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FUKANZAZENGI
Universally
Recommended Instructions for Zazen
The
Way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent on practice
and realization? The true vehicle is self-sufficient. What need is there for special
effort? Indeed, the whole body is free from dust. Who could believe in a means
to brush it clean? It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of
traveling around to practice? And yet, if there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it
is like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises,
the mind is lost in confusion. Suppose you are confident in your understanding
and rich in enlightenment, gaining the wisdom that knows at a glance, attaining
the Way and clarifying the mind, arousing an aspiration to reach for the heavens.
You are playing in the entranceway, but you still are short of the vital path
of emancipation.
Consider the Buddha: although he was wise at birth, the traces
of his six years of upright sitting can yet be seen. As for Bodhidharma, although
he had received the mind-seal, his nine years of facing a wall is celebrated still.
If even the ancient sages were like this, how can we today dispense with wholehearted
practice?
Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating
words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the
light and shines it inward. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your
original face will manifest. If you want to attain suchness, practice suchness
immediately.
For practicing Zen, a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately.
Put aside all involvements and suspend all affairs. Do not think "good"
or "bad." Do not judge true or false. Give up the operations of mind,
intellect, and consciousness; stop measuring with thoughts, ideas, and views.
Have no designs on becoming a Buddha. How could that be limited to sitting or
lying down?
At your sitting place, spread out a thick mat and put a cushion
on it. Sit either in the full-lotus or half-lotus position. In the full-lotus
position, first place your right foot on your left thigh, then your left foot
on your right thigh. In the half-lotus, simply place your left foot on your right
thigh. Tie your robes loosely and arrange them neatly.
Then place your right hand on your left leg and your left hand
on your right palm, thumb-tips lightly touching. Straighten your body and sit
upright, leaning neither left nor right, neither forward nor backward. Align your
ears with your shoulders and your nose with your navel. Rest the tip of your tongue
against the front of the roof of your mouth, with teeth and lips together both
shut. Always keep your eyes open, and breathe softly through your nose.
Once
you have adjusted your posture, take a breath and exhale fully, rock your body
right and left, and settle into steady, immovable sitting. Think of not thinking.
Not thinking-what kind of thinking is that? Beyond-thinking. This is the essential
art of zazen.
The zazen I speak of is not meditation practice. It is simply
the Dharma gate of joyful ease, the practice-realization of totally culminated
enlightenment. It is the koan realized, traps and snares can never reach it. If
you grasp the point, you are like a dragon gaining the water, like a tiger taking
to the mountains. For you must know that the true Dharma appears of itself, so
that from the start dullness and distraction are struck aside.
When you arise
from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. Do not rise suddenly
or abruptly. In surveying the past, we find that transcendence of both mundane
and sacred, and dying while either sitting or standing, have all depended entirely
on the power of zazen.
In addition, triggering awakening with a finger, a
banner, a needle, or a mallet, and effecting realization with a whisk, a fist,
a staff, or a shout-these cannot be understood by discriminative thinking, much
less can they be known through the practice of supernatural power. They must represent
conduct beyond seeing and hearing. Are they not a standard prior to knowledge
and views?
This being the case, intelligence or lack of it is not an issue;
make no distinction between the dull and the sharp-witted. If you concentrate
your effort single-mindedly, that in itself is wholeheartedly engaging the way.
Practice-realization is naturally undefiled. Going forward is, after all, an everyday
affair.
In general, in our world and others, in both India and China, all
equally hold the buddha-seal. While each lineage expresses its own style, they
are all simply devoted to sitting, totally blocked in resolute stability. Although
they say that there are ten thousand distinctions and a thousand variations, they
just wholeheartedly engage the way in zazen. Why leave behind the seat in your
own home to wander in vain through the dusty realms of other lands? If you make
one misstep you stumble past what is directly in front of you.
You have gained
the pivotal opportunity of human form. Do not pass your days and nights in vain.
You are taking care of the essential activity of the buddha way. Who would take
wasteful delight in the spark from a flintstone? Besides, form and substance are
like the dew on the grass, the fortunes of life like a dart of lightning-emptied
in an instant, vanished in a flash.
Please, honored followers of Zen, long
accustomed to groping for the elephant, do not doubt the true dragon. Devote your
energies to the way that points directly to the real thing. Revere the one who
has gone beyond learning and is free from effort. Accord with the enlightenment
of all the buddhas; succeed to the samadhi of all the ancestors.
Continue to live in such a way, and you will be such a person. The treasure store
will open of itself, and you may enjoy it freely.
by
Eihei Dogen (1200-1253)