The Wisdom of Zen - Zazen and understanding the teachings of Dōgen

Dōgen Zenji was a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher born in Kyōto. He founded the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan after traveling to China and training under Rujing, a master of the Chinese Caodong lineage. Many people have studied Dōgen teachings throughout centuries. He is also known for the collection of his writing called Shobogenzo, a masterpiece of the world's religious literature. Dogen was born in Kyoto into an aristocratic family. He was said to have been a prodigy who learned to read both Japanese and classic Chinese by the time he was 4.

The story of Dōgen is actually very profound and immense and this introduction of Dōgen which ultimately leads to Zen and understanding Zen philosophy won't cover entirely. Both of his parents died while he was still a small boy. The death of his mother, when he was 7 or 8, affected him especially deeply, making him aware of the impermanence of life.

Early Buddhist Education

The orphaned boy was taken in by an uncle who was a powerful, highly placed adviser to the emperor of Japan. The uncle saw to it the young Dogen received a good education, which included study of important Buddhist texts. Dōgen read the eight volume Abhidharma-kosa, an advanced work of Buddhist philosophy, when he was 9.

When he was 12 or 13 Dogen left that uncle's house and went to the temple Enryakuji, on Mount Hiei, where another uncle was serving as a priest. This uncle arranged for Dogen to be admitted to Enryakuji, an enormous temple complex of the Tendai school. The boy immersed himself in Tendai meditation and study, and he was ordained a monk at the age of 14.

The Great Question

It was during Dogen's teenage years at Mount Hiei that a question began to nag at him. His teachers told him that all beings are endowed with Buddha nature.

That being the case, why was it necessary to practice and seek enlightenment?

His teachers gave him no answer that satisfied him. Finally, one suggested that he seek out a teacher from a school of Buddhism that was new to Japan -- Zen.

Years before, Eisai (1141-1215), another monk of Enryakuji, had left Mount Hiei to study in China. He came back to Japan as a teacher of the Linji, or Lin-chi, school of Chan Buddhism, which would be called in Japan Rinzai Zen. It is likely that by the time the 18-year-old Dogen reached Eisai's temple Kennin-ji in Kyoto, Eisai already was dead, and the temple was headed by Eisai's dharma heir Myozen.

Travels to China

Dogen and his teacher Myozen traveled to China together in 1223. In China, Dogen went his own way, traveling to a number of Chan monasteries. Then in 1224, he found a teacher named Rujing who lived in what is now the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang. Rujing was a master of a Chan school called Ts'ao-Tung in China, and which would be called Soto Zen in Japan.

One morning Dogen was sitting zazen with other monks as Rujing was circumambulating the zendo.

Suddenly Rujing berated the monk next to Dogen for falling asleep. "The practice of zazen is the dropping away of body and mind!" Rujing said. "What do you expect to accomplish by dozing?" At the words "dropping away of body and mind," Dogen experienced a deep realization. Later he would use the phrase "dropping body and mind" frequently in his own teaching.

In time, Rujing recognized Dogen's realization by giving him a teacher's robe and formally declaring Dogen to be his dharma heir. Dogen returned to Japan in 1227, and Rujing died less than a year later. Myozen had also died while in China, and so Dogen returned to Japan with his ashes.

Master Dogen in Japan

Dogen returned to Kennin-ji and taught there for three years. However, by this time his approach to Buddhism was radically different from the Tendai orthodoxy that dominated Kyoto, and to avoid political conflict he left Kyoto for an abandoned temple in Uji. Eventually he would establish the temple Kosho-horinji in Uji. Dogen again ignored orthodoxy by taking students from all social classes and walks of life, including women.

But as Dogen's reputation grew, so did the criticism against him. In 1243 he accepted an offer of land from an aristocratic lay student, Lord Yoshishige Hatano. The land was in remote Echizen Province on the Sea of Japan, and here Dogen established Eihei-ji, today one of the two head temples of Soto Zen in Japan.

Dogen fell ill in 1252. He named his dharma heir Koun Ejo the abbott of Eihei-ji and traveled to Kyoto seeking help for his illness. He died in Kyoto in 1253.

Dogen's Zen

Dogen left us a large body of writing celebrated for its beauty and subtlety. Often he returns to his original question -- If all beings are endowed with Buddha Nature, what is the point of practice and enlightenment?Fully penetrating this question has been a challenge to Soto Zen students ever since. Very simply, Dogen stressed that practice does not "make" a Buddha, or turn human beings into Buddhas. Instead, practice is an expression, or manifestation, of our enlightened nature. Practice is the activity of enlightenment. The beginnings on how everything started in Zen has a direct connection to the four noble truths which all Buddhists or at least most Buddhists in the world know. Formal study of Buddhism nearly always begins with the Four Noble Truths. The Truths are something like hypotheses presented by the Buddha in his first sermon after his enlightenment, and all of his subsequent teachings support those hypotheses. Buddhism might be defined as a process of verifying and realizing the truth of the Truths. Unfortunately, when they are not properly taught the Truths can sound ridiculous.

A common, sloppy rendering of the Truths tells us that life is suffering, suffering is caused by greed, suffering ends when we stop being greedy, and the way to do that is to follow something called the Eightfold Path. Often people get hung up on "life is suffering" and decide Buddhism isn't for them.

However, if you take the time to appreciate what the Four Noble Truths are really about, everything else about Buddhism will be much clearer. Let's look at them one at a time.

The First Noble Truth: Life Is Dukkha

Much of the subtlety of Buddhist doctrines can be lost in translation. In this case, much confusion has been caused by English translation of the Pali/Sanskrit word dukkha as "suffering." According to the Ven. Ajahn Sumedho, a Theravadin monk and scholar, the word dukkha actually means "incapable of satisfying" or "not able to bear or withstand anything." Other scholars have deleted "suffering" and substituted "stressful."

Further, the Buddha was not saying that everything about life is relentlessly awful.

In other sermons, he spoke of many types of happiness, such as the happiness of family life. But as we look more closely at dukkha, we see that it touches everything in our lives, including good fortune and happy times.Among other things, the Buddha taught that the skandhasare dukkha. What are the skandhas? They are the components of a living human being -- form, senses, ideas, predilections, and consciousness. In other words, the animated body you identify as yourself is dukkha, because it is impermanent and will, eventually, perish. This is also true of happy times and good fortune. 

The Second Noble Truth: On the Origin of Dukkha

The standard rendering of the Second Truth is that dukkha is caused by greed or desire. The actual word from the early scriptures, tanha, is more accurately translated as "thirst" or "craving."

The Second Truth is not telling us we must give up everything we love to find happiness. The real issue here is more subtle -- it's attachment to what we desire that gets us into trouble.

What do we mean by attachment? In order for there to be attachment, you need two things -- an attacher, and something to attach to. In other words, attachment requires self-reference, and the thing desired must be perceived to be separate from oneself. But the Buddha taught that this is an illusion.

Buddhist practice brings about a radical change in perspective. Our tendency to divide the universe into "me" and "everything else" fades away. In time, the practitioner is better able to enjoy life's experiences without judgment, bias, manipulation, or any of the other mental barriers we erect between ourselves and what's real.

The Third Noble Truth: The Cessation of Craving

The solution to dukkha, then, is to stop clinging and attaching. But how do we do that?

The fact is, you can't -- by an act of will. You can't just vow to yourself, okay, from now on I won't crave anything. This doesn't work, because the conditions that give rise to craving will still be present.

The Second Noble Truth tells us that we cling to things we believe will make us happy or keep us safe. But eventually we will be disappointed, because everything is impermanent. Grasping for one ephemeral thing after another never satisfies us for long. It is only when we see this for ourselves that we can stop grasping. But when we see it, the letting go is easy. The craving will seem to disappear of its own accord.

The Fourth Noble Truth: The Eightfold Path

Now we get to the "how." The Buddha spent the last 45 or so years of his life giving sermons on aspects of the Four Noble Truths, and most of these sermons were about the Fourth Truth -- the path (magga).

The path is eight broad areas of practice that touch on every part of one's life, from study to ethical conduct to what you do for a living to moment-to-moment mindfulness. Every action of body, speech, and mind are addressed by the path. It is a path of exploration and discipline to be walked for the rest of one's life.

Without the path, the first three Truths would just be theory; something for philosophers to argue about. Practice of the Eightfold Path brings the dharma into one's life and makes it bloom.

Zen Schools

Shobogenzo

Zen has had a long and varied history in several different Far Eastern cultures. Each culture has

produced a tradition that is recognizable as Zen, but differs slightly from all the others. Vietnamese Zen is the one most influenced by the Theravada tradition. It tends to be gentle in expression and method, to emphasize purity and carefulness, and to combine Zen with some Theravadin teaching and methodology. In China, Zen eventually became the only Buddhist school, inclusive of all the others, so contemporary Ch'an includes many faith-based Mahayana practices that existed initially in other Buddhist schools, especially faith in and repetition of the name of Amida Buddha, the savior Buddha who will ensure rebirth in auspicious heaven to those who venerate him. Korean Zen is the most stylized and dramatic of the Zen schools, and also the most austere. Korean Zen includes prostration practice (repeated, energetic full-to-the-floor bows of veneration) and intensive chanting practice, and has a hermit tradition, something virtually unknown in Japanese Zen.

Within each of the Asian Zen traditions, there are several schools, and within schools, the styles of individual teachers often differ greatly. Still, it is remarkable how essentially similar the various teachers within a particular Zen "dharma family" can be in personal style and mode of expression, even though, paradoxically, each one is quite distinctive and individualistic. This uncanny fact-radical individuality within the context of shared understanding seems to be an indelible feature of Zen.

Zen Today

Over the years Zen has become very popular, particularly in the West. Many people regard Zen as a way of life, more a philosophy of life instead of a classical religion. I have always been following the story of a German Zen Master who became abbot in one of the largest Zen monasteries in Japan. Muho Noelke practices in a temple called Antaiji, situated on top of a mountain in a remote area of Hyogo Prefecture. It's known for its rigorous practices in meditation. Each year around 100 visitors visit the temple, eager to practice Zen which is centered on Zazen seated meditation. Zen Buddhism is deeply woven into Japanese culture. Its fusion of philosophy, spirituality, and art is one of the world's great cultural achievements. The Zen emphasis on spontaneity and the abandonment of fear shaped the samurai warrior code. Zen rituals, which point to the transcendent in ordinary life, spawned the intricate choreography of the tea ceremony.

But over the past 200 years, Zen has fallen far from its peak of cultural influence. Today it's neither popular nor particularly influential in modern Japan. Zen temples still draw visitors on holidays and some turn to Zen priests to officiate at funerals. But very few Japanese practice Zen and the numbers are declining, especially among the young. That decline has coincided with Buddhism's flourishing in the West. Zen and other forms of Buddhism are steadily growing in popularity in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. Practice centers are drawing new members, and Buddhism has become a force in popular culture through books and movies. This seesaw effect has created tensions between the past and present, between East and West -- and poses a kind of Zen riddle for Japanese and foreign Zen practitioners alike.

What happens when a traditional religion, tempered by one culture, crosses boundaries and takes hold somewhere else? In both Japan and the United States, practitioners say Zen must change and adapt to different cultures.

"The basic principle in Zen is the same everywhere. Like Mount Fuji, there are different paths to the summit," said Kusho Itabashi, the abbot of the Soji-ji monastery in Yokohama and the current head of the Soto school, the largest Zen sect. "Americans don't have to go through the medium of Japanese culture or language, and that can be a purer practice of Zen." But in Japan, the changes are sparking anxiety. Japanese feel proprietary about Zen. They worry that its characteristic "Japaneseness" may be almost impossible to separate from the universal philosophy it espouses and that something will be lost when it takes root somewhere else.

Zen has a distinctly different feel in the United States than in Japan.

"American Zen practice is creative," said Matsunami, who spent several years in the United States and whose temple has a tradition of hosting Westerners. "They don't have meditation halls, traditions. They have to create everything. They have to sew cushions ... and they have to turn the cow house into a zendo."

But at the same time, he noted, American Zen has been plagued by a number of scandals among its leaders, partly because it lacks the hierarchies and checks on priestly power found in Japanese Zen.

A classic book of Zen in modern era

The Japanese system is much more established and institutionalized, he said, focused on monastic practice in small monasteries rather than the more lay-oriented Western approach. But it has also lost some of its vitality and discipline.

"Here, everything is established, we have good facilities," Matsunami said. "But here they also accept not pure, not real Buddhist monks' practice. In other countries, priests don't marry, they don't drink."

A loosening of monastic rules a century ago allowed Japanese monks to marry. That created a dynastic structure in temples, with sons following in their fathers' footsteps. Many Zen priests and scholars agree with Matsunami that this has created problems: It placed an emphasis on the temple as a moneymaking business to be passed on to succeeding generations and meant that many young men became monks mainly out of family obligation. Sources of fresh blood and new ideas were choked off.

As a result, the monastery system seems outmoded. Religious life is no longer viewed as a viable vocation for outsiders. The requirements and hardships of the priesthood - which in a premodern world seemed like a reasonable tradeoff - today can present almost insurmountable obstacles.

In the West, however, most Zen practitioners are not monastics. While this may seem strange, it is not at all strange if we consider "monastic" to be an attitude and a level of seriousness, more than a particular lifestyle. Unlike Zen laypeople in Asia, whose main practice is to support the monastic establishment, Western Zen lay practitioners want to understand Zen deeply and to practice it thoroughly, regardless of what their life circumstances may be. 

In this sense, all Western Zen students are "monastic," regardless of their life circumstances. All of them do some form of monastic-style training within the context of their lay lives. They sit meditation regularly, either at home or at a local temple, attend retreats, and live their daily lives with full attention (or at least coming as close to this as they possibly can). They take lay or priest vows, and even sometimes enter monastic training at one or more Zen centers for periods of time.

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