In the sixth talk of the 2024 Samish sesshin, Nomon Tim continues his reflections on Eihei Dōgen's Gakudo-Yojinshu, Points to Watch in Practicing the Way, which was written soon after his return from China.  This was the final of three talks given on Dōgen's early work. 

This text, translated by Shohaku Okamura, is the first of three translations in his freely available digitally published book Heart of Zen: Practice without Gaining-mind.  

Stream audio:

Tim's talk notes:

I appreciated Norman's reminder that you can't understand America without deeply investigating the American slave trade and economy and how that reverberates to this day and will continue reverberating for the rest of the time that humans live on this continent. This is deeply and tragically true isn't it?

I would add that you also can't understand America without understanding what happened to the people who lived here when the idea that became America arrived from Europe.

And one place to pick up that story is also in the 1860's.

In 1862 a passenger steamship arrived in the booming new town of Victoria, B.C. It brought a deadly cargo: smallpox. The first known cases in the Pacific Northwest.

The story I received in school - I think in 6th grade social studies class - was that the enormous deadly impact on native populations by European diseases was pretty much bad luck for them. Europeans' bodies were used to the diseases they brought with them to the so-called new world but indigenous peoples' weren't - they had no resistance and so it got them. Deeply regrettable but no one's fault.

I also vaguely remembered from school that a vaccine for smallpox was an early scientific success. This was probably from a health unit maybe in 7th grade, kind of the backdrop to why we should all get vaccinated to stay healthy - something about a similar disease in cows and some clever and courageous scientist guessing right inoculation by testing the first vaccines on himself or something. Reading up on the creation of the smallpox vaccine this morning I see that's a kind of mashup of multiple different historical events but not too far off.

That these two stories conflict didn't occur to me as a young man.

On the one hand smallpox was just bad luck for the natives, on the other hand that the first vaccine invented was for that very same disease. What gives here?

If I had wondered about that I don't know how I would have found out the truth in the early 1970's. Maybe there was some accurate info in our World Book Encyclopedia or maybe at the public library, but I suspect I would have to have ventured to the Stanford University library and dug into scholarly works which was beyond my reach at that age.

These days a few minutes on the internet will set you straight and it's a sad tall - well maybe disgusting is the right word. Maybe you already know about this but I'd encourage us all to learn more. Part of our responsibility especially as most of us here qualify as members of the dominant privileged class that benefited from slavery; and benefited from the removal and oppression of native peoples. It's tough stuff, but far tougher for those who in the legacy of oppression right?

We'll do a little ceremony this afternoon to acknowledge this.

And WOW: dehumanization is one powerful thing the mind can do all too well. It turns out that neurologically we actually conceptualize people whom we don't see as people with a different part of our brains: we literally see those "others" as objects, not as people. Whether these others are black people, or Indians, or Tutsi's, or Palestinians, or Armenians, or Jews…the list is horribly, horribly long.

[pause]

So back to our dear Dōgen - the 4th section of Gakudo Yojinshu "Points for Practicing the Way" includes another central Suzuki Roshi theme. The title is "Do Not Practice Buddha-Dharma With Gaining-Mind."

Here's a somewhat elided version of the whole chapter for your enjoyment. I'll read it and then highlight a few lines after that.

It is important to receive instruction from a teacher when practicing the buddha-dharma. Never use your own ideas as a basis.

The buddha-dharma cannot be attained with mind or with no-mind.

If your aspiration to practice is not in accordance with the Way, your body and mind will never rest in peace. If body and mind are not at ease, thorns grow on the path of realization.

How should you practice? Refrain from clinging to anything or rejecting anything, and free yourself from desire for fame and profit. Do not practice the buddha-dharma in order to gain a good reputation.

For some people, if no one respects or flatters them, they neglect practice even though they know it is in accord with the true Way. How shameful they are!

A practitioner of the buddha-dharma should not practice for his own sake. How can you possibly think of practicing for fame and profit? Just practice for the sake of the buddha-dharma.

The buddhas take pity on all living beings and help them through compassion. Everything they do is neither for themselves nor for others. This is the way of the buddha-dharma.

For fathers and mothers, after their young have grown up they receive no reward. And yet, they have compassion toward their young. So it is with Buddha’s compassion towards all living beings. We are already the children of the Buddha. How can we refrain from following the Buddha’s path?

Compassion is function of Buddha’s genuine Dharma.

A practitioner should not practice buddha-dharma for his own sake, in order to gain fame and profit, or to attain good results, or to pursue miraculous power.

Practice the buddha-dharma only for the sake of the buddha-dharma. This is the Way.

The point in the title about not doing this to try to get something is certainly here in this passage but there are deeper waters too and a some very practical and helpful points.

The buddha-dharma cannot be attained with mind or with no-mind.

The ultimate point about having no gaining idea. Not that you should soften up about the idea of getting something: there's nothing to get. And don't think of doing some kind of spiritual end run around this truth: even with no-mind that's nothing to attain.

How should you practice? Refrain from clinging to anything or rejecting anything

Very practical. The conditioned mind is endlessly exhausting, and sometimes entertaining, on this point isn't it? Notice clinging, desire:  wanting to be a different way, wanting something from this, some experience, some realization, some…something!

And notice rejecting: opinions, desires leaning the other way, judgments, opinions.

To "refrain from" these mind states doesn't mean these conditioned thoughts will never arise if you're doing this right - that's a tricky misunderstanding the teachings. It's that you see these mind states for what they are. Here's a moment of clinging, here's a moment of rejecting. The chain of thoughts and issues and energy and emotion that this can kick into motion is extra. Is the practice point.

Do you know the practice of "noting"?  Super useful here. Just quietly say to yourself what it is when the mind is attracted to some mental object like that. Just apply a simple lable, just note it. The way "duly noted" has that sense of recognition and acceptance.

For some years I practiced a lot with judgment in that manner. I think it helped a good bit. I established it in meditation first. Noticing as often as I could when a judgment arises. judgment. And then taking that off the cushion.

Sometimes instead of immediately buying my own story that so-and-so is a such-and-such I just flag "judgment," take a breath, and release at least some of that toxic energy.

These mind habits are so insidious aren't they? And the deep irony of them is that what our heart of hearts really wants is connection and love and here's the mind building barriers between us. It's super sad. And oh so human.

And of course it's not many steps past that to fully dehumanizing others and supporting social norms and policies that harm them.

SO this isn't personal improvement work actually: it's peace work. It's bodhisattva work.

In the next part he's talking about not practicing for fame and profit which he seems to emphasize a lot in these earlier teachings. Dōgen must've seen that happening around him on the Tendai stronghold on Mt Hiei and the emerging Zen scene in Kyoto. Dōgen could be a bit judgmental actually. He wrote:

Free yourself from desire for fame and profit. Do not practice the buddha-dharma in order to gain a good reputation.

For some people, if no one respects or flatters them, they neglect practice even though they know it is in accord with the true Way. How shameful they are!

A practitioner of the buddha-dharma should not practice for his own sake. How can you possibly think of practicing for fame and profit? Just practice for the sake of the buddha-dharma.

Our translator, Shohaku Okamura, also did a translation of another interesting Dōgen book: Shobogenzo Zuimonki. Dōgen didn't actually write this one. It's is a record of Dōgen's informal teachings in his first monastery as jotted down by his super-student Ejo.

Shokahu knows Shobogenzo Zuimonki backwards and forwards and he has several long footnotes in this section on Gakudo Yojinshu that echo this stuff about not practicing for fame and profit. Confirms it's importance to Dōgen I guess. He talked about this a lot.

This might be an easy section for us to ignore. Oh, I don't do that. I'm not going to be a famous Zen person. My books won't line the bookshelves, I won't even be the 3rd or 4th teacher in one of Roshi Joan's fabulous Dharma seminars at Upaya or even get an article in Tricycle Magazine. No desire for fame here.

Are you sure? You sure there's not a part of you that would kinda like to be admired for being a good Zen student? For completing a week long retreat. "Oh it was hard, but I got through it!" Maybe a little praise from someone here on Saturday morning when we're chatting again would be nice? Or a little impressed feedback from a friend or a co-worker. "Hey you seem so calm and grounded, I guess that Zen stuff really works!" 

If you read "fame and project" as "admiration" or "being appreciated" or "being validated" or maybe these points hit a little closer to home?

And finally in this chapter Dōgen brings up compassion - sweet!

It's interesting though it's not compassion in any kind of, "here let me help you with that!" way. There's a wisdom throughline here - listen again to this section:

The buddhas take pity on all living beings and help them through compassion. Everything they do is neither for themselves nor for others. This is the usual way of the buddha-dharma.

For fathers and mothers, after their young have grown up they receive no reward. And yet, they have compassion toward their young. So it is with Buddha’s compassion towards all living beings.

We are already the children of the Buddha. How can we refrain from following the Buddha’s path?

Compassion is function of Buddha’s genuine Dharma.

Everything the Buddhas, and thus we bodhisattvas, do should be neither for themselves or for others. Interesting no? And yet it is compassion to practice in this way. The final lines of this chapter conclude:

Practice the buddha-dharma only for the sake of the buddha-dharma. This is the Way.

This is a powerful sesshin instruction for us, especially important if you stumble your way into the sesshin leadership group.

That our first impulse should always be just practice. Always. Just follow the forms of sesshin. Stay in your practice. Just be present, do the buddha-dharma for the sake of the buddha-dharma. That this is true compassion.

Does this mean if someone's falling apart in the zendo we don't check in on them? I mean I know I'm not supposed to break silence, but shouldn't a teacher or the Ino or someone check on them?

Here it gets interesting as I think the answer is…maybe. Or yes and no. Or it depends.

A root teaching of Mahayana Buddhism matters here - one that the heart sutra points to with all of that form and emptiness talk which is sometimes called the two truths.

I don't usually talk this way as it makes something that's really subtle sound simplistic. Or more accurately: that locking this stuff down with words is in contradiction to what these words are pointing to.

More experienced teachers like Norman are talking about it all the time without calling it out so crudely like this - it's woven into the dharma so intricately there would be no Dharma without this.

But here's the idea: there's relative truth and absolute truth. Truth or worlds or realms of experience. Relative and absolute. Thich Nhat Hanh does talk about this a fair bit - he calls them the "historical dimension" and the "ultimate dimension".

The relative world/truth/dimension is how we tend to experience our everyday lives. Conditioned, complicated, busy. There's maybe some order to it - this leads to that, usually at least it seems to - and some ways of thinking about it's complexity that help it be less sticky: karma is mysterious, there are more causes and conditions at play here than I know and everything impermanent. The relative world is the word that we conceptualize, the world that we think about and talk about and make plans about are stressed out and sometimes delighted by: cool I got a promotion today! Relative world. Damn I screwed up today.

The central figure in the relative world is: you. Is me. The relative world swirls around this conception of self.

So the absolute is …. I hesitate to use words here as I know they'll never quite hit the mark … but we might talk about the absolute or ultimate world as the world of peace. The world in which everything is already complete and also never needed to be completed in the first place. Weird sounding terms like the "unborn nature of all things" point to this. The world of our wonderful and troublesome ideas of awakening and enlightenment are here in this place that's not a place.

We could also talk about the absolute, or emptiness is another term here, as the experience of complete trust, of deep settledness, of total engagement. Or absolute acceptance of the flow of the relative through us and us, but saying "us" is wrong as there's no "I" in the middle.

But the great blessing here is when we touch the absolute we touch peace. We touch a peace that's not dependent on anything. Not dependent on being validated by someone. Not dependent on being in good mood or getting a good night's sleep or having had strong and healthy attachment in childhood. There's peace because our nature is peace. There's joy and delight because our nature is joy and delight. There are tears too because our nature is compassion.

It's the naturalness of life you could also say.

So back to our person in the zendo who's becoming a puddle - or better yet is they somehow make it to the dokusan room where we have probably the best chance of being helpful with the support of that form. Sometimes the teacher might perceive that this upset being should be met in the relative world, sometime in the absolute. Either could be helpful.

The relative world is our usual helping. Hopefully here very skillful helping. Helping them turn towards the strong emotions. Encouraging them by pointing out their strengths - I love asking people, "well: how is that you didn't run away from sesshin yet if you're feeling this miserable, what allowed you to keep practicing?" Maybe a suggestion like reframing a self-harmful thought. "So you're saying you feel ashamed because you haven't done enough for the sangha lately? What if someone else in the sangha had to step back from sangha life to take care of themselves, would you be upset with them?" And of course the answer is, "no! I'd encourage them to take care of themselves. So wow, why am I shaming myself for taking care of myself for a few months! Woah!" This doesn't make all shame vanish but it sure can help, no?

But helping in the absolute world often looks very different. Passing by the sobbing person in the zendo you encourage yourself to be aware of your own body and breathing. You plant yourself in the practice. You sit with clarity and trust the Dharma. You trust that the Buddha will take care of this person without your getting involved in a relative way.

You trust that this person has the capacity to stay with their strong emotions and watch them change and maybe even dissolve. You trust the very strong power of our sesshin container to old that person in the silent, invisible utterly open embrace of emptiness. You trust the process that's unfolding and don't interfere with it. And when all is going as it should - as how it so often does - this person is given a very important gift. The gift of touching the ultimate. Or having an experiential learning about the transiency of suffering, the forgetting of self in that good Dōgen way of forgetting the self -softening the self, releasing the self, not being so bound by self.

Remember how Seng tsung in Xin Xin Ming say, "The wise do nothing at all." That's compassion in this way. There are two parts in that short phrase, "the wise" are the ones who see this clearly and can discern - intuitively you might say - that the best course of action is to leave it be. Do nothing at all.

Sesshin is a space to explore this. For all of us. That's why we have all of these rules and forms. That's why the silence especially which we seem to keep going on about and thanking you over and over (saying "thank you for keeping the silence" is little ironic, yes - not less this long Dharma Talk about it all).

And the rules and forms aren't because we're bound and determined to make you all look like Japanese Sōtō Zen monks - and don't worry you really don't look that way, not even kinda even those of us who kind of know how to wear this gear. I myself don't worry about "cultural appropriation" because we are so clearly doing this in our own way with gratitude for what little we understand about where it came from. No Japanese Zen monk would mistake us for the real thing.

NO: the deep purpose and gift of this week is that we all are touching this ultimate dimension in some way. Some feeling. Some moment of clear seeing. Some moment of peace. Some surprising lack of reactivity. Some gradually dawning growth in our trust in ourselves, in each other, in this process we call Buddha-Dharma. That's why were here.

And why is this such a deep gift? We chant the reason why over and over in the Heart Sutra. When we feel the empty nature of all existence there's no fear. The different gifts a bodhisattva can give are listed off in one of the sutra and the most important gift is the gift of fearlessness. That's the gift. I hope you can feel a glimmer of this. I hope you feel it right now. I hope you'll feel it in the next zazen period. I hope you'll feel it as we walk to the dining hall for lunch and gaze out over the water, walking along with our comprades chanting "hoooo" - "dharmaaaaa" and inviting the possibility someone will feed us so we can keep practicing.

So that's a bit of an attempt to explain this bit of Dōgen. That true compassion might not look like running around helping people. It might look exactly like practicing the way with full commitment and joy. Just practicing we touch the ultimate and of course we realize, little by little, that it was here all along woven into every moment or our lives always.

Thank you so much.