IJUN: Going Against or Blindly Conforming

The top character, I, means to go against; the bottom character, JUN, means to follow unquestioningly, to conform.

IJUN WAZUKANI OKOREBA FUNZEN TOSHITE SHIN O SHISSU.

"If the least tendency arises to go against or conform, the mind is lost in confusion."

After reading Pete's question yesterday on the meaning of IJUN, I had something of a worried evening and a sleepless night, feeling a bit like the king who has been perceived to be in the altogether. As day dawns this morning, I am as wrong as I have ever been, but am nonetheless struck by this literal translation and by this meaning, which seems to me now to be true. I may well turn out to be wrong again, but here is the context in which I understand the sentence:

Master Dogen begins Fukan-zazengi by stating and re-stating a thoroughly optimistic principle.

Now, what, as we are all learning from experience, are the twofold dangers that present themselves to us when we encounter a true principle? The first danger is hypocrisy -- a gap between our upholding of a principle in theory and how we actually behave in practice. The second danger is that, notwithstanding the original truth of the principle -- or, indeed, precisely because we perceive the principle to be so enlightened -- we unenlightened beings are liable to react to it instinctively in one of two wrong ways: by going against it (via the universal law that we tend to turn all things into their opposite), or by subscribing to it unquestioningly.

When we look for the cause of our hypocrisy, and the cause of our perverse disobedience or blind conformism, we may conclude that the common root cause resides in a human being's top few inches -- in the combination of our end-gaining and our unreliable sensory appreciation. When I am faced with something that I perceive to be important -- something, say, like the translation of Fukan-zazengi -- my intellectual and sensory faculties tend to make emergency demands on my energy. Thus, my energy is liable to become concentrated in my top few inches instead of feeding a glow in my pelvis and belly. And when that happens, in addition to suffering from sleepless nights, I am liable to become proud of my understanding, full of enlightenment et cetera, et cetera. If not the whole story of my life, this has certainly been a recurring theme, as I go round and round in circles, or round and round in spirals -- I don't know which.

Put out the flags! Just in Fukan-zazengi, we have already encountered the Buddha's true teaching, the totally optimistic Dharma which is good in the beginning, middle and end.

But hang on a bit. The inherent truth of the teaching does not provide any guarantee whatsoever that I will ever be able to get the true point of it. Rather, as a subconsciously controlled being (what FM Alexander called "a lowly evolved swine") I am always liable to react to the true teaching by either perversely going against it, or by blindly subscribing to it in name only.

So, beware even the slightest iconoclastic tendency to go against; and equally beware the sheepish tendency to blindly conform -- beware not only one tendency, but two: not only disobedience but also blind conformity; not only blind conformity but also disobedience.


Leave those flags in the cupboard for a while.