Commonplace Book: Song of Zazen

This has recently become a favorite. I've captured it from Monkey Mind and one of my teacher's Roshi Ford's blog. He has a link to a monk chanting it if you're interested.

The text:

Song of Zazen - by Hakuin Ekaku

All beings by nature are Buddha,

As ice by nature is water.

Apart from water there is no ice;

Apart from beings, no Buddha.

How sad that people ignore the near

And search for truth afar:

Like someone in the midst of water

Crying out in thirst,

Like a child of a wealthy home

Wandering among the poor.

Lost on dark paths of ignorance,

We wander through the Six Worlds,

From dark path to dark path--

When shall we be freed from birth and death?

Oh, the zazen of the Mahayana!

To this the highest praise!

Devotion, repentance, training,

The many paramitas--

All have their source in zazen.

Those who try zazen even once

Wipe away beginning-less crimes.

Where are all the dark paths then?

The Pure Land itself is near.

Those who hear this truth even once

And listen with a grateful heart,

Treasuring it, revering it,

Gain blessings without end.

Much more, those who turn about

And bear witness to self-nature,

Self-nature that is no-nature,

Go far beyond mere doctrine.

Here effect and cause are the same,

The Way is neither two nor three.

With form that is no-form,

Going and coming, we are never astray,

With thought that is no-thought,

Singing and dancing are the voice of the Law.

Boundless and free is the sky of Samádhi!

Bright the full moon of wisdom!

Truly, is anything missing now?

Nirvana is right here, before our eyes,

This very place is the Lotus Land,

This very body, the Buddha

Dosho Port on Zen and a Teacher

"Despite what you might read in the cyberwhirl, Zen is a relational undertaking. Therefore, to authentically be engaged in Zen practice, it is simply necessary to be engaged in a teacher-student relationship."

- Dosho Port from his blog.

Zazen or Daily Life

Interesting conversation starting over at Dosho Port's blog on Zazen or Daily Life. Interested in your two cents.

Chinese and Zen

I like languages and recently have been turning my attention to Chinese—studying it with Jacob. Chinese has always seemed intimidatingly difficult to me. Once I started learning it, it seems a little less complicated and extremely rich as languages go. It's complexity is also making me more interested in many of the Zen texts that are translated into English. To the extent that Dogen wrote in Chinese and in Japanese and often relied on wordplay, it seems difficult to rely on many of the translations we have in English without extensive commentary on the characters used. As I'm learning Chinese radicals, it seems everything can turn on the character. This in turn has me questioning in discussion periods after Dharma talks exactly what characters are used in the original. N.B. I know the Zen injunction on heavy reading early on but am ignoring it and balancing it with regular practice. You can't not ask.

This particulary came up in a study of the the Ten Grave Precepts which were being discussed. As presented, the precepts were each preceded by an English dependent clause that shifted them toward a Western sense of ethics that emphasized our notions of "I" and the autonomous person. However, as I understand it, the precepts aren't that clear. For example, the first simply translated is "no kill." This could be an injunction, a description, a statement of reality, or simply all three. Without knowing the characters of the original, it's hard to say how to approach it. It would certainly be impossible to understand without practice but even with practice, bad translation can lead a novice to error. In some ways this is the ongoing and great debate that I'm only slightly beginning to be aware of in Zen about how much Western influence can there be before it is no longer Zen and the relationship of discipline/form with freedom within the approach.

I digress. My hope is to make it beyond "survival Chinese" as one of my texts refers to it and pick up a more conversational ability over the next year.

Things of interest so far...

1. Chinese has over ten dialects, perhaps more, which are unintelligble to each other when spoken. Yet, the written language is understood by every literate speaker regardless of dialect.
2. There are two types of Chinese characters traditional and simplified. Simplified represents an effort by the PRC to make the more complex traditional system easier and increase literacy. However, it seems learning simplified characters first will make it impossible to ever learn to read traditional characters.
3. Chinese has five tones, if you count one tone as no tone. They are up, down, down-up, flat. These were impossible to understand until they were drawn on a musical scale. The same sound, depending on tone, can have five different meanings, and the same word and tone, e.g. ta(4), meaning he, she, or it is impossible to figure out what is meant without context or seeing the character used.
4. The character for I (我) is a combination of the character for hand (手) and the character for lance (戈). Learning the radicals this way makes it easy to remember how to write them. When writing "I", you think "hand + lance".
5. Penmanship. There is a prescribed order for writing the strokes and penmanship conveys meaning. The characters should be uniform in size and proportional. This is exceedingly challenging.
6. Chinese speakers love wordplay and the language is built for it.

Taking the Path of Zen - Robert Aitken

I just finished Taking the Path of Zen by Robert Aitken. Really, I finished it twice. I picked up the book first as an introduction to Zen Buddhism and to zazen—the form of seated mediation practiced by Zen Buddhists and, in many ways, the fundamental core of the tradition. As an introduction to zazen, it is a great book if you are getting started. It discusses the posture, how to sit, how to hold your hands, the purpose of the methods, how to stretch and to get used to the posture, and how to progress

First Read

The first read was before I had started sitting regularly. In this context, Aitken is a great companion book. He slowly goes through topics that can be confusing:

1. How to stretch to be able to sit in the positions.
2. The four traditionally acceptable positions for zazen.
3. How to sit on the cushions.
4. What to do with your hands.
5. How to breathe.
6. How to behave in a zendo—the meditation hall. This is particularly useful (depending on the formality/informality of your zen center). There is a lot of bowing, proper ways to hold liturgy books, ways of chanting, and movements between sitting meditation—zazen—and walking meditation—kinhin. All of this is signaled only with different types of bells and clappers. The orientation by Aitken is a big help.

He also discusses different substantive doctrinal issues: the Triple Treasures, the Grave Precepts, and the Bodhisattva vows. He also has a chapter on the koan mu. The discussion of the doctrinal issues is very superficial and doesn't go into great detail. It isn't supposed to. Also, Aitken discusses entering shoken and the role of the teacher or roshi.

Second Read

I read the book a second time after I had been practicing almost daily for about five weeks. The book had new meaning. I could identify with the pain in you feel in your legs that he describes and the frustrations that are common. His chapters on delusions, pitfalls and religious ideas in meditation became much more clear after experiencing many of them first hand and—continuing to experience them. It's difficult to describe the second read because all the instructional material is simply your practice and reading the chapters on the precepts becomes very superficial in the sense that, for me, practice makes clear that the precepts are not ought but are. Simply, much of the discussion that you follow in the first read rationally simply collapses into zazen and into practice in the second read.

The book is a definite must read for those interested and just beginning. It doesn't go into great detail regarding Buddhist theology but, that is zen. On the other hand, I am practicing in a community that is definitely focused on the zen tradition and its rigor. However, my community is also dedicated to expanding the Western and American Zen experience so there is room for reading and more detailed exploration of theology and doctrine—all with the practice as the foundation. Aitken is a key figure in bringing Zen to the United States and well-worth reading. Up next for me, Dumoulin's history of Zen in China and then in Japan.