Uji — Session 3

The state we are in is buddha

People … feel that the state of a buddha is not time-present, but a state that they must make efforts to attain.^[1]

We’re all buddhas, but we don’t like to accept it, because we can create an image in our mind of somebody better than ourselves. But that somebody is only an image. When we practise zazen, we sit in our state, whatever it is. And that state is buddha. If we expect the state to be pure, calm and peaceful, we may be disappointed, but the state of being disappointed in zazen is the state of buddha.^[1]

Sometimes we’re thinking, sometimes we’re not thinking, sometimes we’re stopping ourselves thinking, and sometimes we move beyond the state of thinking. All of those are part of zazen. There’s no other state.^[2]

Master Dogen says that if we reject the state of buddha, we’re somebody who hasn’t realised who they are. To realise who we are doesn’t mean to realise that perfect “who” that we want to be, but who we are at this moment. When we sit in zazen and notice that we feel irritated or sleepy, we might feel this isn’t proper zazen. But actually it’s the state that we’re in, so that’s who we are at that moment. So it’s a time-present.^[2]

Master Dogen often talks about half realising things, or half a person, and it’s his way of denying that words can match reality. If we say a buddha, we immediately think of this perfect thing, so he says half a buddha, which breaks our perfection. He’s trying to take us away from perfection: in his sense, perfection is the present moment, not something better than what is here.^[11][12]

Effort and no effort

State is the wrong word really: our state in zazen isn’t stationary, it’s always changing. We don’t have a state in zazen, we wobble around. And that wobbling around is buddha. Balance, if you stand on one leg, is wobbling, and if you don’t wobble you can’t balance.^[2]

In physical terms, to sit straight we need to make an effort, but when we’re just in the middle and all of our weight is through the centre of gravity, there’s no effort. We can’t keep in that exact position, so we move to one side and make an effort to come back. In that theoretical point of balance there is no effort. That’s true both physically and mentally. If we’re wandering off on a train of thought, we might suddenly notice we’re drooping forward. Coming back to the point in the middle is to lose our train of thought and to lose the effort to come back: it’s a balance point.^[3]

Question: I get moments of realising that I’m still, then as soon as I realise it, it goes.

It’s like skiing, or rowing a scull-boat: when you start, there’s a very fine knife-edge, and you wobble about and fall over. If you keep doing it, one day that knife-edge suddenly disappears and there’s a plateau that you’re on. If we practise zazen regularly every day, the balance point spreads; if we practise zazen only now and again, the balance point is just a little moment which we flash through. But that plateau is only a knife-edge. The words we use to describe it are confusing in themselves.^[6][18]

Thinking and stopping thinking

Question: Why do we stop thinking then, if Buddha’s state is also thinking? … But it’s also very difficult.

We get tired of thinking, don’t we? It’s not difficult, but we have a habit to think, and we live in a society which needs us to think. We ate the results of Ella’s thinking at breakfast this morning. We shouldn’t say thinking has no value, but there’s something other than thinking which maintains us. If we only think and never stop, we go mad. Zazen is a way of stopping; making a cup of tea does it too, but we don’t normally give them the value they deserve. The instances in which we act and stop thinking are the basis of our life; the instances when we think are the basis of society, but society isn’t the basis of our life in that sense.^[4]

Question: The posture is kind of self-regulating, isn’t it? You said it’s not necessary to intentionally stop yourself thinking.

Well, you can’t actually, because the intention is a thought. Noticing that you’re thinking, stopping yourself, and correcting your posture are all the same thing. When we describe it, we split ourselves into two. That suggests that there’s someone who’s not thinking who stops someone from thinking, but that’s not true. So zazen is self-regulating, providing we make some effort to reach the point where there’s no effort. So it’s a contradiction.^[5]

Buddhatime-present

… living beings are time-present; buddhas are time-present.^[7]

In Master Dogen’s thinking, what is here and now and time are the same thing: the cup is time-present, we are time-present. The words have already separated them; he wants to stick the words back together again: buddhatime-present, persontime-present.^[7]

The concrete time-present of being angry makes the whole Universe real. The concrete time-present of being a buddha makes the whole Universe real.^[7]

In his philosophy, making something real is to act in the present moment, or to be in the present moment. To be what we are in the present moment is creating the Universe or being the Universe. We can’t have this room without us sitting in it. We can imagine this room without us sitting in it, but at this moment we’ve got the room and us; we can’t get rid of either. There’s just roomus. If you extend that, Master Dogen is saying there’s just angryUniverse, there’s just buddhaUniverse.^[7]

We could say that if we sit by the lakeside and disappear into the surroundings, there’s no surroundings and me separate. In that moment the Universe is making itself real, and we experience that perfection just for a moment.^[8]

It is making perfectly real that the whole of time is the whole of existence, with nothing left over.^[9]

He wants to exactly identify time and existence. That has some kind of taste of Einstein’s space-time continuum, but there we still have process. In Master Dogen’s existence-time there’s no continuum: there’s just this, just this. In his philosophy, we cannot escape from reality, and reality is just here now. We find that very difficult to accept. Fortunately we don’t have to accept it all of the time. All of the past that exists exists now, because now is the only time that can exist. But I don’t think Master Dogen is suggesting that there are parallel Universes with pasts in.^[9]

We suppose that time just passes away, and do not understand that time never arrives.^[14]

Our actual experience is that we’re just here, all the time. The future never arrives, and the past never leaves. We have an idea that attaining the truth might be something we do in a process; Master Dogen wants to point out that it happens at a moment, at a time-present.^[14]

Who we already are

Master Dogen is suggesting that we are already buddha and we’re looking for buddha, if you like: it’s the state of buddha which drives us to search for the truth and practise zazen. Buddhas making buddha: he’s turning things on their head a little.^[8]

Question: You say that he says we can’t conceive it. Is it impossible to conceive, or is it just difficult to conceive?

I don’t know, I haven’t stopped trying yet. We experience it. What Master Dogen is talking about is our real experience: not something that happened to us which we can remember, but what’s going on now.^[9]

Question: Do you mean you’re still trying to grasp it intellectually? Why?

Yes. I don’t know, but I like it. I can’t stop it. I spent nearly twenty years mountaineering; I don’t know why, something drove me to it. Now I’m studying Buddhism; I don’t know why, something drives me to it. We have lots of reasons, of course, but human beings have this kind of curiosity. In Buddhism it’s called the will to the truth, or that’s our translation of it.^[10]

… who can express clearly what the ineffable something is that they have already got? … none of them have stopped groping around trying to find out who they already are.^[15]

He’s talking about the difficulty we have with our own intellectual search. We look for who we are, and if we find who we are, then say that we’ve found who we are, we’ve lost who we are. When we lose who we are, we can’t express who we are. I can’t express any more than that.^[15]

Being present

The vivid state of being in our own state in the Universe we experience when we’re contented where we are.^[12]

Question: The word which comes to mind is acceptance.

Yes, but not a passive acceptance: something which is beyond being passive or active.^[12]

In short, time-present is always made real without ridding ourselves of hindrances and delusions.^[16]

We commonly think that we have hindrances and delusions that we have to get rid of in order to make ourselves real. In a way it’s coming back to what you were saying about acceptance: to be present is not to realise you’re angry and stop being angry, it’s simply to realise that you’re angry; not to realise that you’re sleepy and stop being sleepy, but simply to realise you’re sleepy.^[16]

We should neither confuse it with not being present, nor force it into being present.^[13]

Not being present and being present are both concepts. He says we should leave it as it is. To force something into being present is to say, “Oh, I know I’m present.” Then we’re thinking about being present. But when we pick up a cup of tea and drink it, we don’t need to think whether we’re present or not: we’re completely here.^[13]

Wholehearted effort

Master Dogen is suggesting that when we make wholehearted effort in this moment, all the living beings of the Universe are with us. This sounds rather poetic, and if we think about it, it sounds rather unlikely. But when we put all our effort into what we’re doing at one moment, we can say that we become one with everything, and that’s what he’s trying to say. When we become one with everything, we stop thinking about becoming one with everything.^[17]

Our practice teaches us that without our own moment-by-moment effort in time-present, nothing could ever be made real, or continue from one moment to the next.^[18]

That sounds very unlikely. I’d like somebody to show me a moment in which they’re not making an effort, and then we can all look to see if the world is here or not. Actually there isn’t a moment in which we’re not making an effort. There’s a difference between whole effort and partial effort, and between mental and physical effort together and just mental effort. But if we say in general, we can’t stop making an effort; if we stop we die. If we make only mental effort, we can seemingly disappear from where we are into the mind or the virtual world, but all the time we’re actually still where we are.^[18][19]

The reality we are in

If we go off into a long train of thought in zazen, we can say, “I wasn’t there,” but the person sitting next to us can say, “Yes, you were.” Which is reality? We can end up saying, “I have mine and you have yours,” and suggest that everybody has different realities. But all of those hypotheses are made by people who are always in this reality. So reality seems to be that from which we cannot escape. Sometimes we can’t see what it is, but we can’t escape from it. Whether we’re confused or enlightened or angry or buddhas, we can’t escape from reality. We can’t escape from time-present.^[19]

Time-present is the Universe. Our efforts moment by moment are in time-present, and because our efforts are in time-present, they are time-present; because time-present is the Universe, our efforts are the Universe. Doing something makes us real. When we do something we make ourselves and the Universe real. When we continue to do something moment by moment, we make ourselves and the Universe continue. But then in the next paragraph he says:^[20]

… The whole Universe is progressing from one moment to the next, not static but also not continuous process.^[20]

He’s creating in us lots of contradictions and images, but they are all pointing to the same thing: that it’s impossible to be anywhere else but in reality, and reality at this moment is just as it is.^[20]