Genjokoan #6: Our Experience of Absolute and Relative

by Domyo Burk | Jul 29, 2015 | Understanding: Fundamental Teachings to Investigate

[From the Genjokoan:] In seeing color and hearing sound with body and mind, although we perceive them intimately, [the perception] is not like reflections in a mirror or the moon in water. When one side is illuminated, the other is dark.

Personally, I prefer the translation of the first sentence by Sojun Mel Weitsman and Kazuaki Tanahashi in the book Dogen’s Genjokoan: Three Commentaries (Counterpoint Press, 2012): “When you see forms or hear sounds fully engaging body-and-mind, you intuit dharmas intimately.”

In another translation I like, Robert Aitken translates “intuit dharmas intimately” as “grasp things directly.”

What is this activity of intuiting dharmas intimately, or grasping things directly? It’s the whole goal of Zen. It’s unmitigated, direct experience through our entire body-and-mind as a whole organism.

This remarkable experience of nothing-other-than-this is most vividly and accurately described with poetic language, such as this passage from Bokusan Nishiari’s commentary in Dogen’s Genjokoan: Three Commentaries (Nishiari, 1821-1910, was a Japanese Soto Zen priest and Dogen scholar):

“Lingyun [an ancestral Zen master] had realization when looking at peach blossoms; it’s seeing forms with bright mind. Xiangyan [another ancestor] had realization through the sound of a stone striking bamboo; it’s hearing the sound and being enlightened with the Way…

“‘You intuit dharmas intimately.’ This is good. There is no dharma outside of the self, and there is no self outside of the dharma. Facing forms, the entire body becomes forms. Facing voice, the entire body becomes voice. The self and the object become not-two. At the time of ‘seeing peach blossoms,’ the entire world becomes peach blossoms. At the time of ‘hitting bamboo,’ the entire world is ‘crack!’ That’s the moment when the forms are truly seen and the voice is truly heard. At this moment you intimately intuit it.”

This complete, unmitigated experience is profound, but it’s also very simple. When there is no separation between self and the world, there is only this moment’s radiant occurrence. It’s not radiant because it’s great as compared to our ordinary daily experience; it’s radiant because that’s the nature of reality.

But then Dogen warns us that this experience of reality is “not like reflections in a mirror or the moon in water.” In what sense? What does this warning mean, and why does he offer it?

Think of the nature of a reflection. It’s two dimensional. The mirror or the water is passive and separate, reflecting something outside.

If we act like a mirror, we may be very still, clear, empty of self-concern and perceiving things in a very objective way, but there is still a sense that there’s an “I” that’s observing, perceiving, or reflecting the universe “out there.” Although what we reflect may be beautiful and grand, it’s only one side, just as a reflective surface like a mirror or water reflects only one side of something.

Instead, as I described in an earlier class (#4: The Nature of Awakening), “In the moment of prajna, or enlightenment, we all participate in this reality together. This reality includes unity and difference at the same time.” In a moment of total absorption, when we truly “intuit dharmas intimately,” there is no sense of that “I” am reflecting or intuiting. All beings and things awaken with you, through you, and you through them.

Now we get to the line that has always been troublesome to me: “When one side is illuminated, the other is dark.”

I think many people see this sentence as saying that when we “see forms or hear sounds while fully engaging body-and-mind” and “intuit dharmas intimately,” there is no sense of separation in that moment, therefore the “self” and relative reality is in the dark, or not perceptible. Presumably then, the opposite is true: when we experience a sense of self and operate in the relative world, the absolute is in the dark, or not perceptible. After all, unlike the reflection in a mirror, life is three-dimensional, so there is always a side you’re not seeing. You’re either “in” the relative, or you’re “in” the absolute.

This line of the Genjokoan has always bothered me because of this interpretation. It seems very dualistic to me, as if we’re doomed to be separate from a unified experience of reality as long as we have any sense of self, or as long as we want to operate in the relative world.

Even if this is not what various authors and teachers have meant in their commentaries, this is an interpretation carried – consciously or unconsciously – by many Zen students: We figure that our lives will be mostly “spent” in the relative, nourished by vague memories of our past experiences of the absolute. Then, at certain times, we get the opportunity to “switch modes” and try to tap into the absolute – understanding, of course, that “we” won’t even really be there to experience it.

Dogen’s Zen has got to be deeper than that, doesn’t it? Because of my intuition that it is,  I have to depart from the dualistic interpretation described above. I could be wrong, but I am interpreting this based on my own sense of the Dharma, as opposed to claiming some scholarly understanding of what Dogen meant.

I think Nishiari might have agreed with me. He interprets the meaning of “dark” in a non-dualistic way, taking it to refer to “all things merging in darkness.” In Zen, dark often signifies the absolute, or non-differentiated reality; in this case Nishiari seems to be proposing that when you intimately intuit, there is no “other side:”

“When we intuit that the self and outer realm are not two, but one, there is not a second person throughout heaven and earth. When we illuminate one side, the dharmadhatu [the realm of the absolute] becomes one side, the ten directions [all directions, or everything everywhere] become dark and all collapse.”

He continues, suggesting that through our limited, one-sided illumination we can touch the infinite:

“This one side merges with all dharmas in darkness and there is nothing left out. It’s called dark. One dharma comprehends myriad dharmas in darkness.”

All of Dogen’s teaching, all of the Genjokoan, all of our practice is fundamentally about this paradoxical nature of our existence: How we realize, actualize, and live in harmony with the absolute as a limited being.  Not in spite of our limited being. Not once we transcend our limited being. Not only when we give up our limited being. Not when we discover an alternative, unlimited being. We remain a limited being and we awaken to how, simultaneously, all things are Being and there are no real boundaries around or within Being.

So, what does this mean to our practice? It means we can rely on the fact that we are not cut off from the absolute just because we manifest as a person. In a moment of wholehearted participation in reality, the self is there; it still has a limited view, but by its wholehearted participation it realizes the whole of reality through just what it can see and experience and know. This “self,” of course, is not the conventional self that is defined by our relationships and details and is actually fairly easy to forget. It’s the Self that lies underneath that – the Self that wonders about existence and absolute reality.

We don’t have wait until we’ve managed to get rid of to get rid of our sense of Self in order to intuit dharmas intimately with our whole body-and-mind. So we’d better get busy.

Click here to read Domyo’s entire series of commentaries on the Genjokoan.

Genjokoan #5: What is the Nature of Awakening?

by Domyo Burk | Jul 22, 2015 | Understanding: Fundamental Teachings to Investigate

[From the Genjokoan:] Those who greatly realize delusion are buddhas. Those who are greatly deluded in realization are living beings. Furthermore, there are those who attain realization beyond realization and those who are deluded within delusion. When buddhas are truly buddhas they don’t need to perceive they are buddhas; however, they are enlightened buddhas and they continue actualizing buddha.

Those who greatly realize delusion are buddhas.

Buddhas are awakened beings. We wonder what buddhas are like, and what awakening is life. We imagine that if we are awakened we will “wake up to” some great reality that’s different from the reality we already know. We imagine we’ll see in what way everything is perfect just as it is, or how all is one and we are not separate from anything, and therefore we’ll feel inspired to shed our egocentricity and self-concern.

But in a moment of awakening there is only awakening to the way we obscure reality from ourselves – therefore each person’s path is their own, and unique. We are not awakening to a great abstract philosophical view, we are waking up from our own self-imposed dream.

Those who are greatly deluded in realization are living beings.

There is a difference in our subjective experience in a moment of awakening, and in a moment when we are just a living being – that is, caught up in believing in our self-imposed dream. This is being greatly deluded. Sometimes the dream is pleasant, sometimes it’s not.

And yet even when we are deluded we are in realization. What does this mean? If we don’t realize, what does it mean to be in realization, and what good does it do us? Who is realizing what?

If in the moment of awakening there is no one to realize – there is just life as it is, a complete whole – realization is not something that happens to people. It’s simply true reality. It doesn’t really make sense to talk about “being in” realization this way, with no one to realize, but because of true reality there always exists the potential of realization. We are constantly surrounded by the stuff of realization.

This is like the old Buddhist story of the man with the jewel sewn inside his cloak. While he’s sleeping at a friend’s house, the host sews a valuable jewel into his cloak. The cloaked man then wanders for many years, slipping into deep poverty and despondency. Eventually he visits his friend again, only to have the friend show him how was carrying wealth with him all the time, sewn into his cloak. The man had lived as if he was poor even though he was wealthy. There was a big difference in his subjective experience before and after realizing his wealth, but the reality had not changed.

When we are living in poverty despite the jewel in our coats, we are living beings. This is not pejorative, it’s just an observation.

Furthermore, there are those who attain realization beyond realization and those who are deluded within delusion.

Dogen can’t be satisfied with a tidy analogy. If he left us with buddhas realizing delusion and living beings being deluded about, or in, realization, that would be too easy. We’d fall into dualistic thinking, wondering if we’re really awake or not, or whether we’ve found the jewel in our cloak or not. Am I a living being at this moment, or a buddha? Oh, I guess if I’m thinking about it, I’m a living being.

So he goes further: the moment we become aware of awakening, we inhabit the world of living beings again. Just being, moment after moment, is realization beyond realization.

And then we may pity ourselves because we’re just living beings at any given moment, but if we know there are moments of awakening, we are not completely deluded. At other times we are lost in delusion and believe that’s all there is in life – this is being deluded within delusion.

When buddhas are truly buddhas they don’t need to perceive they are buddhas;

This is really about what we hope for: that we will reach oneness or awakening or whatever and be able to know it – to contrast our experience as a buddha with that of our experience as a living being and say, “Oh, this is much better.” When we are living beings we imagine that when we manage to become buddhas we will be fundamentally better people, or in possession of something special.  But this is not the nature of awakening.

However, we don’t need to perceive we are buddhas, or awakened, in order for buddhahood or awakening to be wonderful, essential, and worthwhile. That’s all we care about, after all. This is why Dogen says need, not just “they don’t perceive they are buddhas” – which is also true, but not the point here, because:

however,[even though they do not perceive they are buddhas] they are enlightened buddhas and they continue actualizing buddha.

Somehow, being awakened does not involve a consciousness of being awakened, but there is still awakening. Think about this. How can this be? How can we be awake without having a sense that “I” am awake? Sometimes we lose our sense of self-consciousness in activity, entertainment, or thinking, but then we cannot be said to be awake in this liberative sense.

How can we be awake – engaged, aware, alive, ready – without self-consciousness? This is our koan, or the big question in our Zen practice. We explore this question for ourselves in our zazen, in retreats, in our daily lives. It’s because this question is so central that we study the Genjokoan.

Click here to read Domyo’s entire series of commentaries on the Genjokoan.

Genjokoan #3: Mahayana Teachings and Dogen’s Take on the Great Matter

by Domyo Burk | Jul 22, 2015 | Understanding: Fundamental Teachings to Investigate

[From the Genjokoan:] When the ten thousand dharmas are without [fixed] self, there is no delusion and no realization, no buddhas and no living beings, no birth and no death. Since the Buddha Way by nature goes beyond [the dichotomy of] abundance and deficiency, there is arising and perishing, delusion and realization, living beings and buddhas.

“When the ten thousand dharmas are without [fixed] self, there is no delusion and no realization, no buddhas and no living beings, no birth and no death” refers to the Mahayana teachings which arose some time later in the development of Buddhism. The Mahayana approach developed long before it was a separate sect – it tried to point practitioners back to the experiential and phenomenological reality of Buddhism. Why?

It’s easy to imagine, isn’t it, that we as a community could enshrine the Buddhist concepts of impermanence, no-self, and disatisfactoriness, and imbue them with self-nature, permanence, or as Okumura says, make them into “irrefutable truths.”

Imagine us correcting and editing one another: “Oh, don’t do that, that’s just being attached!” Or “Of course, I shouldn’t really care because everything is impermanent.” We could start to vilify “desire” of any kind, or withdraw from life because it’s just a source of samsara, or get self-righteous with the people we know who don’t practice.

We could/can, essentially, end up using the Buddhadharma as tool of self – making the self more comfortable, more sure, more immune from emotional difficulty, more superior to all those ordinary attached beings suffering in samsara.

Phenomenology is “an approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience.”
“Emptiness” points more toward how all things are impermanent and ultimately ungraspable, even ideas, experiences, etc. In the absolute present, there is no buddhadharma, no four noble truths, etc. – these are concepts we create and use and pass down through the generations because they are useful, but they aren’t it. This is why Dogen states the Mahayana view in the second sentence of the Genjokoan.

However, we can mess up the Mahayana view too! We can take refuge in the formless aspect of the present moment and fail to commit to anything, to express the truth, to act compassionately. So Dogen adds the third sentence, “Since the Buddha Way by nature goes beyond [the dichotomy of] abundance and deficiency, there is arising and perishing, delusion and realization, living beings and buddhas.” Essentially, “Yeah, yeah, but there’s still life, isn’t there?”

Notice that although Dogen states three approaches to the teaching at the beginning of Genjokoan, no level refutes the previous, it just clarifies it and reminds us not to get stuck.

Beware of thinking you will have prajna (insight/wisdom/enlightenment) about life, or that insight into emptiness is a thing you reach for, attain, or possess. Instead, it’s a unfolding relationship with all things, which happen to be empty.

My potential attachment to Bright Way, continued: I talked earlier about how I can be liberated from samsara if I don’t think my life depends on my relationship with Bright Way. So, let’s say I sit and practice and study and try not to be attached. I conceive of a liberated way I want to be, an enlightened way I want to interact with the world.

I hold myself apart, taking care with my thoughts, actions, and emotions so I don’t get sucked into samsara. (Although some of us are actually better at doing this than others – many of us simply get sucked in anyway start to feel discouraged, or like we’re a failure, etc.). In either case, life becomes a struggle, and a self-interested struggle.

(It also doesn’t help to just stop practicing, because impermanence, no-self, and dukkha are true.)

So what do we do? How do we enact Dogen’s teaching, and avoid getting caught in either trap? To continue my example, I realize my liberation is constantly enacted in this daily dance of life; I only know emptiness because there are things and people and experiences that are empty, I only know non-attachment because I have loved, gotten attached and let go. Even in a moment of perfect liberation it’s experienced through my body, the floor, the light, the context.

First I give up resistance to impermanence and no-self, and this is liberating. Then I give up resistance to the ungraspable nature of liberation, letting go of setting myself up in opposition to samsara. Then I turn toward all of existence – including struggle, suffering, delusion – as inseparable from the Great Reality I want to know intimately.

Click here to read Domyo’s entire series of commentaries on the Genjokoan.

Genjokoan #2: The Basic Buddhist Teachings

by Domyo Burk | Jul 22, 2015 | Understanding: Fundamental Teachings to Investigate

[From the Genjokoan:] When all dharmas are the Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, life and death, buddhas and living beings.

Okumura explains that the first sentence here refers to the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha – basic Buddhism, in other words.

To begin, then, let’s explore why the original Buddhist teachings are liberating. Essentially, they teach us that all things are impermanent, without an inherent, enduring self-nature, and therefore that no permanent refuge can be found in them. To seek happiness and refuge in the things of the world leads to dukkha, or a sense disatisfactoriness that can be acute or subtle. The original Buddhist teachings also give us practices for realizing this for ourselves at a deep level. But why does this help, anyway?

Basically, we want to live. It’s in our cells. We want to exist, stay alive, not die, not end. (As long as we are mentally and physically healthy, that is.) This in itself is not a problem. Animals and plants are the same, and they don’t experience dukkha. Why do we?

Because we have self-consciousness, which is really consciousness of time. We are aware of ourselves as beings who exist through time, and we are aware that beings – and all things – are impermanent and subject to change, decay, death. We naturally become very concerned about ourselves and our existence, whether we realize it or not. We want to stay alive, and know we are alive.

To feel substantial, we collect possessions, power, relationships. To feel alive we seek excitement, intimacy, novelty, beauty. To feel safe we seek understanding and control. To feel effective and powerful, we seek activities and work that affirm our abilities and worth. To feel spiritually connected to something greater – and therefore, perhaps, not quite so vulnerable or impermanent, we seek insights, equanimity, and profound experiences.

These are the activities of daily life, so what’s wrong with them? Simply that we cause ourselves suffering when we believe our life depends on them. All of these things are impermanent and elusive; if we take refuge in them we are doomed to samsara (the cycle of sometimes being on the top of the world, sometimes on the bottom).

We don’t have to live this way if we have insight into impermanence and no-self, but what does it really mean to have insight into impermanence and no-self?  Clearly, mere intellectual acceptance of this – while helpful at a certain level – isn’t liberating in any way that would inspire you to use the word “nirvana.” This insight has to be real, experiential, and personal…

My own personal example: I feel a great joy at being of service to our Zen community, Bright Way. It gives my life meaning, a deeper purpose, and it’s rewarding on a daily basis. However, if I feel my life depends on my relationship to Bright Way, I invite suffering:

• worry about whether it will grow and thrive
• possessiveness of it – it needs to continue to need me
• excitement when things go well, disappointment when things go poorly
• devastation in case of loss (unforeseen things like health issues, or eventual old age and death)
• occasionally it’s not going to be enough to make me happy – then what?

Fortunately, I am familiar with another way of being: not resisting the facts of impermanence and no-self. Over years and practice and hours and hours of zazen, I have looked carefully inwards and built up the courage to really experience the naked self in zazen – moment to moment, without reliance on anything, only experience, only life itself. I have gradually gotten more comfortable with the phenomenological experience of impermanence, and learned gradually to relax into it, to take refuge in it.

When I do so, there is liberation from samsara (moment by moment) because I know my True Life does not depend on anything. We ordinarily think our life is contained in this body and mind, that it’s intimately tied to the well-being and happiness of the conventional self (if I am happy, empowered, safe, free, etc., my life is good and I don’t have to worry, but if I am stressed, sad, depressed, facing failure or difficulty, oppressed, etc., my life is under threat).

All of these things affect us and the quality of our life (they are, as Uchiyama Roshi would say, the “scenery of our life”), but when we stop conceiving of a self “here” that wants or must endure that “over there,” there is no longer a sense of vulnerability. We ride the waves instead of holding desperately to a rock and getting buffeted by them.

Click here to read Domyo’s entire series of commentaries on the Genjokoan.