s no good for reading—and yet it’s an undeniable part of reality. It’s a complete manifestation of impermanence and suffering. How can we see the real nature of the candle and of the fish under the ice, as well as the little animals and the wind and snow and tree branches? It’s sometimes called using form to transcend the form, using our suffering to see the how craving and aversion arise and understand the true nature of reality. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) Uchiyama, Kosho. Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Wisdom Publications, 2005. p. 34 (2) Ibid. p. 36-37. Reflection on inconstancy is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we reflect upon the desires of the triple world. 無常觀是法明門、觀三界慾故 With this gate, we move into a section of the text concerned with the thirty seven elements of bodhi (Jp. sanjūshichi-bon-bodai-bunpō 三十七道品), which includes Gates 18 through 55. These elements are sometimes called trainings toward awakening, but in Dogen's fascicle Sanjūshichi-bon-bodai-bunpō, they're characterized as thirty seven elements of the truth. Translators Nishijima and Cross note that the list is usually considered a "Hinayana" teaching: In Japan, and especially among Mahayana Buddhist masters, it was very rare for Buddhist monks to discuss these teachings. But Master Dōgen has his own views on Mahayana and Hinayana. According to him, there exists only the Buddhism that Gautama Buddha taught. He thought that any distinctions between Mahayana and Hinayana are reflections of the different ages and cultures in which the two schools of Buddhism were taught, and he refused to discriminate between the two Buddhist streams. In this chapter Master Dōgen explains the thirty-seven elements of the truth with no division into Hinayana or Mahayana, but based upon the practice of zazen. (1) The list begins with statements about the four dharma seals (Jp. shihōin 四法印): inconstancy or impermanence, suffering, no-self and nirvana. It’s said that if a teaching contains these four seals, it’s a real Buddhist teaching. They function like a signature stamp or a trademark. Of course, like many other sets of teachings in Buddhism, four seals are not actually separate—they arise and function together—but for the purpose of sharing dharma, we have to give them names and boundaries. The list of the four seals varies depending on context and tradition; the version we’ll discuss here is made up of the three marks of existence plus nirvana. The three marks are very old elements in the Buddhist tradition. We find them in the Dhammapada: 277. “All conditioned things are impermanent” — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification. 278. “All conditioned things are unsatisfactory” — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification. 279. “All things are not-self” — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification. Because we’re limited human beings, we have confusion and misunderstanding about these three marks, and we live in samsara. However, when we deeply experience and understand the nature of existence, we are also aware of nirvana, the cessation of suffering. Our gate statement for this week takes up the first of the seals: inconstancy, or impermanence. Buddha taught that all conditioned things—things that arise because of a combination of karmic causes and conditions—are constantly arising and falling away, constantly changing in gross and subtle ways. This includes not only objects we encounter in the world of form, like shoes, mountains, cell phones and fence posts, but also our bodies and minds, our thoughts and emotions, and our relationships. Shoes wear out, mountains erode or explode as volcanoes, cell phones become outdated or broken, and we ourselves age and die. The elements or skandhas that make up things of the world are impermanent, and the causes and conditions that bring them together are also impermanent. Clinging to the way things are in any particular moment and convincing ourselves that they will never change is a set-up for suffering. Intellectually, we may understand that everything is changing. These days, we can see particles moving under a microscope and we believe our eyes. Science tells us that atoms and molecules are in constant motion, and we can accept that—but we can’t stop there. The more profound understanding is that the world we encounter was deeply impermanent even before it arose. The causes and conditions that led to its arising are themselves impermanent, so how could the outcome of those causes and conditions not also be so? Causes and conditions are not simple to see. We have to deeply experience impermanence in a non-intellectual way, without concepts and theories, in order to truly understand it. The gate statement also refers to the triple world, and it’s just as important a topic here as impermanence. The three worlds are those of desire, form and beyond-form; together they make up the totality of the celestial realms. In the world of desire, we transmigrate around and around on the wheel of samsara, moving ceaselessly between the realms of hell, animals, humans, hungry ghosts, fighting spirits and gods. The world of form consists of the four higher celestial realms in which the desires of the body have fallen away, and the world of beyond-form includes the four highest celestial realms in which there is only the enjoyment of meditative states. In the Sangai Yuishin fascicle of the Shobogenzo, Dogen talks about a verse from the Avatamsaka Sutra that says these three worlds make up the entire unsurpassable universe—and also are all creations of our own minds. Our gate statement says that considering impermanence leads us also to consider the desires of this triple world. The world of desire is dominated by our sensory experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, in which we chase after things we want and run from things we don’t want. We worry that things we have will disappear, or that things we’d rather avoid will show up in our lives. That scurrying around is what keeps the wheel of samsara turning. The world of form is inhabited by beings who are temporarily able to suppress hatred and ill-will, and who have abandoned the desires that arise from sensory experience. The world of beyond-form has beings with no physical form or location, but some retain some ability to engage in perception. According to early Buddhist teachings, moving upward through these three worlds is the result of meditative attainment, and yet, Buddha saw that even existence in the highest planes was subject to impermanence and was not in itself the end of suffering. Beings in any realm could be reborn into any other realm, so suffering of existence went on. He saw that the only way to the cessation of suffering was the cessation of rebirth. Thus in the world of desire, our craving and aversion intersect with impermanence to keep us tied to the wheel of samsara, but even if we manage to loosen those bonds and move to the worlds of form or beyond-form, the very fact of our existence means we can’t leave suffering behind. This is the first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths: existence is characterized by suffering. Impermanence is at the heart of our ancestors’ teachings about emptiness. If all things are impermanent, then they can have no fixed and permanent essence; they are empty of self-nature. Emptiness doesn’t mean that things and people don’t exist; it means that because they are deeply impermanent, there’s nothing about them we can hold onto. In order to function in the world, we have to give names and attributes to things we encounter, but we also have to remember that these are provisional means that allow us to do our bodhisattva work in the world of desire. Any boundaries we set up around things are our own, because the true nature of all things is complete emptiness and liberation. Dogen took a close look at the nature of impermanence in the Genjokoan fascicle of the Shobogenzo. That inquiry was key to his resolving his disagreement with one of the teachings of Tendai Buddhism, the tradition in which he originally practiced. The relationship between impermanence and desire mentioned in the gate statement seems obvious, particularly as it relates to the arising of suffering: we grasp for things we like, those things are always coming and going and changing, and when they change or disappear we become unhappy. Yet Dogen wondered: if everything is impermanent, how can there be an absolute and unvarying Buddha-nature, as the Tendai tradition taught? Buddha-nature was supposed to be something unchangeable that you got at the end of a linear practice. Was it really something detached from everyday experience, a potentiality that you manifested somehow after years of effort? How could this be? If all conditioned things are constantly changing because the causes and conditions that lead to their arising are constantly changing, and if nothing is separate from causes and conditions, there can be nothing that arises and then remains fixed and immutable forever, including Buddha-nature. Dogen’s own experience of impermanence led him to see that there were two ways to understand it. One was the point of view of being an observer of things changing all around yourself. You feel sad when you’re clinging to something and it’s lost, and then you want to be released from those feelings. Another point of view was being completely immersed in the total dynamic functioning of the universe without artificial separation, understanding that you’re an element in that functioning which is as impermanent and changeable as everything around it. If you get this second point of view, you don’t get caught up in the sentimentality of impermanence because there is no self to own those feelings. but you also don’t deny them. When you completely enter into feelings of grief and loss. that can lead to insight into the real nature of impermanence. The reality is that humans cling and suffer. That can’t be ignored or separated from the truth of this moment. Clinging and suffering are not outside of the Buddha Way because the Buddha Way is unsurpassable—there’s nowhere it doesn’t reach. Thus Dogen isn’t telling us to cut off or push away our feelings of regret or sorrow at the transiency of the world. He’s pointing out that there is no separation between regret and no-regret. Regret is simply the outcome of the arising and falling away of impermanent phenomena. We don’t have to get caught up in it and use it to perpetuate delusion, but we also shouldn’t ignore it either, since it exists and serves as a gate of dharma illumination that helps us to understand desire and the nature of suffering. It’s an interesting view of our human relationship with impermanence. Our suffering is right in the midst of Nirvana, which is right in the midst of the Buddha Way. In one of his discussions of waka poems, Okumura Roshi says: Seeing impermanence and feeling grief is not necessarily negative in Buddhism, especially in Dogen’s teachings even though we feel sad. It is a good chance to arouse bodhi-mind and aspire to practice what the Buddha taught. As Shakyamuni Buddha said in the Sutra on the Buddha’s Bequeathed Teaching, within the practice, the Buddha’s indestructible Dharma Body is actualized. The very desire to which we as humans fall prey, the very clinging in the vain hope that things won’t change, the very emotions we experience when the things we love or believe we need are fading away—those are themselves the complete manifestation of the Buddha Way. In completely living our lives, we hold two paradoxical truths: we try to liberate ourselves from suffering by seeing through our delusion that the world is unchanging and loosening the grip of craving and aversion that leads to pain. At the same time, our deluded human experience of grief, loss and fear is itself what Okumura Roshi has called the eternal life of Buddha. Practice in the midst of impermanence is what gives rise to the Buddha’s indestructible dharma body. In his book on the Mountains and Waters Sutra, Okumura Roshi says: Impermanence is one half of reality. The other side is that everything is always abiding peacefully in its Dharma position, where nothing arises and nothing changes. Everything is there at this moment. (1) Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) Cross, Chodo, and Nishijima, Gudo. Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, Volume 4. United States, Booksurge Publishing, 2006. p. 3. (2) Okumura, Shohaku. The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s “Sansuikyo”. United States, Wisdom Publications, 2018. p. 173 Abandonment is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we turn away from the five desires. 是法明門、厭離五欲故。 This week we take up the last of the four brahma viharas or divine abodes. We’ve considered benevolence, compassion, sympathetic joy, and this time it’s abandonment (Skt. upekka), frequently translated as equanimity. You may have heard of something in the Buddhist tradition called the Eight Worldly Winds or Eight Worldly Conditions. These are:
This is the stuff that swirls around us in our lives and pulls us off center or off course. It’s interesting that they’re in pairs of opposites; there is definitely a “good” and “bad” here. We chase after one and avoid the other; it’s basic craving and aversion which, as we know, leads to suffering. Equanimity is being calm and balanced and stable in the midst of the swirling of these eight worldly winds. The English word is made up of “equal” plus “animus,” which is mind or spirit. We encounter various things with equal spirit, looking carefully, not looking away, not immediately deciding to connect with this and throw out that. The gate statement says that abandonment is a gate because we turn away from the five desires, also known as the five hindrances (Skt. pancha nivarana). These are known to be obstacles to tranquility of mind. They are:
At Gate 36 we’re going to be returning to these five desires or hindrances and we’ll go into additional detail then. For the moment, let’s connect the five desires with the eight worldly winds and abandonment or equanimity. The gate statement says that we turn away from sensory desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt. That allows us not to be thrown off in the midst of loss and gain, good-repute and ill-repute, praise and censure, sorrow and happiness. That in turn creates the conditions for equanimity, or the ability to abandon picking and choosing and needing to take a side. All this is a more complex way of saying that if we’re not paying attention to these things arising in our minds and understanding them really well, they get in the way of our zazen and the rest of our lives. Before we realize it, we get hijacked into taking sides, and chasing after and running away from things. As Dogen says, Flowers fall with our attachment, and weeds spring up with our aversion. We want the flowers, and as soon as we see them, our grasping comes up. We don’t want the weeds, and as soon as we see them, our aversion comes up, We can become consumed with that and lose our balance. Once we’ve lost our balance, we don’t see clearly and it’s difficult to be skillful bodhisattvas in the world. It’s really hard to do anything useful for others when we’re caught up in our own greed, grasping and craving. Now, equanimity is not about being passive and apathetic. It would be easy to think that not giving in to desires means that we should just become inert and never make a choice, but it doesn’t really mean we just say, well, everything’s OK and there’s nothing I need to do. It helps us see where can actually be useful and what we just need to let go of, because there are things we want to change and things we can actually change. Having equanimity is about being stable in the face of everything coming at us in good times and difficult times. It’s not about detaching or withdrawing from the world, maintaining our personal peace by ignoring what’s happening. Buddha is not saying we should be indifferent or unconcerned about others. He’s saying that abandoning the hindrances allows us not to get swept away by the eight worldly winds. The only thing we’re indifferent to is the demands of the ego or the small self. In the face of loss and gain, we accept that things come and go. Sometimes we want something we don’t have, and sometimes we have something we don’t want. Sometimes we have something we want and we’re afraid to lose it, and sometimes we’re afraid of something coming into our lives that we’d rather avoid. That’s what this worldy wind is about. When we lose a job or get a new job, break up a relationship or start a new one, make a lot of money or lose all our money -- can we fully enter into what’s going on, fully see and accept what’s happening, and not get blown over by it? In the face of good-repute and ill-repute, or changes in what others think of us, we can do our best to maintain good relationships, but in the end even if we do our best to be skillful, there are those who are just going to disagree with us or even disparage us. In the midst of that, can we stick to our principles and do what we think is right and wholesome? I’m sure you’ve heard this story about Hakuin: A beautiful girl in the village was pregnant. Her angry parents demanded to know who was the father. At first resistant to confess, the anxious and embarrassed girl finally pointed to Hakuin, the Zen master whom everyone previously revered for living such a pure life. When the outraged parents confronted Hakuin with their daughter’s accusation, he simply replied “Is that so?” When the child was born, the parents brought it to the Hakuin, who now was viewed as a pariah by the whole village. They demanded that he take care of the child since it was his responsibility. “Is that so?” Hakuin said calmly as he accepted the child. For many months he took very good care of the child until the daughter could no longer withstand the lie she had told. She confessed that the real father was a young man in the village whom she had tried to protect. The parents immediately went to Hakuin to see if he would return the baby. With profuse apologies they explained what had happened. “Is that so?” Hakuin said as he handed them the child. In the midst of good repute and ill repute, or honor and dishonor, he remained stable and simply cared for the child. In the face of praise and censure or criticism, can we avoid becoming proud or shriveling up and hiding? In the face of sorrow, can we pick up and keep going while taking care of the grieving process? In the face of happiness, can we completely enter in the joy of that while not becoming consumed by it? Within the four brahma viharas, equanimity is not only its own point but helps to refine the other three. Steadiness combined with benevolence, compassion and sympathetic joy helps us wish all beings well and enter equally into their suffering and joy, regardless of our personal likes and dislikes or the condition that we ourselves are in Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes: When you encounter suffering that you can’t stop no matter how hard you try, you need equanimity to avoid creating additional suffering and to channel your energies to areas where you can be of help. In this way, equanimity isn’t cold hearted or indifferent. It simply makes your goodwill more focused and effective. Our interactions and relationships with others don’t swing wildly in one direction or the others depending on how we feel that day or latest thing the other person has done or said. When we remain steady and stable, we create less suffering for ourselves and better causes and conditions for those around us. Regardless of how much goodwill or compassion you’ve cultivated, there are bound to be people whose past actions are unskillful and who cannot or will not change their ways in the present. Equanimity helps make sure we can benefit all beings. Upekkha has been described as freedom from all points of self-reference. It’s also been described as learning to put aside your preferences so that you can watch what’s actually there. Equanimity helps us take a step back and see that not everything is about us, our wants and likes and ideas. As soon as everything is about me, I’m subject to every whim, delusion and misperception that comes out of the small self. It’s an unstable and fatiguing place to be, and not a good basis for decisionmaking. Dogen wrote a waka about equanimity, which Okumura Roshi has translated: Natsu fuyu mo Omoi ni wakanu Koshi no yama Furu shi-ra-yu-ki mo Naru i-ka-zu-chi mo Whether summer or winter, the mountain of Koshi is free from discriminative thinking. It sees equally falling of white snowflakes or roaring of thunder. Not discriminating between summer and winter, accepting all of the different conditions of four seasons, means we encounter summer storms and winter snow with equal spirit. It’s just the next thing that’s happening, and it’s not necessary to decide whether it’s good or bad. We may still need to clear away the fallen trees or shovel the snow—in other words, we may still need to take some action—but we can do that without grumbling. It’s just the next thing that needs to be done. Okumura Roshi says that this waka reminds him of what Dōgen wrote in the Tenzokyokun (The Instructions for the Tenzo) regarding magnanimous mind: As for what is called magnanimous mind, this mind is like the great mountains or like the great ocean; it is not biased or contentious mind. Carrying half a pound, do not take it lightly; lifting forty pounds should not seem heavy. Although drawn by the voices of spring, do not allow your heart to fall. The four seasons cooperate in a single scene; regard light and heavy with a single eye. On this single occasion you must write the word ‘great.’ You must know the word ‘great.’ You must learn the word ‘great.’” This “great” is a pointer back to ”magnanimous.” He’s exhorting us to deeply study what these words mean. Okumura Roshi is giving us a clue here about how we can cultivate equanimity or abandonment. We enter into magnanimous mind and we see and accept 100% of this one unified reality. Imagine a time when you were caught up in one of the hindrances. Maybe you were worried about the outcome of something, feeling unmotivated and that everything was pointless, or feeling bitterness that your input about something was not asked or was disregarded. At times like this, hard to see beyond two immediate stories: there’s what you want and then there’s how things are going. One is good and one is not good, and everything gets evaluated in terms of that dichotomy. You accept one and reject the other, and that’s it. There’s actually a bigger world out there in the world of magnanimous mind. We accept all possibilities and options without judging and labeling from a self-centered perspective. and we can see all sides of the situation and all the elements involved. If you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle and you pick up a piece and try it and it doesn’t fit, you don’t say, “Well, that’s a bad piece” or “I really hate that piece.” You say, “Well, it doesn’t fit there.” You’re able to take action, but it’s not based on what that piece means to you personally; it’s based on what’s needed in that situation. Equanimity allows us to hold both ends of the dichotomy equally and at the same time: loss and gain, honor and dishonor. In the middle of two things, or in the middle of seeming chaos, we can stand up, look around, and see clearly what’s happening and what we need to do. We can see that these two things are not actually separate. In addition to the desire for one element or another, there is frequently an additional desire: to avoid ambiguity. Sometimes we have a hard time with uncertainty. Deciding on one thing or another can give us a feeling of being in control or having something solid to hang onto. It can also make it difficult to change our thinking when we’re presented with new information. That’s when we can find ourselves entrenched, and if the “other side” is equally dug in, that’s a problem. Equanimity allows for keeping an open mind. Just as the mountain has a firm foundation, we need to build a firm foundation in our practice. Giving way to restlessness and doubt makes it hard to practice, and we need that stable practice foundation in order to go forward. We don’t just wake up in the morning and say, Today I’m going to have equanimity and magnanimous mind. They come from deeply understanding the nature of impermanence and no self and how causes and conditions work. Deep understanding requires regular committed zazen practice. Zazen is a fine place to cultivate equanimity. There’s a reason we have phrases like “sit like a mountain.” It’s sitting that’s solid, stable, and unmoving. The mountain has strength and dignity, but is completely natural. Equanimity also has to be natural, not something you put on. It’s not about suppressing thoughts or feelings so you appear calm. It’s about seeing through those thoughts, feelings and hindrances so they don’t cloud your understanding and judgement. Questions for reflection and discussion
Joy is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we abandon all unpleasant things. 喜是法明門、一切不喜事故. This week we take up the third of the four brama viharas, sympathetic joy (Skt. mudita). This is the joy we feel with others when something goes well for them. (Compassion was feeling others’ suffering with them.) How much better it would be for us if we could be happy with others in their joy rather than feeling envious: how come him or her and not me? Why not increase our own happiness by partaking in the joy of others? The classical image of sympathetic joy is the joy of a parent when the child grows, develops and prospers. Parents feel very connected to their children, so they’re pleased for them when they learn to walk and talk, do well in school, get a date for the prom, or get a good job. So how do we cultivate or create the conditions for this sympathetic joy? We need look no farther than Dogen’s famous teaching that to study the self is to forget the self. If we practice and loosen the grip of this idea that there is a fixed and unchanging self nature that persists through time and that we need to defend, we are naturally able to feel others’ joy. It’s interesting how all the brahma viharas we’ve talked about over the last few weeks are not about ourselves. Benevolence is about wishing others well. Compassion is feeling others’ suffering with them. Sympathetic joy is feeling others’ happiness with them. All of these things which are the result of our getting ourselves out of the way are supposed to lead us to a heavenly realm. If we simply keep running after what we want, we create suffering. If we let go of self and focus on others, we receive everything we need and end up in heaven! There’s another relationship between compassion and sympathetic joy. Sympathetic joy keeps compassion from becoming condescention: I’m helping you because I have something you need. I’m helping you out of your suffering and so you can achieve some better state. Instead, I share your suffering with you and on that basis I do what I can to relieve that suffering, and I share your joy when things have gotten better. It’s a subtle difference. What if we could gain happiness for ourselves by noticing and entering into the joy we find around us every day? We don’t need to thrust ourselves into someone else’s conversation or activity, or ask them for anything. When we see a family or a couple who are happy just to be together, well, good for them! When someone wins a contest, gets a good grade or finishes a project, good for them! This isn’t a selfish joy; I’m not acquiring happiness at the expense of someone else or because someone else has let me in on it. I don’t have to have a personal relationship with what’s happening. I can simply recognize that the universe is doing what the universe does, and joy arises naturally. The happiness of others can my happiness. Why not? Where is the actual barrier? What’s keeping me from sharing in that joy? Why shouldn’t I smile when I see child playing with puppy or young person giving up a seat on bus for an older person? It’s not like there’s a limited about of joy in the world and I’m stealing it from someone else. The brahma viharas also called the four immeasurables, after all. It’s like lighting a candle from another candle. It’s not like there’s a limited amount of flame, and now we’re cutting it in half to light another candle. If anything, there’s now twice as much! Now, this is not an exercise in avoiding suffering, covering it over with hearts and flowers and marshmallow creme. It’s not about being inauthentic or hypocritical. Sympathetic joy can lighten spirits, but doesn’t erase suffering. As Buddha said, life is characterized by suffering. The way to deal with it is to see where it comes from and our relationship with it, then try to reshape that relationship. Sympathetic joy is also not advocating that we become frivolous and superficial and try to surround ourselves only with YouTube videos of funny cats. Looking for and taking in the happiness around us is not a means of avoidance, and it won’t become that if we’re not letting go of wisdom. Wisdom is about seeing the whole catastrophe, joy and suffering, and not looking away from either one. Forgetting the self makes it less possible to get stuck in avoidance because we’re not in this for ourselves. We’re not cultivating sympathetic joy so that we can get some personal reward. Daniel Zelinski is a philosophy professor at Missouri State and he has written: Dogen’s ideally nonattached individual is a humble agent in the world whose perceived sense of a pervasive interconnected unity of all things through Buddha-nature instills a sympathetic connection to others within him or her, which in turn results in his or her projects and actions expressing both respect and compassion. (1) Cultivating sympathetic joy is both a means of forgetting the self and a manifestation of forgetting the self. They reinforce each other. The envy and jealousy and resentment I mentioned a moment ago is based in the delusion that somehow we aren’t enough as we are, that somehow this self is insufficient or something is lacking. If we are buddha-nature, there’s nothing we need to acquire and we don’t need to be insecure about ourselves. We just need to learn how to see through our delusions, get out of our own way and move through the world skillfully with wisdom and compassion. That’s what the bodhisattva does. Can you imagine Manjusri and Avalokitesvara being envious of each other every time someone made an offering or built a shrine? No, because they know that something good happening for one of them doesn’t take anything away from the other. As human beings, we don’t like to acknowledge envy. It’s not good that he got that promotion -- not because I’m envious, of course, but because he doesn’t have the right skills. We’re going to find a way to justify our resistance. I was once asked to officiate at an important ceremony. When my friend found out, her response was, You're doing it? Well, of course, the reason I wasn’t asked was because the organizers must have already known that I wasn’t available that day. Ouch! However, this reaction wasn’t meant to hurt me, and clearly wasn’t about me at all. Jack Kornfield says: The near enemy of sympathetic joy (the joy in the happiness of others) is comparison, which looks to see if we have more of, the same as, or less than another... (2) It is (or should be) fairly easy to enter into sympathetic joy with our friends and family and people we like. What about people we don’t like so much? Can we be happy for someone who has something good going on in her life when we don’t like what’s happening? We’re not talking about condoning bad behavior, or cheering on someone who’s getting some reward for causing harm. We’re talking about struggling when something good and wholesome is happening for someone we don’t like. Here’s something written by a member of a prison sangha in Maryland. I’ve been constantly been told by other inmates to treat the staff like they are the enemy. This us vs. them never sat right with me and when you look at the Buddhist teachings you will see that there is really is no us vs. them. I found that when I’ve treated people (whoever they are) with kindness, I have been usually treated the same in return. When a corrections officer or another inmate treats me cruelly I remind myself that they are suffering and trying to attain happiness just the same as everyone else. So, they act out and it really has nothing to do with you, but their own drama. Putting our ego on hold can be challenging, but it can be done. I have found it helpful to simply take a step back and take a few silent breaths. Remember, we are trying to attain enlightenment for the benefit for all. (3) Goodness, where are you ever going to be that’s more of a challenge to sympathetic joy than in prison? Here’s the thing: we might as well enter into sympathetic joy, because not doing it isn’t going to change the situation. You’re not going to get revenge on somebody by withholding joy. Carrying resentment rather than sympathetic joy is the ego trying not to die. If I let go of my resentment I might disappear; I need to maintain this fiction that I’m better than you or more deserving than you, or at least separate from you. Otherwise, I might cease to be. Instead, we can aspire to be like Manjusri and Avalokitesvara, or some other selfless beings we may know. We can try not to overlook the various sources of joy that we can enter into every day. If we’re really trying to live like bodhisattvas and help all beings, than we need to be encouraging people. Even someone who’s really deluded can probably take even a small skillful action or make even a small change toward wholesomeness. The bodhisattva response to that success is not “Well, it’s about time you shaped up! I told you you should stop doing this or start doing that. It’s all well and good that you’ve taken this small step, but you’ve still got a long way to go, so don’t slack off!” It’s not kind, and not helpful, and not entering into sympathetic joy. Instead, look for the opportunity to recognize and celebrate wholesome action. It doesn’t mean you’re letting this person off the hook for other harmful stuff. It does mean you’re building a trust relationship and not perpetuating the delusion of separation. A rising tide floats all boats. His success is my success. At minimum, there’s just that tiny bit less suffering in the world for everyone. It’s said that cultivating sympathetic joy is the hardest of all the brahma viharas. It’s just so easy to say, I deserve happiness more than he does or she does. However, we have to remember: we don’t know about all of our own causes and conditions, let alone someone else’s. We’ve done both wholesome and unwholesome things; so has that person. Karma says that there are actions that lead to pleasure and actions that lead to pain. We don’t need to worry about who deserves what; the universe will sort that out, and not in a personal way. If we’re awarding sympathetic joy, or compassion, based on people’s purity, what are we doing? First, who are we to judge? How can we know all the streams of causes and conditions at work here? Second, if there is no one outside of Buddha’s way, there is no one who falls outside of our practice of the brahma viharas and there is no one from whom we’re really separate. Instead, we cultivate an attitude of wishing everyone well, suffering with those who suffer and feeling joy with those who feel joy. If we do that, where is boundary between self and other? It’s a really powerful way to experience that nonseparation. Here’s the other thing about karma: what we do now sets up the causes and conditions for what arises in the next moment. Do we go into that moment filled with resentment and envy, or do we go into it wishing people well? And what comes out of that choice? What happens if I’m constantly judging and envying what others have, and then something good happens to me? Will others have sympathetic joy for me, or just their own resentment? What dynamic have I set in motion there? When we talked about compassion, we talked about feeling the suffering of others without being overwhelmed by it. Sympathetic joy provides some balance and optimism. Yes, there’s suffering, but there is also joy. It keeps us from being consumed by pain and grief. If we collapse under the weight of compassion, it’s hard to do anything to actually help. We need the balance of entering into the happiness of others as well as their suffering. Nyanaponika Thera was a German Theravadan monk who died about 25 years ago. He wrote this about sympathetic joy: It is the divine smile on the face of the Enlightened One, a smile that persists in spite of his deep knowledge of the world’s suffering, a smile that gives solace and hope, fearlessness and confidence: “Wide open are the doors to deliverance,” thus it speaks. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) Queen, C. (2003). Action Dharma: New Studies in Engaged Buddhism. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. p. 60. (2) Kornfield, J. (2009). A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life. United States: Random House Publishing Group. (3) O’Connor, T. (2012). Buddhas Behind Bars. United States: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Compassion is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we do not kill or harm living beings. 悲是法明門、不殺害衆生故. This week we continue our discussion of the part of the text that deals with the four brahma viharas or divine abodes. Last week we talked about benevolence (or loving-kindness or metta). This week it’s compassion or karuna, and we still have sympathetic joy (mudita) and abandonment (upekka) ahead of us. Again, cultivating these qualities was said to lead to the arising of the mind of brahmas or loving gods, or to allow one to live with the gods. In the kanji for compassion 悲是, the first character has to do with grief, sorrow, sadness (hi). Of course, the roots of the English word “compassion” mean to feel with (someone). When we have compassion, we’re feeling someone’s suffering along with him or her. Our interactions with that person and the actions we take arise from our recognition of shared suffering. Compassion is the recognition of the first of the four noble truths: life is characterized by suffering. A sanghe member once asked me whether benevolence and compassion were the same, and I said no. Benevolence is about wishing all beings to be well and happy while compassion is wishing all beings to be free from suffering—recognizing the suffering of beings and doing what we can to relieve it, or at least not perpetuate it. The difference is subtle and they are related, but there are two different aspects here. The opposite of compassion is anger. When someone makes a mistake because of his own suffering, we can take it personally and become angry and lash out, or we can recognize the suffering and try to help stop that chain or cycle of pain perpetuating pain. That’s the difference between anger and compassion. When I first read this gate I immediately thought of this teaching from the Tibetan tradition: Just as I wish to be free from suffering and experience only happiness, so do all other beings. In this respect, I am no different from any other being; we are all equal. Compassion is understanding that all beings can experience suffering just as we can, so we don’t do harm to them. It’s when we see others as others, who are somehow disconnected from us and not our responsibility, that we make mistakes. We can put ourselves in their place because in a way we are already in their place: no one is outside the Buddha Way. As we saw last time, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra is a good source for teachings about the brahma viharas. Buddha is teaching about the pure actions of a bodhisattva, and the sutra makes the point over and over again that Buddha views all beings as he does his son Rahula. We as bodhisattvas are also to see all beings as we would see our own children. This is not easy; people question the Buddha about whether he can really do this. This or that person did this or that bad thing; can you really see him as your son? Yes, it’s true, I really do. The point is not to blame, shun or get angry at the person, but to fix the problem so suffering doesn’t perpetuate. Buddha says it’s like seeing that your okesa has a hole in it and simply repairing it. There’s a tear in the dharma fabric somewhere and something is out of alignment. Suffering arises because something is out of whack—our expectations, perceptions, craving and aversion, or whatever. Our job as bodhisattvas is simply to mend the tear so beings don’t keep falling through the hole. Buddha sees beings falling into hell with their suffering, and because of compassion he tries to do something so it doesn’t keep happening. In the sutra, he says: Should I see but one person falling into Avichi Hell, I would, for the sake of that person, stay in the world for a kalpa or less than a kalpa. I have great compassion for all beings. How could I cheat one whom I regard as my son and let him fall into hell? Seeing a person falling into hell, I cause repairs [to be made] and bestow the precepts for good deeds. Buddha could have seen people making mistakes and falling into hell realms and just written them off or become angry. Instead, he provides teachings, guidance and precepts the way a parent would care for a child. A parent might make a rule that the child not to go outside of the yard and into the street; when the child is older, she understands on her own that the street is busy and dangerous and has no desire to go there, but for now she needs help. This is how we’re also encouraged to approach the world: seeing the suffering of beings and what that suffering leads to. When we wake up, we can see enough to keep some of our suffering from arising, but for now we and others need help. This is compassion, and we can see that it arises from Right View from the Eightfold Path. Right View is a clear and deep understanding of the nature of suffering, how it arises and what we can do about it. If we don’t understand suffering, we can’t act compassionately. Now we can see how wisdom and compassion are connected. We have to have wisdom to see what’s actually going on and to know how to act skillfully to mend the tear. It’s not enough just to feel sorry for someone; I feel sorry for you still means I don’t see your suffering as my own (and I’m glad it didn’t happen to me). Also, Dogen’s teacher Tendo Nyojo tells us how zazen and compassion are connected: The zazen of buddhas and ancestors places primary importance on Great Compassion and the vow to save all living beings. … In buddhas’ and ancestors’ zazen, they wish to gather all Buddha Dharma from the time they first arouse bodhi-mind. Buddhas and ancestors do not forget or abandon living beings in their zazen; they offer a heart of compassion even to an insect. Buddhas and ancestors vow to save all living beings and dedicate all the merit of their practice to all living beings. The vow to save all beings means to liberate all beings from suffering. This is Great Compassion, and the kernel of the whole thing. The most important, basic kind of compassion is the first of the Four Bodhisattva vows: liberating all beings from suffering. This is what our practice is all about. Buddhas and ancestors do not forget or abandon living beings in their zazen. Again we are reminded that we’re not sitting for our own benefit alone. We’re not sitting so that we can reduce our stress and feel peaceful or have a peak experience; we’re sitting in order to liberate all beings. Zazen is not about closing ourselves off from the world in order to focus or concentrate; it’s about letting the whole world and all beings in. We don’t forget or abandon living beings in zazen. If compassion is the whole point of our practice and we’re putting all of our attention there, then it’s not possible to harm beings, because anger and ill-will is the opposite of compassion. When we see how central Great Compassion is in our practice and tradition, then no wonder Kannon is such an important bodhisattva. Kannon is the embodiment of our aspiration to free all beings from suffering. One of the manifestations of Kannon has a thousand hands and eyes, and Dogen wrote a whole fascicle about it. He says that Kannon’s whole being is hands and eyes—in other words, compassion fills the universe. There is no “I see suffering with my thousand eyes so I’m using my thousand hands to help.” Compassion is already completely there. Kannon’s whole being and our whole being is compassion. Eyes are seeing everywhere and hands are helping everywhere wherever there are suffering beings to be liberated. There are a lot of stories in the medieval Buddhist tale literature about Kannon manifesting in various forms to save people in their hour of need: curing illness, saving them from danger, helping the poor, helping them have children, or liberating themselves or their parents from hell realms. Kannon stories are among the most popular in the tale literature. Why? Because we all suffer and would like to be saved. You may know that Avalokitesvara in India was male, and somehow by the time he makes his way to China and becomes Kuan Yin and to Japan as Kannon, he becomes female. The male version was said to represent compassion in a general way, but the female version is compassion in action. Compassion isn’t just a feeling. It’s something we do. No wonder, then, that in the tale literature, Kannon actively comes to the aid of people who need help. As we move through the world, we do our best not to cause injury or harm, but compassion isn’t about just being nice, never doing or saying anything that shakes anyone up. Sometimes the compassionate thing to do is to bruise someone’s ego. If I’m drinking on the job, the compassionate thing is for my supervisor or somebody to say, “Look, get it together. You can’t go on like this.” If I let my ego get involved, I might feel foolish or insulted, but that doesn’t make this an uncompassionate act. What about all the rest of the people around me who are affected by what I do? Dealing with me is the compassionate thing for them. Preventing harm to beings can mean making the tough call and it might be that not everyone likes it. Compassion is not all hearts and flowers and sugary stuff. It’s not one big Hallmark card. Seeing all the suffering of the world and vowing to liberate beings is not an easy thing. People sometimes ask, how can I take on all the suffering of the world when I can’t even deal with my own? If we take it on like Kannon, there is no such thing as compassion fatigue. Compassion doesn’t come at a personal cost to ourselves if our egos aren’t poking their heads in. My friend and fellow dharma teacher Dr. Tomon Marr is a palliative care physician. She wrote a piece called “Can Compassion Fatigue?” in the Journal of Palliative Care. (She also gave a dharma talk on the topic here.) She makes the point that to say compassion can fatigue assumes that there’s a limited well of compassion in each of us. Once it’s used up, either we must replenish the well, or move along without it, devoid of our compassion or with impaired compassion. Instead, if we’re just wholeheartedly focused on this moment without worrying about where else we should be or what else we should be doing, we can show compassion without burning out. Our self-care strategies can actually work against us if we’re getting through the day in order to get to our real life or our leisure time, where self-care supposedly happens. She’s speaking here specifically of compassion fatigue. We certainly need physical rest, downtime, and activities other than work. However, rather than relying on going somewhere other than here and now to recover from compassion fatigue, we have to understand what compassion really is. Real compassion doesn’t cost us anything. Perhaps what gets in the way is the idea that we should be able to finish the work. Beings are numberless and I vow to free them, but it’s not possible. It’s a never-ending uphill slog. Just because can’t do everything doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything. As Okumura Roshi has frequently reminded us, our practice will always be incomplete. We do our best not to harm beings. We recognize that one of the marks of existence is suffering. We all have that in common: we all want to be free from suffering and not come to harm. The opposite of harming beings is seeing that all beings are suffering and doing what we can to lessen that suffering. We take bodhisattva vows that include liberating all beings. Compassion becomes a dharma gate when non-harming is the natural outgrowth of our wisdom rather than something we have to acquire or put on. For now, we may need to remind ourselves to look for the compassionate response to what’s happening in our lives, but the more we practice the more it arises naturally because there’s no gap. Our challenge is: how do we get out of the way of our own compassion—because there’s an unlimited well already there. We just have to find it. Questions for reflection and discussion
Benevolence is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] good roots prevail in all the situations of life. 慈是法明門、一切生處善根攝勝故 This week we move into discussion of the four brama viharas, or the four divine abodes. You may not recognize them in this text if you’re used to them as loving-kindness (Skt. metta), compassion (Skt. karuna), sympathetic joy (Skt. mudita), and equanimity (Skt. upekkha). It’s interesting that the brahma viharas come right after mindfulness of heavens in this text. Brahma vihara literally means “divine abode,” and cultivating these qualities was said to lead to the arising of the mind of brahmas or loving gods, or to allow one to live with the gods. One cultivates brahma viharas in order to overcome ill-will and sensual desire, and to facilitate training in deep concentration (samadhi). The brahma viharas are very, very old. They predate Buddhism, and three of the four show up in the Hindu Upanishads. They also appear in the Jain tradition. Brahma viharas are also called apramāṇa, the four immeasurables that develop the spacious or unlimited mind of the gods. However, Buddha took these teachings and reinterpreted them. He said he was not practicing these things in order to be reborn in a heavenly realm with the gods; he was practicing while walking the Eightfold Path in order to manifest awakening and live with gods right here and now. Other than in the list of the 108 gates, the brahma viharas don’t really show up in Dogen’s writings. They do show up in Japanese Buddhism as shi muryo shin 四無量心, literally the four immeasurable minds. “Immeasurable” or “limitless” is muryo, the same kanji as those found in the third of the four bodhisattva vows: homon muryo seigan gaku 法門無量誓願學 (Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them). (1) The Mahaparinirvana Sutra is a good source for teachings about the brahma viharas. In it, Buddha is teaching about the pure actions of a bodhisattva mahasattva. The person with whom he’s speaking makes the point that you can’t really separate these four minds and that there is really only one. Buddha says that indeed they are completely interconnected, but in order to teach beings he has to talk about four aspects of reality; this is skillful means. This week we start with benevolence or loving-kindness. The kanji in the gate statement is 慈 ji. In English, benevolence literally means "well-wishing." Okumura Roshi translates ji as the mind that offers joy to others. This is a kanji associated with love or affection, and it shows up in the Japanese words for charity and philanthropy. Jizen 慈善 is charity; ji is love and zen is goodness. Jizenshin 慈善心 is benevolence: love + goodness + heart/mind. In the sutra, Buddha says loving-kindness reverses anger and greed, but that this will take some time. For a long time past, over innumerable kalpas, one has amassed delusions and not practised what is good. For this reason, one is unable to subdue the mind in a day. Then he goes on to use some interesting metaphors: When a pea is dried up, one might try to thrust an awl through it, but one cannot. Delusions are like that. Also, the dog of a house does not fear people, and the deer of the forest fears man and runs away. Anger is difficult to do away with, like the dog that guards a house; but the heart of loving-kindness easily flees, like the deer in the forest. It is therefore hard to subdue this mind. When we draw a picture on stone, it always remains thus. But drawn on water, it disappears immediately and its strength does not remain there. Anger is hard to do away with, like a drawing that has been done in stone. A good deed easily disappears, like a picture drawn in water. That is why it is not easy to subdue this mind. A great ball of fire sustains light for a long while; the brightness of a flash of lightning cannot endure long. It is the same here. Anger is a fire-ball; loving-kindness is like lightning. That is why this mind is hard to subdue. Even when we aspire to benevolence, we have trouble sustaining it. We get it intellectually, we know what we want to do, but holy mackerel—we keep falling off the wagon. You may be aware of loving-kindness meditations from the Theravada tradition, like meditation on loving-kindness that starts with yourself and moves to family/friends, acquaintances, strangers, and finally people you don’t like. In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Buddha says we haven’t reached great or limitless loving-kindness until we experience it equally for everyone. It’s easy to experience it for yourself and your loved ones, harder for strangers and impossible for people you hate! In the sutra, Buddha says we are really practicing loving-kindness when we don’t see wrongs and anger doesn’t arise. We stop seeing what others do as personal affronts to ourselves or attacks on our egos, and if we don’t take stuff personally, we don’t get angry. Sometimes it’s as basic and commonplace as “She didn’t mean to step on my foot.” Sometimes it’s “Yes, he spoke unskillfully to me in a way that was painful, but clearly he was caught up in his own stuff and wasn’t really responding to the situation in this moment, so it wasn’t really about me.” Then we have the opportunity to not rise up on our hind legs, fill ourselves with righteous indignation, and say something hurtful right back because our egos have been bruised. This doesn’t mean we condone unskillful, harmful behavior. It means we don’t respond out of our personally motivated anger. We do what we can to resolve the problem, sometimes forcefully if necessary, but not because we’re protecting our egos or getting revenge. We do this in a loving and benevolent way, wishing everyone well. In the sutra, the Buddha says: If one does not feel anger even towards a single being and prays to give bliss to such a being, this is loving-kindness. I’m guessing this may be related to another line that says, If any person asks about the root of any aspect of good, say that it is lovingkindness. All the wholesomeness in the world is based on benevolence. Whatever good is happening is because of wishing others well and wanting them to be able to liberate themselves from suffering. Wishing others well is not hoping their cravings for diamond rings and cherry pie are fulfilled. It’s wishing they have wisdom, compassion and insight so they can cut through delusion and wholesome circumstances can arise. This is where our own individual practice intersects with benevolence. In the sutra, the Buddha says, A person who performs good is [one of] true thinking. In other words. benevolence arises from insight into the true nature of reality. If we really see how things work, if we really see dependent arising, impermanence, the nature of self and how suffering arises, benevolence happens naturally. This is the kind of benevolence that is both skillful and not done for any kind of personal reward. We wish others well because it doesn’t make sense not to. Buddha goes on to say, Loving-kindness is the Buddha-Nature of all beings. Such a Buddha-Nature has long been overshadowed by defilements. That is why all beings are unable to see. The Buddha-Nature is loving-kindness. Loving-kindness is the Tathagata. Though Dogen doesn’t write specifically about the brahma viharas as a group, he does have something to say about each of them. In the Gakudo Yojinshu (Points to Watch in Studying the Way), he says, The buddhas take pity on all living beings and help them through compassion. Everything they do is neither for themselves nor for others. This is the usual way of the buddha-dharma. That’s interesting, isn’t it? There’s no label to be applied to this kind of benevolence. It’s not benevolence for personal gain, but it’s also not intended as something done for others; those are both ideas. It’s just a normal day in the life of the bodhisattva. I’m sure you have seen that even small worms or animals raise their young. Parents experience physical and mental hardships, and yet they persevere. After their young have grown up, fathers and mothers receive no reward. And yet, they have compassion toward their young. Even small creatures have this attitude. This is very similar to the Buddha’s compassion towards all living beings. Benevolence is our natural approach to our lives if we can just get out of our own way, and that’s why we have to practice. Until it arises naturally, benevolence is just our idea. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still do good actions, but our practice at that point is incomplete. When there’s no “me” trying to be “benevolent,” then I can enter into this week’s gate and benevolence completely manifests in everything I do. In the Shushogi, Dogen says: The stupid believe that they will lose something if they give help to others, but this is completely untrue for benevolence helps everyone, including oneself, being a law of the universe. We’re not actively looking for some reward, but we can’t help but be benefitted. Why? Because benevolence is one of the four immeasurables, which means there’s no limit. Nothing is outside of the Buddha Way including us, so creating wholesome conditions for others also increases our own wellbeing. A rising tide floats all boats, or, as the gate statement says, good roots prevail in all the situations of life. There’s no limit to who receives our goodwill, so no one is left out, including us. We don’t lose anything by being benevolent; we can only benefit. What is there to lose by wishing others well? It’s in not wishing others well that we lose because we’re going against a law of the universe. We’re out of alignment with reality and we’re causing dissonance and suffering. And yet, that can be so hard. What does it mean when someone is doing something really bad and yet we still wish him well? Aren’t we letting him off the hook and saying it’s OK? No. We’re envisioning for him a circumstance in which he wakes up, mends his ways, and stops hurting himself and others. That takes a really, really expansive and clear viewpoint. Suffering happens because people are ignorant. They’re doing stuff in an attempt to get rid of their own pain and discomfort, and nine times out of ten they’re making things worse. Here’s the point of view of a lady who’s been involved in dog rescue: The most important point of all is benevolence. Most people do the best they can. Yes, people do things that disappoint us. Yes, others will do things that we consider to be mistakes. Yes, some people do horrible things to dogs, not to mention to other people. But the more we can feel benevolence for other people, as much as we do for our dogs, the better off we will all be. Over the decades that I have been in the dog world, I have seen so much anger about the behavior of others, and so much guilt from wonderful people about decisions they have made with the best of intentions. If only we could gather up all that negative energy we could power the world on it. But in my humble opinion, it’s not what the world needs right now, and it’s not what each individual within it needs. Malevolence, the opposite of benevolence, won’t help. It’s a waste of time and energy. It’s easy to be kind to dogs and have goodwill for dogs. It’s not easy to have goodwill toward people who abuse dogs or children or vulnerable women or anyone. Can we do it? Buddha and Dogen say yes, we can, and we have to. We have to because we are bodhisattvas and we don’t have a choice. This is our immeasurable, limitless life. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) Ryo 量, quantity, measure or amount, is the same kanji found in oryoki 應量器, a bowl or vessel that holds the right amount. Mindfulness of the heavens is a gate of Dharma illumination; for it gives rise to a wide and big mind. 念天是法明門、發廣大心故 This week we come to the sixth and final item in the set of six types of mindfulness. There’s a reason that mindfulness of heaven (sometimes translated mindfulness of the gods) is the last on the list: it’s only if you have faith in the Three Treasures, exercise generosity and keep the precepts that you can be reborn in a heaven realm. This week’s gate statement is the culmination of the previous five. In a traditional view, we’re being encouraged to keep our eyes on the prize, to maintain awareness that if we do the right things, a good result will follow. If we live upright and wholesome lives, we’ll be reborn in a better place filled with peace and happiness, or we’ll leap free from the wheel of birth and death and enter Nirvana. In the Hindu version of this teaching, we will be one with Brahman and escape the control of demons. It will be useful here to review a bit of Buddhist cosmology—a bit only, because all of the planes and dimensions very quickly become quite complex. It’s helpful to think of realms or worlds as the beings that make them up rather than as particular places. A realm is determined by the perceptions and responses of its beings and sustained by their karma. If somehow all the karma of the beings of a particular realm exhausts itself and they cease to be, then their realm disappears as well. You may be familiar with the rokudo 六道, or six realms of samsara: devas or gods, humans, animals, asuras (fighting gods), hungry ghosts and hell dwellers. How beings transmigrate through these realms is dependent on causes and conditions, namely the first five of the mindfulnesses we’ve been discussing. Buddhist cosmology also includes thirty one planes of existence that are classified into three realms, or trailoka: the formless realm (Ārūpyadhātu), the form realm (Rūpadhātu), and the desire or pleasure realm (Kamadhātu). Moral conduct and engagement with giving can land one in the desire realm, while landing in the form or formless realm depends on the development of meditative concentration. Beings in the formless realm have attained a particular state known as the Four Formless Absorptions, They don’t have any shape or location and are made up entirely of mind, and without any physical form, they are unable to hear the dharma. The realm of form, on the other hand, is made up of beings that have physical form, though that form is subtle and not visible to beings in the realm of desire. These beings are not pulled about by pleasure and pain. Those in the desire or pleasure realm are still bound by their karma and subject to the suffering that comes with desire and clinging that arises from the senses. The rokudo falls within this realm. Within the rokudo, the highest realm is that of devas or gods existing in something we might call higher heavens. Those beings have long lives, various powers, and enjoy aesthetic pleasures. If you’ve led a wholesome life, you may land in one of these realms based on your positive karma—but eventually that karma will exhaust itself and then it’s off to a lower realm. The lower heavens include the asuras, or fighting gods. (Why are they fighting? Because they forgot themselves, got drunk, and were thrown down from their original heavenly home, and now they’re fighting to regain their lost kingdom, forever unable to break through the forces of those who guard it.) Then come the earthly realms, which include humans, hungry ghosts and animals. In the human realms, beings are capable of moral choice and have some say in their own destiny. Because it’s a place of both pleasure and pain, it makes practice uniquely possible: the development of wisdom and compassion that enables liberation. Thus birth in the human realm is a considered a precious opportunity. While hungry ghosts and animals are within the earthly realm, their perceptions and experience of it are quite different from those of humans. Hungry ghosts wander forever in search of sensual fulfillment, occupying for the most part deserts and wastelands. Animals of whatever class, kind or size that are able to feel suffering make up the animal realm. Finally there are the hell realms, characterized by the most extreme suffering based in fear and helplessness. Unwholesome karma is what lands one here until that karma has completele unfolded; then, in a parallel with the heavens, it’s off to one of the higher realms on the basis of earlier, more positive karma that had not yet come to fruition. There are myriad hell realms, each centered on a particular kind of torment. You don’t have to believe in a literal rebirth in order to take something useful from this cosmological set-up. We transmigrate around the rokudo moment by moment depending on our mindstates and responses to what’s happening. I have a successful day at work and I feel like a deva. Then I make a mistake and take some criticism, and I’m an asura. I arrive at the dharma center and feel fortunate to have access to the Three Treasures, and then can’t decide where to stop for lunch on the way home. I’m driven by my need for sleep, and then feel disressed when I look at my calendar and to-do list and know that I’ll be burning the midnight oil this week. If we pay attention, we can see that no realm is really unfamiliar to us. It’s important to see that while devas are in a heavenly realm, they’re still caught in samsara. They eventually use up their various merit and succumb to aging, illness, and death, and must eventually take rebirth in other realms, which may be pleasant or otherwise according to the quality and strength of their past karma. They come into existence based on their past karma and they’re as much subject to the natural laws of cause and effect as any other being in the universe. Devas are not always especially knowledgable or spiritually mature. In fact, they can be quite intoxicated by sensual indulgences, and none are considered worthy of veneration or worship. A deva is not a “god” so much as any being enjoying longer life and a more generally comfortable and happy existence than humans. They have no real concern or contact with the human world, so these are not beings to which one prays for intercession, for instance. Nonetheless. devas and heavens remind us of two things. One is that acting skillfully and compassionately in the world leads to wholesome consenquences. The other is that being intoxicated or caught up in sense pleasures, even in heaven, still leads to suffering because these things aren’t permanent. In the next moment, we’re reborn in a hell realm when our toys are taken away. In the Mahanama Sutta, the Buddha starts by teaching about mindfulness of Buddha, dharma and sangha, then tells Mahanama to reflect on his own virtue and generosity, covering the first five mindfulnesses. Next Buddha tells him to cultivate conviction, virtue, learning, generosity, and discernment. These are five mental factors that have to become dominant in the mind for awakening to occur; they appear over and over in the early texts. These are the characteristics that got devas reborn in heaven realms. Buddha says Mahanama should recall that those characteristics present in the devas are also present in him: At any time when a disciple of the noble ones is recollecting the conviction, virtue, learning, generosity, and discernment found both in himself and the devas, his mind is not overcome with passion, not overcome with aversion, not overcome with delusion. His mind heads straight, based on the [qualities of the] devas. And when the mind is headed straight, the disciple of the noble ones gains a sense of the goal, gains a sense of the Dhamma, gains joy connected with the Dhamma. In one who is joyful, rapture arises. In one who is rapturous, the body grows calm. In one whose body is calmed, experiences ease. In one at ease, the mind becomes concentrated. (1) Certain helpful, wholesome qualities got the devas into heaven, and we can cultivate those same qualities so they are present in us. This leads to liberation from the three poisonous minds of greed, anger and ignorance. After each of the forms of mindfulness, the Buddha indicates how we should work with it. In the case of devas, he says: Mahanama, you should develop this recollection of the devas while you are walking, while you are standing, while you are sitting, while you are lying down, while you are busy at work, while you are resting in your home crowded with children. Walking, standing, sitting, lying down, known as the four postures, is another way to say "all the time." Buddha said our zazen flows through all four postures and through the transitions between the postures. In other words, we are to practice in every waking moment. Now let’s look at wide and big mind, the second half of this week’s gate statement. Magnanimous mind (daishin) is another term for this, and it’s one of the sanshin (three minds) for which our temple is named. The other two are kishin (joyful mind) and roshin (nurturing or parental mind). In the Tenzo Kyokun, Dogen says: As for what is called magnanimous mind, this mind is like the great mountains or like the great ocean; it is not biased or contentious mind. Carrying half a pound, do not take it lightly; lifting forty pounds should not seem heavy. Although drawn by the voices of spring, do not allow your heart to fall. The four seasons cooperate in a single scene; regard light and heavy with a single eye. On this single occasion you must write the word "great." You must know the word "great." You must learn the word ‘great.” (2) Magnanimous mind is about non-discrimination. There are lots of metaphors in our tradition about non-discrimination, such as a monk’s mouth is like an oven, or the ocean accepts all rivers. Non-discrimination is not engaging in judging, labeling, accepting and rejecting, but seeing and acknowledging everything clearly. Magnanimous mind is deeply understanding that there is nothing outside of our lives or the Buddha way. It’s seeing all of reality just as it is. As soon as we start rejecting parts of our lives or ourselves, we’re putting constrains and limitations on something that’s actually limitless. Now we can start to see the connection between cultivating the qualities of heavenly beings and giving rise to magnanimous mind through developing conviction, virtue, learning, generosity, and discernment.
If we have faith in the Three Treasures, live an ethical life, study the dharma, practice generosity and use good judgement that comes from our insight into the true nature of reality, we will give rise to magnanimous mind—the mind of nondiscrimination and inclusivity. Now these are the things that got the devas into heaven, and we could decide that that’s what we want too as a result of our practice—and that’s when we have to remind ourselves of the real nature of devas, who are considered inferior to buddhas. They aren’t omniscient; their knowledge is inferior to fully enlightened buddhas, and they especially lack awareness of beings in worlds higher than their own. They also aren’t omnipotent; their powers tend to be limited to their own worlds, and they rarely intervene in human affairs. They aren’t morally perfect, while they may lack human passions and desires, some of them are capable of ignorance, arrogance and pride. It is, indeed, their imperfections in the mental and moral realms that cause them to be reborn in these worlds. Heavenly realms are not an escape from samsara. Devas are still transmigrating around the rokudo. Our practice is to surpass even the devas in seeing nonduality and taking action on that basis rather than on the basis of a heavenly reward. Okumura Roshi writes, The first level of morality is to do wholesome actions expecting to be reborn in heaven, or having fear of being reborn in hell because of doing something bad. Both result in remaining within the six realms of samsara. The second level is to expect to attain enlightenment, be free from samsara and reach nirvana by doing what is good or compassionate and avoiding evil. These two levels are still dualistic, and we should go beyond these two—samsara and nirvana should be one. That’s what the spirit of the precepts is trying to do—to get us to go beyond the duality between samsara and nirvana. We try to do good things, but not because we expect to be reborn in heaven or to gain some good thing, not because we are afraid to be reborn in hell, and not because we wish to reach nirvana. The good deed is just for the sake of actualizing reality, and it’s the same as our practice of the zazen of just sitting. (3) Samsara and nirvana are both right here. and there’s no special place to get to and nowhere else to go, because nothing is outside of reality or the Buddha Way. If that’s disappointing, consider that we don’t have to wait until the end of our lives to get to a heavenly realm. Just like all the other realms in the wheel of samsara, heaven is right here —there’s no waiting. Once we stop picking and choosing as a means of shoring up the small self, we reach heaven right in this moment. For the devas, their heavenly realm is still part of samsara just as it is for us, so heaven isn’t an ultimate goal for either of us. There’s no long term advantage in aspiring to become a deva. We’re just trading one realm of samsara for another. Instead, this dharma gate is advising us to keep the devas in mind both for the helpful qualities they’ve cultivated and for their dharma position as beings that have not been liberated from samsara. We can emulate them in cultvating magnanimous mind, but we do that right here in this day to day world. We don’t wait until we get to heaven someday. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) The version of the Mahanama Sutta to which this discussion makes reference is found here. (2) From Okumura Roshi’s article for the Dogen Institute, Four Seasons of Accord. (3) from Okumura Roshi's forthcoming book on the precepts, to be published by the Dogen Institute. Mindfulness of precepts is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we fulfill all vows. 念戒是法明門、一切願具足故. According to this week’s gate statement, keeping precepts is how we carry out our bodhisattva vows. First let’s understand what precepts are about and then let’s look at how precepts and vows are related. A precept is a guideline for ethical behavior, some kind of instruction about the actions we should take. In our tradition, the ten major precepts are: (1) do not kill, (2) do not steal, (3) do not engage in improper sexual conduct, (4) do not lie, (5) do not deal in intoxicants, (6) do not criticize others, (7) do not praise self and slander others, (8)do not be stingy with the dharma or property ,(9) do not give way to anger, (10) do not disparage the Three Treasures. There are hundreds of precepts in the Theravada tradition, however. The Mahayana understanding is that precepts existed before Buddha’s awakening and didn’t originate with his teaching, but that’s not a historical perspective. In the human realm, once the early sangha was established and people made mistakes, Buddha said, “You shouldn’t do such a thing again.” The examples range from broad admonitions against killing people and taking their belongings to very specific rules about what colors your blanket has to be and prohibitions against monks having a women unrelated to them washing or sewing their clothes, or against having a new bowl until the old one has been mended five times. Buddha’s disciple Upali memorized all these admonitions and the stories of how they happened, and recited them when all the monks gathered after Buddha died. This is the source of the Vinaya precepts. There were no regulations or precepts until monks made mistakes; even though they tried to practice and study the dharma, they were human, after all. The basic idea of the bodhisattva precepts we receive is different. These precepts are not a collection of prohibitions about mistakes. Instead they simply describe reality; they’re ten ethical aspects of the dharma. In that way, they pre-date the Buddha, who said that he didn’t invent the dharma; he awoke to it. These precepts came into being at the time of Buddha’s awakening. Dogen Zenji says in the very beginning of his Kyojukaimon (Comments on Teaching and Conferring the Precepts), “Receiving the precepts transcends the borders of past, present and future.” The basis of bodhisattva precepts is the reality of all beings to which the Buddha awakened, which is characterized by impermanence, egolessness, and interdependence. Because everything is impermanent, including the self, we can’t cling to anything, and if we deeply understand this, we’re released from attachment to self, possessions, etc. Stealing doesn’t make sense because there’s nothing that’s really permanently ours. If there is no self that persists through time, it doesn’t make sense to indulge our personal anger because there’s no self we need to defend. Because everything is interconnected and arises from something else, we can only exist in relationship with other things and people. That means that if we harm other beings, we harm ourselves. Now we can begin to see the relationship between keeping precepts and carrying out vows. The bodhisattva vows we chant after every dharma talk remind us that we vow to free all beings, end all delusions, enter all dharma gates and realize (make real) the Buddha way. Precepts might seem restrictive if we think they’re all about what we’re not supposed to do. Actually, precepts bring about freedom and liberation. When we keep precepts, we don’t keep churning up our harmful karma, and we don’t keep adding to our own suffering and the suffering of others. We’re not slaves to our thirsting desires, cravings and aversions. We can say that keeping precepts liberates all beings. If nothing else, they’re liberated from our unskillful actions. However, because of interdependence, our own liberation is also the liberation of others because we’re all in this together within this one unified reality. If I’m creating safe, wholesome and peaceful circumstances in the world by observing precepts, I’m creating the conditions for other beings also to settle and cultivate wisdom and ethics and concentration. If, instead, I’m doing whatever I want based on craving and aversion and the three poisonous minds, no one is going to feel safe around me. No one is going to settle down and see clearly what’s happening. Folks are just going to get more caught up in anxiety and unskillful responses to my behavior. We can begin to free all beings by bearing the precepts in mind. Likewise, precepts help us recognize and dissolve our own delusion because they describe reality as it is rather than as we create it in our minds. If we pay attention to our use of intoxicants, whether that’s drugs and alcohol, food, shopping, other people or whatever, we begin to clear the clouds. If we don’t give way to anger and instead can remain clearheaded, we can see what’s really happening and how we’re being triggered by clinging to delusions about the self. This is of course where our zazen comes in. Zazen and precepts are not separate—they’re complementary in our practice. We need the precepts in order to settle down in zazen and cultivate awakening and insight. If we’re running around being pulled by our karma and our delusions, we’re not creating the conditions for becoming quiet and seeing clearly. Okumura Roshi has written, “Our zazen and the precepts are one. In our zazen practice, we put our entire being on the ground of true reality of all beings instead of the picture of the world that is a creation of our minds. By striving to keep the precepts in our daily lives, we strive to live being guided by our zazen.” (1) Precepts describe reality, and zazen is also about seeing reality. We can begin to end our inexhaustible delusions by bearing the precepts in mind. Next, precepts help us recognize all the dharma gates we encounter as we move through the world. Once we take the focus off of ourselves and remember that we’re part of an interconnected system, we can notice all the opportunities we have to practice. We can turn every one of the precepts around, from a prohibition to positive action, and right there we can see all the gates we can enter. When the precepts are turned around in this way, they’re sometimes called the clear mind precepts.
It’s good to refrain from doing the things the precepts warn us against, but we can go beyond that and actively enter into the dharma gates they offer us. We can begin to find, recognize and enter myriad dharma gates by bearing the precepts in mind. Finally, precepts lead us to make the Buddha way real, right here and now, moment after moment. Okumura Roshi writes, “In order to nurture the seeds to actualize Buddha, we should strive not to kill. In the same way, the other nine major precepts all show the virtue of the true reality of all beings.” So, how do we bear the precepts in mind? Maybe it’s simply an internal agreement between ourselves and Buddha that we aspire to keep the precepts and help others all we can. Maybe it’s with the public declaration of jukai and wearing a rakusu. When we put on as robe, we’re wearing the Tathagatha’s teaching, and it’s pretty hard to forget. Robes hold us up as well as serving as reminders and inspirations to others. When I was training in Japan, we were required to wear koromo and rakusu when we went out on temple business because, according to the head of the temple, when people see monks they can’t do anything bad! We can liberate others by serving as a reminder not to break precepts. When we take the precepts, we publicly declare our intention to live as bodhisattvas, keep the precepts and free all beings. In a way, it’s kind of a big deal and requires some discernment. We reccognize that our practice isn’t just for ourselves. We’ve taken vows to free all beings, end all delusions, enter all dharma gates and realize the Buddha way, and now we’re accountable for how we carry them out. Zen is a practice—it’s something we do, so it’s all about our actions and activities. What do we do to carry out our vows? There’s the eightfold path (2) and there’s keeping precepts. Of course these are related as well: there’s the sila division of the eightfold path that includes right speech, right action and right livelihood. For example, right speech is about refraining from the four evils: lying, idle or frivolous speech, harsh or abusive speech and divisive speech or backbiting or malicious gossip. The precepts include not lying, speaking ill of others or praising self and blaming others. Right action happens naturally when we see reality as it is. We understand suffering, interdependence, the true nature of self and how these three things are related. There is nothing to learn and no decision to be made. What I do affects others and what they do affects me; there’s no getting around it. We all have a responsibility to take right action because the consequences are bigger than ourselves. The precepts are all about taking right action. When we really understand how the universe works, we don’t kill or steal or misuse sexuality or intoxicants. We don’t have to stop ourselves from doing this stuff; it just won’t help or fix anything, so we don’t want to do it. This is why the bodhisattva precepts existed before Buddha: no one has to tell us not to kill—killing just doesn’t arise. The last item in the sila division is right livelihood. The workplace is one of the most important practice containers. We spend a lot of time there, and it’s one place we’re likely to be challenged to keep vows and precepts. There’s the work itself that we’re being paid to do—does it move the world toward wholesomeness or unwholesomeness? Is it built on killing, lying, stealing, abusing others or creating ill will? Then there’s our own actions in the workplace. Are we breaking precepts on our own, no matter what the work is? As is true with just about everything else in Buddhism, precepts, vows and the eightfold path arise together and can’t really be pulled apart. They’re just multiple aspects of the same thing. When we first encounter the bodhisattva vows, our reaction is usually “I can’t do that!” so we’re afraid to practice. We may think it’s no use. As Okumura Roshi frequently tells us, vow and repentence are two sides of one practice because our practice will always be incomplete. We just have to keep going and doing our best, and the way we do that is by keeping precepts moment by moment. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) All quotes from Okumura Roshi this week are from his article “The Bodhisattva Precepts in Soto Zen Buddhism,” Dharma Eye vol. 13, 1–3 (2004). (2) We'll take a closer look at the eightfold path beginning with gate 75. |
About the text The Ippyakuhachi Homyomon, or 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination, appears as the 11th fascicle of the 12 fascicle version of Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo. Dogen didn't compile the list himself; it's mostly a long quote from another text called the Sutra of Collected Past Deeds of the Buddha. Dogen wrote a final paragraph recommending that we investigate these gates thoroughly. Hoko has been talking about the gates one by one since 2016. She provides material here that can be used by weekly dharma discussion groups as well as for individual study. The 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination
[1] Right belief [2] Pure mind [3] Delight [4] Love and cheerfulness The three forms of behavior [5] Right conduct of the actions of the body [6] Pure conduct of the actions of the mouth [7] Pure conduct of the actions of the mind The six kinds of mindfulness [8] Mindfulness of Buddha [9] Mindfulness of Dharma [10] Mindfulness of Sangha [11] Mindfulness of generosity [12] Mindfulness of precepts [13] Mindfulness of the heavens The four Brahmaviharas [14] Benevolence [15] Compassion [16] Joy [17] Abandonment The four dharma seals [18] Reflection on inconstancy [19] Reflection on suffering [20] Reflection on there being no self [21] Reflection on stillness [22] Repentance [23] Humility [24] Veracity [25] Truth [26] Dharma conduct [27] The Three Devotions [28] Recognition of kindness [29] Repayment of kindness [30] No self-deception [31] To work for living beings [32] To work for the Dharma [33] Awareness of time [34] Inhibition of self-conceit [35] The nonarising of ill-will [36] Being without hindrances [37] Belief and understanding [38] Reflection on impurity [39] Not to quarrel [40] Not being foolish [41] Enjoyment of the meaning of the Dharma [42] Love of Dharma illumination [43] Pursuit of abundant knowledge [44] Right means [45] Knowledge of names and forms [46] The view to expiate causes [47] The mind without enmity and intimacy [48] Hidden expedient means [49] Equality of all elements [50] The sense organs [51] Realization of nonappearance The elements of bodhi: The four abodes of mindfulness [52] The body as an abode of mindfulness [53] Feeling as an abode of mindfulness [54] Mind as an abode of mindfulness [55] The Dharma as an abode of mindfulness [56] The four right exertions [57] The four bases of mystical power The five faculties [58] The faculty of belief [59] The faculty of effort [60] The faculty of mindfulness [61] The faculty of balance [62] The faculty of wisdom The five powers [63] The power of belief [64] The power of effort [65] The power of mindfulness [66] The power of balance [67] The power of wisdom [68] Mindfulness, as a part of the state of truth [69] Examination of Dharma, as a part of the state of truth [70] Effort, as a part of the state of truth [71] Enjoyment, as a part of the state of truth [72] Entrustment as a part of the state of truth [73] The balanced state, as a part of the state of truth [74] Abandonment, as a part of the state of truth The Eightfold Path [75] Right view [76] Right discrimination [77] Right speech [78] Right action [79] Right livelihood [80] Right practice [81] Right mindfulness [82] Right balanced state [83] The bodhi-mind [84] Reliance [85] Right belief [86] Development The six paramitas [87] The dāna pāramitā [88] The precepts pāramitā [89] The forbearance pāramitā. [90] The diligence pāramitā [91] The dhyāna pāramitā [92] The wisdom pāramitā [93] Expedient means [94] The four elements of sociability [95] To teach and guide living beings [96] Acceptance of the right Dharma [97] Accretion of happiness [98] The practice of the balanced state of dhyāna [99] Stillness [100] The wisdom view [101] Entry into the state of unrestricted speech [102] Entry into all conduct [103] Accomplishment of the state of dhāraṇī [104] Attainment of the state of unrestricted speech [105] Endurance of obedient following [106] Attainment of realization of the Dharma of nonappearance [107] The state beyond regressing and straying [108] The wisdom that leads us from one state to another state and, somehow, one more: [109] The state in which water is sprinkled on the head Archives |