A Life of Dogen by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

Dogen was born in the year 1200 to an aristocratic family from Kyoto, the capital of Imperial Japan. When his mother died, he was adopted by the Regent. It was certain that he could look forward to a bright future at Court. Consequently, he was given the wide-ranging education necessary for a nobleman, and acquired many of the worldly skills of a high-ranking gentleman.

At the age of thirteen, however, some inner prompting forced him to abandon his political connections and seek the protection of an uncle who was an influential figure in the Buddhist Tendai school. A year later he was ordained and learning the syncretic and socially-aware doctines practised by this school.

That Dogen was not totally convinced by the Tendai teachings is borne out by the fact that within a year he was consulting Eisai, the Zen master who had introduced the Rinzai school into Japan. It is also said that he was pointed in the direction of Zen by a Tendai priest, no doubt spotting an incipient impatience with the school’s more elaborate doctrines and rites.

It says much for the basic unity of the Buddhist schools in Japan at that time that he continued to study Tendai contemplation methods, even after he had become formally associated with Rinzai Zen. In his later teaching phase, however, Dogen was to drop the rituals of esotericism from his own school of Zen. He described his early training and its set-backs in a lecture to an assembly of his student monks:

When I was quite young, the realization of the
transiency of this world stirred the mind towards
seeking the Way. After leaving Mt. Hiel, I visited
many temples during my practice of the Way, but until
I arrived at Kenninji I had yet to meet a real
teacher or a good friend. I was deluded and filled
with erroneous thoughts. The teachers I had seen
had advised me to study until I could be as learned
as those who had preceded me. I was told to make
myself known to the state and to gain fame in the
world…But on opening (books of biographies) and
on learning about the great priests and Buddhists
of China, I could see that their approach differed
from those of my teachers…By even thinking about
fame, I would be disgracing the old men of wisdom
and the men of good will to come, while earning a fine
name among inferior persons of this period. If I
wanted to emulate someone, it should be the former
sages and eminent priests of China and India,
rather than those of Japan…My physical and
mental makeup changed completely.

After Eisai’s death, he continued his connection with the Zen school through Myozen, the master’s successor, and finally became his disciple some three years later, at the age of eighteen. Such was his talent and application that, at twenty-one, Dogen was recognized as Myozen’s successor in the Oryu branch of the Rinzai Zen school.

There followed a visit to China, at that period the land of the Holy Grail, with his master, Myozen. It seems though that they were rather restricted by the political conditions then prevailing and could not travel much outside the Eastern part of the Empire. It is possible that this did not weigh too heavily on Dogen as he soon realized he had nothing to learn from any of the Zen masters there. It was a classic case of the pupil outstripping the teachers. He decided to return to Kyoto.

In the end he was persuaded to see one more master, Nyojo, and found his final teacher, staying on in his monastery for two years. His enlightenment came during this period of study and intensive meditation. Given his early preoccupation with words, it is perhaps not surprising that the trigger for his realisation came in the form of a rebuke by Nyojo to a sleeping monk.

“The study of Zen requires the shedding of body and mind.”

At this Dogen achieved great enlightenment. In his twenty-eighth year he returned to Japan having “completed his life’s study”.

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A Life of Dogen by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

A later, highly significant master, whose name looms large in Zen history, is the aristocratic priest, Dogen (1200-1253), renowned for introducing the Soto Zen school into Japan, but whose greatest achievement, paradoxically, is in the realm of words, his monumental collection of essays, the Shobogenzo, or Treasury of the True Dharma Eye.

Dogen was an extremely well-read man and something of an infant prodigy. By the age of seven he had devoured the major Confucian classics, and by nine, the complex psychological literature of Southern Buddhism. Unlike the T’ang masters, who revelled in their anti-literacy, Dogen was more of a contemplative kind, a thinker who nevertheless transcended his own thought processes. He is perhaps an ideal example for Westerners, as against the poor and apparently illiterate Hui Neng whose early experiences can only be simulated nowadays in the Third World.

It was the death of Dogen’s mother when he was eight that precipitated his first interest in Buddhism. It is said that as he watched the smoke rising from the incense stick that burnt by the body, he felt directly the transience of all existence. His loneliness drew him towards seeking an explanation for this cruel evanescence, one that satisfied his deepest sense of being, not just a form of words.

Even then he must have been acquainted with the Buddhist notion of annica, impermanence, change. Now he had first-hand knowledge of the principle in his own life. Not surprisingly perhaps it was the phrase, “shedding body and mind”, which was an important catalyst in his realization at the age of twenty-eight. At the moment of his enlightenment Dogen exclaimed: “There is no body and no mind.”

According to a spiritual heir of Dogen, Soto master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (1905-1971): “all his being in that moment became a flashing into the vast phenomenal world, a flashing which included everything, which covered everything, and which had immense quality in it; all the phenomenal world was included within it, an absolute independent existence. That was his enlightenment.”

His experience was that he had shed body and mind, but still existed — as skylike mind. Suzuki continues: “Because you think you have body or mind, you have lonely feelings, but when you realize that everything is just a flashing into the vast universe, you become very strong, and your existence becomes very meaningful.”

Suzuki Roshi, former Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, distinguishes between “little mind”, which is associated with body-mind, and “big mind”, which is everything: Buddha-mind, Buddha-nature. When, during enlightenment we align with big mind, little mind is seen to be just an expression of big mind; clouds scudding across a vast blue sky.

Dogen’s views on enlightenment are generally well-known and much quoted in the literature. Like many a good writer he had the knack of creating memorable phrases, and in this he has been well served by his translators.

“To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves.” That is, to forget little mind. And in similar vein: “When one leaves the Way to the Way, one attains the Way.” Or again, on the “unattainability” of attainment: ”to consider attaining such a thing, one must be such a person; already being such a person, why trouble about such a thing?” Here he is playing around with the notion of suchness, allowing it to penetrate into his phraseology with great exuberance.

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A Life of Bankei by John M Evans. Part of the Zen Masters Series.

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Another disciple was concerned about his wandering mind. He could not concentrate on the Unborn all the time without his mind sloping off to other thoughts. Bankei insisted, however, that he was never separated from the Buddha-mind. If you were, he said, you would not be asking this question now. Your mind is not really somewhere else. It is just that you have not yet learned correctly about it. You do not know your own self. Instead of just dwelling in it, you change and distort it into other things. When you are in this state, your mind is at a low level of efficiency and you cannot absorb information or function at your maximum potential. You are not absent-minded, just tying up part of your mind by making it do things which it would not normally do.

The psychological aspect in Bankei’s teaching is paramount. This is because he laid so much stress on practice and actually living in the Unborn. Theory, theology and metaphysics take a back seat in the exposition of Unborn Zen. Even the psychology is narrowed down and sharply focused: “Your self-partiality is at the root of all illusions. There aren’t any illusions when you don’t have this preference for yourself.” And, of course, without illusions one lives in the Unborn as an enlightened Buddha.

The Buddha-mind has wonderful illuminative wisdom, he constantly taught. All past experiences and actions are fully reflected in it. It is good spiritual practice, therefore, not to fix onto these reflecting images. If you do, you are creating illusion. Originally, these thoughts had no substance, so the prudent way of dealing with them is to ignore them, whether they are rising or stopping. Then, no matter how many thoughts there are, it is the same as if none had arisen. The tyranny of memory and past conditioning is broken, and with it, neurotic behaviour patterns and other psychological problems.

Brushing off thoughts which arise is just like
washing off blood with blood. We remain impure because
of being washed with blood, even when the blood that
was first there has gone — and if we continue in this
way the impurity never departs. This is from ignorance
of the mind’s unborn, unvanishing, and unconfused
nature. If we take second thoughts (normal thinking)
or an effective reality, we keep going on and on
around the wheel of birth and death. You should
realise that such thought is just a temporary mental
construction, and not try to hold or to reject it.

A close examination of most religions reveals a hefty weight of self-partiality, myth, and dubious authority; so much so that the underlying impulse to reveal God/the Unborn is lost in a welter of forms and ceremonies. The absolute makes an appearance only in distorted or anthropomorphic terms, rarely in its suchness.

The impression left after a reading of Bankei’s talks is that of religion, philosophy, and psychology, merged and distilled down to the finest essence, until all that remains is the bare, ungarnished truth of the non-dual Unborn, fully revealed in the consciousness of each individual.

The conscious act of steadfastly being in the Unborn, is the basis of many Japanese art-forms and activities, including Zen archery, flower arranging, landscaping and gardening, the tea ceremony and brush drawing and calligraphy. The practitioner, by concentrating his mind, submerges himself in the Unborn, where the seer, the seeing and the seen, subject and object, dissolve one into the other and into effortless, non-dual activity.

Dr. D.T. Suzuki, who trained in the Rinzai Zen school, wrote this about Japanese artistic expression: “How does a painter get into the spirit of the (subject)? The secret is to become the (subject) itself…The discipline consists in studying the (subject to be painted) inwardly with his mind thoroughly purified of its subjective, self-centred contents. This means to keep the mind in unison with the emptiness or suchness (of the subject)…and transform himself into the (subject) itself.”

The result is an elegant, artless performance, devoid of ego and self-partiality, in which the Buddha-mind expresses itself with perfection as the True Man of the Way.

Bankei always claimed that he was the only master to give proof that the Unborn Buddha-mind was, as he declared, the sole ground of human consciousness.

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A Life of Bankei by John M Evans. Part of the Zen Masters Series.

Bankei’s main objective now was to have his enlightenment confirmed by other advanced Zen masters. His own master, Umpo, commented that the experience was the marrow of Bodhidharma’s bones, but Bankei wanted more than that.

His travels took him to Nagasaki, where the Chinese priest, Dosha Chogen had been installed in a temple. Dosha, who always retained the respect of Bankei, was impressed by the young man. He had certainly penetrated to the Self, he agreed. “But you still have to clarify the matter beyond, which is the essence of our school.”

Bankei was nonplussed at this news. He had thought that his satori was the final opening of truth. In time, he came to accept what Dosha said and stayed on at the temple for further post-enlightenment training, much to the discomfiture of the other monks who felt he was receiving preferential treatment. However, within a year Bankei “clarified the matter beyond” while meditating in the zendo early one morning.

When he approached Dosha with the tidings, one of those curious Zen set-pieces took place, which are mystifying to the unenlightened mind. Bankei picked up a brush and wrote, in Chinese — for Dosha could speak no Japanese — “What is the ultimate matter of Zen?”

Dosha then brushed, “What matter?” To which Bankei just extended his arms. When Dosha again picked up the brush, Bankei grabbed it and flung it away. Following this apparent display of bad manners, he stood up, swung his deep Chinese sleeves and left. We can be sure that Dosha was well pleased.

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