Summer 2005 — Bussho

Having and being

Master Enkan preached that “all beings have buddha-nature”. That suggests to us that there’s something separate which I have in me. I have a cold: we think that there is me and a cold which comes into me. Master Dogen often identifies things instead; he would say “I am a cold”, not “I have a cold”.^[1.3][1.4]

When he says that grass, trees and land are mind, he doesn’t mean that it’s all in the mind. Mind here is not the mind with which we analyse the world, but the mind with which we are in the world. When we are consciously and fully aware of everything around us, there is no division in us between our conscious awareness and those things.^[1.5]

Lots of people interpreted Master Enkan to mean that buddha-nature is some kind of special quality that one could get by various efforts and keep inside oneself. But Master Dogen interprets it to say something more like all beings are buddhas by nature.^[1.6]

He says that Enkan needs to drop off the have. In Chinese and Japanese “have” is “U”, and U is not exactly “have” and not exactly “are”, but can be somewhere between the two.^[1.7]

Master Isan preached the opposite: “All beings are without buddha-nature.” When we think about something, we either have it or we don’t have it. But fortunately reality can transcend our thinking, and in reality it can be both. Master Dogen thinks Isan’s saying is the more profound: in his image Gautama Buddha and Master Enkan are carrying the truth between them on a pole, but with Isan both men have been swallowed up by the pole. We have buddha-nature, but we don’t have “buddha-nature”.^[1.10][1.11]

Human beings have buddha-nature: there’s a problem there, isn’t there? It creates something called buddha-nature which must exist separate from me; I come along and I get it, then I have it. It’s that way of thinking that Buddhism wants to get round. Master Isan doesn’t mean we don’t have it, he means we don’t have it.^[1.12]

Master Dogen writes: “It is not true to say that beings have buddha-nature, as if it is something that comes to beings who don’t have it and then becomes their possession. … The kind of ‘being’ that we imagine has buddha-nature is not a real being.”^[1.17]

Hyakujo … said “To preach that all beings have buddha-nature is to insult Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and to preach that all beings are without buddha-nature is also to insult Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.” … However, it is impossible to discuss buddha-nature without discussing these phrases.^[1.18]

It’s very difficult to render what Master Dogen means: he’s commenting in Japanese on a Chinese quotation. But this is my interpretation, what makes sense to me. What I’ve picked out is the difference between having something and being something. And that’s the best I can do so far.^[1.16]

Being without

Question: The best phrase was your translation, “being without”. The state of buddha is the state of being without.

The state of buddha is the state of being without. It’s difficult though, isn’t it? Master Dogen says dropping off is a characteristic of the Universe. But a characteristic of the human intellect is to put on: we layer ourselves over with things. To Master Dogen, learning things is throwing things away, becoming better is throwing away the desire to become better, becoming buddha is throwing away the desire to become a buddha, finding buddha-nature is throwing off the idea that we have buddha-nature. Even though I say it now, I don’t think like that when I go and do a piece of work for someone; I want the work. But at root, Buddhism is about dropping off.^[1.7][1.13]

Free in this moment

Explaining Master Hyakujo’s teaching, Master Dogen says that a buddha’s real body is governed by physical and mental limitation, but since we are always in the present, when we act in life, living does not imprison us, and when we act in death, dying does not frighten us.^[2.2]

What Hyakujo says and Master Dogen reiterates is very important: if we throw away rather than build up our abilities, then we can find freedom, but true freedom is not a permanent state. We shouldn’t think that there is something called a buddha who can do magic and transcend the limits of the body; Buddhism talks about the freedom and transcendence of the present moment. We’re always choosing, and in that sense we’re always free. We don’t feel free because we think that freedom is to have all of the doors open for us, but freedom exists in a prison cell. The phrase “do not love life too much and do not fear death too much” is also very important: the judo champion Yamashita throws away any thought of winning or losing. If we have an idea of throwing away, we should throw the idea away first. It’s a puzzle. Although it’s a puzzle, we do it.^[2.3]

The “unimaginably splendid and pure world” that Hyakujo and Dogen refer to is not heaven, but this world. They could say that because they could see that this world is the only world.^[2.4]

Now, now, now, now

Asked by Nansen about equally practicing balance and wisdom to make buddha-nature clear, Obaku replies, “Independent of everything throughout the twenty-four hours of the day, we have it already.” Master Dogen says that the state where buddha-nature is clear is the practice of Zazen. If we say balance and wisdom, we think of two things, but when we practice Zazen, there aren’t two things.^[2.5][2.6]

Master Dogen is reminding us that the twenty-four hours of a day are now, now, now, now. In every now, in the balanced state, we are independent; when we sit in Zazen we don’t lean on anything. We imagine a length of time, but the only real thing is time here and now.^[2.8][2.9]

In his last paragraph Master Dogen says that everything is independent, but he admits that all the hours in the day are both dependent and independent in a complex way, and that the whole Universe exists before we conceive of it. We are dependent on each other. So both are true.^[2.15][2.18]

Keeping quiet

Asked whether that view is his own, Obaku replies, “I dare not say it is”, a polite way in Chinese to affirm it. When we speak the truth, we can say that the words are not our own. When you say exactly what you wanted to say and what you say exactly describes the circumstances, there are words but nobody speaking. It’s not always like that. The truth that Master Dogen is talking about, we shouldn’t think it’s some kind of special truth that resides in Buddhism; it’s the truth of the world.^{[2.5][2.9][2.10]}

When Nansen asks who will pay for all his travelling, Obaku keeps quiet. Later masters often interpreted the story to mean that Obaku kind of lost, but Kyozan said that Obaku was resourceful enough to trap a tiger, and Master Dogen says he could also tame it. His replies were not designed to show how good he was.^{[2.11–12][2.14–15]}

Question: Is he saying that Obaku could have said anything, but he chose to say nothing?

Yes. His ability to keep quiet was his ability to tame the tiger.^[2.17]

Without any concept

A monk asks Master Joshu whether or not a dog has buddha-nature, and he replies “mu”. I’ve translated it as “Without [any concept of buddha-nature]”; I’ve added words which are not in the original. Master Dogen is saying that the answer has no subject: it could be buddha-nature, the dog or an onlooker. Here I’m interpreting this word mu into a whole sentence: the master said “no you stupid thing, the dog doesn’t have any idea of buddha-nature, it’s just a dog”, and “yes, because it has no idea of buddha-nature it’s just a buddha, so it has buddha-nature”.^[3.1–2]

One reason I used “without” is that earlier in the chapter Master Dogen talks about buddha-nature as “being without”, the state where we are without all the things we layer onto ourselves. I think that “without” is just about acceptable as the meaning of mu. I wrote “without” because it makes sense to me, and you have to judge whether it makes sense to you.^[3.3][3.5]

When the monk asks why the dog is without, if all beings fully manifest buddha-nature, Joshu replies, “Because we have a mental viewpoint that is formed from our past experiences.” We discuss whether or not a dog has buddha-nature because we can’t get rid of our thinking. Master Dogen is trying to make it clear that it’s all to do with our conceptualisation. The dog exists without any concepts, and buddha-nature exists without any concepts. So he’s saying that buddha-nature is not a concept. When we put a word on it, it becomes a concept, but it is something beyond concepts. And we can’t describe the nature of an animal with our mental viewpoint.^{[3.6][3.7][3.8]}

Only at the moment of the present

Another day, Joshu answers “It exists”, the opposite of mu. Master Dogen says this is not existence as described by scholars and theorists; what Joshu meant is that the dog exists, and since the dog exists, buddha-nature exists. There’s a real dog here.^{[3.9][3.10][3.11]}

The monk asks why buddha-nature needs to enter into this animal form. Master Dogen says we should look at what “exists” means: does it mean that the dog exists here, or that it has existed from the past? This is a strange Buddhist way of looking at the world which says that reality or existence is only at the moment of the present. We find that quite bizarre. To say that the dog exists means the dog is just here, just real, so it’s impossible for something called buddha-nature to come from somewhere else and come into the dog; this is what Master Dogen is saying.^[3.12]

Mistaking our thoughts for reality

Joshu says that although we recognize it, we can’t help mistaking our thoughts for the real situation, and Master Dogen is suggesting that this is the human condition. But that human condition itself is momentary, so we don’t need to try and find some state in which we don’t mistake our thoughts for reality; all we need to do is to recognise what the human state is. If we try never to think, we end up going bonkers; they do this in some training temples in Japan, and the monks leave exhausted. We can’t stop thinking, we can’t stop mistaking our thoughts for reality, that is the nature of thought, but we can notice it.^[3.15][3.16]

Master Dogen is insisting that we have buddha-nature at this very moment, in the middle of our mental viewpoints. How to find the middle way is the centre of Buddhism.^[3.18]

Question: Does Dogen say elsewhere that “momentary action in the present unites both me and the world”?

Yes. But those are my words, my interpretation of a line about a moment that “contains self and contains other people”.^[3.18][3.19]

The cut earthworm

Jiku, who was a government officer and studied under Master Chosa Keishin, asked his master: “If you cut an earthworm into two, and both parts are still moving, which part has the buddha-nature, I wonder?” The master replied: “No delusions!” … The master replied: “It is merely the worm’s physical energy, which hasn’t dissipated completely.”^[4.4]

Master Dogen asks whether the officer is thinking of the one earthworm that existed before it was cut. The worm did exist, but when it’s cut into two it doesn’t exist any more. His questions refer to the way that we imagine an earthworm in two parts and buddha-nature being in both of them. I can’t explain why he refers us to the Kegon Sutra to interpret why both parts are still moving.^[4.4][4.5]

Master Dogen’s way of commenting is almost kind of tongue-in-cheek. He’s pointing us towards something obvious but not telling us what it is, because it’s impossible to say what it is. Master Dogen says we should not say that physical energy is the same thing as buddha-nature; this is why Master Chosa didn’t say whether it was there or not, but he said something very realistic, and the officer could have, and we can, notice the very real and simple situation. If we discuss buddha-nature in the earthworm story, it’s not buddha-nature, it’s the concept of buddha-nature. Which half is buddha-nature in?^{[4.7][4.8][4.9]}

Question: Isn’t it like the firewood and ash thing?

Master Dogen uses the simile of firewood and ash to make us see that what is here in the present is not what was here in the past. We connect the past to the present and we call it process. So all he is doing is focussing us on the present. He says that the physical energy which has not dissipated completely is a buddha showing us what reality is, just as something we hear teaches us reality in the moment of the sound: a kind of assertion that process is a mental construction.^{[4.9][4.10][4.11][4.12]}

Master Dogen writes that thinking that buddha-nature can only exist while there is life is too simple-minded, too naive: in the moment in which we live, and in the moment in which we die, “we totally manifest buddha-nature in our existence, and we are without any [concept of] buddha-nature”, and that equating buddha-nature with soul or spirit is plainly absurd. He brings in spirit because we think of buddha-nature as something that can exist in half an earthworm: some kind of belief in spirit.^[4.12][4.13]

The usual mix

What is buddha-nature from the ultimate viewpoint? … It is the usual mix of thinking, frustration, and stupidity in which we live our lives.^[4.13]

In Sanskrit buddha-nature is “buddhata”, buddha-ness. Someone in their natural state is a buddha; they have something which is attributable to the natural state of a buddha, but it’s not what we can capture with any concept of buddha-ness. All Buddhist concepts refer to real things, and real things only exist here and now.^[4.13][4.15]

Question: The earlier passage distinguishes between reality and our thoughts, but on the last page he’s affirming that ultimate reality is our thoughts.

It doesn’t say ultimate reality is our thoughts, it says that ultimate reality includes everything, including our thoughts.^[4.15]

There’s a “real” that we use in discussion and there’s a real real. The real real thoughts we’re having are the ones we’re having now, and directly we talk in general terms, we’re talking about an abstraction. We have real thoughts in the present moment, and with them we create unreal scenarios.^[4.17][4.18]

My reality is shared with you. How can we have two points of view on a cup in two different worlds? It’s impossible! The real world is the world in which we all create our own worlds. There must be a time-place in which it’s all happening, and I just call that time-place reality.^{[4.18][4.19][4.20]}

Pointing beyond the words

The only way we can get any meaning is to relate something to our own experience. If we only relate the concepts we study in Buddhism to other conceptual understanding, we can become very clever scholars but we can never understand Buddhism.^[1.11]

When Master Dogen says that buddha-nature is the same as being and time, he doesn’t mean that no concepts have any meaning; what we are in the present moment is not differentiated into concepts, and all Buddhist concepts point to that undifferentiated state.^[1.9]

A lot of these descriptions sound as if there must be very wonderful beings around, but if we study Buddhism based on that kind of interpretation we can never understand it. So it’s necessary to study Buddhism based on Zazen. In Zazen is contained the subject that Buddhism is talking about.^[2.16]

Putting up with pain in the dojo is somehow not asceticism in the sense that Gautama Buddha meant, and it does develop some kind of ability to put up with things. But there is nobody telling us to sit through pain if we are unable to bear it, so do take a break if you need one.^{[4.1][4.2][4.3]}

The intention of Buddhism is to construct a theory that agrees with the way reality really is. The small, subconscious ways in which we fit ourselves into a construction of our own making cause unhappiness, stress and puzzlement. When we practice Zazen we notice the bizarre nature of what reality is and who we are; then we try and construct a theory.^[3.13]

“You have never even dreamt that all buddhas are without buddha-nature! I’d like to see you try again!”, Master Dogen tells Isan: a bit of humour. He’s trying to deconstruct our conceptual thinking whilst using language to do it, and we can sense that he’s pointing to something vague and unformed. If we read it and then practice Zazen, we can get some kind of sense as to what buddha-nature is. What he’s pointing towards, we have to leave for next time. We can’t help living in duality, but it’s not all about duality, it’s all about the state in which there is no duality. Samsara and Nirvana are the same world, and that’s a duality. To get away from it all, we can stop thinking about it.^{[1.18][1.19][1.20]}

Master Dogen didn’t mean to clear everything up; he just spoke. He contradicts himself, and we want to sort it all out. I can’t check my own work, so if you can see that something is round the wrong way, please say so.^{[2.11][2.18][2.20]}

We can say that even if someone is trapped in the concept of buddha-nature, they’ve still got buddha-nature according to Master Dogen. It’s a real puzzle. I haven’t a clue what it is.^[4.14]

Question: Does the last sentence imply that we don’t really need to worry about buddha-nature very much?

No, we don’t need to worry about it at all.^[4.20]