ZAZEN NO YOJUTSU: The Vital Art of Sitting-Zen
ZAZEN sitting-zen
NO [particle] of
YO vital, pivotal
JUTSU art, technique, secret
ZAZEN NO YOJUTSU
“The vital art of sitting-zen.”
In the previous post I wrote that Master Yakusan’s phrase HI-SHIRYO “non-thinking,” was Master Dogen’s mature expression of the vital art of sitting-zen. His mature expression, in other words, was not his own expression.
In his original version of Fukan-zazengi written on returning from China, Master Dogen expressed the vital art of sitting-zen in his own way, using four sets of four Chinese characters. As I am in France now, without the original text (a facsimile of which hangs on my wall at home), I am going to quote the 16 characters from memory -- please don’t sue me if I make a mistake in their pronunciation.
NEN thought, wish, desire, emotion, worry, image, impulse -- anything that comes up
KI arise
SOKU just, immediately
KAKU wake up
KAKU wake up
SHI this, it
SOKU just, immediately
SHITSU vanish, be lost, cease to exist
JO long time
JO long time
BO forget
EN connections, involvements, peripheral things -- anything irrelevant to the practice and experience of sitting-zen here and now
JI naturally, spontaneously
JO become, realize
IPPEN = ICHI + HEN
ICHI one
HEN piece
“If anything arises in the mind, just wake up.
Wake up to it, and immediately it will cease to exist.
Forgetting involvements forever,
To spontaneously become one piece:
This is the vital art of sitting-zen.”
Master Tozan Ryokai, an ancestor in Master Dogen’s lineage, had previously coined the phrase TA-JO-IPPEN.
TA means to strike. It is used emphatically to indicate doing something decisively, as in SHIKAN TA-ZA “just sitting”
TA-JO-IPPEN means “Become one piece by action.”
In seeking to understand what Master Dogen meant by “the vital art of sitting-zen,” I have often asked myself
(1) why Master Dogen first changed Master Tozan’s TA-JO-IPPEN into his own JI-JO-IPPEN;
(2) and why Master Dogen later dropped his own expression in favour of the exchange between Yakusan and the monk, to express the same “vital art of sitting-zen.”
Why was TA-JO-IPPEN not it, and why, in the end, was JI-JO-IPPEN not it either?
Why was TA-JO-IPPEN not it?
I think that Master Dogen, even as a young man of 26 or 27, saw the danger of Tozan’s more positive expression, which can easily point the stupid in an end-gaining direction -- on the side of physical doing.
Any approach which aims at body-mind integration, i.e. health, without taking into account acceptance and use of the whole body-mind, is an end-gaining approach. The end-gaining approach can be observed in many supposedly ‘holistic’ disciplines including bodywork and psychotherapy, as well as in Western medicine in which drugs are used without clear appreciation of accompanying side effects and without truly seeing the patient as a dynamic whole. The end-gaining approach can commonly be observed in Alexander work and in Zen practice, when those disciplines are understood and taught wrongly. If you understand what end-gaining is, you doubtless find plenty of manifestations of end-gaining in what I write. My habitual attitude of grim determination is just end-gaining. When I stop end-gaining, what do I have to be grimly determined about?
An approach to body-mind integration that encouraged us just physically to sit in the full lotus posture would be end-gaining if it went no further than that, i.e. if it took into account only unconscious, autonomic functions while negating any role in the process for mental faculties such as volition, intention, reason, conscious awareness, et cetera.
I think this is why Master Dogen preferred JI (spontaneous, natural) to TA (striking, doing, acting) -- because JI conveys no sense of going for the target directly by physically doing something, i.e. no sense of end-gaining. I am not suggesting that Master Tozan’s approach was end-gaining. I am suggesting that Master Dogen was wary of Master Tozan’s words being wrongly interpreted by ignorant people who didn’t understand the problem of end-gaining. I think this is why Master Dogen looked for an expression which more explicitly expressed sitting-zen as a NON-end-gaining practice and experience, as a practice and experience whose original nature -- before we taint it with our clever doing and stupid worrying -- is effortlessness, spontaneity.
Why, then, was JI-JO-IPPEN not it?
The view of practice that Master Dogen expressed with the 16 characters quoted above was a truly excellent view. I think that by the time he entered his 40s, Master Dogen had grown to see it as such: that is, as his own excellent view, as an excellent view that he had continued to uphold. But my holding of my view, any view, is itself a bit of attachment, a bit of fixity, a bit of stiffening the neck, a bit of end-gaining. To keep holding any view of my own, even a brilliant one, is, on some level, a kind of failure to carry out the act of sitting in the full lotus posture, AGAINST the end-gaining habits of one’s lifetime.
I think that somewhere along the line Master Dogen recognized, even in regard to his own brilliant view, insofar as he was continuing to uphold it, “No. It is not that!” So he decided to follow the other, dropping off his own expression, brilliant though it was. He decided to rely instead on the words that a buddha-ancestor had naturally spoken when asked to express what the young Master Dogen had striven to express in his own words, that is, “the vital art of sitting-zen.”
The monk asked the other, and the other spontaneously expressed itself: HI-SHIRYO
HI anti-, against
SHIRYO thinking
What against what?
If I ask the question with my habitual grim determination, that is not it. After I have asked the question, whatever answer comes up, that is not it. Whatever brilliant idea comes up, that is not it. Whatever suppressed emotion comes to the surface, that is not it. Whatever blind instinctive reaction is aroused, that is not it. Whatever confident view emerges, that is not it.
It is always not that.
Are there any questions?
NO [particle] of
YO vital, pivotal
JUTSU art, technique, secret
ZAZEN NO YOJUTSU
“The vital art of sitting-zen.”
In the previous post I wrote that Master Yakusan’s phrase HI-SHIRYO “non-thinking,” was Master Dogen’s mature expression of the vital art of sitting-zen. His mature expression, in other words, was not his own expression.
In his original version of Fukan-zazengi written on returning from China, Master Dogen expressed the vital art of sitting-zen in his own way, using four sets of four Chinese characters. As I am in France now, without the original text (a facsimile of which hangs on my wall at home), I am going to quote the 16 characters from memory -- please don’t sue me if I make a mistake in their pronunciation.
NEN thought, wish, desire, emotion, worry, image, impulse -- anything that comes up
KI arise
SOKU just, immediately
KAKU wake up
KAKU wake up
SHI this, it
SOKU just, immediately
SHITSU vanish, be lost, cease to exist
JO long time
JO long time
BO forget
EN connections, involvements, peripheral things -- anything irrelevant to the practice and experience of sitting-zen here and now
JI naturally, spontaneously
JO become, realize
IPPEN = ICHI + HEN
ICHI one
HEN piece
“If anything arises in the mind, just wake up.
Wake up to it, and immediately it will cease to exist.
Forgetting involvements forever,
To spontaneously become one piece:
This is the vital art of sitting-zen.”
Master Tozan Ryokai, an ancestor in Master Dogen’s lineage, had previously coined the phrase TA-JO-IPPEN.
TA means to strike. It is used emphatically to indicate doing something decisively, as in SHIKAN TA-ZA “just sitting”
TA-JO-IPPEN means “Become one piece by action.”
In seeking to understand what Master Dogen meant by “the vital art of sitting-zen,” I have often asked myself
(1) why Master Dogen first changed Master Tozan’s TA-JO-IPPEN into his own JI-JO-IPPEN;
(2) and why Master Dogen later dropped his own expression in favour of the exchange between Yakusan and the monk, to express the same “vital art of sitting-zen.”
Why was TA-JO-IPPEN not it, and why, in the end, was JI-JO-IPPEN not it either?
Why was TA-JO-IPPEN not it?
I think that Master Dogen, even as a young man of 26 or 27, saw the danger of Tozan’s more positive expression, which can easily point the stupid in an end-gaining direction -- on the side of physical doing.
Any approach which aims at body-mind integration, i.e. health, without taking into account acceptance and use of the whole body-mind, is an end-gaining approach. The end-gaining approach can be observed in many supposedly ‘holistic’ disciplines including bodywork and psychotherapy, as well as in Western medicine in which drugs are used without clear appreciation of accompanying side effects and without truly seeing the patient as a dynamic whole. The end-gaining approach can commonly be observed in Alexander work and in Zen practice, when those disciplines are understood and taught wrongly. If you understand what end-gaining is, you doubtless find plenty of manifestations of end-gaining in what I write. My habitual attitude of grim determination is just end-gaining. When I stop end-gaining, what do I have to be grimly determined about?
An approach to body-mind integration that encouraged us just physically to sit in the full lotus posture would be end-gaining if it went no further than that, i.e. if it took into account only unconscious, autonomic functions while negating any role in the process for mental faculties such as volition, intention, reason, conscious awareness, et cetera.
I think this is why Master Dogen preferred JI (spontaneous, natural) to TA (striking, doing, acting) -- because JI conveys no sense of going for the target directly by physically doing something, i.e. no sense of end-gaining. I am not suggesting that Master Tozan’s approach was end-gaining. I am suggesting that Master Dogen was wary of Master Tozan’s words being wrongly interpreted by ignorant people who didn’t understand the problem of end-gaining. I think this is why Master Dogen looked for an expression which more explicitly expressed sitting-zen as a NON-end-gaining practice and experience, as a practice and experience whose original nature -- before we taint it with our clever doing and stupid worrying -- is effortlessness, spontaneity.
Why, then, was JI-JO-IPPEN not it?
The view of practice that Master Dogen expressed with the 16 characters quoted above was a truly excellent view. I think that by the time he entered his 40s, Master Dogen had grown to see it as such: that is, as his own excellent view, as an excellent view that he had continued to uphold. But my holding of my view, any view, is itself a bit of attachment, a bit of fixity, a bit of stiffening the neck, a bit of end-gaining. To keep holding any view of my own, even a brilliant one, is, on some level, a kind of failure to carry out the act of sitting in the full lotus posture, AGAINST the end-gaining habits of one’s lifetime.
I think that somewhere along the line Master Dogen recognized, even in regard to his own brilliant view, insofar as he was continuing to uphold it, “No. It is not that!” So he decided to follow the other, dropping off his own expression, brilliant though it was. He decided to rely instead on the words that a buddha-ancestor had naturally spoken when asked to express what the young Master Dogen had striven to express in his own words, that is, “the vital art of sitting-zen.”
The monk asked the other, and the other spontaneously expressed itself: HI-SHIRYO
HI anti-, against
SHIRYO thinking
What against what?
If I ask the question with my habitual grim determination, that is not it. After I have asked the question, whatever answer comes up, that is not it. Whatever brilliant idea comes up, that is not it. Whatever suppressed emotion comes to the surface, that is not it. Whatever blind instinctive reaction is aroused, that is not it. Whatever confident view emerges, that is not it.
It is always not that.
Are there any questions?
posted by Mike Cross at 7:22 PM
2 Comments:
Yesterday was the monthly full day's zazen and teaching for our group. One sitter talked about ‘putting himself in the normal state.’ This rang to me a little like Master Tozan’s expression, he knew what he meant but for some new to practise, it could lead to end-gaining practise, a kind of therapeutic view which is very fashionable amongst 'meditators' at the moment. He also talked about ‘the sport of zazen’ and the fact that zazen is interchangeable with swimming. What do you think of this assertion? I sense that it is not right. I am moved by Master Dogen’s dedication to zazen but why zazen and not simply working in the fields if the above is true?
I've been a little confused since you refuted my assertion that Hi-shiryo was a description of a true expression of zazen, confused because I couldn't see what there was to refute. You seemed to latch on to only the last paragraph which is about self awareness, a by-product of practise – your mirror principle for example.
Our teacher was talking about 'stopping' thinking so I asked whether he actively stopped thinking in zazen and he said no, he ‘noticed’ thinking and it stopped. I suggested that noticing, stopping and becoming ‘one piece’ were one thing. There are many expressions for this – ‘waking-up, witnessing, noticing, stopping…’ How would you describe this?
There is something else in zazen. Noticing that we’re present and drifting off into imagination again is like a pendulum. But there is a point at which the pendulum stops and something else opens into the present. What is that? ‘True reality spontaneously emerging?’ Until encountering this blog I had always practised zazen for itself, that occasional very special experience a pleasant part of practise but not something to unduly focus on. Do you think I was wrong in this?
I practise zazen because I like it. Sometimes it is quite hard to sit because I am so lazy or too excited.
But when I do and everything settles and becomes clear then my life is simple . Master Dogen makes the case irrefutably for why we practise zazen but why must we study the attendant philosophy? He even seems to suggest that we should cease studying sayings and chasing words….
Do you think Master Dogen was free from end-gaining?
I have now almost completely lost the vigorous road of getting the body out so I'll off and remedy that immediately.
Hi MT,
I refer you to my next post.
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