ANRAKU NO HOMON: Pure Ease (with or without exuberance)

This summer by the seaside in France, I learned something afresh about ease as opposed to un-ease, from re-learning how to be in, how to breathe in, and how to swim in the sea. In that re-learning process I was aided by my wife, who is an Alexander and swimming teacher, and by a little book written by my brother Ian, called Swimming without Stress, Lessons for Land Lovers (available from www.swimmingwithoutstress.co.uk).

Whether or not anybody besides me is reading this blog, it doesn’t really matter. I feel at ease in writing it, and maybe it will provide a record. For 25 years I have been endeavoring to clarify my understanding of Fukan-zazengi, and it may be only natural that I should now be expressing just my own understanding of it, like this.

In a similar way, it seems to me that it was a natural thing for my brother to write his book. As he describes in his book, 20 years ago he was a terrible end-gainer in the water, obsessed by counting the seconds taken to swim every length. But the picture on the front cover of his book shows him totally at ease in the sea, practicing what he preaches as he releases his arm slowly out of his back and slowly out of the water in front crawl.

In the last 20 years, by working on himself, Ian has really learned something about ease in the water, and so nowadays he is at ease writing about it and teaching it. His evolution into a teacher of a true means-whereby has been natural and spontaneous, and -- ironically, since I have been instrumental in Ian’s process -- evidently a lot easier than the faltering steps I have taken in that direction, ever hindered by having too much emotion invested in my great heroic mission.

The pseudo-Zen shitbags of the present, in which group, following the mirror principle, I am duty bound to include myself, could not hold a flame to Master Dogen. Still, it seems that some among us wish to fill the internet with the sounds and images of our own weedy selves. True, Master Dogen is not available in video. But we have got his texts of Fukan-zazengi, both the revised version and the earlier version.

My investigations of these two texts, haphazard though they are, are bringing me, along with any reader of this blog who bothers to put in the effort, into direct contact not only with Master Dogen’s handwriting, but also with his innermost thought processes. But rather than plough and sift through what I am writing, I am afraid that people would rather watch a video of some modern-day Zen pseudo-roshi. That, my noble friends who learn through experience (SANGAKU NO KORYU), is just how it is.

Ian describes in his book how, when Mark Spitz won all his Olympic golds, people watched videos of Mark Spitz swimming underwater, and imitated his movements. Whereas, Ian argues, if people had really wanted to swim like Mark Spitz, they should have tried to understand his thought processes.

I find increasingly that I am not bothered whether anybody is reading this or not. To have received positive feedback from even one person whose view (or, more accurately, absence of his own view) I value, is plenty. I am writing what I feel I was destined to write, clarifying what I was born to clarify, and there is ease in that.

“When an idea arises, just wake up. Just in the waking up to it, it ceases to exist. Taking plenty of time to forget involvements, spontaneously to become one piece: this is just the secret of sitting-zen. What is called ‘sitting-zen’ is the great Dharma-gate of ease.”


DAI great
AN ease, peace, rest, relief, release
RAKU ease, comfort, relief, pleasure, enjoyment, happiness
HO Dharma, law
MON gate

DAI AN-RAKU [NO] HO-MON
"The great Dharma-gate of ease and happiness"

One of these days I am going to get fed up of hammering on endlessly about end-gaining....

But don't hold your breath!

I have already argued, in the posts of 31 August and 3 September, that with the phrase ANRAKU NO HOMON, "Dharma-gate of ease and joy," Master Dogen is emphasizing that sitting-zen is not end-gaining Zen. Sitting-zen, indeed, is the very antithesis of end-gaining Zen.

In the original version of Fukan-zazengi the phrase is not ANRAKU NO HOMON but DAI ANRAKU NO HOMON. The phrase begins with this character:


DAI means big, great.

So in the original version the phrase is:

DAI AN-RAKU [NO] HO-MON (5 characters)

Whereas in the later version the phrase is:

AN-RAKU [NO] HO-MON (4 characters)

Again, it is worth asking what thought processes led Master Dogen to make the change. Why did he drop the character that means "great"?

It may be that in his later years, Master Dogen became a bit more under-stated, a bit less exuberant. There is not one iota of difference, as far as I can tell, in the message Master Dogen is conveying in the two versions of Fukan-zazengi. But in the revised version there may be less inclination to over-egg the pudding.

When we begin to understand the difference between end-gaining (generally characterized by grim determination) and the means-whereby (generally characterized by ease and happiness) our natural altruistic tendency is to want to let everybody know about the means-whereby. And the stronger this altruistic desire is, the more liable we are to follow our desire in an end-gaining way -- without realizing, of course, that this is what we are doing. As Marjory Barlow told me as I tightened my throat in preparation to move a leg: "If you realized you were doing it, you wouldn't do it!"

The main job of an Alexander teacher, Marjory emphasized, is to teach the pupil how to work on himself. The big pitfall for the teacher is to go about this job of teaching the pupil in an end-gaining way. The teacher, in her concern for her pupil's wellbeing, can easily fall into the trap of not paying sufficient attention to what she herself is doing. Hence, on an Alexander teacher training course, there is a lot of emphasis on the trainee teacher learning how not to destroy herself in the process of teaching an Alexander pupil how to work towards a better integration of himself.

I think that when Master Dogen came in later years to revise Fukan-zazengi, Master Dogen more clearly recognized the importance, as Marjory Barlow also clearly recognized the importance, of not getting carried away.

In Shobogenzo Master Dogen refers often to Gautama holding up a flower and Maha-kasyapa spontaneously smiling. At the same time, Dogen quotes the teaching of his teacher, Tendo Nyojo, that we must sternly guard against getting carried away by the twirling flower.

When It came back to Japan from China in around 1227 and sat down to put Fukan-zazengi on paper, signing Itself NYU SO DENPO SHAMON DOGEN, “Dogen, a striver who entered China and received the transmission of the Law,” buddha sat down to put Fukan-zazengi on paper. Buddha sat down and picked up a writing brush, exuberantly.

It seems to me that, as buddha ascended further and further beyond buddha, a bit of exuberance naturally dropped off. Thus, in the revised version of Fukan-zazengi, the Dharma-gate of pure ease is expressed not with five characters, but with only four: