Saturday, September 29, 2007

YOKU-TOKU-INMO: Wanting to Get It




YOKU wanting, desiring
TOKU to get, to attain, to realize
INMO [2 characters] it, the ineffable

“Wanting to get it,”

KYU emergency, urgency
MU duty, task, practice
ZAZEN [2 characters] sitting-zen

“urgently practice sitting-zen.”

In Japanese, these eight characters are read as:
INMO O EN TO HOSSEBA, KYU NI ZAZEN O TSUTOME YO.

INMO it
O [object particle]
EN to get
TO [particle]
HOSSEBA if want
KYU NI in haste, urgently, impatiently, promptly, quickly
ZAZEN sitting-zen
O [object particle]
TSUTOME practice, exert oneself, be diligent in, apply oneself
YO [imperative form]

“If you want to get it, urgently apply yourself to sitting-zen.”

Wanting to get the end, be quick in attending to the means.




The first character, YOKU, is smaller than the other seven because it lies at the bottom of a row of characters on the orignal scroll, and I couldn't get the characters in the two photos to match exactly. At the same time, in re-sizing the first photo I deliberately erred on the side of scaling it down, mindful of the final teaching of the Buddha -- SHO-YOKU CHI-SOKU, to have small desire and know satisfaction...



The four characters of the above bit of calligraphy start in the top right corner, so YOKU, desire, is the character in the bottom right.

I dwell on this character YOKU for a reason. The Buddha did not advocate having no desire. He advocated having small desire. Similary, Master Dogen is not telling us in Fukan-zazengi to eliminate our desire to get the ineffable; he is acknowledging that desire, and cautioning us primarily, as I see it, against trying to fulfill that desire through end-gaining Zen. Hence, "Wanting to get the ineffable, be quick to practise sitting-zen!"




In the later version of Fukan-zazengi, Master Dogen changes these eight characters into ten. Instead of INMO [2 characters] in the first clause, he uses INMO NO JI [3 characters]; and instead of ZAZEN [2 characters] in the second clause, he again uses INMO NO JI [3 characters].

JI means matter, thing, fact; used grammatically, preceded by the particle NO, JI turns what precedes NO into a noun phrase.

INMO NO JI that which is it, that which is ineffable, the ineffable

The Buddha’s enlightenment was not only nothing. Even people who have the will to the truth are after something.

Similarly, when an Alexander teacher causes us to fly out of a chair, although the teacher calls it “a bit of nothing,” that is not the whole truth -- we experience it as something. So what is it?

Whatever we say that it is, it is not that. In the effort to understand what it is, an end-gaining buffoon may submit himself to training as an Alexander teacher, and then, understanding that it has a lot to do with vestibular reflexes, the end-gaining buffoon may spend yet more time and money training as a neuro-developmental therapist. And so a view is liable to be formed, again and again, as to what it is. Unfortunately, however, it is always not that.

As an end, it cannot be grasped. But what about the means? Can we grasp the means, can we know the secret, can we possess the subtle method, by which it may be allowed to realize itself?

Again, unfortunately, in our efforts to grasp the secret key that unlocks the treasure house, whatever we have grasped, so far, has always turned out not to be it.

This is one thing, maybe the only thing, that I have learned during the past 13 years struggling to understand what is the secret of the Alexander work: Whatever I have found it to be, it has always turned out not to be that.

The end is something, but it is not that. The means, also, is always not that.

Thus, in the later version of Fukan-zazengi, Master Dogen spelled it out for us even more explicitly:
INMO NO JI O EN TO HOSSEBA, KYU NI INMO NO JI O TSUTOME YO.
“Wanting to get that which is it, urgently practice that which is it.”

The meaning is exactly the same as in the earlier version of Fukan-zazengi, but in the later version the recognition is more explicit, that what Master Dogen calls “sitting-zen” is not blind end-gaining Zen, is not regimented, parade-ground Zen, is not the Zen that Mike Cross and the like are prone to think they have mastered already.

Wanting to realize it, urgently attend to sitting-zen -- not to endgaining zen, but to the sitting which is the traditional embodiment of the impossibility of me doing what I want to do, which is to change this into it.

Wanting to realize it, urgently attend to that which is always "not that."

The kind of urgency required may be that of a top batsman batting well against a very fast bowler. His movements appear unhurried, but his mind is working very fast.

Urgency is required, because our unconscious reactions are so quick. We may know intellectually that it is always not that. But fear of being wrong, and the associated tendency of trying to be right, are not only functions of the intellect. Their root goes deeper. The grasping hand and aspiring eye are not susceptible to the weedy power of the intellect alone.

Understanding that our unconscious reactions are so quick, FM Alexander frequently admonished his students: “The conscious mind must be quickened.” He also wrote that “Time is the essence of the contract.” He wasn’t after quick results.

A Japanese proverb says, ISOGABA MAWARE, "When in a hurry, take the indirect route." Thus it may have been that, thanks to ancient individuals like Zen Master Dogen, a bit of the Buddha's wisdom, the wisdom of non-endgaining, seeped even into Japanese culture.

Time is the essence of the contract. And yet, in a learning process that can’t be hurried, the conscious mind must be quickened.

We need plenty of time to forget involvements, to let integration happen spontaenously, naturally -- not trying to get it. And yet, wanting to get it, we are told to practice sitting-zen -- and be quick about it!

If we want to get it, we should urgently practice that which is it -- not learning Zen, not Dogen Zen, not Rinzai Zen, Not Soto Zen, not hardcore Zen, not chin-pulling Zen, not end-gaining Zen.

If we want to get it, quickening the conscious mind, we should deftly practice bowing-zen, exhaling-zen, swaying-zen.

Wanting to get it, we should quickly practice sitting-zen.





Having got it already, Master Dogen instructs us that we should move the body slowly -- but that is material for another post.

2 Comments:

Blogger Mike Cross said...

"If for a long time we do that which is it, we will be it. The jewel-treasury will open spontaneously, for us to receive and use as we please."

This doesn't mean that sitting-zen will cause us to get what we crave. The meaning, rather, is roughly opposite to that.

The treasure we can get is never what we crave.

After 70 years of sitting-zen Kodo Sawaki engaged in lonely masturbation, still longing for a wife he could never get. After 70 years of sitting-zen Gudo Nishijima worries about getting literary fame from a translation he could never do. What I tend to crave, also, I can never get.

Treasure we can get. But not what we crave.

7:19 AM  
Blogger Mike Cross said...

I was reflecting this morning on a comment my parents received on a parents' evening in 1968, from a certain Miss Whittle at Chilcote Primary School. I was 8 years old at the time and top of the class, but I didn't think much of Miss Whittle and must have been quite unruly. "Michael is very bright," Miss W told my parents, "but his behaviour is disgusting."

The lonely masturbation of Master Kodo does not disgust me at all -- I understand that impulse very well from my own excrutiatingly lonely days in Japan during the 1980s. Rather, I find Master Kodo's honesty to denigrate himself as Masu-O touching and endearing.

But something in the behaviour of Gudo Nishijima I find truly and deeply disgusting. His seeing the Shobogenzo translation as "my personal job," and complaining that what I have done has been "a violation of my personal job" -- I find that disgusts me.

The mirror principle being what it is, my feeling of disgust must be really trying to be tell me something about me -- about how my own translator's ego still tends to stand in the way of a really true effort in the direction of translating Fukan-zazengi from Chinese characters into English words.

7:31 AM  

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