20. Zen Practice Quartet 4: Zazen

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Zazen is the bomb,
the essence of essential.
Without it, no Zen.

You can’t spell “zazen” without “z-e-n, zen,” and you can’t practice Zen without zazen. Some who should know better may disagree, but Zen cannot be separated from Buddhism, and Zen is founded exclusively on the insights that come from zazen. Some might argue that they do not have to practice meditation in order to “get” Zen, to adopt its worldview, and enjoy the benefits thereof. I say good luck with that.

While working on my graduate degree in design, I had a roommate sharing an apartment on the north side of Chicago, a jazz pianist who would come home from the gig, toss his hat at the hat rack, and declare “My Zen thing is working!” — or not — depending on whether he missed, or not. For some, Zen is just that simple. We are either in the flow, or not. In the moment, or not. When we are, that is Zen. When we are not, it is not.

This particular stereotype may stem from Zen’s Taoist heritage in China. Taoism stresses being in harmony with the Great Way, and offers some parables on that theme, including a shaggy dog story about the Taoist’s sympathetic neighbor, who loudly laments when his only horse runs off, then celebrates its return, followed by a whole herd of horses. Next, he laments the Taoist’s son breaking his leg while taming one of the wild stallions, then celebrating the fact that the army does not conscript the son, and on and on, with the pendulum swinging wildly, day after day. Meanwhile the Taoist himself responds only, “I don’t know, could be good, could be bad…” with each reversal of fortune.

This tale, which begins to sound like a standup routine from the Borscht Belt, certainly has a grain of truth in it, like any good stereotype. It offers a shortcut way of thinking, so that we don’t have to take its message too seriously.

But seriously, folks… life gets tedious, as grandma used to say. There are endless, and unrelenting — and not only technical — circumstances beyond our control — beyond anyone’s control — that intrude at the most inconvenient moments. Like the current pandemic. Or the impending election. But no worries — we won’t go there.

Where we will go is back to zazen. It is the “bomb” — or more accurately, “da bomb” — which the dictionary defines as “an outstandingly good person or thing.” That such a hipster colloquial expression would be given space in what used to be the pages, now the computer screen, of what used to be the somber, sober, primary authoritative tome on English vocabulary usage — the dictionary — is both refreshing, and disturbing. Purists lament such liberal laxity of language, while laissez-faire anarchists celebrate mocking what used to be “the king’s English.”

Which brings us to the repeat references to language that you may stumble across, if you are not careful enough to avoid the Soto Zen liturgy, especially those gnarly missives from China, three major teachings that we chant, from the early Chinese transmission. The first, second and third hail from around the 600s, 700s, and 800s CE, respectively, almost exactly a century apart. I will read the Japanese version of the Masters’ names, the Chinese pronunciation being more challenging:

Hsinhsinming / “Faith Mind”
(Jianzhi Sengcan/Kanchi Sosan d. 606)

Sandokai / “Harmony of Difference and Equality”
(Shitou Xiqian/Sekito Kisen 700–790)

and

Hokyo Zammai / “Precious Mirror Samadhi”
(Dongshan Liangjie/Tozan Ryokai 807–869)

The first is by the third Ch’an patriarch after Bodhidharma, usually referred to as Sengcan, and is the longest, at a bit fewer than 1,000 words in English translation. The second is the shortest, at just under 300 words, and the third is in-between, at just under 500. That translates roughly into three pages for the first, one for the second, and two pages for the third. A factoid that, 100 years apart, these three Masters felt moved to comment on Zen at radically different length. Do you suppose that they imagined that we would be reading these, over 1,000 years later?

What they have to say about Zen, and our compulsion to translate experience into words and concepts, is instructive. The first, Hsinhsinming, starts out challenging our very preference for preferences:

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences

Shortly thereafter, he points out that this applies to all dimensions of practice and daily life, without mentioning meditation, including our preference for passivity over activity, for example trying to suppress the monkey mind, which in Zen is a losing proposition:

When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity
your very effort fills you with activity
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other
you will never know Oneness

We should note that while both extremes are to be avoided, the gist of the poem points to nonduality of reality, where even emphasizing “oneness” as a thing can be misleading:

Although all dualities come from the One
do not be attached even to this One

And later, toward the end,

When such dualities cease to exist, Oneness itself cannot exist

Nonetheless, we dance with the idea of duality versus nonduality as we work our way through the Master’s analysis:

Those who do not live in the single Way fail in both activity and passivity — assertion and denial
To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality
to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality

So even emptiness, the holy grail of Zen, can be a case of over-thinking. Further:

The more you talk and think about it
the further astray you wander from the truth
Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know

That is pretty brutal, but compassionately so. Talking and thinking do not necessarily help. They can even get in the way of knowing, in the deepest sense of the term. From the second poem, Sandokai, we hear more comments about language from Sekito Kisen:

…revered and common, each has its speech

How many times have we heard, and recoiled from, that holy-holy sort of tone of voice, preaching in stentorian resonance, or hush-hush whisper — indicating that what is being said is really special, apart from the ordinary, so listen up — but which often comes off as somewhat strained, even phony? Attempted eloquence slides into artificial cadence.

But according to Master Dogen, in his first manual on meditation, “By virtue of zazen, it is possible to transcend the difference between common and sacred.” It is said that there is no “stench of holiness” in Zen. The down-to-earth, earthy and pithy comments of great Zen masters of the past, such as Dogen — who recognized the importance and rarity of encountering and hearing the “true Dharma,” but considered it nothing out of the ordinary — are downright refreshing by contrast. Sandokai also includes comments on the nature of language itself:

Darkness merges refined and common words
brightness distinguishes clear and murky phrases

Here the reference to darkness versus brightness may be Ch’an symbolism, but I think a simpler, more direct interpretation is in order. Refined or revered speech includes the vernacular, when considered from the standpoint that there is no daylight between the common and sacred in Zen. The brightness of Zen’s direct, experiential insight allows us to sort through the phrases of the ancients, no matter how clear or murky the syntax.

Toward the end of Master Sekito’s poem, we find another zinger on language itself:

Hearing the words, understand the meaning
do not establish standards of your own

While Zen is the ultimate in do-it-yourself as a practice, there is something to be said for listening to others who have been there and done that, and to not be fooled by the words themselves, or our preconceptions of their meaning. Perhaps the most famous phrase from Zen, one that everyone seems to think they know the meaning of, is “The finger pointing at the moon.” Do not be taken in by either the finger, or the moon. The standards that have been handed down from the ancients — who were no slackers, after all — are what Dogen was interested in finding out, in China. Which he demonstrated, when asked what souvenirs he had brought back, by holding out his empty hands.

Master Tozan, the founder of Soto Zen in China, begins the third poem with the stunning assertion:

The dharma of thusness is intimately transmitted by buddhas and ancestors
Now you have it; preserve it well

We have to wonder who he thinks his audience is. Is he implying that we already have the Dharma? “Thusness” is a tricky word here, pointing to the “as-it-is-ness” of reality, the ineffable truth that is fully in front of our face, but totally beyond expression, like the moon that can only be pointed to. If we “have it,” it must have somehow already been transmitted to us, in this intimate fashion, so intimate that we may be totally unaware of when and how it happened. Again, Master Dogen has got you covered (Jijuyu Zammai “Self-fulfilling Samadhi”):

When you first seek Dharma
you imagine that you are far away from its environs
But Dharma is already correctly transmitted
you are immediately your original self

So we don’t have something else to worry about acquiring, this Dharma. It is innate, our birthright. Yet we are charged with preserving it, and doing that well. So we have to at least have some idea of what it is that we are preserving, and how. Not to mention who, exactly, we are preserving it for. We understand that it cannot be transmitted in words, so in what kind of language is it communicated? Master Tozan, the “To” in Soto, drops a clue in the next stanza:

The meaning does not reside in the words
but a pivotal moment brings it forth

This “pivotal moment,” of which we have heard much, seems to be the ticket to what is missing. As Master Dogen reminds us some 400 years later, in the same tract:

All this, however, does not appear within perception, because it is unconstructedness in stillness, it is immediate realization

If the Dharma were an object of perception, in other words, it would by definition have to be a mental construction. He continues clarifying this point, the difference between appearance and essence, in the Genjokoan excerpt from Bendowa, the first chapter in Shobogenzo, his comprehensive collection:

The boundary of realization is not distinct, for the realization itself comes forth with the mastery of Buddhadharma. Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent. Its appearance is beyond your knowledge.

So we cross some sort of boundary on this journey, but we cannot be aware of crossing it. I have to add my usual caveat that, just as we do not master Zen, but it masters us, the same may be said for Buddhadharma. It is more a process of surrendering to this truth, the “compassionate teaching,” than mastering it, as if one had taken up the challenge of actually reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace or James Joyce’s Ulysses cover-to-cover, and actually assimilating its meaning. Dogen seems to belabor the obvious, that the inconceivable, being inconceivable, would necessarily not be in any way, shape or form, apparent. So within this realization, we must enter into a new dimension of reality, in which nothing is as it appears. Like Alice in Wonderland.

Zen has been said to be about the pursuit of the understanding of meaning. But that particle of meaning that can be translated into language is regarded as just the tip of the iceberg. And the truism from communications design, that the message is not that which is sent, but that which is received, holds true for Zen. As the poem relates further:

Just to portray it in literary form is to stain it with defilement

This defilement is the attempt to reduce the profound essence of Zen to words and concepts. Because we are human beings communicating with human beings about Zen, we find that there is no exit from this trap. But we do not have to be confused, regarding the efficacy and precision of language, whether written or spoken. It is the best we have to work with, in all its inadequacy. But Master Tozan goes on to assure us that the effort, nonetheless, is worthwhile:

Although it is not constructed, it is not beyond words

And then he follows with an attempt to put his dharma where his mouth is, with the title stanza:

Like facing a precious mirror
form and reflection behold each other

This conjures quite an image. The mirror is mentioned as a repeat trope, or theme, in Zen, so we should give it due consideration — but as an image, rather than a concept. Like Alice going right through the looking-glass to the other side, or Einstein, engaging in thought experiments beyond thinking, and at the speed of light, the dharma gate begins to open just a crack. We can just barely see the light leaking through. Master Dogen captures this same spirit in another visionary passage from the same Genjokoan:

When you see forms and hear sounds
fully engaging body and mind
you grasp things directly
Unlike things and their reflections in the mirror
and unlike the moon and its reflection in the water
When one side is illumined, the other side is dark

Taking the analogy of the mirror to new heights, or new depths. What we are actually seeing — in lieu of an actual mirror — is like a mirror, but radically different. In order to see something reflected in a mirror, or on the smooth surface of a body of water, both sides have to be illuminated: that which is reflected, and its reflection. Otherwise, nothing can be seen on either side, like a mirror reflecting an unlit, underground vault under a pyramid.

However, our usual condition of seeing reflects only one side of the totality. Behind the eyes, so to speak, and on the other side of the objects in our field of vision, lies the dark. This velvety dark extends throughout the universe. We even suspect that there is a preponderance of dark matter, and dark energy, throughout. But as the poem reminds us, grasping this truth can be taken as an example of personal, perceptual relativity, illuminating the limits of our “eye of practice” (Master Dogen’s coinage):

In darkest night, it is perfectly clear; in the light of dawn, it is hidden

Something there is that comes out at night, but recedes in daylight, recalling the phrase, “How bright and transparent, the moonlight of wisdom,” from Master Hakuin’s poem, Zazen Wasan, “Song of Zazen.” This begs the question: if this light in darkness is not coming from the sun, the moon, or the stars, then where does it come from?

In Sandokai, this same point is touched upon some 100 years prior:

The spiritual source shines clear in the light
the branching streams flow on in the dark

Here the reference to the single source becoming many streams may be a trope for the five houses of Zen carrying the light of enlightenment into the ubiquitous darkness of ignorance characteristic of civilization. Bringing it down to the personal level once again:

In the light there is darkness, but do not take it as darkness
In the dark there is light, but do not see it as light
Light and dark oppose one another
like the front and back foot in walking

The direct experience of light under the intense glare of zazen reveals a vacillation characteristic of all sensory stimulus and sense-data. There is no darkness without light, and no light without darkness. And there can be neither without the observer.

Matsuoka Roshi once made the startling declaration, “The light by which you see things comes from you.” In zazen, we begin to witness the nonduality of our so-called internal, versus external, lighting. It seems to originate on both sides of the sensory interface. Further, there is something timeless about it, as reflected in the “Precious Mirror”:

Within causes and conditions, time and season, it is serene and illuminating

And even further, it is not really dependent upon our understanding of it, or lack thereof:

Now there are sudden and gradual, in which teachings an approaches arise
Whether teachings and approaches are mastered or not,
reality constantly flows

The reference here is to the so-called Northern and Southern schools in China after the advent of Huineng, the famous Sixth Patriarch of Ch’an Buddhism, also known as the “gradual” and “sudden” schools of enlightenment, respectively. Of course, sudden and gradual comprise another binary dyad, which dissolves in the nonduality of reality. If there is such thing as enlightenment, it must be both sudden and gradual, simultaneously. The main point is that the reality that Zen points to is constantly flowing, outside of and independent of our ideas about it. It doesn’t care what we think.

The earliest poem, Hsinhsinming, seems to verify this same finding:

All is empty — clear — self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind's power

That this level of insight is not really accessible through ordinary exertions is easy to understand. But that does not mean it is entirely out of reach. It is some comfort to know that whatever the truth — the Dharma — is, it already is true, and that no amount of mental effort will make that any plainer.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that the ancient masters did not suffer fools gladly, but they were willing to appear foolish themselves, if need be. In the last line of the third poem, Master Tozan gives us some friendly advice:

With practice hidden, function secretly, like a fool, like an idiot
Just to continue in this way is called the host within the host

The “host” reference is to a Zen teaching model using the “host and guest” analogy as a foil to examine the relationship of self to other, mind to body, subject to object, et cetera — all the binary pairs of seeming opposites the discriminating mind may conjure. The host within the host is the “inmost” reality, in which the apparent separation between inside and outside — a fundamental dyad — disappears. What is left is not one, exactly, but definitely not-two. In society, we can function in this reality without making a big deal of it to others. We can be in our milieu, but not of it, like a fool, like an idiot. And we can continue in this way with no regrets. Please just do your best, on the cushion and off. I bow in gassho to you.