60. Lancet of Zazen: Zazenshin

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

What is it, really —

this so-called upright sitting?

It’s your everything.

* * *

Possibly the briefest of all of Master Dogen’s written teachings, Zazenshin is his rewrite of a poem he found in China, as was his initial tract on the principles of seated meditation, Fukanzazengi. The title means something like “Acupuncture Needle for Zazen,” or the shorter “Lancet of Zazen” I have chosen. Something sharp, in other words, that can cut or penetrate to the heart of the matter. In this case, the “Great Matter,” as it is called. In Japan in 1987, I had the good fortune to have acupuncture — needles, electricity and all — performed upon my back. As our Japanese host promised, it made me feel “light.”

The essential-function of buddhas,
and the functioning-essence of ancestors;
Being actualized within non-thinking;
Being manifested within non-interacting.

Here again, as in the last segment where we covered his Vow, Dogen never mentions it — zazen — even once. But we all know what he is talking about. It — zazen — is the essential function of all buddhas of past, future, and present. You might suggest that their function is to teach Buddhism, to transmit the dharma to the great unwashed masses. But the singular, effective, and only way to do so is through zazen. Not only do they need to impress upon others the central need for them to practice this “excellent method,” as Master Dogen refers to it, but they need to do it themselves, before they can have any idea of why others must be encouraged to sit, or to have any street cred for promoting the practice. It is what buddhas do. It is how buddhas become buddha, awakened. Otherwise, no buddhas.

How this comes about is that it begins with “non-thinking.” We return to our natural state of non-thinking, that is. There is nothing automatic about thinking. It has to be learned, just like language. But long before we learn to think, we are already fully conscious. Consciousness does not rely on thinking. Thinking may come and go, but it is not fundamental to awareness. It doesn’t hurt, but it can get in the way of direct intuition. We can think that something is real when it is not, for example, and that what is real, is not. We can tell when we are thinking, or when we have been, for a minute. And we can tell when we have not, just the moment before. As soon as we recognize this, of course, we are back to thinking. Non-thinking is neither thinking nor not-thinking. It is that awareness that can be aware of thinking, but is not dependent upon it. It can also be aware of non-thinking, without having to think about it. But simply returning to a childlike state of non-thinking awareness is not Zen’s comprehensive insight.

Insight into deeper levels of reality — the nondual side of things — is broadly considered the “effect” of meditation, one of many, but cannot be attributed to meditation as its cause, as in linear causality. It is difficult, but not impossible, for individuals to experience profound insight without the prerequisite of zazen. Sixth ancestor in China, Huineng, is the standout historical exemplar of this phenomenon. Most of us have to spend considerable time in zazen, just to cut through the clutter of our own opinions about it. It being zazen, and everything else we might think about reality.

This insight is not manifested simply in non-thinking, however. According to Dogen, it manifests in “non-interacting.” A line from one of the Ch’an poems we have examined claims that “All the senses interact and do not interact; interacting they are linked together; non-interacting, each keeps its place.” We look at them as a Venn diagram, overlapping, as in synesthesia. If we come to experience non-thinking as our new normal, intellectual state of mind, we can begin to apprehend non-interacting as an even deeper, intuitive state of merging of the senses, and all that that entails for consciousness itself. If non-thinking, or the embrace of it, is a prerequisite, then non-interacting in general, i.e. in the sensory realm, can be conceived as the next level down the rabbit-hole. This investigation can be understood as a kind of deep and all-inclusive process of profound sensory adaptation. Sitting still enough for long enough, everything adapts, or neutralizes. This is non-interacting on a granular level, so to speak.

Being actualized within non-thinking,
the actualization is by nature intimate.
Being manifested within non-interacting,
the manifestation is itself verification.

Master Dogen further unfolds the last two lines of the prior stanza, like flower petals opening to reveal the interior of the blossom. If we can accept that it — zazen and its effect — is most naturally actualized within this primordial state of non-thinking, then we can further embrace the idea that this revelation is by nature “intimate.” Here Dogen means, as usual for him, intimate in both temporal and spatial modes. That is, we are awakening to what we already are — nothing is changing — but it is so close in time and space, like the water to the fish, that we cannot really share it with anyone else. We cannot even separate our “self” from “it.” This is Uchiyama Roshi’s “Self selfing self,” Okumura Roshi’s translation.

When we penetrate to the depths of consciousness itself, encountering the stillness that resides at the heart of motion there, the non-interacting manifested therein is itself the verification of our exploration. We have discovered the Original Frontier™ of mind that Buddha pioneered 2500 years ago. We have found the territory for which Dogen is laying out the map.

The actualization that is by nature intimate
never has defilement.
The manifestation that is by nature verification
never has distinction between Absolute and Relative.

It becomes clear that this new landscape has never been defiled, and cannot be reduced to ordinary understanding, Zen’s special meaning of defilement. In it, we verify that there has never been any distinction between absolute and relative, a hallmark of the world of linear logic we have left far behind.

The Intimacy without defilement
is dropping off without relying on anything.
Verification beyond distinction between Absolute and Relative
is making effort without aiming at it.

Again unfolding the deeper meaning of the prior lines, Dogen reveals that this personal insight, one that cannot be shared with others, nor reduced to common understanding, is experienced as the “dropping off” of the imputed body-mind of one’s self, as well as of that of others, as we first encountered in his Genjokoan. This cannot be done intentionally, and can happen only in a context of not “relying on anything,” i.e. not being able to rely upon the usual tricks and dodges we employ in confronting the various vagaries and vicissitudes of daily life. All such gimmicks must be left behind at this remove, on the cushion.

This verification, in which absolute and relative truths find no foothold — and that, again, can occur, but we cannot force it — is reduced to simply making effort without aiming at it, again, on the cushion. We continue to make effort as in the beginning of our meditation, when as a novice, the physical world of form, the body and its resistance to sitting still for long, was the first barrier. Then, as the posture became comfortable, emotional and mental distress may have set in, perhaps accompanied by the social stressors of family and friends who do not meditate, and do not understand why we do. When we run out of explanations, even to ourselves, we still have no choice but to continue. We are no longer aiming at anything that we can articulate, but we are still making the effort. It is not rational at this point.

The water is clear to the earth —
a fish is swimming like a fish.
The sky is vast and extends to the heavens —
a bird is flying like a bird.

But like a refreshing, cool breeze, or a summer rain on a hot day, Master Dogen assures us that all is well. Zazen should be the comfortable way, the posture more like a refreshing stretch, and the breath like a sigh of relief. This is perfectly natural, like a fish swimming like a fish, or a bird flying like a bird. We are just sitting, like a person sitting. The water becomes clear, and the sky vast, extending to the heavens. The “vast emptiness, nothing holy” of Bodhidharma’s expression of spiritual truth to emperor Wu opens up before us. When we are asked why we do what we do, i.e. zazen — or even who it is answering the question — we can honestly say, with Bodhidharma and Dogen, and with a sense of putting our burden down, “Don’t know.” Nobody really knows, not even Buddha.

* * *

Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to [e-mail]. Gassho.

Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell