Winter 2005 — Bussho

Beyond the glasses we wear

We are working from my modern interpretation of Bussho. In the chapter Master Dogen discusses one of the most misunderstood terms in Buddhism, buddha-nature, and he points out that it’s something to do with “fully manifesting our existence”. The Shobogenzo is not a book we can buy, take home and understand clearly; it’s interactive teaching material, and this is probably one of the most difficult chapters. I think it’s much easier in my interpretation than in the book. This is only my first draft.^{[1.1][1.2][1.20]}

By “fully manifesting existence” Master Dogen wants to catch the reality of a real person here, separate from the coloured spectacles we wear when we look at each other. If I see Paul, with the word “Paul” come all my associations, and I put them over the human being in front of me. But we are before each other as real, living “somethings”, which are beyond the glasses we wear. That’s not to say that we should relate to one another without names. The layer we put onto reality is necessary for us to live in a sophisticated human society. Just seeing that fact is important.^[1.2]

Mountains, rivers and the Earth

Asvaghosa’s poem says that the mountains, rivers and the Earth are constructed out of buddha-nature. “Constructed out of” introduces a kind of dualism. Ginger and lemon tea is made out of ginger and lemons and water; Master Dogen wants to say ginger and lemon tea is ginger and lemons and water. Mountains, rivers, the Earth are buddha-nature.^[1.3][1.5]

Then he turns the sentence around: all are constructed out of it, and it is constructed out of all. That suggests an identity between the two.^[1.6]

The six powers in the poem are traditional categories: seeing everything means not being narrow-sighted, not super powers. Master Dogen doesn’t give them much value, but we don’t need to deny them, and each is something real.^[1.4][1.7]

Being without buddha-nature

Master Daiman Konin is an old man planting pine trees, living a very natural life, rooted in reality. Whether the facts are accurate or whether it’s a kind of story, I’m not sure. Master Dai-I tells him he is too old for transmission. Later a boy of seven tells Master Dai-I that his name is buddha-nature, and the story suggests he is the same man.^{[1.8][1.9][1.10][1.12]}

Master Dai-I says, “You are without buddha-nature,” suggesting that the child is not caught up in concepts. And the child agrees: buddha-nature is sunya, without anything. That is the sense in which, when we practice Zazen, our problems, tensions, worries drop away.^[1.11][1.12]

That’s the essence of why we practice Zazen: not to get some natural state we don’t have, but to drop off everything that’s hanging onto ourselves. People who live planting trees up a mountain don’t need Buddhism!^[1.14]

In Master Dogen’s commentary, Master Dai-I means: because you are just as you are without any pretensions, you are buddha-nature. So “without” doesn’t mean without the true buddha-nature, but without the concept of buddha-nature. Sunya is being without any trapping, being natural; it does not mean non-existent.^{[2.1][2.4][2.5]}

“Form is just emptiness” in the Heart Sutra doesn’t mean that two things are one; there is only one thing in the first place. It’s the same with body and mind: there is one thing, but we give it two names.^[2.6]

When Daikan Eno says he wants to become a buddha, Master Daiman tells him that people from south of the five peaks are simple folk without buddha-nature. Master Dogen comments:^[2.7]

He meant that since a person south of the peaks is without any idealistic pretensions, they are buddha-nature.^[2.7]

The emphasis there is on “are” buddha-nature rather than “have” it, or “does not have” it. It is a real state, and to discuss whether we have it or not is just an intellectual discussion. They are simple and direct, they are buddhas, so why become a buddha?^[2.7][2.8]

Master Dogen says that buddha and buddha-nature go together; they are the same state. Buddha-nature is not something you get, it’s something which appears when you get rid of other things.^[2.9]

Master Dogen denies that Buddhism is a way to get something; the Buddhist path is dropping off all the stuff that we pile on top of ourselves. But if we intentionally try to drop everything, then we’re trying to get something. He says don’t try to stop it happening, and don’t try to make it happen; leave things as they are. That puts us in the state of buddha immediately.^[2.2]

When we have gained a true understanding of buddha-nature, we can assert both that living beings have buddha-nature and that living beings are without buddha-nature.^[2.9]

Master Dogen is suggesting that manifesting buddha-nature and being without it are pointing to the same thing; the masters who said either are preaching Buddhism. Work that one out.^[2.11]

Names, concepts and reality

Master Dogen suggests that “What is your name?” is a statement as well as a question: “you are something I don’t know”. In Chinese only context decides whether something looks like a question. In his reading the child’s name is “exists”, and Master Dai-I’s “What is it?” is not a question either: “what” and “it” both mean reality, and reality is beyond description. We’re in reality every day when we drink tea and eat meals. So, he says, to act in everyday situations is to be real; to discuss and think is to be abstract.^{[1.15][1.16][1.17][1.20]}

Then he leads us round in a circle: throw away these concepts, then get rid of throwing them away, and we come back to the fact that people have names, and the child’s name, Shu, is one of them. So there are two levels. There’s something real that exists beyond the names we use for things. His object is to accept both the conceptual and beyond the conceptual.^[1.18][1.19]

Master Daikan says that concepts like “south” and “north” are not part of buddha-nature; they are just what we define them to be. Master Dogen says:^[2.11][2.12]

We should quietly both try to understand his words, and give up understanding them.^[2.12]

That’s a very important sentence. Some of you are trying to understand, and some of you have given up. We should do both, and we can choose which to do at this moment, and which at the next.^[2.12]

Our conceptual understanding is real and very valuable; our whole human society is founded on it. All wars are based on people believing that what they have conceptualised is true and fixed. Our ability to understand the world is our greatest achievement, but the price is that we believe our concepts of reality are reality. To some extent we can never get out of that difficulty. If we understand that our concepts are just concepts, when reality shows us it is not quite like that, we can adjust our understanding.^[2.13]

Just at the present moment

Christianity studies what is not here. But in Buddhism we study this time and world here and now, and we call it reality; it is a very strange pursuit to study what is in front of us.^[2.1]

Master Daikan taught his student Gyosho: “Buddha-nature exists just at the present moment, but the mind, which categorises all things into good and bad, creates an enduring image.”^[2.16]

Nobody has ever been any other place than today. Master Dogen says that non-Buddhists, and Buddhists who study only theory or only the form, all exist just at the present moment, although they do not fully realise it. All people exist just at the present moment, whether they think they are here or not. There is no other place to be.^[2.16][3.1]

We impose an enduring quality on things. But the grass, trees, mountains and rivers that Master Dogen calls buddha-nature are all non-enduring; what is here and now is just here and now. We create an image of ourselves and call it “me”. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a real me, but the real me I find here at every moment. The enduring image of me that I create sometimes gets a bit static, not so close to how I am.^[3.11][3.12]

Question: We can’t know that this mountain will be there in a thousand years’ time.

It depends what we mean by “know”: we believe it’s going to be there. We all agree that the world endures, although it’s not always true; without agreeing on it we can’t plan.^[3.13]

Master Dogen explains the Lotus Sutra’s bodhisattvas, who appear to teach people, as people who know what the present is, appearing in the present and teaching that it is the truth. To realise that reality is the present moment is to be saved from the future and from the past. But not saved from the present.^[3.2]

Unlike trees, animals and stones, we can pull ourselves out of the present moment. We can create worlds that don’t exist yet; without that ability we would be just like trees, cats, and dogs.^[3.3]

To be fully in the present is not an intentional activity. It’s not to say “right, I’m going to be in the present”, it’s to act, to do something. We can’t sit there and think, “I am mindfully in the present”; the thought is not the present.^[3.4]

Question: But while you’re thinking that, the thinking is taking place in the present moment.

Yes, we’re always in the present moment. What he refers to is the state in which we are not divided, not reflecting on ourselves. When we act, we usually stop splitting ourselves and become one. We split ourselves, and this is both the source of human beings’ great achievements and the source of their unhappiness. It’s our strength and our weakness. So it’s not a question of trying to get into some special state, it’s just understanding the way we are.^[3.5][3.6]

A Buddhist lecture is not Zazen; it’s an attempt to discuss what Buddhism is, because we’ve got questions. It’s ok to listen and think: we can talk about something whole even while thinking about it, but we mistake the thinking about it for it itself.^[3.9]

Nagarjuna’s full moon

Master Nagarjuna’s listeners are ordinary people seeking happiness in secular things, who complain that he only teaches about buddha-nature. He replies, “If you want to see buddha-nature, you must get rid of selfish pride.” They are proud of their own way of life, and they don’t want to get rid of that pride and ask him directly what he is talking about. He also replies, “Buddha-nature is neither big nor small.” In the simple state in which we’re not evaluating or discriminating, there is buddha-nature.^[3.16][3.17]

Buddha-nature was in front of these people in the form of Master Nagarjuna, but their pride had been preventing them from seeing it. Master Dogen says the words do not mean that you cannot see buddha-nature; they mean that getting rid of selfish pride is seeing buddha-nature. Master Nagarjuna appeared to them as complete and whole as the full moon, and an interpretation was passed on, rather simplistically, that he literally turned into a full moon. Master Dogen criticises it.^{[3.18][3.19][3.20][4.13]}

He says that just at the present moment there is no separation between hearing and understanding. Often our understanding is an intellectual recognition: we fit what we hear into our existing structure of knowledge. The understanding he’s talking about is hearing and understanding as one act.^[4.1][4.4]

Master Nagarjuna’s body and him manifesting it are one, and his listeners were not examining him but hearing and understanding. What we read in a book is just facts stored in our brain. Real understanding is deeper; we don’t get it from books, or we don’t get it only from books.^[4.3][4.4]

I’m not suggesting abstract knowledge has no value; news reports by people who’ve never been to places have great value. But we should notice the difference between someone who has experienced something and someone who has not. That’s why Master Dogen says we have to practice Zazen.^[4.8]

Master Dogen says the body manifesting itself cannot be completely described; you can’t describe the person you’re looking at. A writer evokes images, but in different readers, I wonder how accurate or different they are.^[4.9]

Someone who has selfish pride puts on a mask, an image of themselves which is different from how they really are. Master Nagarjuna, who had got rid of selfish pride, didn’t want to create an image of himself as a proud teacher of the truth. So he manifested himself just as he was, and to manifest ourselves just as we are is to be a buddha. Buddhas are real; our ideas, pictures and descriptions of buddhas are fabrications, and the only real buddhas are sitting here in this room. We hesitate to think that we might be a buddha because we feel we don’t quite come up to scratch. To realise that we don’t quite match up is to be a buddha, to accept ourselves as we are.^[4.11]

As they listened, at times their listening, their understanding and him became one; then they drifted out of that state and back in. It’s a normal situation.^[4.13]

The body he showed them, according to Master Dogen, was more than just physical, and there is no set way to teach the truth: reality is always changing, so the set way is to follow reality. As Nishijima Roshi would often say, “our aim is to have no aim”. Everything real has two sides, physical and mental or spiritual, which are not separate; we split them in order to talk about them. The moon in a book is not the real moon: all of the knowledge which we read in books has one side missing.^[4.12][4.16]

Our fullness responds to the other’s fullness: because Master Nagarjuna was full and real, the audience became full and real. The moon makes us full and real, or maybe we make it so, or both. We categorise nature into facts so that we can control it; the facts are useful, but real nature is always different, because we’re not yet clever enough to describe reality perfectly.^[4.17][4.18]

Acting just as we are

And among the many people of the past and present … who has ever said that buddha-nature is the body manifesting itself just as it is? The Venerable Kanadeva is the only person in the Universe who has said this.^[5.12]

In Zazen we drop off all pretensions, all ideas, and we sit just as we are. Master Dogen also says we don’t need to notice it, just to be yourself without noticing. The obvious times when we are ourselves without noticing are when we are doing things, when we’re acting.^[5.13]

Question: How do you abandon yourself without telling yourself you’re going to abandon yourself?

You just do it, you step off the top of a hundred foot pole. At the top of a ski run, at some point you just go. Crossing the street is an act. We all do it, but we cover it up. We’re taught that our thinking comes before our action. Of course we do think before we act, but we believe our thinking somehow is the engine of our action.^[5.14]

Question: It almost sounds as if you’re saying we should be forcing ourselves forward.

No, I don’t mean taking decisions, I mean the act. Picking up a cup of tea, at that instant we abandon everything else. We remember that feeling in extreme situations, but it’s in every situation. My words make it sound too dramatic. Don’t trust them.^[5.16]

Belief and what is passed on

Master Dogen says that Nagarjuna passed his teaching only to Kanadeva, and that writings other groups claimed as his are forgeries. He is saying that the teachings passed on are more authentic than written teachings, although writings are valuable. Master Dogen believed in Zazen, he believed in what he’d learned from his master, and in those writings he could find nothing of what he’d received. That’s an assertion which we can’t prove, but it’s definitely something that we can assert.^[5.4]

Question: Master Dogen calls people stupid. Is he not kind to them?

He is kind to them, by being himself. And a master who refuses to affirm a student using set phrases learned from someone else leaves them to find their own words. That’s compassionate. Tough love.^[5.1][5.5]

Belief is far deeper than trusting in an idea. Real belief has the power to direct our actions; belief is mental and physical.^[5.7]

I think all human beings have a very fundamental simple belief in humanity, but we cover it up. The things we can accept and believe in seem familiar because they resonate with us. It’s like uncovering something in ourselves rather than putting something on top of ourselves.^[5.8]

In a sense there is no difference between a Muslim fundamentalist and Master Dogen; they are asserting different things, but human beings’ power to assert their belief is the same in all human beings. One face of that kind of assertion sounds arrogant. But the other face is that if we don’t assert what we fundamentally feel, then we can’t assert the direction of our lives. What we believe in is very important.^[5.9][5.11]

Zazen as our reference

Master Dogen tells us to use the practice of Zazen as our reference. Reality is outside of philosophy or intellect, so the way to study it is to sit in it.^[2.14]

Question: How does that help you when you come out of Zazen and face the real world of all your concepts again?

It doesn’t help at all.^[2.15]

In fact it does help, but not in a way that we can grasp. Zazen changes our psycho-physical state; if we feel irritable and we practice Zazen, we usually calm down, and it takes hours or days to leave the balanced state. Master Dogen describes that as like the ringing of a bell, which doesn’t stay for ever, so we keep practicing Zazen, every day. That is maintaining the state, and there is nothing else we need to do, but we can’t believe that.^[2.15]

In Zazen we balance the two halves of our autonomic nervous system, and in that state we can act more simply. It’s down to our physical state, not to us deciding. That’s why sitting up straight is important, though difficult.^[5.17][5.18]

If you only do Zazen, it’s almost impossible to practice peacefully, because questions arise. I’ve never met anyone who practices Zazen without ever studying some Buddhist theory who is happy. Master Dogen says there are myriad ways to the balanced and peaceful state; however, those other ways are not Buddhism, but the state is the same. Very great athletes, we can say, are buddhas, but they don’t know it. Master Dogen’s Buddhism includes both study and physical form.^[2.17][2.20]

In Buddhism Zazen gives our body a certain state, which is part of our belief, and studying Buddhist theory directs us in the same direction. So there are two halves to Buddhism, and both are helping us uncover our fundamental nature, which is called here buddha-nature.^[5.11]

Master Dogen said that the Shobogenzo comes out of his practice of Zazen. Just like the atomic physicist, we sit and study reality and then try to describe it. So we’re kind of scientists.^[4.20]

Question: If you are at all caught up in your thoughts, you are not 100 percent in your action.

That’s the difference between our image of what things should be like and reality. Although words can’t describe reality, they’re almost better than reality, so we look for a reality to match the words and it doesn’t. Of the pastries you made in the kitchen, some came out burned, some twisted. That’s reality. Real life, balance, is not like my description. It’s sort of like it, it’s as near as I can get. But reality is all there is: the only pastries we got were the real ones, and they were nice.^[5.19][5.20]

Question: I guess you just have to accept it when your Zazen seems pretty crap.

Zazen is never crap. We should accept that even though we think it’s crap, it’s just Zazen. That’s real Zazen. The other is only an idea, we can never find it. So talking about Buddhism creates an idea, and that idea itself is an obstruction, but I can’t stop talking about it. Well I can stop.^[5.20]