Showing posts with label Zazen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zazen. Show all posts

 Shikantaza and Zazen


Recently many people who conversed with me had breakthroughs. It is my belief that each one of us, especially those who knows and have insight, have a duty to share with others.


One of them I spoke to broke through from I AM and one mind to the anatta realization. See: Michael’s Breakthrough http://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2022/09/michaels-breakthrough.html . I offered some advise and recommended him to join his nearby Zen center of John Daido Loori’s lineage (located in New Zealand). I also recommended him to read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Just-Sitting-Essential-Shikantaza-ebook/dp/B003XF1LJI/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?crid=1NMJP6T3CH3M&keywords=john+daido+loori&qid=1663042731&sprefix=john+daido+loori%2Caps%2C624&sr=8-5


An excerpt from the book:


HONGZHI, DOGEN AND THE BACKGROUND OF SHIKANTAZA

Feb 21, 2019 | Articles

Taigen Dan Leighton


Preface to the book, The Art of Just Sitting, edited by Daido Loori, Wisdom Publications, 2002

One way to categorize the meditation practice of shikan taza, or “just sitting,” is as an objectless meditation. This is a definition in terms of what it is not. One just sits, not concentrating on any particular object of awareness, unlike most traditional meditation practices, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, that involve intent focus on a particular object. Such objects traditionally have included colored disks, candle flames, various aspects of breath, incantations, ambient sound, physical sensations or postures, spiritual figures, mandalas including geometric arrangements of such figures, or of symbols representing them, teaching stories, or key phrases from such stories. Some of these concentration practices are in the background of the shikan taza practice tradition, or have been included with shikan taza in its actual lived experience by practitioners.


But objectless meditation focuses on clear, non-judgmental, panoramic attention to all of the myriad arising phenomena in the present experience. Such objectless meditation is a potential universally available to conscious beings, and has been expressed at various times in history. This just sitting is not a meditation technique or practice, or any thing at all. “Just sitting” is a verb rather than a noun, the dynamic activity of being fully present.

The specific practice experience of shikan taza was first articulated in the Soto Zen lineage (Caodong in Chinese) by the Chinese master Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157; Wanshi Shogaku in Japanese),and further elaborated by the Japanese Soto founder Eihei Dogen (1200-1253). But prior to their expressions of this experience, there are hints of this practice in some of the earlier teachers of the tradition. The founding teachers of this lineage run from Shitou Xiqian (700-790; Sekito Kisen in Japanese), two generations after the Chinese Sixth Ancestor, through three generations to Dongshan Liangjie (807-869; Tozan Ryokai in Japanese), the usually recognized founder of the Caodong, or Soto, lineage in China. I will briefly mention a couple of these early practice intimations in their Soto lineage context before discussing the expressions of Hongzhi and Dogen.


Shitou/ Sekito is most noted for his teaching poem Sandokai, “Harmony of Difference and Sameness,” still frequently chanted in Soto Zen. Sandokai presents the fundamental dialectic between the polarity of the universal ultimate and the phenomenal particulars. This dialectic, derived by Shitou from Chinese Huayan thought based on the “Flower Ornament” Avatamsaka Sutra, combined with some use of Daoist imagery, became the philosophical background of Soto, as expressed by Dongshan in the five ranks teachings, and later elucidated by various Soto thinkers. But Shitou wrote another teaching poem, Soanka, “Song of the Grass Hut,” which presents more of a practice model for how to develop the space that fosters just sitting. Therein Shitou says, “Just sitting with head covered all things are at rest. Thus this mountain monk does not understand at all.”[1]So just sitting does not involve reaching some understanding. It is the subtle activity of allowing all things to be completely at rest just as they are, not poking one’s head into the workings of the world.

Shitou also says in Soanka, “Turn around the light to shine within, then just return. . . . Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk, innocent.” According to Shitou, the fundamental orientation of turning within, also later described by Hongzhi and Dogen, is simply in order to return to the world, and to our original quality. Letting go of conditioning while steeped in completely relaxed awareness, one is able to act effectively, innocent of grasping and attachments. So the context of this just sitting suggested by Shitou is the possibility of aware and responsive presence that is simple, open-hearted, and straightforward.


When discussing zazen, Dogen regularly quotes a saying by Shitou’s successor, Yaoshan Weiyan (745-828; Yakusan Igen in Japanese). A monk asked Yaoshan what he thought of while sitting so still and steadfastly. Yaoshan replied that he thought of not-thinking, or that he thought of that which does not think. When the monk asked how Yaoshan did that, he responded, “Beyond -thinking,” or, “Non-thinking.” This is a state of awareness that can include both cognition and the absence of thought, and is not caught up in either. Dogen calls this, “The essential art of zazen.”[2]

These early accounts would indicate that there was already a context of Caodong/ Soto practitioners “just sitting” well before Hongzhi and Dogen. The Soto lineage almost died out in China a century before Hongzhi, but was revived by Touzi Yiqing (1032-1083; Tosu Gisei in Japanese), who brought a background in Huayan studies to enliven Soto philosophy. Touzi’s successor, Furong Daokai (1043-1118; Fuyo Dokai in Japanese) was a model of integrity who solidified and developed the forms for the Soto monastic community. It remained for Hongzhi, two generations after Furong Daokai, to fully express Soto praxis. Hongzhi, easily the most prominent Soto teacher in the twelfth century, was a literary giant, a highly prolific, elegant, and evocative writer who comprehensively articulated this meditation practice for the first time.


Hongzhi does not use the actual term, “just sitting,” which Dogen quotes instead from his own Soto lineage teacher Tiantong Rujing (1163-1228; Tendo Nyojo in Japanese). But Tiantong Monastery, where Dogen studied with Rujing in 1227, was the same temple where Hongzhi had been abbot for almost thirty years up to his death in 1157. Dogen refers to Hongzhi as an “Ancient Buddha,” and frequently quotes him, especially from his poetic writings on meditative experience. Clearly the meditative awareness that Hongzhi writes about was closely related to Dogen’s meditation, although Dogen developed its dynamic orientation in his own writings about just sitting.


Hongzhi’s meditation teaching is usually referred to as “silent, or serene, illumination,” although Hongzhi actually uses this term only a few times in his voluminous writings. In his long poem, “Silent Illumination,” Hongzhi emphasizes the necessity for balance between serenity and illumination, which echoes the traditional Buddhist meditation practice of shamatha-vipashyana, or stopping and insight. This was called zhiguan in the Chinese Tiantai meditation system expounded by the great Chinese Buddhist synthesizer Zhiyi (538-597). Hongzhi emphasizes the necessity for active insight as well as calm in “Silent Illumination” when he says, “If illumination neglects serenity then aggressiveness appears. . . . If serenity neglects illumination, murkiness leads to wasted dharma.”[3]So Hongzhi’s meditation values the balancing of both stopping, or settling the mind, and its active illuminating functioning.


In his prose writings, Hongzhi frequently uses nature metaphors to express the natural simplicity of the lived experience of silent illumination or just sitting. (I am generally using these terms interchangeably, except when discussing differences in their usages by Hongzhi or Dogen.) An example of Hongzhi’s nature writing is,

A person of the Way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere. The white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain’s foundation. The bright moon cherishes being carried along with the flowing water. The clouds part and the mountains appear. The moon sets and the water is cool. Each bit of autumn contains vast interpenetration without bounds.[4]


Hongzhi here highlights the ease of this awareness and its function. Like the flow of water and clouds, the mind can move smoothly to flow in harmony with its environment. “Accord and respond without laboring and accomplish without hindrance. Everywhere turn around freely, not following conditions, not falling into classifications.”[5]

In many places, Hongzhi provides specific instructions about how to manage one’s sense perceptions so as to allow the vital presence of just sitting. “Respond unencumbered to each speck of dust without becoming its partner. The subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds.”[6] Again he suggests, “Casually mount the sounds and straddle the colors while you transcend listening and surpass watching.”[7]This does not indicate a presence that is oblivious to the surrounding sense world. But while the practitioner remains aware, sense phenomena do not become objects of attachment, or objectified at all.


Another aspect of Hongzhi’s practice is that it is objectless not only in terms of letting go of concentration objects, but also objectless in the sense of avoiding any specific, limited goals or objectives. As Hongzhi says at the end of “Silent Illumination,” “Transmit it to all directions without desiring to gain credit.”[8]This serene illumination, or just sitting, is not a technique, or a means to some resulting higher state of consciousness, or any particular state of being. Just sitting, one simply meets the immediate present. Desiring some flashy experience, or anything more or other than “this” is mere worldly vanity and craving. Again invoking empty nature, Hongzhi says, “Fully appreciate the emptiness of all dharmas. Then all minds are free and all dusts evaporate in the original brilliance shining everywhere. . . . Clear and desireless, the wind in the pines and the moon in the water are content in their elements.”[9]

This non-seeking quality of Hongzhi’s meditation eventually helped make it controversial. The leading contemporary teacher in the much more prominent Linji lineage (Japanese Rinzai) was Dahui Zonggao (1089-1163; Daie Soko in Japanese). A popular historical stereotype is that Dahui and Hongzhi were rivals, debating over silent illumination meditation as opposed to Dahui’s Koan Introspection meditation teaching. Historians have now established that Hongzhi and Dahui were actually good friends, or at least had high mutual esteem, and sent students to each other. There was no such debate, at least until future generations of their successors, although Dahui did severely critique “silent illumination” practice as being quietistic and damaging to Zen. However, Dahui clearly was not criticizing Hongzhi himself, but rather, some of his followers, and possibly Hongzhi’s Dharma brother, Changlu Qingliao (1089-1151; Choryo Seiryo in Japanese), from whom Dogen’s lineage descends.[10]


Dahui’s criticism of silent illumination was partly valid, based on the legitimate danger of practitioners misunderstanding this approach as quietistic or passive. Dahui’s critique was echoed centuries later by Japanese Rinzai critics of just sitting, such as Hakuin in the seventeenth century. Just sitting can indeed sometimes degenerate into dull attachment to inner bliss states, with no responsiveness to the suffering of the surrounding world. Hongzhi clarifies that this is not the intention of his practice, for example when he says, “In wonder return to the journey, avail yourself of the path and walk ahead. . . . With the hundred grass tips in the busy marketplace graciously share yourself.”[11]The meditation advocated by both Hongzhi and Dogen is firmly rooted in the bodhisattva path and its liberative purpose of assisting and awakening beings. Mere idle indulgence in peacefulness and bliss is not the point.


The other aspect of Dahui’s criticism related to his own advocacy of meditation focusing on koans as meditation objects, explicitly aimed at generating flashy opening experiences. Such experiences may occur in just sitting practice as well, but generally have been less valued in the Soto tradition. The purpose of Buddhist practice is universal awakening, not dramatic experiences of opening any more than passive states of serenity. But contrary to another erroneous stereotype, use of koans has been widespread in Soto teaching as well as Rinzai.


Hongzhi himself created two collections of koans with his comments, one of which was the basis for the important anthology, the Book of Serenity. Dogen also created koan collections, and (ironically, considering his reputation as champion of just sitting meditation) far more of his voluminous writing, including the essays of his masterwork Shobogenzo, “True Dharma Eye Treasury,” is devoted to commentary on koans than to discussion of meditation. Dogen was actually instrumental in introducing the koan literature to Japan, and his writings demonstrate a truly amazing mastery of the depths and breadth of the range of that literature in China. Steven Heine’s modern work, Dogen and the Koan Tradition, clearly demonstrates how Dogen actually developed koan practice in new expansive modes that differed from Dahui’s concentrated approach.[12]Although Hongzhi and Dogen, and most of the traditional Soto tradition, did not develop a formal koan meditation curriculum as did Dahui, Hakuin, and much of the Rinzai tradition, the koan stories have remained a prominent context for Soto teaching. Conversely, just sitting has often been part of Rinzai practice, such that some Soto monks in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries went to Rinzai masters for training in just sitting.


Although a great deal of Dogen’s writing focuses on commentary on koans and sutras, and on monastic practice expressions, the practice of just sitting is clearly in the background throughout his teaching career. Dogen builds on the descriptions of Hongzhi to emphasize the dynamic function of just sitting.


In one of his first essays, Bendowa, “Talk on Wholehearted Practice of the Way,” written in 1231 a few years after his return from training in China, Dogen describes this meditation as the samadhi of self-fulfillment (or enjoyment), and elaborates the inner meaning of this practice. Simply just sitting is expressed as concentration on the self in its most delightful wholeness, in total inclusive interconnection with all of phenomena. Dogen makes remarkably radical claims for this simple experience. “When one displays the buddha mudra with one’s whole body and mind, sitting upright in this samadhi for even a short time, everything in the entire dharma world becomes buddha mudra, and all space in the universe completely becomes enlightenment.”[13]Proclaiming that when one just sits all of space itself becomes enlightenment is an inconceivable statement, deeply challenging our usual sense of the nature of reality, whether we take Dogen’s words literally or metaphorically. Dogen places this activity of just sitting far beyond our usual sense of personal self or agency. He goes on to say that, “Even if only one person sits for a short time, because this zazen is one with all existence and completely permeates all times, it performs everlasting buddha guidance” throughout space and time.[14]At least in Dogen’s faith in the spiritual or “theological” implications of the activity of just sitting, this is clearly a dynamically liberating practice, not mere blissful serenity.


Through his writings, Dogen gives ample indication as to how to engage this just sitting. In another noted early writing, Genjokoan, “Actualizing the Fundamental Point,” from 1233, Dogen gives a clear description of the existential stance of just sitting, “To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.”[15]That we are conditioned to project our own conceptions onto the world as a dead object-screen is the cause of suffering. When all of phenomena (including what we usually think of as “ours”) join in mutual self-experience and expression, the awakened awareness that Hongzhi described through nature metaphors is present, doing buddha’s work, as Dogen says.


Some modern Dogen scholars have emphasized the shift in his later teaching to the importance of strict monastic practice, and supposedly away from the universal applicability of shikan taza practice. In 1243 Dogen moved his community far from the capital of Kyoto to the snowy north coast mountains, where he established his monastery, Eiheiji. His teaching thereafter, until his death in 1253, was mostly in the form of often brief talks to his monks, presented in Eihei Koroku, “Dogen’s Extensive Record.” These are certainly focused on training a core of dedicated monks to preserve his practice tradition, a mission he fulfilled with extraordinary success. But through his later work as well as the early, instructions and encouragements to just sit appear regularly.

In 1251 Dogen was still proclaiming,

The family style of all buddhas and ancestors is to engage the way in zazen. My late teacher Tiantong [Rujing] said, “Cross-legged sitting is the dharma of ancient buddhas. . . . In just sitting it is finally accomplished.” . . . We should engage the way in zazen as if extinguishing flames from our heads. Buddhas and ancestors, generation after generation, face to face transmit the primacy of zazen.[16]


In 1249 he exhorted his monks, “We should know that zazen is the decorous activity of practice after realization. Realization is simply just sitting zazen. . . . Brothers on this mountain, you should straightforwardly, single-mindedly focus on zazen.” (319) For Dogen, all of enlightenment is fully expressed in the ongoing practice of just sitting. That same year, he gave a straightforward instruction for just sitting:


Great assembly, do you want to hear the reality of just sitting, which is the Zen practice that is dropping off body and mind?


After a pause [Dogen] said: Mind cannot objectify it; thinking cannot describe it. Just step back and carry on, and avoid offending anyone you face. At the ancient dock, the wind and moon are cold and clear. At night the boat floats peacefully in the land of lapis lazuli.(337)


The concluding two sentences of this talk are quoted from a poem by Hongzhi, further revealing the continuity of their practice teachings. Dogen also frequently describes this just sitting as “dropping away body and mind,” shinjin datsuraku in Japanese, a phrase traditionally associated with Dogen’s awakening experience in China.[17]

For Dogen this “dropping off body and mind” is the true nature both of just sitting and of complete enlightenment, and is the ultimate letting go of self, directly meeting the cold, clear wind and moon. After turning within while just sitting, it is carried on in all activity, and throughout ongoing engagement with the world. Although just sitting now has been maintained for 750 years since Dogen, the teachings of Hongzhi and Dogen remain as primary guideposts to its practice.


Endnotes:

1. Shitou does not use the words for “shikan taza,” but the reference to the iconic image of Bodhidharma just sitting, or “wall-gazing” in his cold cave with quilt over his head is unquestionable. For “Soanka” see Taigen Dan Leighton, with Yi Wu, trans., Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi, revised, expanded edition (Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 2000), pp. 72-73.

2. In Dogen’s Fukanzazengi; see Kazuaki Tanahashi, editor, Enlightenment Unfolds: The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen(Boston: Shambhala, 1999), p. 55; or the groundbreaking translation by Norman Waddell and Masao Abe later in this book.

3. Leighton, Cultivating the Empty Field, pp. 67-68 (reprinted in this book). For more on Hongzhi and his meditation teaching, see also Morton Schlutter, “Silent Illumination, Kung-an Introspection, and the Competition for Lay Patronage in Sung Dynasty Ch’an” in Peter Gregory and Daniel Getz, editors, Buddhism in the Sung(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999), pp. 109-147.

4. Leighton, Cultivating the Empty Field, pp. 41-42.

5. Ibid., p. 31.

6. Ibid., p. 30

7. Ibid., p. 55.

8. Ibid., p. 68.

9. Ibid., p. 43.

10.Schlutter, “Silent Illumination, Kung-an Introspection” in Gregory and Getz, Buddhism in the Sung, pp. 109-110.

11. Leighton, Cultivating the Empty Field, p. 55.

12. Steven Heine, Dogen and the Koan Tradition: A Tale of Two Shobogenzo Texts(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).

13. Shohaku Okumura and Taigen Dan Leighton, trans. The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen’s Bendowa with Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi(Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1997), p. 22.

14. Ibid., p. 23.

15. Kazuaki Tananhashi, editor, Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen(New York: North Point Press, division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1985, p. 69.

16. Eihei Koroku, Dharma Discourse 432, from Taigen Dan Leighton and Shohaku Okumura, trans. Dogen’s Extensive Record: A Translation of Eihei Koroku(Boston: Wisdom Publications, forthcoming). All later quotes from Eihei Koroku in this preface are from this translation, identified in the text after the quote by Dharma Discourse number.

17. See Leighton, Cultivating the Empty Field, pp. 20-23; reprinted later in this book.

 

More than halfway through this series. Good talks, highly recommend.
第一講 學道用心集-可發菩提心事 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIkhnoG2V4E
第二講 學道用心集-見聞正法必可修習事、佛道必依行可證入事 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvj8_CQxOlg
第三講 學道用心集-用有所得心不可修佛法事 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y5fgytWccE
第四講 學道用心集-參禪學道可求正師事 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXN6mRIEmLY&t=856s
第五講 學道用心集-參禪可知事 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwKxxqNbPEk


Also all the other videos by him are great, some are short clips:

 
 

 


    Kyle Dixon told me Zen teacher Meido Moore Roshi is very clear about the view based on a teaching he attended.
    Also, Kyle:
    Meido Moore Roshi, who has posted here in the past is very clear on the view, and though I’m not clairvoyant, and he is very modest, his presentation and understanding of the path are indicative of someone with some degree of genuine insight or realization.
    Certainly a reliable resource as far as Zen goes.
    ……
    Soh: Also a piece of info for everyone:
    Meido Moore is the admin of Rinzai Zen Discussion group. Anyone interested should join.

    3 Comments


  • Kyoshu Okan Özaydin
    If you're interested in Rinzai practice, while this teacher isn't the Omori Sogen lineage like Meido Moore, she's from an extremely potent lineage, Yamada Mumon and Shodo Harada.
    DECEMBER 4th (SATURDAY) OFFERING: INTRODUCTION TO MEDITATION HALF-DAY-WORKSHOP, 9am~11:30am PT, in person and via zoom. (NO 5:30am sitting that day!) zoom: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/9147221372 -Meeting ID: 914 722 1372; Passcode: zazen
    ---Join us for a thorough introduction to the practice, try it out, ask all your questions and share with fellow travelers. We'll end with plenty of time for questions and discussion.
    If you are joining online, donations are very much appreciated and you are helping us continue our work for the benefit of all. It is advised to wear comfortable, preferably dark clothing that covers shoulders and knees. After the introduction you are welcome to join our daily sittings...
    Since this difficult time effects every ones state of mind, meditation is one of the suggested ways to ground and center ourselves within, finding release and stability in the here and now.
    US04WEB.ZOOM.US
    Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting
    Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting
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  • Soh Wei Yu
    Author
    Admin
    Also a piece of info for everyone:
    Meido Moore is the admin of Rinzai Zen Discussion group. Anyone interested should join.

    • Reply
    • 2h

  • Soh Wei Yu
    Author
    Admin
    Here's the course Kyle attended but I think it passed, took place 4 days ago,
    "Did an accessing samādhi through the senses teaching with Meido Moore Roshi, was quite good
    ...
    Live Workshop: Entering Samadhi Through the Senses
    INNER-CRAFT.COM
    Live Workshop: Entering Samadhi Through the Senses
    Live Workshop: Entering Samadhi Through the Senses

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  • Nads Ross Jones
    Roshi’s Monastery Patreon - great content on here
     
     
     
     
      Tyler Jones
      I've gotten a lot out of Meido Roshi's offerings, and am just impressed with him generally on many levels. He teaches a very complete path. As for "clear about the view" in the AtR sense, the various deepening of awakening seems to be dealt with in the context of koan training, which is not talked about openly. In particular, I've never seen him express a substantialist understanding of nonduality or a nonsubstantialist understanding, because espousing a precise philosophical view is just not how his lineages goes about things.

    • Reply

    • 1d

Soh: "...Even in Zen there are stages of enlightenment - the Ten Oxherding Pictures https://terebess.hu/english/oxherding.html (this webpage has the best commentaries on the old text by a modern Zen master yet) and Tozan's Five Ranks http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2008/02/tozan-ryokais-verses-on-five-ranks.html for example.

And in Mahayana there are the 10 bhumis, in Dzogchen there is the Four Visions, in Mahamudra there is the Four Yogas, in Theravada there is the Four Paths to Arahantship, so on and so forth.

Different Buddhist traditions have different approaches to triggering insights. Likewise, in Zen, there are different categories of koan triggering different level of insights -- From direct realization of the Absolute to the full integration of the Absolute and Relative. The experience derived from the koan “before birth who are you?” only allows the initial realization of our nature. It is also not the same as the Hakuin’s koan of “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”, and others. The five categories of koan in Zen ranges from hosshin that give practitioner the first glimpse of ultimate reality to five-ranks that aims to awaken practitioner the spontaneous unity of relative and absolute..."


Mr A said:
"So here's my question, how can you speak of stages when Zen is the school of instant enlightenment?"


Soh replied:

"Nobody denies instantaneous awakening.

But awakening is not an end. Usually it's just Thusness Stage 1 realization, or the First Rank of Tozan. It needs to be matured and deepened.

"Nice explanation. Meido Moore, who is a Rinzai Zen master says the same, he writes: 'From a practice standpoint, the crucial point is contained in the words, "one should just constantly activate correct views in one’s own mind." This has nothing to do with theoretical certainty that defilements are empty and do not bind; it refers to the seamless, sustained upwelling of the unity of samadhi/prajna. Departing from but then returning to this, again and again, describes the post-awakening practice to dissolve jikke. If one experiences departure from this samadhi, even for a moment, the path is not completed at all. If one does not know what is actually meant by that samadhi, then even with kensho the path is still barely begun in terms of actualization.' This process, dovetailing the “sudden” and “gradual” is identical for Dzogchen and Mahāmudrā as well." - Kyle Dixon, 2021

Meido Moore also said,

"In Rinzai practice, the process of establishing continuity is what is meant by practice of Hokyo Zanmai (jewel mirror samadhi) and Sho Hen Ego Zanmai (alternating samadhi of sameness and difference), taken up well after the initial awakening. Once the meaning of these is penetrated within sanzen (encounter with the teacher), the traditional instruction is to secretly practice them for a minimum of three years in order to establish sufficient continuity within daily activities.

I posted a famous text by Hakuin, which also is the source for koans that serve within the structure of Rinzai practice to point out this crucial stage of training, in this topic: viewtopic.php?f=69&t=29215&p=461314#p461314 " - https://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=29188&hilit=bhumi&start=20

Anyone who thinks that an instantaneous awakening or kensho does not need to be followed up by years of deepening and stabilizing one's practice and insight would be quite naive and misguided."



Mr. A said: “
That’s another thing, what would you need to practice for? your true nature is lacking nothing, so why supplement it with these meaningless practices?

 

Soh replied:

Your question is a good one, and since this is precisely the paramount question which drove Zen Master Dogen's search to China and which culminated his great awakening, I'll paste this famous text as a response to your question as it seems appropriate:

Zen Master Dogen’s teachings on Zazen:

Fukan Zazengi (Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen)

The way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent on practice and realization? The true vehicle is self-sufficient. What need is there for special effort? Indeed, the whole body is free from dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of traveling around to practice? And yet, if there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. Suppose you are confident in your understanding and rich in enlightenment, gaining the wisdom that knows at a glance, attaining the Way and clarifying the mind, arousing an aspiration to reach for the heavens. You are playing in the entranceway, but you are still short of the vital path of emancipation.

Consider the Buddha: although he was wise at birth, the traces of his six years of upright sitting can yet be seen. As for Bodhidharma, although he had received the mind-seal, his nine years of facing a wall is celebrated still. If even the ancient sages were like this, how can we today dispense with wholehearted practice?

Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will manifest. If you want to realize such, get to work on such right now.

For practicing Zen, a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately. Put aside all involvements and suspend all affairs. Do not think "good" or "bad." Do not judge true or false. Give up the operations of mind, intellect, and consciousness; stop measuring with thoughts, ideas, and views. Have no designs on becoming a buddha. How could that be limited to sitting or lying down?

At your sitting place, spread out a thick mat and put a cushion on it. Sit either in the full-lotus or half-lotus position. In the full-lotus position, first place your right foot on your left thigh, then your left foot on your right thigh. In the half-lotus, simply place your left foot on your right thigh. Tie your robes loosely and arrange them neatly. Then place your right hand on your left leg and your left hand on your right palm, thumb-tips lightly touching. Straighten your body and sit upright, leaning neither left nor right, neither forward nor backward. Align your ears with your shoulders and your nose with your navel. Rest the tip of your tongue against the front of the roof of your mouth, with teeth together and lips shut. Always keep your eyes open, and breathe softly through your nose.

Once you have adjusted your posture, take a breath and exhale fully, rock your body right and left, and settle into steady, immovable sitting. Think of not thinking, "Not thinking --what kind of thinking is that?" Nonthinking. This is the essential art of zazen.

The zazen I speak of is not meditation practice. It is simply the dharma gate of joyful ease, the practice realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the koan realized; traps and snares can never reach it. If you grasp the point, you are like a dragon gaining the water, like a tiger taking to the mountains. For you must know that the true dharma appears of itself, so that from the start dullness and distraction are struck aside.

When you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. Do not rise suddenly or abruptly. In surveying the past, we find that transcendence of both mundane and sacred, and dying while either sitting or standing, have all depended entirely on the power of zazen.

In addition, triggering awakening with a finger, a banner, a needle, or a mallet, and effecting realization with a whisk, a fist, a staff, or a shout --these cannot be understood by discriminative thinking; much less can they be known through the practice of supernatural power. They must represent conduct beyond seeing and hearing. Are they not a standard prior to knowledge and views?

This being the case, intelligence or lack of it is not an issue; make no distinction between the dull and the sharp-witted. If you concentrate your effort single-mindedly, that in itself is wholeheartedly engaging the way.

Practice-realization is naturally undefiled. Going forward is, after all, an everyday affair.

In general, in our world and others, in both India and China, all equally hold the buddha-seal. While each lineage expresses its own style, they are all simply devoted to sitting, totally blocked in resolute stability. Although they say that there are ten thousand distinctions and a thousand variations, they just wholeheartedly engage the way in zazen. Why leave behind the seat in your own home to wander in vain through the dusty realms of other lands? If you make one misstep, you stumble past what is directly in front of you.

You have gained the pivotal opportunity of human form. Do not pass your days and nights in vain. You are taking care of the essential activity of the buddha-way. Who would take wasteful delight in the spark from a flintstone? Besides, form and substance are like the dew on the grass, the fortunes of life like a dart of lightning --emptied in an instant, vanished in a flash.

Please, honored followers of Zen, long accustomed to groping for the elephant, do not doubt the true dragon. Devote your energies to the way of direct pointing at the real. Revere the one who has gone beyond learning and is free from effort. Accord with the enlightenment of all the buddhas; succeed to the samadhi of all the ancestors. Continue to live in such a way, and you will be such a person. The treasure store will open of itself, and you may enjoy it freely.

 

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 Original Enlightenment vs Practice-Enlightenment

  • John Tan
    When Dogen was still a monk in Tendai School, he was puzzled and couldn't understand the teaching of "original enlightenment". If we were originally enlightened, how can we be lost? Unsatisfied he traveled to China in search for answers and when he returned back to Japan, he began promoting "practice-enlighthment". What did Dogen realize from this koan of "original enlightenment" into "practice-enlightenment"?
    Those that went for the ATR gathering don't answer ah🤣.
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    Robert Dominik Tkanka
    John Tan
    anatta is a seal. Its permament in the sens it is always already so, originally so. Its not permament substance but more like - impermanence is permament.
    Not seeing that however one suffers like a beggar who sleeps on a rock with precious stone inside. He is free of poverty altough his ignorance covers that. Or like water. Water is pure, limpid and clear. It can look though as if water is unclear due to the mud of obscurations. Practice is resting (samatha) so the mud settles down and seeing (vipassana) so one recognises the natural state of water.
    Also koan about wind being permament and penetrating everywhere comes to mind. One still practises fanning to cool the suffering and refresh the mind distracted with it.
    Just some ramblings that came to me when I saw your comment 🙂
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    John Tan
    Robert Dominik Tkanka
    is this the first time u hear this koan and and has an intuitive immediate direct recognition? Or u have heard of this koan and had contemplated it before?

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    Robert Dominik Tkanka
    John Tan
    about your comment its the first time I see it worded like that.
    Though Ive contemplated similar themes and pointers. I think most of all your pointer of Anatta being a seal has triggered the recognition.
    Post-anatta Ive came to see Buddha nature teachings as hinting at that.

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    John Tan
    Robert Dominik Tkanka
    well said. When I heard of this koan shortly after anatta insight, I too have a direct immediate recognition and I was telling the ATR gathering yesterday that Soh Wei Yu
    was too lazy to contemplate when I asked him abt this koan post his anatta insight 🤣🤣🤣.
    Indeed this is similar to anatta insight. When no self/Self is seen through, seen is just seen and heard is just heard. When original enlightenment is seen through, sitting is just sitting, walking is just walking, and sleeping is just sleeping -- practice enlightenment!
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    Soh Wei Yu
    John Tan
    I can't remember when I first read about practice-enlightenment, but it has resonated with me from the very early years... I also like this one:
    No Buddha is Conscious of its Existence [of having a Perfect-nature]
    "By his fifteenth year one burning question became the core around which his spiritual strivings revolved: "If, as the sutras say, our Essential-nature is Bodhi (perfection), why did all Buddhas have to strive for enlightenment and perfection?" His dissatisfaction with the answers he received at Mount Hiei led him eventually to Eisai-zenji, who had brought the teachings of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism from China to Japan. Eisai's reply to Dogen's question was: "No Buddha is conscious of its existence [that is, of this Essential-nature], while cats and oxen [that is the grossly deluded] are aware of it." In other words, Buddhas, precisely because they are Buddhas, no longer think of having or not having a Perfect-nature; only the deluded think in such terms. At these words Dogen had an inner realization which dissolved his deep-seated doubt."
    -- recommended reading, Yasutani-roshi's Introductory Lectures on Zen Training (it's a practical text on Zazen and Koan training)
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    Soh Wei Yu
    My journal entry 25th February 2012
    I see Shikantaza (The Zen meditation method of “Just Sitting”) as the natural expression of realization and enlightenment.
    But many people completely misunderstand this... they think that practice-enlightenment means there is no need for realization, since practicing is enlightenment. In other words, even a beginner is as realized as the Buddha when meditating.
    This is plain wrong and thoughts of the foolish.
    Rather, understand that practice-enlightenment is the natural expression of realization... and without realization, one will not discover the essence of practice-enlightenment.
    As I told my friend/teacher 'Thusness', “I used to sit meditation with a goal and direction. Now, sitting itself is enlightenment. Sitting is just sitting. Sitting is just the activity of sitting, air con humming, breathing. Walking itself is enlightenment. Practice is not done for enlightenment but all activity is itself the perfect expression of enlightenment/buddha-nature. There is nowhere to go."
    I see no possibility of directly experiencing this unless one has clear direct non-dual insight. Without realizing the primordial purity and spontaneous perfection of this instantaneous moment of manifestation as Buddha-nature itself, there will always be effort and attempt at 'doing', at achieving something... whether it be mundane states of calmness, absorption, or supramundane states of awakening or liberation... all are just due to the ignorance of the true nature of this instantaneous moment.
    However, non-dual experience can still be separated into:
    1) One Mind
    - lately I have been noticing that majority of spiritual teachers and masters describe non-dual in terms of One Mind. That is, having realized that there is no subject-object/perceiver-perceived division or dichotomy, they subsume everything to be Mind only, mountains and rivers all are Me - the one undivided essence appearing as the many.
    Though non-separate, the view is still of an inherent metaphysical essence. Hence non-dual but inherent.
    2) No Mind
    Where even the 'One Naked Awareness' or 'One Mind' or a Source is totally forgotten and dissolved into simply scenery, sound, arising thoughts and passing scent. Only the flow of self-luminous transience.
    ....
    However, we must understand that even having the experience of No Mind is not yet the realization of Anatta. In the case of No Mind, it can remain a peak experience. In fact, it is a natural progression for a practitioner at One Mind to occasionally enter into the territory of No Mind... but because there is no breakthrough in terms of view via realization, the latent tendency to sink back into a Source, a One Mind is very strong and the experience of No Mind will not be sustained stably. The practitioner may then try his best to remain bare and non-conceptual and sustain the experience of No Mind through being naked in awareness, but no breakthrough can come unless a certain realization arises.
    In particular, the important realization to breakthrough this view of inherent self is the realization that Always Already, never was/is there a self - in seeing always only just the seen, the scenery, shapes and colours, never a seer! In hearing only the audible tones, no hearer! Just activities, no agent! A process of dependent origination itself rolls and knows... no self, agent, perceiver, controller therein.
    It is this realization that breaks down the view of 'seer-seeing-seen', or 'One Naked Awareness' permanently by realizing that there never was a 'One Awareness' - 'awareness', 'seeing', 'hearing' are only labels for the everchanging sensations and sights and sounds, like the word 'weather' don't point to an unchanging entity but the everchanging stream of rain, wind, clouds, forming and parting momentarily...
    Then as the investigation and insights deepen, it is seen and experienced that there is only this process of dependent origination, all the causes and conditions coming together in this instantaneous moment of activity, such that when eating the apple it is like the universe eating the apple, the universe typing this message, the universe hearing the sound... or the universe is the sound. Just that... is Shikantaza. In seeing only the seen, in sitting only the sitting, and the whole universe is sitting... and it couldn't be otherwise when there is no self, no meditator apart from meditation. Every moment cannot 'help' but be practice-enlightenment... it is not even the result of concentration or any form of contrived effort... rather it is the natural authentication of the realization, experience and view in real-time.
    Zen Master Dogen, the proponent of practice-enlightenment, is one of the rare and clear jewels of Zen Buddhism who have very deep experiential clarity about anatta and dependent origination. Without deep realization-experience of anatta and dependent origination in real time, we can never understand what Dogen is pointing to... his words may sound cryptic, mystical, or poetic, but actually they are simply pointing to this.
    Someone 'complained' that Shikantaza is just some temporary suppressing of defilements instead of the permanent removal of it. However if one realizes anatta then it is the permanent ending of self-view, i.e. traditional stream-entry.
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    John Tan
    Soh Wei Yu
    din know u wrote this. Means u did put in some effort🤣.
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  •  Anurag Jain
    Thanks Geovani Geo
    I get your point. Was the original face not manifest then is the point I was making 😉
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    Geovani Geo
    I wrote "original self" instead of "original face". Corrected.

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    Geovani Geo
    I think everything is always manifested but mind fabrications stir and infuse mud into de clean pure water making one believe that the clean water has disappeared.
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    John Tan
    Geovani Geo
    If original face is always manifested, then there is no orignal face other than the zillions of manifested faces. Each face is is neither same nor different, pure in every manifestion.
    All along there is no dust on the mirror, all dusts r mirrors; only when a particular speck of dust claimed to b special and pure, all other mrriors suddenly become dusts.
    Also to answer ur below post since it is related:
    👇👇👇
    Take everything away, strip it empty. No colors, no taste, no sensations, so that colors, tastes and sensations can arise. Empty of knowing, so that knowing can abide. Empty it from everything imaginable or not. Empty it even from the idea of no-thingness that is still there: nothing. That is the Ground. So, is there a Ground? If yes, than its not yet empty enough. If no, how come we are talking? Good morning children... 😉
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  • Also see: Original Enlightenment and Original Nature is a wrong view / How did Ignorance originate etc
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