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

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Of the three disciplines of Buddhism, sila (precepts), dhyana (meditation) and prajna (wisdom), the Zen schools were said to give greater emphasis to meditation. While it is certainly true that meditation, or methods of awakening, assumed priority over doctrinal matters, masters like Hui Neng and Dogen were aware that a balanced approach was necessary. Hui Neng believed that dhyana and prajna arose together and were not to be separated. Dogen frequently stressed the precepts to his students, and many of his homilies are variations on the ethical side of Buddhism, though given a practical edge through the belief that morality brings one into alignment with satori, since true moral behaviour is without self.

In the Buddha’s time, there were no sutras and sastras. Most scriptural material was held in the memory of monks. The Buddhist canon had not yet been established. Mind to mind transmission was the order of the day. Zen aimed to come closer to that situation and thus move closer to the Buddha’s intention. When Dogen returned from China he was intent on making zazen the principal means of practice within the Soto school. And since each one of his students was already the Buddha, it was only necessary to act like it; that is to say, to assume the true nature during sitting, standing, walking and lying down. Thus all aspects of life are given a sacramental significance.

Towards the end of his short life (he died of cancer at fifty-three) he became more and more attracted to the life of retreat, away from the turmoil of “the world of dust”. He turned down offers from the Emperor, who granted him an honorific title and ceremonial robe. He died in Kyoto, where he was receiving medical care in the house of a disciple, in 1253.

Master Dogen provides the literary, contemplative side of Zen. Thus he complements the contributions of Hui Neng and Rinzai, and fleshes out the Zen corpus into a coherent whole. His amazingly quirky, but astonishingly insightful writings are one of the glories of spiritual literature. Only now are they beginning to be fully understood by modern-day thinkers, religious and philosophical, who are taking a great interest in this 13th Century Japanese sage.

The work, however, was never meant to be set in concrete, or to form the basis for a “system” of thought. Dogen’s purpose was to use words interactively, directly in the consciousness of his readers. His lines are movement, not stasis; life, not theology. His bequest is enlightenment, not scripture.

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

The Einsteinian notion of space-time, a continuum in which time represents the fourth dimension, was apparently anticipated by Dogen, for whom time was inseparable from “being”. Time, of course, can only exist within a context of space, since it is a function of movement. But since being, or put another way, consciousness, is self-identical with space, time itself is inseparable from being.

Dogen said: “So-called time of being means time is already being; all being is time…Self is arrayed as the whole world. You should perceive that each point, each thing of this whole world is an individual time.”

Shunryu Suzuki elaborates this point: “Moment after moment each one of us repeats this activity (of breathing). Here there is no idea of time and space. Time and space are one. We do things one after the other, that is all. At one o’clock you will eat your lunch. To eat lunch is itself one o’clock. You will be somewhere, but that place cannot be separated from one o’clock.” To create an idea of a place separate from one o’clock, as when we say “I wish I had gone somewhere else for lunch,” is playing mind-games, weaving illusion.

Dogen’s ideas on being and time, which have aroused a lot of interest among modern thinkers, arise from his basic theme of the non-dual suchness of the world, the unity of being. All dimensions and systems of measurement, therefore, are just mentally-created facets of the one central reality, and ultimately are indistinguishable from each other and the underlying reality realm.

The ramifications of this temporal system include the concept of all things existing in their own “being-time” for all time. Thus at this instant you and this time are identical. But you also participate in the whole structure of being-time, which is timeless. This means that you have always existed, and past moments are still in existence, but exclusively within their own being-times. The notion resembles a roll of movie film, where individual frames can be observed and put into motion as being-time. However, the whole drama exists timelessly as the reel of film.

Dogen also points out that time can seem to be moving in various ways, from past to present to future, or the reverse, depending on the standpoint of the observer. In this he seems to be looking forward to Quantum Theory and other developments of mathematical relativity.

A number of current writers are making the connection between modern science and ancient Eastern philosophies, for example, Fritjof Capra in his interesting account, The Tao of Physics. Despite such ideas, Dogen was never diverted by mind-games and always remained firmly in the Buddhistic realm of direct experience. Words to him were only fingers pointing to the moon. Never the moon itself.

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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”.

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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”.

Now Read Part 3