Summer 2002 — Genjo-koan

A window onto a lifetime of effort

Genjo-koan is a nice compact chapter, but it’s quite difficult to know what Master Dogen really means. I watched a programme on TV about a little frog in the far north which freezes and comes alive again when it thaws, and we feel, “Oh, it’s wonderful, I know that now.” But this little capsule of information is actually the result of lifetimes of effort.

We grasp knowledge and think we know it, without noticing that it’s a very superficial picture of very great effort over lifetimes. Genjo-koan is a kind of mirror of Master Dogen’s life; if we think we can digest it within five minutes, five days, five years, we’re expecting a lot. The writing is a window into somebody’s lifetime of effort, and what Buddhism says is that the lifetime of effort is more important than the window. That doesn’t mean knowledge isn’t important; it’s very important. But our effort to understand is more important than whether or not we understand. So let’s make an effort.

Four viewpoints

The chapter is structured around Master Dogen’s four viewpoints, and even the sentences change viewpoints: a philosophical or theoretical view; an objective, concrete view based on the external world; the view of action, a rather bizarre way to describe it, because how can action be a viewpoint?; and a fourth, in which he tries to catch reality in words, which is impossible, so he uses poetry, a story or a symbol.

When all dharmas are seen as the Buddha-Dharma, then there is delusion and realisation … When the myriad dharmas are each not of the self, there is no delusion and no realisation … The Buddha’s truth is originally transcendent over abundance and scarcity …

This first paragraph has all four views in it. From the religious view we discriminate: “He’s wearing a rakusu, he must be a Buddhist.” From the scientific view, “It’s only cotton, like that bloke’s t-shirt; they’re both human beings,” and delusion and realisation are only patterns in our brain. The third sentence transcends both: I don’t care whether you call me a Buddhist or not; what matters, for me, is that I’m wearing it. Just wear it.

Both views are based on concepts, and we transcend concepts. Scientists and religious people can discuss whether there’s another life, and the Buddhist says, “You can carry on talking all day, but I’m alive now, so I’ll have a cup of tea.” We don’t deny that we’re going to die, but “two sugars please” — in my case. So action transcends thinking.

We come to the third viewpoint by bouncing around between the first two, as when we debate between two sides of ourselves until one morning we think, “Oh, bugger it,” and feel happy; if we don’t transcend our conflict, we can sometimes become ill. The physical correlate is zazen: if we concentrate neither on the mental nor on the physical, but just let them come and go, we’re sitting in the interface between mind and body. That is the balanced state, and from it we get the view of action. Like a tightrope walker: if he doesn’t wobble, he can’t find his balance.

At the end of the paragraph Master Dogen points to the fact: flowers die, and weeds grow though we don’t want them to. That fact exists now, and we call it reality; but when we try and grasp it, it falls through our fingers. And this whole paragraph is itself in the first view: it’s all theory.

Action is only here and now

The view of action is the centre of Buddhism. In a way it’s no viewpoint, because when we’re acting we stop analysing; we can’t reflect on what we’re doing while we’re doing it. Master Dogen talks about body and mind being one in action, and about the present moment being real, and the past and the future not being real in that sense.

When we involve ourselves fully in our action, we’re here, in the present place and time, and there is an experience of something whole, not centred around self. Action can only ever be now; actions in the past, of other people or in the future are stories about action. So Master Dogen’s definition of “real” is very narrow: real means something here, now. That’s very difficult to accept, because we live in a largely virtual world: we make our picture of the world into a huge continuum and don’t notice that some of it is real and some of it is virtual. There isn’t a reality for this stick I’m holding yesterday. That doesn’t mean it didn’t exist yesterday, but my holding it yesterday is a memory. And because no subject is separate from object, we can say I’m acting, or the Universe is acting. Of course it doesn’t seem to make much sense to say the Universe is acting, but in a real sense, at the instant, action pervades the Universe.

Usually our mind is running over simple action: while we’re cleaning our teeth, we’re thinking about the day. Yet these unnoticed, instantaneous actions maintain our lives; if we don’t act, we die, and if we’re imprisoned, we usually find it very difficult to keep our mental balance.

Question: What is action, in your use of the word?

When we act in the present moment, we and the world become something which is one. In sport or an emergency, what’s crucial is that at that moment we stopped being aware of ourselves as a person. But we’re acting all of the time, and whenever we act, we stop thinking. In the modern world we tend to think too much, and when we think about what we’re doing, our action is incomplete.

All actions have equal value: wiping round the toilet bowl and transferring funds between accounts are the same action. Of course we have to order our actions to live in society; but we can pour a cup of tea as whole-heartedly as we do something we consider important. Every action is valuable to itself, sacred and ordinary at the same time. Buddhism gives us two things, the teachings to remind us intellectually and zazen to ground us in what we’re doing now; it doesn’t give us a life or a job. I can’t do it, so I keep studying and trying every day.

I was a very intellectual young man. Hanging on a rope when I started rock climbing, I had to act, otherwise I’d fall, and I felt ever so happy without noticing why; puzzling later over what Nishijima Roshi said, I realised, “Ah, that’s action.” But you don’t have to be a rock climber. Just picking up the teapot is very important, but because it’s so ordinary, we give it no value at all. Everything is action, but we have a brain which abstracts us from what we’re doing; that’s our human condition.

Right action is in this moment

Buddhism says that to act without thinking, without intention, is right action. It sounds strange and seemingly irresponsible: when we throw ourselves into action, we become balanced, and when we’re balanced, our action is right. But real action is different from thinking about action. If we’re angry, we could say there are poisons in our blood, and if we wait until they’ve gone, we never act; there’s no other time to act. To think about right and wrong is not the same as to do right and wrong. We’re taught “think before you act”, but Buddhism says act!

Question: Someone might, in the moment, commit murder, like the man who killed those two girls. But maybe he wasn’t thinking; he was fairly focussed. Was it right action?

He was unbalanced. That man who murdered those girls did something terrible, and he should be punished. But action is not what he did in the past; action is always here and now, and our punishment takes place now. Master Dogen always talks about real action, not theoretical action. The only place where we can do anything right is now, but if our body and mind is wrong now, then our action will be wrong now. But even if we act wrong now, the next moment is the only moment when we can act right. Like a tennis player after a lost point, we have to return ourselves to balance at every moment.

Of course it would be foolish to say that what goes on in our head doesn’t affect our actions, but that’s from a certain point of view, so we need four points of view. If I’m in a terrible mental state, what I do is terrible; somebody whose mind is unbalanced will act badly. But the only time we can act is now, with our own body and mind, so we can’t take theory about somebody else’s action and apply it to ourselves.

Driving ourselves, realising delusion

On this retreat we’re balancing ourselves, then forgetting about whether or not we’re balanced; if we start thinking about it, we lose our balance. Every time we peer at ourselves, we split ourselves into two. Then we act, and we become one again.

Driving ourselves to practice and experience the myriad dharmas is delusion. When the myriad dharmas actively practice and experience ourselves, that is the state of realisation.

Especially when we start zazen, we want a peaceful state, and we’re disappointed when we can’t get it. It’s like a pendulum: every attempt to stop the wobbling keeps it going, but if I take my finger away, it stops. Trying to stop ourselves intentionally is not the way, but to stop stopping ourselves is a very effective way to stop ourselves. “I must stop thinking” doesn’t work; but when we just keep sitting and correcting our posture, sometimes, quite suddenly, everything clears and we’re sitting quite peacefully. So Master Dogen says that when we drive ourselves to get what we want, it’s a kind of delusion. Striking the pendulum is trying to look at ourselves; that’s why Master Dogen says, “to realise the self is to forget the self”.

Those who greatly realise delusion are buddhas.

It doesn’t say that buddhas are not deluded. If we think never to be deluded is to be a buddha, we’re creating a perfect picture; but if we think that a buddha notices what delusion is, we may be nearer the real situation. If we notice and admit it, we can move on. “Oh dear, I’m not what I thought I was, now I can start again”: noticing that we’re deluded is itself a kind of moving on. And the sentence says that to be a buddha, you don’t need to know you’re a buddha.

Question: So is there some kind of realisation to be attained?

Master Dogen says there are two kinds of realisation: the one we have in the moment, and one due to our efforts over years of zazen and study, when we become clear about what Buddhism is. So he doesn’t deny that there is progress, but he denies there is progress: progress is in our minds, because we’re only living now, but we do feel there is something called progress.

The state of buddha is a state, not the result of intentional effort, so we don’t need to recognise it, just do it. In zazen it’s difficult to find a reason, or to see whether we’re peaceful now, but we can continue. It’s better to stop trying to be perfect all the time; the question is how.

One side, and the whole

When we use the whole body-and-mind to look at forms, and when we use the whole body-and-mind to listen to sounds, even though we are sensing them directly, it is not like a mirror’s reflection of an image, and not like water and the moon. While we are experiencing one side, we are blind to the other side.

Our senses are one-sided. While I’m talking, I can’t listen to somebody else, and it’s a very rare person who can read the newspaper while having a conversation; on a mobile phone in the car, we don’t notice the traffic. Studies suggest that we actually see a very small area, and the rest is filled in from memory. Modern science can contribute far more to our understanding, but in paragraph three Master Dogen is pointing out something simple, nothing more or less. That’s not to say there isn’t more intuitive perception: a tennis player can hit the ball just as he sees it, without focusing.

Acting is different: when we’re acting, we lose our feeling of reflection and we’re totally involved in what we’re doing, and in that total involvement there is also a wider involvement, as a footballer can still retain an awareness of everything around him, though there might be a few things missing. Moving and listening to music at the same time we call dance: one whole thing. But our perceptions are partial.

I realised what the problem was with that paragraph yesterday: “the mirror’s reflection of an image”. Master Dogen uses it in paragraph six for realisation, which means to be whole. So when we look and listen, we’re completely involved, but it’s not like realisation: we’re blind to the other side.

To learn the Buddha’s truth is to learn ourselves. To learn ourselves is to forget ourselves. To forget ourselves is to be experienced by the myriad dharmas. To be experienced by the myriad dharmas is to let our own body-and-mind, and the body-and-mind of the external world, fall away. There is a state in which the traces of realisation are forgotten; and it manifests the traces of forgotten realisation for a long, long time.

When we forget who we are, there is no “we”, a kind of egoless state, and it’s very familiar to us: every time we act, picking up a cup of tea or jumping off a cliff, at the instant of acting there is no room to reflect and no room to perceive; although we can’t say there’s no reflection or perception, our experience is whole. To be experienced by the whole of the Universe is the opposite of “I am experiencing the Universe”, and that suggests action.

No permanent self

Richard Feynman says that the phosphorus atoms in a rat’s brain, and in ours, are not the same atoms which were there two weeks ago. So what is it I call “my brain”? Our concept of ourselves is quite strong, but whether there is an enduring something called “myself” or not is very difficult to know.

Because we think body and mind exist separately, we come back to the assumption, I think Descartes made it, that my mind is the only thing that’s constant. Master Dogen says that’s a misapprehension: there is no permanent mind or essence or self. That’s not to say we don’t feel permanent, because we do. And when we look for our mind, we always find it: in zazen, every time we notice we’re thinking, we’re thinking. But it’s not permanent.

Similarly, human beings, after death, do not live again.

Master Dogen didn’t believe that human beings had a mental essence or soul which becomes a human being again, and Master Nagarjuna says the same. Buddhism has always said that body and mind are two sides of one thing; how can something go on to the next life without a body? That’s not to say there’s no mental or spiritual side of things. But there is no abstract part of us which can live again after death.

Question: So why does it say in so many Buddhist sutras that reincarnation is true?

It was Brahmanism, already in India in the Buddha’s time, and it remained where people studied without practising. The whole of Buddhism is centred on the practice of dhyana, zazen. If we practise, the experience of the immediate present kind of fills us, and we can tie the words of the masters back to something real; in the abstract realm all we can do is argue and discuss.

Question: So there is no rebirth?

Well, I can’t tell you. But I don’t believe in rebirth, and Master Dogen didn’t believe in rebirth. Saying whether there is or not is almost impossible, I think.

Firewood is firewood now

Firewood becomes ash … It has a past and it has a future. Although it has a past and a future, the past and the future are cut off.

Of course we have a past and a future, but real firewood is firewood now, real ash is ash now. We can never go into the future: the future comes to the present, and the present goes into the past. Our real mind in the present creates a past and a future.

We can’t deny the value of human effort in building society, of history and of planning for tomorrow. But the Middle Way adds a very simple view: there is a quality about now-ness and here-ness, and that quality is real. When I’m stacked up with things to do, I can say, “The only thing I can do is now, so I’d better start,” and directly I start the first job, the others disappear for a bit. To be in the present with a simple act is the way out of illness. I don’t mean it will cure cancer, but it’s the way to ground ourselves and to redeem ourselves.

Sometimes in kinhin, walking very simply, we can get a feeling that we’re just here. When it doesn’t hurt, there is no pain; when it hurts, the pain fills the Universe. “No appearance, no disappearance”: reality doesn’t come from anywhere or go anywhere; it’s always here. I’ve never found any part of my life where I’m not in reality.

Life is an instantaneous situation, and death is also an instantaneous situation.

When we’re living we’re alive, and when we’re dead we’re dead; we can talk about death, but that’s not real death. “We do not think that winter becomes spring” — of course we do; it’ll be autumn soon. But this is the third view, the view of instantaneousness, and we can’t live in this world with this view alone, nor with the spiritual or the scientific view alone; we need all three. The turning of the Dharma-wheel is a symbol of movement: daily life, samsara, the seasons, our minds go round; sometimes we feel we’re pushing reality, sometimes it’s pushing us, sometimes we and it are moving together.

Realisation is wholeness

In zazen, when body-and-mind fall away, we have no separate consciousness of our own body-and-mind or of the world’s. Something is sitting, somewhere. We think, “My zazen isn’t like that,” but zazen is like that. We pass through two fundamental states, of thinking and of perception, and when we wobble between them there is a state in the middle, the interface, where we forget any trace of realisation; we don’t know if we realise. And this state of traceless realisation continues endlessly. Is that right, Yoko?

Yoko: Hmm? I wasn’t listening.

She was reading, so she wasn’t listening! That’s what Master Dogen is saying!

When we sit in zazen, we’re sitting in eternity. We have an idea of eternity as stretching into the future, but we can experience eternity in the present moment, and it’s different from the eternity we think about.

Question: I like what Yoko said once — that eternal experience is momentary.

Yoko: Yes, that’s what I said.

Satori has come to mean breaking through into a special state called enlightenment. But if we think of it as everything becoming clear, like somebody turning the light on, we might get a little bit closer to the meaning. In zazen there is a state where we’re not trapped by our thoughts or by our feelings. If our mind is going round and round, it’s usually because that’s what we habitually do; in that sense zazen shows us what we’re habitually like. If we don’t expect our thoughts suddenly to disappear, sometimes, just for a moment, we find ourself just sitting and the sun coming through the window. In that moment we have realisation; we’re clear. Other states are dreams about other worlds; so Master Dogen says there’s no realisation outside of zazen, or outside of action. To focus on the present and act in the present is realisation, or awake, or buddha, and we are awake, for split seconds. All that Buddhism says is, notice the value of coming back to this moment, and when we notice it, it expands.

A person getting realisation is like the moon being reflected in water: the moon does not get wet, and the water is not broken.

In Master Dogen’s time the moon in water represented something whole, the great inside the small. When we’re whole in the Universe, we don’t disturb the Universe and it doesn’t disturb us; realisation does not break the individual. I can’t describe it, but we experience it. Think of a balloon of water immersed in water: as an engineer I think of equal pressure on both sides, and the interface disappears. In zazen we wobble in the interface between ourselves and the world, and just as we enter it, the interface itself disappears; we melt into where we are.

The whole moon and the whole sky in a dew-drop: the infinite in the infinitely small. People have said realisation is some special spiritual state, and it’s so far from that as to be laughable. Master Dogen says the state is balance between inside and outside. So we just look normal; it’s nothing special. In being normal we’re special, but not because that bloke can levitate himself.

Only as far as our eyes can reach

When the Dharma fills the body-and-mind we feel one side to be lacking.

If we think we’ve got it, we’re a long way from it; when we’ve got it, it feels like something is missing, and so we make our effort in daily life. Looking itself is the Buddhist state. In the koan, a monk who had understood “a child of fire comes looking for fire” intellectually was told he was very far from Buddhism; coming back to ask, “What is it?”, he heard the same words and understood that his sincere attitude was the truth itself.

Right out at sea the horizon is a circle, but Master Dogen says the ocean is not round and not square. So what he seems to be saying is that because reality is formless, when we experience it we feel something is missing, a “What is it? Where is it?” feeling, because we like to have things defined. To fish the ocean is a palace, to gods a string of pearls; the ocean itself doesn’t have only the qualities that we see.

Master Dogen says that we see and understand only as far as our eyes of learning and practice are able to reach: we understand as much as we experience, but there’s more in the world. We can’t see the world from outside our own viewpoint; but being one with the Universe, when we act, when we practise zazen, we experience everything as it is. Besides the qualities we give to things, there are millions of others which fish might give them, or gods. Even a single drop of water, beyond our interpretations, we can’t grasp; but it’s there, as it is. It sounds spiritual, but it’s not.

Walking in kinhin, I have a picture of a ghostly me going from there to here, and we call that movement; but it’s a complete illusion. The arc of a kicked football exists only in our consciousness. Modern research on perception is finding that some of the bizarre things Masters Dogen and Nagarjuna say are valid: we have an interpreted picture of reality, and our whole society is founded on it. That’s not about throwing away society or our watches. Of course we move; but what we call movement is not what movement really is.

Fish never leave the water

At the same time, fish and birds have never, since antiquity, left the water or the sky.

There are no limits to our action: the fish carries on swimming throughout its life. But a fish needs water for there to be swimming, and we can only act when there are circumstances in front of us. In reality, action can never exist separately from “me” and the circumstances; they’re welded together.

So to think about what is good action and what is bad action is only a thought, and it’s utterly different from acting. The good or bad is in the action itself; Master Dogen says in another chapter that we think good exists somewhere waiting for someone to do it, but that’s wrong. In Buddhism, morals are not abstract; morals are inseparable from action.

When we act, we’re limited to this moment and this place, but in that limitation we’re completely free. We can shout anything stupid, so that’s a kind of freedom; but I can’t make a noise like a rhinoceros, only like a stupid human being. We think freedom means doing what we want, but we can be free in this moment to be in this moment; we can’t be in another moment. The limitations are obvious to us; the freedom we only experience in action.

“If a bird leaves the sky it will die at once”: we can interpret this to mean that if we leave our daily life, getting up, washing our faces, eating, going to bed, we will die at once. We go around looking for the kind of life we want, but the life that we have is the interface between “me” and my surroundings. This place is us. The “me” I’m thinking about in Paris next week is not real; it’s an idea.

Finding our way as we move

A bird that checks every branch before it decides which way to fly could never find its way. In England I was brought up to think before I act; in Japan, while I was explaining why we couldn’t do something, my colleagues were already half finished. Another way is just to start, with other people, not stupidly, and find our way as we move. Strategy has its value, but we have to move. After ten years I could do it a bit.

On a mountain you plot your course at each corner, though without an overall strategy you might be in trouble. A 100 percent clear picture must be wrong; we take a step and notice that reality is not quite like our picture. We can’t stop making plans, but if our plan turns out to be different from reality, we should go with reality. Goals are a kind of carrot: our goal is an idea, and the place at which we arrive is real. It may not be so different.

In a huge hot tub with hotter and cooler places and higher and lower seats, some sit half out of the water or in the hottest part and say they’re fine; others move till they find a place that suits them, and there they’re contented. We think, “I talk too much,” and try to be something that we’re not. But in zazen we’re looking not for the strong, confident me that I want to become, but for the me that I already am. Effort is very important, but we shouldn’t sit in boiling water saying, “It’s fine.” We should move, and to keep moving means to drop our idea of how we feel; so it’s related to being honest.

Don’t think, “I’m a person who is too hot”; just move. My hot tub is only a picture, and there is no picture of reality; we have to just joggle along together, like pebbles at the bottom of a stream, as Nishijima Roshi says.

When we find this place, this action is inevitably realised as the Universe.

“The realised Universe”, a translation of the chapter title Genjo-koan, means everything made real; realised not in the sense of understood, but made real. Our thoughts are real, but they’re about the world, not the world; when we act, what we’re doing is real, so acting realises the Universe. The Universe is just here; we can’t understand reality, but we experience it.

Not in the words

Authentically transmitted means from one real person who practises zazen to another. We can start from a book, but in the end we need somebody who practises zazen to show us, just as craftsmen taught their apprentices.

Question: Can you experience realisation?

We can only experience it, we can’t define it. You can think, “That was it just now,” but when you’re thinking that, it’s not. Trying to understand the state so that we can get it is not Buddhism; Buddhism is not understanding the experience in zazen, but sitting in zazen. I don’t like the word mindfulness, because it suggests me watching myself. We can never grasp with our minds what realisation means, but we’re all doing it. So to do it is more important than to discuss it.

Master Dogen often ends a paragraph by saying we should investigate in experience: go out and live. What he’s talking about is not in the words. In the West we find it almost impossible to believe that the meaning of a sentence is not in the sentence; in mathematics it is, but not in his description of reality. Read a book on skiing by all means, but then close the book and go and do it.

Just sitting

In the balanced state, like sitting in water at body temperature, we don’t feel the need to discriminate, better or worse, mine or yours; we just do the one thing in front of us completely. We’re here, fully here, but we don’t quite know where here is. Not only do we want to find our place, but we want to know clearly that we’re in it; but it’s not an intellectual recognition.

Realisation is the state of ambiguity itself.

Towards the end of a sesshin, if we’re lucky, we’ve given up all our ideas of how to sit, and we find ourself just sitting. There’s some kind of satisfaction, but it contains disappointment with ourselves: “Ah, it doesn’t matter.” In that sitting, containing happiness and disappointment, there’s some kind of contentment. We think, “Oh well, this is me and I’m doing it.” That’s the real me sitting, with my real body.