Saturday Shinzo Sangha Talks by Will Holcomb, St. Louis, MO
June 11, 2016
Fukanzazengi1: Why and how to meditate
Good morning. Today we’ll start a new topic which probably will carry through the rest of the
month and maybe beyond. What I thought I’d introduce today is a writing by the thirteenth century
Japanese teacher, Zen master Dogen. Since some of you may never have heard of Dogen, and
since those who have heard of Dogen may not be familiar with some of the aspects of his life, I
thought it would be helpful to talk a little bit about who he was.
Dogen was born in the year 1200 in Kyoto, Japan, or near Kyoto anyway. Kyoto, at that time, was
the imperial capital of Japan. That’s where the emperor’s palace was. But there was a lot going on
politically in Japan at that time because that’s also the time of the Samurai, of the warlords and
the Fujiwara clan. There was a city on the opposite side of the island, near Tokyo, where the
competing warlords had set up a new government, a military government. It wasn’t a stable time
in Japan by any means. Dogen was the son of one of the ministers of the court – that sounds
pretty good. But it wasn’t clear that he was married to Dogen’s mother. To make matters worse,
his father died when he was only three years of age. And to make matters worse yet, his mother
died when he was only eight years of age, and he was left an orphan.
Now, he lived in the imperial court, and people looked after him, especially his uncle, who saw
that he received an excellent education. In that sense, he wasn’t growing up in poverty. But he
didn’t have much family support. Being a bright, inquisitive person, he started asking questions as
he entered adolescence. What’s this all about? His questioning led him to become ordained as a
monk at 13 years of age. He was ordained in one of the big monasteries there in Kyoto – the socalled Tendai school. According to Dogen’s description of it, what he encountered at that
monastery was disturbing to him. He saw a lot of corruption, and people more or less taking
bribes, slacking off, not really pursuing a spiritual path. He was dissatisfied. As he wrote later, he
coalesced his big question in this way, and I’ll just read it as he wrote it later. He said, “Both
scriptures state that a person in essence has true dharma nature and is originally a body of true
buddha nature. If so, why do all buddhas in past, present, and future, arouse the wish for and
seek enlightenment?” What’s he trying to say there? Well, we don’t know for sure. For one thing,
this is an English translation of a medieval Japanese text. What he seems to be pointing to is a
question that is pretty relevant to what we just got through doing. We spent 30 minutes of our
precious lives, sitting in silence. Why did we do that? What purpose does that serve? If you
believe that, in a sense, I’m okay and you’re okay, what are we trying to fix by our practice? As
Mr. Rogers was fond of saying, if Mr. Rogers thinks we’re okay just the way we are, then why are
we working so hard? What are we trying to do?
That question he carried to the various teachers in Japan at the time. None of them could give
him a satisfactory answer, or an answer that satisfied him anyway. So, he went from one
monastery to another and ended up studying with a teacher that he bonded with named Myosin.
Myosin realized he was a bright pupil and thought that he could benefit from going to China to
study there. China was the civilized world – Japan was on the outreaches. It was considered a
primitive culture compared to China, which had a much longer civilized history.
When Dogen was 23 years of age, he and Myosin traveled to China. Nowadays, it’s no big deal to
go from Japan to China. You get on a plane and you go and you’re there in less than an hour. But
at that time, travel in wooden ships was pretty treacherous. Many of them didn’t make it across
the Sea of Japan because of storms and other conditions. As Dogen says, he “entrusted his
transient body to the billowing waves” in making this trip.
Well, he arrived in China and met with various people, as he traveled from monastery to
monastery. After he had been there for two years, he met with a noted teacher by the name of
Rujing. The two of them immediately bonded, and Dogen knew that Rujing was what he was
looking for in a teacher. Unfortunately, Myosin, meanwhile, around the same time, died. People
didn’t live as long back then, but Dogen had particular misfortune in all of these people who had
been close to him dying one right after another. He experienced a lot of loss and grief. He stayed
with Rujing for two years, whose main focus in his teaching was on sitting meditation. And that’s
what Dogen brought back to Japan, the importance of sitting meditation.
The first writing by Dogen found after he returned, (he was about 27 years of age at this point),
but the first thing that was actually recorded that we have access to now is called the
Fukanzazenji, which is “Universal Recommendation of Sitting Meditation.” It’s a relatively short
piece, and we won’t get very far into it. But basically, it addresses why to do sitting meditation and
then how to do sitting meditation. Much of the way this room is set up, the things we talk about,
much of it is attributable to the writings of Dogen. Which, in turn, are heavily attributed to Chinese
teachers, which, in turn, all point back to the Buddha, who lived 500 years before Christ.
I thought I would read the beginning portions of the Fukanzazengi to just give you a flavor for what
he’s talking about. We’ll see how far we get. We won’t spend too long because I want to leave
time for discussion.
He starts off, “The way is originally perfect and all pervading. How could it be contingent
upon practice and realization?” (It’s a restatement of the previous comment.) “The Dharma
vehicle, the teachings, are utterly free and untrammeled. What need is there for our
concentrated effort?” (Again, a restatement of that initial question.) “Indeed, the whole body is
far beyond the world’s dust. Who could believe in the means to brush it clean? It is never
apart from you right where you are. What use is there going off here and there to
practice?” Again, those are restatements of that question – what are we trying to fix with
meditation practice?
Then he says, “And yet, if there is the slightest discrepancy, the way is as distant as
heaven from earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion.” As you’re
sitting, you may notice that the mind drifts. Does that happen sometimes? Your thoughts wander
off? If you watch carefully, you can see that some of the time you just notice things drift through,
and other times you get lost in them. Some of the time, it’s neutral - you’re watching, just sitting
there. You don’t get really wrapped up in it. And other times you dive down into something you’re
either worried about, or something that you’re enjoying. If you actually observe this carefully, you’ll
notice that most of the time it’s things you’re worried about. Sometimes it’s things you’re enjoying.
But much of the “lostness” involves things that, we get down this little tunnel of memories, or
things that we wish were other than they are. As you continue on and you notice, well, that
happened. What? I’ve gotten lost! And then you come back. That’s actually the process of
meditation practice. One way of describing it is that coming back again and again. Noticing and
coming back. Noticing and coming back.
Sometimes you’ll find that you can go for long periods of times without getting trapped or without
getting lost in a tunnel. Other times you’ll notice that there are tunnels everywhere and you can
hardly even go for one minute without getting lost in some distraction. When Dogen says, “If the
least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion,” I think that’s the process he’s
referring to.