It Came from Beyond Zen!: More Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master
368
It Came from Beyond Zen!: More Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master
368eBook
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Overview
In Japan in 1253, one of the great thinkers of his time died — and the world barely noticed. That man was the Zen monk Eihei Dogen. For centuries his main work, Shobogenzo, languished in obscurity, locked away in remote monasteries until scholars rediscovered it in the twentieth century. What took so long? In Brad Warner’s view, Dogen was too ahead of his time to find an appreciative audience. To bring Dogen’s work to a bigger readership, Warner began paraphrasing Shobogenzo, recasting it in simple, everyday language. The first part of this project resulted in Don’t Be a Jerk, and now Warner presents this second volume, It Came from Beyond Zen! Once again, Warner uses wry humor and incisive commentary to bridge the gap between past and present, making Dogen’s words clearer and more relevant than ever before.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781608685127 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | New World Library |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 368 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
A Soto Zen priest, Brad Warner is a punk bassist, filmmaker, Japanesemonstermovie marketer, and popular blogger. He is the author of Hardcore Zen, Don’t Be a Jerk, Sit Down & Shut Up, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate, There Is No God and He Is Always with You, and Sex, Sin, and Zen. His writing appears on Suicidegirls.com and in Shambhala Sun, Tricycle, Buddhadharma, and Alternative Press.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
It Came from Beyond Zen!
Inmo
It!
In the first half of this book, I will be looking at some of Dogen's easier, more straightforward stuff and then I'll transition into the harder, more abstract and philosophical stuff in the second half. But, just to be contrary to myself, I'm going to lead off with one of Dogen's most difficult and deeply philosophical pieces. The main reason for this is that I think this piece lays the groundwork for much of what is to come.
Most translations of Shobogenzo give the title of this essay as something along the lines of "Thusness" (Tanahashi), "Suchness" (Nishiyama/Stevens), "That Which Comes Like This" (Shasta Abbey), or some other such fairly pretentious designation. Nishijima and Cross translate the title simply as "It."
The word Dogen actually used is ??, which is pronounced inmo in Japanese and renme in contemporary Mandarin Chinese. Online Chinese-English dictionaries tend to give "this way" or "what" as the contemporary meaning, though one I consulted also gave me "do you." Do they mean as in "you do you"? I do not know.
Anyhow, in his intro to this chapter in his translation of Shobogenzo into contemporary Japanese, Nishijima explains the more ancient meaning as being akin to the Japanese words ano or are. These words are used to suggest a thing you don't know the name of but that you have to indicate, as in the English phrase "that thingamajig over by the whatchamacallit." So the word is kind of a catchall term for something you can't name.
The words suchness and thusness are very popular among English-speaking Buddhists in general, and not just to be used as the title of this essay. Suchness is often used as a translation of the Sanskrit word tathata, which is part of the word tathatagata, which is one of the nicknames that Buddha gave himself, according to the ancient sutras. This name means something like "that which comes and goes in the same way," or to quote Shasta Abbey, "that which comes like this." It's a weird nickname, to be sure.
By the way, the h in the word tathatagata is pronounced like a kind of short puff of air, so it's tat-(h)a-gat-a. The h does not affect the t that comes before it and make it into the sound that begins words like thistle or thwack. It's the same with the th in Siddhartha and in Theravada, by the way. It always annoys me when people who should know better mangle those words, pronouncing Theravada kind of like they'd pronounce Thera-Flu®.
Anyway, the problem with translating the title of this chapter as "suchness" or "thusness" is that [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (inmo) is not the character combination Chinese and Japanese Buddhists use for tathata. The character combo they use is [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] which is pronounced shinyo in Japanese. For tathatagata they use [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] which is pronounced nyorai. So Dogen doesn't seem to me to be specifically trying to draw a connection to the Buddha's ancient nickname, the way a lot of English translators tend to.
Having said that, there is some justification for making a connection. In his English intro to the chapter Nishijima says, "The word inmo was used to indicate the truth, or reality, which in Buddhist philosophy is originally ineffable." Shasta Abbey's introduction to the chapter says of the word inmo, "It was used by the Chinese Zen Masters to designate 'That Which Is,' the Ultimate Reality which goes beyond any words we can employ to describe It." The weird capitalization is theirs. Perhaps the Buddha also chose his nickname to indicate that he was the voice of that ineffable something. Could be.
Maybe that's why translators like froufrou-sounding words like suchness and thusness when titling this chapter. So, okay, suchness or thusness. Fine. Personally, I prefer It because it reminds me of fifties science fiction films like It Came from Beneath the Sea; It: The Terror from Beyond Space; and the Roger Corman classic, It Conquered the World. These are films in which the big, ugly, gross, tentacle-y thing in question could not be named. Even though Dogen was not writing cheap science fiction, I feel that he was going for the same sort of feeling that's evoked by these film titles.
In a lecture he gave in 1969, Shunryu Suzuki, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and author of the book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, explained the meaning of the word inmo like this: "In English you say, 'It is hot.' That 'it' has the same meaning as when you say, 'It is nine o'clock,' or, 'It is half-past eight.' We are also 'it,' but we don't say 'it.' Instead we say 'he' or 'she,' or 'me' or 'I.' But actually we mean 'it.' Everything can be 'it.' It's the same as using a question mark. When I say 'it,' you don't know exactly what I mean, so you may say, 'What is it?'"
Dogen used the word inmo a whole lot in his writings, as we shall soon see. He uses the word four times in one of his most famous essays, "Fukanzazengi" (Universal Guide to the Standard Method of Zazen). Two of those usages occur in the closing sentence. English translations usually split that sentence into two sentences that go something like, "If you practice the state like this for a long time, you will surely become the state like this itself. The treasure-house will open naturally, and you will be free to receive and to use [its contents] as you like" (Nishijima/Cross) or "If you practice suchness continuously, you will be suchness. The treasure-house will open of itself, and you will be able to use it at will" (Shohaku Okumura). The italicized words are their translations of the word inmo.
As far as Dogen was concerned, zazen wasn't intended to induce some special mental state. Rather, it was a practice in which you try to experience clearly the state you're already in. You can't understand that state, no matter what it is. So it's ineffable, unnameable; it's it because you can't call it much else.
To me, this use of the word inmo is Dogen's way of indicating something like the Western concept of God. I don't mean the concept of God as a giant guy with a white beard who smites the Peloponnesians with lightning bolts for carving unto themselves a graven image of a horned beast. I mean a subtler idea of God. It's more akin to what the Irish philosopher and poet Johannes Scotus Eriugena, who lived 815–77 CE (four hundred years before Dogen), talked about when he said, "Every visible and invisible creature is an appearance of God" and "We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being." Or, to put it in more Buddhist-friendly terms, this it that Dogen refers to is the ineffable something that pervades the universe with what we humans perceive as meaning, order, and intelligence.
Let's see what Dogen has to say about it.
Master Ungo Doyo (Ch. Yunju Daoying, d. 902 CE) said, "If you want to get it, you gotta be it, since you already are it, why worry about it?" That means if you want to experience the unnameable, you need to be a person who is the unnameable. Since you already are a person who is the unnameable, why worry about the unnameable?
I'm using the word it to describe directing yourself toward the supreme truth. The whole universe in every direction is just a teeny-weeny bit of the supreme truth. Maybe the supreme truth is bigger than everything there ever is, was, or could be.
We ourselves are just tools it uses to experience itself. How do we know this indescribable something I'm calling "it" exists? Because even your own body and your own mind aren't really you.
Your body is obviously not the real you. Days and nights race by. We can't stop time, even for a split second. Where did the snot-faced little kid you once were go? Look all you want, but you'll never find him or her. Think about it. So much stuff has happened that'll never happen again. If you look at it honestly, you have to admit that even your raw mind doesn't stick around, either. It appears and vanishes from one moment to the next.
The truth exists. It just isn't likely to hang out with the likes of you. Thus within the limitless universe, something establishes the will to the truth.
Once you establish a willingness to align with what is true, you put aside all the other crap you've been messing around with. You hope to hear what you've never heard before and experience what you've never experienced before. This isn't something you do yourself. It happens because you are a person who is it.
You might ask, How do I know I'm a person who is it? You know you're a person who is it because you want to understand what it is and align yourself with it. You have the face and the eyes of an it person, so you don't have to worry about the ever-present it. Heck, even worry itself is part of the great, unknowable it that is the universe and is you. So it's beyond worry!
Also, don't be surprised by the it-ness of it. Even if you're surprised by it, it is still just as it as it ever was.
Buddhas can't understand it. The mind can't understand it. Even the whole universe can't understand it. There's only one way to put it: If you're already a person who is it, why worry about the matter of it?
The it-ness of sensation is it, and the it-ness of mind and body is also it, and even the it-ness of Buddha is also it.
Look. You fall down and hit the ground. Ouch! But you also use the ground to help yourself get up. You can't get up any other way. The ground you fall on is it. The ground you use to help yourself up is it, too. Buddha's attainment of the truth is just like someone using the ground to get up off the ground. That's the way it's always been for every Buddha there ever was. That's the way it is for us, too.
Even so, there's another side to it. The Indian Buddhists never said this, and nobody else did, either. But even if you tried for a million-zillion years to get up off the ground by using the ground, you could never, ever do it. There's just one way to do it. Those who fall down on the ground get up by using the sky. Those who fall to the sky get up by using the ground. That's what all the Buddhas and ancestors did.
Maybe somebody might ask, "How far apart are the sky and the ground?" You can tell them, "They're exactly 108,000 miles apart!" You can only get up off the ground by using the sky. You can only get up off the sky by using the ground. If you can't understand this, you'll never understand Buddhism at all.
There's an old story that relates to this stuff. A guy named Samghanandi had a student named Geyashata. Some bells were ringing and Samghanandi, the teacher, asked his student Geyashata, "Is that the sound of the wind ringing or the sound of the bells ringing?"
Geyashata must have been used to being asked weird questions, so he said, "It ain't the wind or the bells! It's my mind ringing!"
Samghanandi said, "Then what's the mind?"
Geyashata said, "The reason it's ringing is 'cuz it's still and serene."
Samghanandi said, "Good answer! Who else but you could've said that?"
This state of the wind not ringing is the study of "my mind is ringing." The time when the bells aren't ringing is studied as "my mind is ringing." "My mind ringing" is it. And all is still and serene.
This story has been around for ages, and lots of people think it expresses some great truth, but most people have misunderstood it. They think that whole deal of Geyashata saying, "It ain't the wind or the bells! It's my mind ringing!" means that at the moment of hearing the bells, a state of mindfulness occurs. This state of mindfulness is called "the mind." If there wasn't a state of mindfulness, then how could you recognize you were hearing bells? The root of hearing, then, is the mind, they say. It's all in the mind, they say.
That's totally not the way this story should be understood.
Here's the real deal. If one thing is still and serene, then everything is still and serene. It's a metaphor. In the story we have an agent — either the wind or the bells or the mind, take your pick — and an action, the ringing. In reality agent and action are not separated. That's what it means to say everything is still and serene. Another way to say the same thing is, "Why worry about it — the unnameable?" How can the unnameable be related to something with a name?
One other time, two monks were watching a flag waving and arguing about it. One said, "The flag is moving." The other said, "The wind is moving."
Daikan Eno (Ch. Dajian Huineng, 638–713 CE), their teacher, heard this and told them, "You knuckleheads! It's not the flag and it's not the wind. You are the mind moving. Now get back to work!" The monks agreed with the teacher and went back to what they were supposed to be doing.
Daikan Eno was saying that the wind, the flag, and the movement all exist not in the mind but as the mind. Even nowadays most people get this wrong. If you think these words mean, "Your mind is moving," you don't know dip about Daikan Eno's teachings. You could just cut to the chase and say, "You are moving." That's because moving is moving, and you are you. You are it. You are the indescribable something that is the all-inclusive universe. There's no separation between you and the universe, just as there's no separation between wind and flag and movement.
Daikan Eno started out as a woodcutter. He didn't know anything about Buddhism. He couldn't even read the sutras. His dad died when he was young so he had to work hard and look after his mom. He had no idea he had a precious jewel of wisdom hidden under his woodcutter's coat.
Then one day he heard a monk chanting the Diamond Sutra, and he knew what he had to do. He made sure his mom would be okay, and then he just up and left his life as a woodcutter to study in a temple. That must have been a huge deal to him, to leave his mom like that. Nobody takes such obligations lightly. But, like the Lotus Sutra says, "Those with wisdom understand the truth from the first moment they hear it."
You don't get wisdom from somebody else, and you don't make it yourself. It's not intentional or unintentional. It's not conscious or unconscious. You can't talk in terms of delusion and realization. None of that stuff applies.
Daikan Eno didn't even know Buddhism existed, so there was no way he could have aspired to understand it. But as soon as he heard that sutra — blammo! — he got it. These kinds of things happen because the body and mind of someone endowed with real wisdom is not their own. Nobody knows how many times somebody has to be born and die while possessing wisdom they don't even know they have. Imagine a rock that has a jewel inside it. The rock doesn't know there's a jewel in it, and the jewel doesn't know it's inside a rock. It's kinda like that.
But when they finally get it, they grab it. You could say that the person and the wisdom don't even know each other. Yet somehow the wisdom discovers the truth. It's not even like you have wisdom or lack wisdom. Yet wisdom is there, just like the trees and flowers are there.
When wisdom appears as being without wisdom, everything is unknown, everything is doubt and wonder. All things are lost forever at this moment, and all things are real action. Words that ought to be heard, and things that ought to be understood, are totally doubt and wonder.
The entire universe is not me. There's no place to hide. Yet there is nobody else. It's a single unified thing, like an iron rail ten thousand miles long.
The entire universe exists in having wisdom and in not having wisdom, just like daylight and darkness are part of the same day. That's an example of how the universe is the unnameable it I've been talking about.
Anyway, I was telling you about Daikan Eno. Once he realized he had this wisdom stuff in him, he went to a Zen master named Daiman Konin (Ch. Hongren, 601–674 CE) who lived in a monastery up on Obai-zan Mountain. They put Daikan Eno in charge of rice pounding. He did this for eight months, which is not really that long, considering what happened next.
One night the master came in while Daikan Eno was pounding some rice. The master said, "Did you get all the hulls off the rice yet?"
Daikan Eno said, "It's white but not sifted."
The master pounded the rice three times. Then Daikan Eno sifted it three times. That was the moment when teacher and student truly connected. You'd had to have been there to really understand. When a teacher transmits the dharma to a student, not even the teacher or the student himself knows it. And yet it totally happens at just that precise moment.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "It Came from Beyond Zen!"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Brad Warner.
Excerpted by permission of New World Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction1. It Came from Beyond Zen! — (Inmo) It!
2. Don’t Be Half Assed — (Tenzō Kōkun) Instructions for the Cook
3. A Thousand Eyes and Hands of Compassion — (Kanon) Compassion
4. Compassion and Zen Buddhist Ethics
5. Four Good Ways to Treat People Right — (Shishōbō) Four All-Embracing Virtues
6. Eating Cornflakes and Doing the Dishes — (Kajo) Everyday Life
7. Garbage In, Garbage Out — (Jinshin Inga) Deep Belief in Cause and Effect
8. Wait! What Was the Deal with Cause and Effect Again? (Dai Shugyo) Great practice
9. Buddhist Super Powers — (Jinzū) Mystical Power
10. He Not Busy Being Born Is Busy Dying — (Shoji) Living and Dying
11. Does Life Exist?
12. A Willingness to See the Truth — (Doshin) The Will to the Truth
13.1 Needle in the Butt of Zazen Commentary Part 1
13.2 Needle in the Butt of Zazen Commentary Part 2
14. Talking to the Trees About Reality — (Mujō Seppō) The Insentient Preach the Dhrama
15. It’s All in the Mind, Or Is It? (San Gai Yui Shin) The Three Worlds Are Only the Mind
16. All You Have to Do is Dream — (Mu-chu Setsu-mu) Explaining a Dream Within a Dream
17. Giggling in Delight — Conclusion
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