Tag Archives: Master Dogen

July 12, 2015 · 11:33 am

Zazen Is Not The Better Way

By: David Xi-Ken Shi 曦肯

I greatly respect the life experience reflected in the teachings of Master Dogen, especially when I open my mind to what he is pointing at when I get his 13th century language out of the way. This is the challenge that all serious students have when reflecting on what our legacy teachers have transmitted to us. It is the nature of their karma. Master Dogen taught that zazen is the key to our awakening. I bow to his wisdom. But why do I say then that “zazen is not the better way?” This is yet another lesson of when the ideal meets the real. Some Zen teachers may even have said that zazen is not the better way, it is the only way. The problem with this statement is in using the words better or only.

The important point here is for us to understand what zazen really means. Zazen is pointing to our universal natures, or that we are expressions of the universe. The practice of mindful meditation can be a bridge to zazen, just as what we “do” in each moment off the cushion can be a bridge to awakened moments when our body-mind is ready. Zazen is expressed in how we are when we do enough work on the cushion to establish a clear and abiding mind transformation without making unnecessary distinctions, or thinking. I express this as saying that Buddhism is about subtraction not addition. We learn to subtract from our ordinary mind-state so we can become ready to move beyond it to an extra-ordinary mental experience. This can achieve a body-mind state that is natural to our human-beingness. The reality of this universal self is not to run away from either the good or unsatisfactory situations we may encounter in the moment. When we establish a mental attitude of life where our Buddha nature lives from states of reality rather than self imposed notions of a set of ideals, we awaken to acknowledge that a healthy worldview accepts a world just as it is. While ideals may be a part of our worldview platform, they are only blueprints that we take with us into the real world experience. Reality reflects a life lived with varied scenery. These various scenes unfold as they have been driven by the causal-chain of events we are honing in our practice on the cushion. A healthy and harmonious mind accepts things as they are. No better, no bad, no only. It just is when we get ourselves out of the way and move into a mental state capable of “becoming.” This is why I say that zazen is not the better path. The reality of our lives that zazen wakes us up to is really a life that comes from our natural self, and a now that is only the now we can fully trust as being real. Our past experiences, and any thoughts of future expectations, only can prepare us for the present moment. All else is an illusion. When we base our lives on distinguishing between the better way and the worse way, we will never find a peaceful mind that whatever happens is all right. There is no end in looking for “the better.”

Zazen is pointing us to the lessons of interdependence, universal connectiveness, impermanence, and a way of moving away from floundering in desperation. Shikantaza means just sitting and Dogen used both expressions to teach the nature of meditation as a vehicle for transformation beyond the ordinary. However, zazen as Dogen Zenji used it in a broader sense indicates the reality that is manifested in practice. Zazen is about refining how we are. A delineated best path does not exist for universal life. There is only the direction of natural causal forces as they influence our life. This is equally true of zazen as a practice we may choose. So how can it be better, when how we are is our natural state of being all along. We just must come to realize this reality. So zazen is like a mirror too. How we come to see what is reflected is up to our ability to awaken to what is real. “Just like this.”

Master Dogen: A Pragmatic Mind

By: David Xi-Ken Astor, Sensei

It doesn’t take long for anyone new to Buddhist inquiry to encounter the name and lessons of the thirteenth century Japanese Zen Master Dogen. He is referenced all the time in Zen/Ch’an publications today. He is a Zen superstar, and is credited for establishing the Soto Zen school. His work is referenced by both Chinese, Japanese, and contemporary Western Zen Buddhist teachers today as representing how important mindful meditation (zazen) and a common sense approach for a serious practice is. He is very pragmatic in his approach to Buddhist thought. “Useful and productive” seems to be an underling theme throughout his teaching. He, of course, had no notion of the term ‘pragmatic’. While the term has been around for quite a few decades, it is also a modern philosophical construction arising from the American pragmatic movement in the nineteenth and twenty centuries. But Dogen’s path to development of a pragmatic perspective to life, and his subsequent worldview, was one that he cultivated over a period of years, especially in his travels and study in China.

Dogen was one of the major leaders in the Kamakura period’s revitalization of Buddhism in Japan. It was not an immediate consequence of his influence on the cultural changes that took place during this dynamic period in Japanese history, but one that required decades to accomplish. These changes, and the new Buddhist schools that emerged, had either direct or indirect roots in China. These new schools, including what was to become know as Soto Zen, emphasized the practical actions to be undertaken by both lay and monastic students stressing individual practice that was supported by a Sangha open to all. It was no longer just a monastic practice that was required for coming to a realized state of body-mind. What was more important was establishing a strong student/teacher relationship. In order to do this, authenticated teachers were encouraged to make themselves open to those outside the walls of a temple. This was a revolutionary change. In the past, only the best educated and aristocratic families contributed to the monastic communities. In the type of militaristic culture Japan had at the time, it was only possible for the samurai class to participate in the traditional style of education like offered in monastic communities. There were exception, but they were rare. Dogen himself came from an aristocratic family, but early life circumstances provided him a chance to move away from what was expected of him and instead followed his developing awareness that was calling him to step on the spiritual path.

Dogen was driven to find answers to one nagging question, “If we are all enlightened beings, why is it so difficult to achieve this understand?” To get answers that could be useful and productive to his own practice, he decided to travel to China where he thought he would find a teacher that could work with him on this question. He was taking the bull by the horns, and his life would never be the same again. On this first trip to China he stayed for four years and worked on his meditation technique that was stressed in Chinese Ch’an practice over what was emphasized in traditional Japanese Buddhism in the thirteenth century. He experienced a breakthrough that was authenticated by his teacher. When he returned to Japan it was with a new pragmatic approach to practice that was outside conventional structures of his day, and placed emphases on personal experience that acted as the basis for self-realization when combined with a strong zazen practice. Continue reading →

The Zen Art of Teaching Birds To Fly

By: David Xi-Ken Astor, Sensei

In teaching Buddhism, and especially zazen, I am constantly reminded of Dogen’s statement that “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self.” This is not only the essential ingredient in his Genjokoan, but also the driving force that moves us along our encounter with the Buddha’s primary teaching of the Four Noble Truths.

The Zen master, Shohaku Okumura Roshi, tells us that the word study that Dogen uses in Japanese is narua. Okumura tells us, “Narau comes from nareru, which means: to get accustomed to, to become familiar with, to get used to, or to become intimate with. This is not simply intellectual study.” He continues to tell us that the Chinese character for narau is written in two parts. The first character means “bird’s wings” and the second one means “self”.

This explanation took me back to an experience I had many, many, years ago when I had a large house that was divided into two apartments. I lived upstairs, and I rented the downstairs. One of my renters was a young single mother with two sons. The older kid was about six and his name was Jimmy. Like most boys his age he was always hanging around watching what I was doing; mowing, fixing a stuck door, planting a tree, that sort of thing. He was just very curious, and generally was not annoying. I could not drive my car into the garage that he did not come running to see what I brought home. One day as I drove up I noticed under the large tree in the back yard a commotion on the ground. It was a bird that seemed hurt. But after a moment I realized that what I was observing was a young bird and his mother higher up in the tree teaching him how to fly. She would hop down, then fly back up and call down to him. He would hope around and try to fly a few feet at a time. This was repeated over and over. As I was transfixed on this event Jimmy came running up. I pointed out the bird on the ground and ask him what he thought was happening. He said he thought it was hurt or sick. When I pointed out that the bird on the ground was young and was being taught, through encouragement, how to fly by his mother up in the tree, he was truly dumfounded. I remember this so well even now. He looked up at me with those blue eyes and a look that was overwhelming and said “I thought birds could fly by themselves.” He was transfixed as I too was on what was happening. But what he said next was very memorable. With a true look of wonder Jimmy said “I didn’t know that.” Even for a six year old, this was a moment toward understanding and wisdom. As a young person himself, there might have been a connection some how with the bird and his own growing experiences. Kind of like narau. In many ways, we too have to learn how to fly. This is an essential meaning to how Dogen engaged zazen.

When we engage zazen practice, we engage this study-of-the-self admonition. We study the self in order to awaken to how we are. That awakening awareness is what drives the change necessary for our self-flourishing. In other words, we must learn to fly too. We awaken to this notion of the self being the only foundation that is none other then our Universal expression. Like the baby bird that has the ability to fly and yet does not know how until it observes the skillful teaching of the mother, our zazen practice is driven by the skillful teachings of others that have gone before us and the observation of this self we call ’I”.

As flying is an essential attribute for a bird to be a bird, so is the study of ourselves essential for discovering our human natures. We awaken to what truly makes us human when we gain a quiet abiding body-mind that is the self of our Buddha natures. Then we too will fly with the birds.

The Study Of Self:
“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of self, and the body and mind of others, drop off. There is a trace of realization that cannot be grasped. We endlessly keep expressing the ungraspable trace of realization.”

— Dogen Zenji from Genjokoan