Myoki Raizelah offers a reflection on Eihei Dogen's Genjo Koan during this third session of her shuso's class, Discovering Your Genjo Koan. This class was offered in support of the community's Winter Practice Period.
Stream audio:
Stream video:
Myoki Raizelah's talk notes:
To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.
To study the buddha way is to study the self.
Questions arise in me like:
Which aspect of the self?
The conditioned self?
Our true self? Our boundless nature?
I thought there was no self?
As Shohaku Okumura says in Realizing Genjokoan, the word translated as “to study” more specifically means “to get accustomed to,” or “to become familiar with.”
This isn’t intellectual study. Become familiar with yourself. I would stretch that - become intimate with yourself. Study all aspects of yourself.
For many years, my practice included this particular inquiry:
Who am I right now? It didn’t matter what I was doing.
Who is washing the dishes right now?
Who is pushing my son on the swing right now?
Who is teaching this class right now?
The easy answer would be, “Raizelah is doing blah-dee-blah right now?”
But who is this person identified as Raizelah?
This practice, a kind of a mantra practice, helped me to meet all parts of myself. I came face-to-face with beliefs about myself, identities and ideas about myself that I cling to, as well as the less rigid and open aspects of my being.
To investigate into yourself might include any of these questions:
What do I think about myself right now?
How am I feeling?
What is triggering me?
How do I feel when I am triggered in this way?
Where do I feel my reaction in my body?
What sensations accompany that reaction?
When do I feel small and defensive?
When do I feel open and connected?
What am I fearing?
How do I feel the fear in my body?
What is it like when my self-consciousness falls away?
Who am I if I were to express myself authentically?
What emerges when I allow, but don’t cling tightly, to the thoughts and feelings emerging right now?
Triads (5 min each with 5 min for discussion in triad) total of 20 minutes
Investigate your experience in the moment. Be inquisitive. Study (become intimate) with yourself right now.
Group discussion: What happened when you inquired into your experience?
To study the self is to forget the self.
The reason that the mantra practice of asking myself, “ Who is doing blah-dee-blah right now?” was so powerful: it helped mt to recognize what Norman calls “self-clinging.” Just the mere recognition, would loosen its grip on my consciousness. Another way of saying this: when I recognize the identity, self-belief or self-concept that is running me, it loses its power. If I observe closely, eventually I see how ephemeral or insubstantial these aspects of the conditioned self are. If I am practicing wisely, I let it go.
And in a moment of grace, the identity may drop away. I forget the self.
Here is a quote from Hakuum Yasutani (p.35)
Show the book: Flowers Fall: A Commentary on Zen Master Dogen’s GenjoKoan
“To study oneself, what must one endeavor to do? What is essential is to throw away one’s own views of oneself. To throw away all one’s acquired affectations, which are the knowledge and experience accumulated since birth, to become a pure white sheet of paper, and to bring oneself into accord with the teachings of the Buddhas and ancestors - that’s the important thing. While carrying around such things as “my ideas” and “my opinions,” one absolutely can not attain the Buddha way. The Buddha way is the way of returning to one’s intrinsic nature itself; how can one awaken to one’s intrinsic nature when one is diluted by one’s acquired affectations? To forget oneself is not to fall victim to amnesia. It’s to throw away all former knowledge and views and to become a pure white sheet of paper. ”
And what does this have to do with Zazen?
These are some things I have noticed about the content of my mind while sitting Zazen:
-
I rehearse future conversations or replay past conversations that reinforce my view or beliefs
-
I make plans that reinforce my identity - I create a class plan, for example, reinforcing my identity as a teacher
-
I imagine a future that is based on my personal preferences or that will reinforce my identity
-
I re-play stories from my past that bolster my identity, self-concepts, beliefs, perceptions
How much of my mind’s activity is about reinforcing these views of myself, “these acquired affectations,” which are in essence, the content of my conditioned self? A lot.
But when we practice Zazen (and I want to underscore this practice is not just done on the cushion - what we do on the cushion is a practice ground for the rest of our life), we are encouraged not to hop on the train of these thoughts, but to let them go, to allow them to drop away. If we don’t give them energy, then what happens?
When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away.
More from Hakuum Yasutan (p.36):
“To completely discard one’s own views and oneself, and then, moved by one’s intrinsic nature itself, to carry out the activities of daily life as one’s intrinsic nature - going out and returning home, getting dressed, eating and drinking, defecating and urinating - that is “to be enlightened by the myriad dharmas.”
So, the myriad dharmas are referring to all things of our life, the activities and content of our daily living. And when we are “actualized by the myriad dharmas,” we are taking our practice from the cushion into our daily life. We are practicing with what life presents in each moment.
And then Dogen says “your body and mind as well as the body and mind of others will drop away.”
Don’t take this too literally. No, you will not drop dead. What Dogen is talking about is the identities that comprise your ego, the “acquired affectations” learned throughout your life, the conditioned mind and body will drop away. These conditioned ideas will lose their grip on your consciousness - or maybe the other way around: you will loosen your grip on your ideas about yourself and others. Or both. And in that, you realize the interdependence of all beings, so if your body and mind drop away, then the body and mind of others will, too. You are practicing with everyone.
Hakuum Yasutan (p.36) says it this way:
“Now throwing away all one’s previous knowledge and views, you become a pure white sheet of paper, and living the life of one’s intrinsic nature…this is the whole of original enlightenment, the actualization of enlightenment …that is completely dropping away body and mind.”
So, of course when our own body and mind fall away, the body and mind of others will drop away, because in the dimension of the absolute, there is no self and no other. There is one inter-being. We are all waves in a single ocean. My wave has a ripple effect throughout the whole ocean of being. The whole world is touched when you allow your body and mind - your skin bag separate self - to drop away. When you return to your original nature, you help everyone’s return.
No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.
Don’t hold on to this either. This moment of awakening - let that go, too.
People are sometimes intimidated by the language of “awakening” or “enlightenment,” and think to themselves, “I’m not enlightened or I am not awakened. That is something that might happen to me later - if I practice hard enough and long enough. That is something over there.”
It’s right here. And you have little experiences of this all the time, whether you notice or not:
-
When you are having an argument or disagreement with someone and then you let go of being right. Sometimes Tim says something that I completely disagree with, and because I have an ego, I believe I’m right. And I see that, so I say, “OK, whatever,” because I’m not interested in arguing. But there are 2 ways to say, “OK, whatever.” I can say it and still maintain the internal posture of “I’m right (my I’m-rightness),” or I can say it and really just let it go, return to not-knowing mind
-
When you notice you are badgering or criticizing yourself and - you see it and you disengage from your critical mind
-
When you are pushing yourself too hard, conditioned by perfectionism, and upon seeing it, ease up on yourself. That is a big one for me. I had a perfectionist mother, and 2 very critical parents, and a long history of pushing myself right past my limits.This has been big practice for me during these recent weeks with Covid. I am in week 4, and I would say I have 60% of my energy back (on a good day). I still sleep every afternoon. So, everyday I meet myself pushing myself too hard. Trying to live up to my “perfectionistic” expectations in my work. And every day, I practice with “this is good enough.” It has to be. I don’t have the energy to work a full day. I do what I can and practice with “just this is enough.” Letting it go - the perfect idea of how this class should be - just letting it go.
I think this is what Dogen calls practice-enlightenment (all one word). It happens on the cushion and it happens off the cushion, in the rest of your life. It’s those brief moments when you see your contraction, maybe even suffering, and you pause, you exhale and you allow whatever is driving you to drop away. You just let go - and maybe something else opens up in your experience. Yasutan has been referring to this as a blank, white sheet of paper. I think of it as “not knowing” mind. And it’s from this place that your true nature (or intrinsic self or Buddha nature) might express itself.
Suzuki Roshi p.129 of Not Always So on enlightenment
“You may think you can only establish true practice after you attain enlightenment, but this is not so. True practice is established in delusion, in frustration. If you make some mistake, that is where to establish practice…Even in our imperfect practice, enlightenment is there.”
and this no-trace continues endlessly.
There is no limit to the practice of enlightenment. It continues endlessly. The same practice over and over again: letting go.
Repeating question in dyads (5 minutes each): What are you holding on to right now?
End with Group discussion.
When you first seek dharma, you imagine you are far away from its environs. But dharma is authentically transmitted, you are immediately your original self.”
To imagine that you are far away from the “environs” of the Dharma is to imagine that it is outside of yourself. If it is something over there and something you need to get. It is separate from you. But, in actuality, there is nothing to attain, nothing to get.
You are Buddha. You are already living Buddha’s life. This is what I was trying to communicate in my Way Seeking Mind talk. There is a feeling I was trying to communicate in that talk - that my life was/is perfect just as it is - not because it is flawless or idyllic - but because it is Buddha’s life. It couldn’t be any other way. The life we are given is the life we wake-up in. Perfect as it is.
