English:

https://www.sotozen.com/eng/practice/zazen/advice/fukanzanzeng.html

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.

See Soh's reply below.

Geovani's Post
Comments

Geovani Geo
This is quite 'advaitic' from Dogen, right? I see no problem with it.

    Reply
    1d
    Edited

Geovani Geo
When thoughts that there is something perceived and a perceiver,
Lure my mind away and distract,
I don’t close my senses gateways to meditate without them
But plunge straight into their essential point.
They’re like clouds in the sky; there’s this shimmer where they fly.
Thoughts that rise, for me sheer delight!
When kleshas get me going, and their heat has got me burning,
I try no antidote to set them right.
Like an alchemistic potion turning metal into gold,
What lies in kleshas power to bestow
Is bliss without contagion, completely undefiled.
Kleshas coming up, sheer delight!
When I’m plagued by god-like forces or demonic interference,
I do not drive them out with rites and spells.
The thing to chase away is egoistic thinking,
Built up on the idea of a self.
This will turn the ranks of maras into your own special forces.
When obstacles arise, sheer delight!
When samsara with its anguish has me writhing in its torments,
Instead of wallowing in misery,
I take the greater burden down the greater path to travel
And let compassion set me up
To take upon myself the sufferings of others.
When karmic consequences bloom, delight!
When my body has succumbed to the attacks of painful illness,
I do not count on medical relief,
But take that very illness as a path and by its power
Remove the obscurations blocking me,
And use it to encourage the qualities worthwhile.
When illness rears its head, sheer delight!
When it's time to leave this body, this illusionary tangle,
Don’t cause yourself anxiety and grief.
The thing that you should train in and clear up for yourself is
There’s no such thing as dying to be done.
Its just clear light, the mother, and child clear light uniting,
When mind forsakes the body, sheer delight!
When the whole things just not working, everything’s lined up against you,
Don’t try to find some way to change it all.
Here the point to make in your practice is reverse the way you see it.
Don’t try to make it stop or to improve.
Adverse conditions happen; when they do it's so delightful.
They make a little song of sheer delight!
~ Gyalwa Götsangpa

    Reply
    53m

Soh Wei Yu
John Tan 2011 partial excerpt from https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../realization...
1. The myriad things advance and confirm the self
Zazen is “mustering the whole body-mind (the whole of existence-time, inclusive of “A” and “not-A”) to look at forms and listen to sounds,” which is described by Dogen as “direct experience.” This “direct experience” is not only hearing, seeing, etc.; it is the arising of an ‘I’.” As in Shobogenzo, Genjokoan, “The myriad things advance and confirm the self.”
The whole article would be beautiful without the above texts quoted in bold. This emphasis is no difference from the need to find ground in the ‘here and now’. There is another article posted by you in the blog Genjo Koan: Actualizing the Fundamental Point that in my opinion provides a more accurate translation:
To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.
….
….
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 actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.
If “the myriad things advance and confirm the self”, then practitioners will be leaving trace. This also reminds me of my conversation with Gozen (a Soto Zen teacher) in dharmaoverground:
24. RE: The mind and the watcher
Apr 7 2009, 5:46 PM EDT | Post edited: Apr 7 2009, 5:57 PM EDT
"I AM: Paradoxically, one feels at the same time that one is both essentially untouched by all phenomena and yet intimately at one with them. As the Upanishad says "Thou are That."
1.a. Body and Mind as Constructs: Another way to look at this is to observe that all compound things -- including one's own body and mind -- are **objects to awareness.** That is to say, from the "fundamental" point of view of primordial awareness, or True Self, even body and mind are **not self.**"
Ha Gozen, I re-read the post and saw **not self**, I supposed u r referring to anatta then I have to disagree...🙂. However I agree with what that u said from the Vedanta (True Self) standpoint. But going into it can make it appears unnecessary complex.
As a summary, I see anatta as understanding the **transience** as Awareness by realizing that there is no observer apart from the observed. Effectively it is referring to the experience of in seeing, only scenery, no seer. In hearing, only sound, no hearer. The experience is quite similar to “Thou are That” except that there is no sinking back to a Source as it is deemed unnecessary. Full comfort is found in resting completely as the transience without even the slightest need to refer back to a source. For the source has always been the manifestation due to its emptiness nature.
All along there is no dust alighting on the Mirror; the dust has always been the Mirror. We fail to recognize the dust as the Mirror when we are attached to a particular speck of dust and call it the ”Mirror”; When a particular speck of dust becomes special, then all other pristine happening that are self-mirroring suddenly appears dusty.
Anything further, we will have to take it private again. 🙂
source : Emptiness as Viewless View and Embracing the Transience
Therefore to see that all dusts are primordially pure from before beginning is the whole purpose of maturing the insight of anatta. The following text succinctly expresses this insight:
...According to Dogen, this “oceanic-body” does not contain the myriad forms, nor is it made up of myriad forms – it is the myriad forms themselves. The same instruction is provided at the beginning of Shobogenzo, Gabyo (pictured rice-cakes) where, he asserts that, “as all Buddhas are enlightenment” (sho, or honsho), so too, “all dharmas are enlightenment” which he says does not mean they are simply “one” nature or mind.
Anything falling short of this realization cannot be said to be Buddhist's enlightenment and it is also what your Taiwanese teacher Chen wanted you to be clear when he spoke of the "equality of dharma" as having an initial glimpse of anatta will not result in practitioners seeing that phenomena are themselves primordially pure.
Realization, Experience and Right View and my comments on "A" is "not-A", "not A" is "A"
AWAKENINGTOREALITY.COM
Realization, Experience and Right View and my comments on "A" is "not-A", "not A" is "A"
Realization, Experience and Right View and my comments on "A" is "not-A", "not A" is "A"

    Reply
    Remove Preview
    4m

Soh Wei Yu
In any case Dogen's insights are very much based on anatman, dependent origination and emptiness. Not Advaitic substantialist nondualism. For example:
“For Dōgen, Buddha-nature or Busshō (佛性) is the nature of reality and all Being. In the Shōbōgenzō, Dōgen writes that “whole-being (Existence itself) is the Buddha-nature” and that even inanimate things (grass, trees, etc.) are an expression of Buddha-nature. He rejected any view that saw Buddha-nature as a permanent, substantial inner self or ground. Dōgen held that Buddha-nature was “vast emptiness”, “the world of becoming” and that “impermanence is in itself Buddha-nature”.[23] According to Dōgen:
Therefore, the very impermanency of grass and tree, thicket and forest is the Buddha nature. The very impermanency of men and things, body and mind, is the Buddha nature. Nature and lands, mountains and rivers, are impermanent because they are the Buddha nature. Supreme and complete enlightenment, because it is impermanent, is the Buddha nature.[24]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dōgen#Buddha-nature“
—-
http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=H6A674nlkVEC&pg=PA21...
From Bendowa, by Zen Master Dogen
Question Ten:
Some have said: Do not concern yourself about birth-and-death. There is a way to promptly rid yourself of birth-and-death. It is by grasping the reason for the eternal immutability of the 'mind-nature.' The gist of it is this: although once the body is born it proceeds inevitably to death, the mind-nature never perishes. Once you can realize that the mind-nature, which does not transmigrate in birth-and-death, exists in your own body, you make it your fundamental nature. Hence the body, being only a temporary form, dies here and is reborn there without end, yet the mind is immutable, unchanging throughout past, present, and future. To know this is to be free from birth-and-death. By realizing this truth, you put a final end to the transmigratory cycle in which you have been turning. When your body dies, you enter the ocean of the original nature. When you return to your origin in this ocean, you become endowed with the wondrous virtue of the Buddha-patriarchs. But even if you are able to grasp this in your present life, because your present physical existence embodies erroneous karma from prior lives, you are not the same as the sages.
"Those who fail to grasp this truth are destined to turn forever in the cycle of birth-and-death. What is necessary, then, is simply to know without delay the meaning of the mind-nature's immutability. What can you expect to gain from idling your entire life away in purposeless sitting?"
What do you think of this statement? Is it essentially in accord with the Way of the Buddhas and patriarchs?
Answer 10:
You have just expounded the view of the Senika heresy. It is certainly not the Buddha Dharma.
According to this heresy, there is in the body a spiritual intelligence. As occasions arise this intelligence readily discriminates likes and dislikes and pros and cons, feels pain and irritation, and experiences suffering and pleasure - it is all owing to this spiritual intelligence. But when the body perishes, this spiritual intelligence separates from the body and is reborn in another place. While it seems to perish here, it has life elsewhere, and thus is immutable and imperishable. Such is the standpoint of the Senika heresy.
But to learn this view and try to pass it off as the Buddha Dharma is more foolish than clutching a piece of broken roof tile supposing it to be a golden jewel. Nothing could compare with such a foolish, lamentable delusion. Hui-chung of the T'ang dynasty warned strongly against it. Is it not senseless to take this false view - that the mind abides and the form perishes - and equate it to the wondrous Dharma of the Buddhas; to think, while thus creating the fundamental cause of birth-and-death, that you are freed from birth-and-death? How deplorable! Just know it for a false, non-Buddhist view, and do not lend a ear to it.
I am compelled by the nature of the matter, and more by a sense of compassion, to try to deliver you from this false view. You must know that the Buddha Dharma preaches as a matter of course that body and mind are one and the same, that the essence and the form are not two. This is understood both in India and in China, so there can be no doubt about it. Need I add that the Buddhist doctrine of immutability teaches that all things are immutable, without any differentiation between body and mind. The Buddhist teaching of mutability states that all things are mutable, without any differentiation between essence and form. In view of this, how can anyone state that the body perishes and the mind abides? It would be contrary to the true Dharma.
Beyond this, you must also come to fully realize that birth-and-death is in and of itself nirvana. Buddhism never speaks of nirvana apart from birth-and-death. Indeed, when someone thinks that the mind, apart from the body, is immutable, not only does he mistake it for Buddha-wisdom, which is free from birth-and-death, but the very mind that makes such a discrimination is not immutable, is in fact even then turning in birth-and-death. A hopeless situation, is it not?
You should ponder this deeply: since the Buddha Dharma has always maintained the oneness of body and mind, why, if the body is born and perishes, would the mind alone, separated from the body, not be born and die as well? If at one time body and mind were one, and at another time not one, the preaching of the Buddha would be empty and untrue. Moreover, in thinking that birth-and-death is something we should turn from, you make the mistake of rejecting the Buddha Dharma itself. You must guard against such thinking.
Understand that what Buddhists call the Buddhist doctrine of the mind-nature, the great and universal aspect encompassing all phenomena, embraces the entire universe, without differentiating between essence and form, or concerning itself with birth or death. There is nothing - enlightenment and nirvana included - that is not the mind-nature. All dharmas, the "myriad forms dense and close" of the universe - are alike in being this one Mind. All are included without exception. All those dharmas, which serves as "gates" or entrances to the Way, are the same as one Mind. For a Buddhist to preach that there is no disparity between these dharma-gates indicates that he understands the mind-nature.
In this one Dharma [one Mind], how could there be any differentiate between body and mind, any separation of birth-and-death and nirvana? We are all originally children of the Buddha, we should not listen to madmen who spout non-Buddhist views.
Dōgen - Wikipedia
EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
Dōgen - Wikipedia
Dōgen - Wikipedia

    Reply
    Remove Preview
    1m

Soh Wei Yu
----
John Tan said in 2007 about Dogen, “Dogen is a great Zen master that has penetrated deeply into a very deep level of anatman.”, “Read about Dogen… he is truly a great Zen master… ...[Dogen is] one of the very few Zen Masters that truly knows.”, “Whenever we read the most basic teachings of Buddha, it is most profound. Don't ever say we understand it. Especially when it comes to Dependent Origination, which is the most profound truth in Buddhism*. Never say that we understand it or have experienced it. Even after a few years of experience in non-duality, we can't understand it. The one great Zen master that came closest to it is Dogen, that sees temporality as buddha nature, that see transients as living truth of dharma and the full manifestation of buddha nature.”
"When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine many things with a confused mind, you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent. But when you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that there is nothing that has unchanging self.
- Dogen"
“Mind as mountains, rivers, and the earth is nothing other than mountains, rivers, and the earth. There are no additional waves or surf, no wind or smoke. Mind as the sun, the moon, and the stars is nothing other than the sun, the moon, and the stars.”
- Dogen

Reply
1m

Nafis Rahman shared: “Someone converted the new SZTP translation of Shobogenzo into PDF format

Also see: The Unbounded Field of Awareness

Quotes from The Great Ocean Samadhi chapter from Zen Master Dogen's Shobogenzo:

Totally agree with Anzan Hoshin Roshi and Dogen on this matter.

Excerpt from https://wwzc.org/dharma-text/cutting-cat-one-practice-bodhisattva-precepts

Beyond this is the fact that, no matter how much we like or dislike, or are hurt or maimed by a thought, action or event, our attitudes do not colour the event itself, only our relationship to it. As this is so, no matter how much we stomp or shout or cajole or whine, reality is what it is. In this is sacredness and dignity.

This can extend into territory we might not be comfortable with. Our personal ambitions and dreams and hopes and fears are meaningless, just sounds that don't even find an echo in a universe that extends forever, in all directions. An earthquake that kills ten thousand people is not evil; it is just plates of rock shifting. A bullet is not evil. The universe is simply not conditioned towards our personal convenience. The person who pulls the trigger that kills the mother of three is original purity. But at the same time, we recognize that person as being evil, as being tainted or deranged. There is horror at the memory of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz and Hiroshima , of the fact that the molestation of a child is probably occurring somewhere at this moment. Yet even there, there is intrinsic purity. This is how it is. No one said (at least among the enlightened) that purity is necessarily what is pleasant. The fact that everything, every event, is intrinsically pure does not eliminate the fact of our responsibility. We can't just say. "Oh it's all Buddha Nature", and kick the cat. The fact is Buddha Nature, complete freedom from birth and death; the opposites of samsara and nirvana can both be transcended right here, now, but without that realization and in fact even more so after a good glimpse of it, the issue at point is meaning , and living in a way that honours this fact.

There is a famous koan about a Chinese Chan master called Nanquan or Nanzan, who cut a cat in two in order to teach his students about grasping. It appears in many different koan collections and is the ninth case of the "Shoyoroku" :

"One day the monks of the western and eastern halls of Nanquan's monastery were squabbling over a cat. When Nanquan saw this going on he seized the cat and held it up before them and said, 'Say one true word or I'll cut it.'
"No one could say anything. Nanquan cut the cat in two."

Dogen zenji saw this as an immense failure; he saw it as a Teacher with bloody hands standing before embarrassed, horrified, and confused students. He said that Nanzan may have been able to cut the cat into two, but had no realization at all of being able to cut the cat into one. Bringing together body and mind, self and other, time and space, bringing everything back into its original wholeness and bringing all that we are aware of into Awareness itself through cutting away separateness with the sword of insight, the thin blade of this moment, is cutting the cat into one.

At first kensho, the student sees into Ordinary Mind. So what? If you can't live here, there is no point in standing outside in the flower bed, peering in between the window blinds. It is not a matter of taking some particular moment of practice and setting that up as the entirety of the path. Realization must be embodied and unfolded completely. If you refuse to take responsibility for your body, breath, speech and mind, and unfold each moment as this Original Nature itself, then get the hell out or I'll throw you out. We can't excuse ourselves from true wholehearted practice just because we have a note from our Teacher saying: "Congratulations. Here's inka-shomei, you're a Sensei." How much more so if we have only had one or two satoris and have read too much Alan Watts, or D. T. Suzuki out of context, or buji zen ("doesn't matter zen").

Great Faith is abiding in True Nature as the root of practice so that practice acts to expose us to this True Nature always and in every moment. No experiences, no attainments define or limit this Way. Everything is this Way. Great Doubt shows us the outflows in our practice clearly. Great Practice is coming back to just this, again and again.

The Ten Grave Precepts reflect this. "There is no wrong action" is followed not by "nothing matters", but by "There is only the arising of benefit". Acting fully and responsibly from Awakened Mind, from that which sees tracelessness, is the Buddhaway. From such a mind, not only can wrong action not arise, all that is becomes of benefit to all beings.

Having taken your suffering and delusion seriously, opened it to see what's inside it, you work thoroughly with everything that arises as the world in which you live. As this is so, you recognize that this suffering is true for others, that this dignity and clarity are true for others. Thus, the bodhisattva brings forth benefit clearly and with open hands. A thousand eyes and hands are one's whole body. Free from the klesas of passion, aggression, and ignorance, one's action is clear and truly spontaneous -- not governed by impulse (which the usual mind likes to believe is spontaneity). There is only the benefit of all beings. The universe in which the bodhisattva lives is "all beings", he or she is "all beings", rocks and air and nostril hair are "all beings". Kannon's "thousand eyes and hands" are the whole universe itself.

This benefit is not a matter of self-congratulatory goody-two-shoed-ness, or deprecation of another's essential dignity through pity. It is simply a raw and open heart that does what needs to be done. It does not force others to be what it wants -- it is only a heart, it doesn't want anything. It does not seduce or console or convert. It is simply a raw and open heart.

Traditionally, there are said to be four ways in which the Bodhisattva manifests dana paramita: material benefit; giving what each needs to promote well-being; giving freedom from fear; giving the Teachings. Actually there is no number or limit to this benefit. There is only the benefit of all beings.

John, Yin Ling and I enjoyed some writings I shared from Soto Zen teacher Anzan Hoshin Roshi, who is also Ven Jinmyo Osho's teacher.

Here's an excerpt from his book Intimate Reality which you can purchase from https://wwzc.org/intimate-reality

SEVEN: Seamlessness

“When the ten thousand dharmas move forward and practice and realize the self, this is awakening.”
Just for this moment: be right where you are, be just as you are. Release all of this pushing and pulling, this subject and object. Don’t fall into pushing against the pushing to get rid of it. Simply don’t push. Just sit. Release this pushing and pulling even slightly, for just one moment, and you will find that something begins to happen. The moment begins to exert itself as the sights and sounds, touch and taste, smells and thoughts and feelings.

You will discover that seeing has its own intelligence which presents itself as the green of leaves, the grey and blue and white of the clouds, the vast blue of the sky. Hearing has its own intelligence. All of the senses are open and the body is alive and knowing itself as the world.

Stand up and take a step. Another step. Each step exerts itself completely and then is gone. The moment exerts itself completely and then is gone, without a trace. There is no trace of that step in this step. There is just this step. There is just hearing, just seeing, just knowing. The ten thousand dharmas exert themselves completely and without effort.

You can grasp at whatever you want to, but there is nowhere that anything is separate from you so that you can take hold of it. Everything arises within the seamlessness of experience. If we enter yet further into this moment and enter directly into the exertion of these ten thousand dharmas, enter directly into how Awareness displays itself as what it is aware of, then something else begins to make itself clear. There aren’t “ten thousand” dharmas. There isn’t even “one” dharma either. There’s just this. This is the moment of dropping body and mind.

Well, where are these “bodies” and “minds” now? Someone, please, show me your body. How would you know about the body if not through the mind? The “body” is perceived by the mind. Is there an itch? A colour? A sound? You look at your hands, you move your thumb, wiggle your fingers. These are all just perceptions arising, dwelling and decaying. Your “body” is all in the mind. Now, where is this “mind”? There is this seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, thinking and feeling — but where is the “mind”? Someone, please, show me your mind.

When there is no separation, no distance to be closed between yourself and your experience, then where are you? The sound of a hammer, the sound of your breath. When there is just this there is no room for a body, no mind, no time, no space. There is just Open Luminosity which can sometimes look like a body, a mind. Everything is released, everything is dropped, everything rises up as it is, everything leaps into and out of itself. In this moment is the arising of all world-systems, in this moment is the vanishing of all world-systems.