In 19th Century America, Ralph Waldo Emerson knew all about the non-dual vision.

“Standing on the bare ground — my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and parcel of God.”

Perhaps the most accessible of the Upanishads propounding the non-dual vision is the Katha Upanishad. This scripture describes how a youth, Nachiketas, sacrifices himself to Yama, the God of Death, in order to discover the secrets of immortality. The god grants him three boons which Nachiketas uses to extract the innermost secrets of the universe. In the process he rejects all offers of material powers and pleasure, prompting the god to name the ultimate fire sacrifice after Nachiketas himself.

The story is fascinating in that it has some parallels with the early experiences of the youthful Ramana Maharshi of South India who, at the age of sixteen, was confronted with death in the form of an existential seizure. Instead of collapsing in terror, Ramana boldly faced up to it and extracted the inner essence of the life/death experience.

Apart from the Upanishads, the other major work which constitutes the bedrock of Vedanta and, for that matter, all else in Hindu India, is the Bhagavad Gita. This sublime scripture, sometimes regarded as an Upanishad, has a more practical edge than many other texts of this period. For this reason it is often seen as a work of karma yoga (union through action).

In fact, the jnani (a man of vision or knowledge), is given the prominent place in the scripture. “The jnani and I are one,” says Krishna, the embodiment of God in the Gita.

Nevertheless, the bhakti (devotee) finds his consolation in the Bhagavad Gita, and Mahatma Gandhi used it as authority for his particular gospel of action and work in the world. Like many other great scriptural outpourings, the Gita satisfies all manner of persons.

The book, as we now know it, comes down to us as part of the Mahabharata, a vast epic poem of war and conflict, said to be the longest in the world. The Gita, however, stands out from it, almost as the New Testament shines out of the Bible against the darker qualities of the Old, where “an eye for an eye” becomes “turning the other cheek”.

The spirit of the Gita, as with the Upanishads, can be represented by a few short extracts. The non-duality of the work as a whole is expressed perfectly by Krishna’s words to Arjuna.

‘When a man sees that the God in himself is the same God in all that is, he hurts not himself by hurting others; then he goes to the highest path.”

Again, in a great declaration, Krishna speaks for the All.

I am the Father of this universe, and even the Source
of the Father. I am the Mother of this universe, and
the Creator of all. I am the highest to be known, the
Path of purification … I am the Way, and the Master who
watches in silence; thy friend and shelter and thy
abode of peace. I am the beginning and the middle and
the end of all things: their seed of Eternity, their
Treasure supreme.

From these deeply spiritual teachings, arose Buddhism, Jainism and later a Hindu/Buddhist synthesis, the Advaita Vedanta of Shankara.

The experiments of Dr Rupert Sheldrake, whose concept of “extended mind” is one of the more interesting developments in biological research this century, seem to have touched off a number of other scientists to follow suit.

The scientific journal Science is reporting the findings of neuroscientist Dr Henrik Ehrsson who has succeeded in simulating out of body experiences under laboratory conditions.

The findings seem to reveal that the mind relies on the senses of sight and touch to locate itself inside the human body. When the connection is disrupted, whether by illness, drugs or experiment, strange things begin to happen. The sensation arises that the mind has left the body.

Ehrsson used goggles, a video camera and rods to confuse the brain and create the effect. A sitting volunteer wore goggles linked to a video camera pointing to his back. Looking through the goggles, he saw an image of his back, from the perspective of someone sitting around six feet behind him. Touching his chest with a rod, which was unsighted to the camera, the split effect took hold.

Dr Ehrsson tried the experiment out on himself, “You really feel that you are sitting in a different place in the room, and you’re looking at this thing in front of you that looks like yourself, and you know it’s yourself, but it doesn’t feel like yourself. This experiment suggests that the first-person visual perspective is critically important for the in-body experience. In other words, we feel our self is located where our eyes are.”

Mystics have been reporting out of body states since time began. They are usually dismissed by science as hallucinations or neurological disturbances. The state really has to be experienced to be understood, however.

Until now science has failed to reproduce it experimentally. This study appears to have simulated the effect in the laboratory, while also validating Sheldrake’s hypothesis of extended mind.

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

Although Dogen is known for his philosophical thinking, he was quite prepared to preach more practical and homely sermons to his pupils. In his teaching years, he would often quote popular Chinese proverbs and expand upon them to illustrate Zen principles. For instance: “A man can only become the head of a house if he becomes deaf and dumb.” Dogen puts this in a Zen context by pointing out that we cannot complete our allotted task unless we ignore the tittle-tattle of others and refrain from being critical about their shortcomings. Here we are into the Buddhist precepts, and the master stresses how difficult these are to observe in practice. Only those who have penetrated to the bones and marrow of Zen, he says, are capable of this.

On Zen attitudes, he would warn that students must be like someone who has borrowed an enormous sum of money and is now expected to pay it back, but has nothing to give. With this frame of mind, said Dogen, it is an easy matter to gain enlightenment.

On another occasion, he quotes a famous Zen verse: “To achieve the Way is not difficult; just reject discrimination.” By rejecting the discriminating (little) mind, the student at once awakens. He must cast aside both body and mind and all the prejudgements of his conditioned past, and he will attain immediate awakening.

Although he was the founder of Soto in Japan, supposedly a “gradualist” path, here we see Dogen standing in the tradition of sudden and immediate enlightenment. A modern Soto master, Shunryu Suzuki, makes a similar point about Dogen’s stream of Zen:

“Our unexciting way of practice may appear to be very negative. This is not so …It is just very plain … it may seem as if I am speaking about gradual attainment. This is not so either. In fact, this is the sudden way, because when your practice is calm and ordinary, everyday life itself is enlightenment.”

One of the basic insights the candidate must have is that prized material possessions can often become enemies that bring harm instead of pleasure. Dogen tells this story about a common man who had a beautiful wife:

The lord of the manor demanded that he give her up to him, but he refused. When the lord surrounded his house with soldiers, the man said to his wife: “because of you I lose my life.” But the wife had other ideas, and before she threw herself from the top floor of the house, she said: ”because of you, I am losing mine.”

Once you have made the commitment to Zen, said the master, forget all about yourself. Simply practise what you are taught and do not allow yourself to become caught up in personal matters. If your mind does not desire anything, you will find absolute peace. Although here speaking to monks, the message is clear: unless you determinedly reject personal concerns (little mind), you will labour long on the road to enlightenment.

For laymen, Dogen has this to say: “there are those who never have associated with others and have grown up only in their own homes.” They behave, says the master, like tyrants, oblivious of what others think, or of their own spiritual condition. A Buddhist, on the other hand, should not set up his own views; he should work with other Buddhists and forget his little mind, dwelling at all times in big mind (the unborn).

A good Buddhist understands poverty. He at once casts aside his possessions, fame, fortune, and never curries the favour of anyone. He is his own man, and yet beyond being his own man. The world at large may not understand, but that does not matter. Such a man sells gold, but there is no-one to buy it. It is freely offered but nobody accepts it because what is free and available is at once suspect.

In terms of technique, Dogen would recommend the Eight Awarenesses and the Four Integrative Methods of Bodhisattvas. The Eight Awarenesses are:

1. Rejecting desire. Those who have many desires are always seeking to gain, and therefore have many afflictions.
2. Being content with things as they are. To be content, said the Buddha, “is the abode of prosperity and happiness, peace and tranquillity”.
3. Seeking solitude. Solitude is not necessarily the same as being alone. One can be in solitude in a big city. It all depends on one’s frame of mind. Big mind is quietude, solitude; small mind is the turmoil of the world.
4. Being diligent. To persevere without turning back on the path to enlightenment makes everything easy.
5. Maintaining mindfulness. The best companion, the Buddha said, is unfailing recollection. Awareness of Self and the teachings is the Royal Road of the Buddhas.
6. Cultivating concentration. This leads to a state of stability and an insight into the nature of rising and ceasing phenomena.
7. Seeking wisdom. The wisdom of learning, thinking and application makes a Man of the Way.
8. Desisting from idle chatter. Vain talk disturbs the mind and leads away from liberation.

Each of these eight awarenesses contains the others, making sixty-four in all. Students should single-mindedly follow the Way, aware that all things are unstable and subject to disintegration.

The Four Integrative Methods of Bodhisattvas are:

1. Giving. This means not being greedy or coveting anything. It also means not flattering, which is just another way of coveting.
2. Maintaining kind speech. This is the absence of harsh speech, one of the Buddhist precepts. When one knows that all beings and objects are the Buddha, kind speech is the most appropriate way of speaking.
3. Acting beneficially. This means employing the skilful means of the Bodhisattva for the benefit of all beings.
4. Co-operating. Co-operation, by not opposing, means knowing that oneself and others are one suchness. Just as “the ocean does not refuse water”, so one co-operates by knowing all as Self.

These four methods show how an enlightening being should operate in the world, unselfishly and, as Dogen puts it, “facing everyone with a mild countenance”.

Now Read Part 4

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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