FUKAN: Encouragement Everywhere (No Great Idea Anywhere)

Christmas Humphreys in one of his many books on Zen, Buddhism, et cetera, once wrote that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

If that is so, then any aspiring Messiah who wishes to save all beings in the ten directions, whether they like it or not, needs first and foremost a great idea whose time has come.

Once the great idea, the idea that can lead the world to progress into a new golden age, has been clearly understood, then can begin the progressive process of indoctrinating others.

I, mainly through my contribution to the Nishijima-Cross translation of Shobogenzo, have been instrumental in such a process.

Gudo Nishijima's big idea is realism. About 20 years ago he told me that he hopes that his idea will remain on the globe after his death. Since then, in his characteristic slow but energetic, resolute, and realistically manipulative manner he has been gradually working towards that end. That is what Dogen Sangha International is all about -- a means for keeping a great man's great idea alive after the man himself has died.

In indoctrinating others, that is, in convincing others of the validity of his great idea, the indoctrinator may exhort, persuade, urge, or prevail upon others. These are all translations of the character pronounced in its Chinese-sounding reading as KAN, or in Japanese as SUSUMERU.

Translations of KAN at the opposite end of the coercive spectrum include encourage, or offer up.

So what is FUKAN-ZAZENGI all about? Is it a tool in the armoury of a religious philosopher/indoctrinator with an agenda to leave his dirty imprint on the pages of human history? Or is it a kind of encouragement, a kind of agenda-free offering?

It seems to me that it can be either.

In going wrong, I have tended to see it more as the former. To the extent that I am able to glimpse my wrong tendency for what it is, I see it as definitely not the former.

It seems to me that Fukan-zazengi can be either, but it can never be both. It is one or the other -- either, or. Either it belongs to endgaining practice, or it belongs to non-endgaining practice.

'Master Dogen's Rules of Sitting-Zen are an expression of the great idea that can lead to salvation all human beings in the ten directions. I can make my own miserable life into a supremely valuable life by exhorting, persuading, urging, and prevailing upon everybody in the ten directions to study, understand, and follow in practice, this great idea -- which might be called "realism", or "balance of the autonomic nervous system." '

At the root of going wrong, when we investigate going wrong in detail, what is usually happening is an unconscious reaction to some such idea. That is what FM Alexander saw with brilliant clarity, and that is what his niece helped me to begin to see for myself.

The root idea does not have to be a Messianic delusion. It can be the idea of rising from a chair, the idea of moving a leg, or the idea of joining hands and bowing. It can be an idea that is intimately connected with, in the words of Maggie Lamb, "a strangled bollock" -- the idea that my voice should be heard; that others should heed my crying out in pain.

"Ideas can lead us," my Zen Master told me. Yes, Master, how true your words are: ideas can lead us to devote our lives to the building of an empire, ideas can lead us to manipulate others, ideas can lead us to throw away our own integrity and humanity. Ideas can lead us directly into hell.

In the original version of Fukan-zazengi Master Dogen wrote a sentence that is explicitly not an exhortation to embrace an idea, but is rather an encouragement just unworriedly to sit:

"Not having a single idea, sit away the ten directions."