67. Song of Zazen

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

Who you gonna call?

Where you gonna look for it?

Look in the mirror!

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Stepping out of the Soto Zen lineage, we want to pay our respects to one of the great masters of the Rinzai lineage, Master Hakuin Ekaku. His life bridged the 17th and 18th centuries, so he was active during the colonial period, dying a few years before the Revolutionary War. A prolific teacher, calligrapher, and no-nonsense practitioner of Zen, he was a big advocate of zazen for his students, and is credited with reviving Rinzai Zen in Japan, established by Myoan Eisai some 600 years earlier, whose successor, Ryonen Myozen, traveled with Dogen Zenji to China, which culminated in Myozen’s death in China, and Dogen’s establishment of Soto Zen in Japan. Matsuoka Roshi dedicated a chapter of his collected talks to Hakuin’s Zazen Wasan — Song of Zazen, his translation differing from the one we will review, which is available online at: Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun.

This also happens to be the version that I have set to music, so I am somewhat familiar with it.

From the beginning all beings are Buddha.
Like water and ice, without water no ice, outside us no Buddhas.

That “all beings are Buddha” does not mean that they know it, however. As Master Dogen reminds us in Genjokoan, “When buddhas are truly buddhas, they do not necessarily notice that they are buddhas.” The reference to the differing states of the fundamental element of water — its liquid and solid form — is sometimes used as an analogy to the transformative and morphing quality of our buddha-nature. It can flow into and conform to any vessel, any set of causes and conditions.

How near the truth, yet how far we seek.
Like one in water crying, “I thirst!”
Like the son of a rich man wand’ring poor on this earth
we endlessly circle the six worlds.

That we do not know our buddha-nature is the fall from grace, and leads to our pursuit of satisfaction in all the wrong places, and for all the wrong reasons. Like the monk or nun who carries the wish-fulfilling mani jewel sewn into the hem of the robe, we run around like chickens with their heads off, when what we are looking for has been right here, right now, all along. What a pity. The “six worlds” are the Buddhist cosmological realms, from Tusita heaven as the highest, to Avici hell as the lowest. So this indicates that this mindless pursuit transcends any one lifetime.

The cause of our sorrow is ego delusion.
From dark path to dark path we’ve wandered in darkness,
how can we be freed from the wheel of samsara?

The primary delusion afflicting us, according to Buddhism, is that of the imputed or constructed self, which is not quite identical with the contemporary concept of ego, I think. The “self” questioned in Zen is not merely a psychological construction, but the physical body as well as the mind. Thus, in Master Dogen’s shinjin datsuraku, dropping off of body-mind, the emptiness at the heart of corporeal existence is not just a concept, either, but the dynamic reality of ever-changing impermanence. The dark paths would include those based on superstitions, myth, and beliefs. They are dark, not because they are evil, but because ultimately they shed no light on reality. The version I am most familiar with translates the last line as “how can we be free of birth and death?” It begs the question, how would we even know that we want to be free of this cycle of life, “samsara.” Do we really know the alternative?

The gateway to freedom is zazen Samadhi.
Beyond exaltation, beyond all our praises the pure Mahayana.

Here, Hakuin is talking about true freedom — including, I would suggest, freedom from the concept of getting free from birth and death. This would be contrary to the Bodhisattva vow to save all others, the operative dimension of Mahayana, the “greater vehicle.” Like the traditional American gospel song, “This train is bound for glory,” you are either on this bus or not. In Buddhism, we leave no one behind. We commit to returning to this battleground as long as necessary to bring our brothers and sisters home.

Observing the Precepts, Repentance and Giving,
the countless good deeds and the Way of Right Living, all come from zazen.

As Master Dogen similarly reminds us, “What Precept is not fulfilled in zazen?” And “Without engaging in incense offering, bowing, chanting Buddha’s name, repentance or reading scriptures, you should just wholeheartedly sit, and thus drop away body and mind.” All of the protocols and implications that are characteristic of the Buddhist worldview and lifestyle stem from this central practice, just sitting still enough, for long enough, and letting go of all attachments, including those to our body and mind.

Thus one true Samadhi extinguishes evils.
It purifies karma, dissolving obstructions.
Then where are the dark paths to lead us astray?
The Pure Lotus Land is not far away.

This original self, discovered, or uncovered, in deep zazen, is the only true Samadhi — complete and natural balance within the physical, emotional, mental and social realms. We typically shy away from absolutist terms such as “evils,” substituting confusions or delusions, those frailties, follies and foibles to which we are generally vulnerable. Purifying our karma may seem indefensible as a claim, until we remember that purity in Zen has the connotation of nonduality. If we are resistant to the consequences of our actions, we defile our own karma, and create further obstructions. If we embrace it, we may see the light at the end of the tunnel. The “Pure Lotus Land” is, again, not “pure” in any absolute sense, or morally distinct from samsara, but is the other shore of nirvana coming to us, as Dogen promises. Our charge, our practice, is to see through the delusion of samsara, to the underlying reality of nirvana.

Hearing this truth, heart humble and grateful.
To praise and embrace it, to practice its Wisdom,
brings unending blessings, bring mountains of merit.

“Hearing this truth” does not naively imply that simply hearing words pointing to it will do the trick. We must vow to “hear the true Dharma,” as Master Dogen exhorts us to do in his famous vow. A natural state of humility and gratitude accompanies and informs this process. To put it into practice, fully embracing it and praising it, to oneself and others, entails the recognition of “unending blessings” and “mountains of merit” built into existence itself. Our practice, however worthy, does not create it.

And if we turn inward and prove our True Nature, that
True Self is no-self, our own self is no-self, we go beyond ego and past clever words.
Then the gate to the oneness of cause-and-effect is thrown open.
Not two and not three, straight ahead runs the Way.

Turning “inward” seemingly contradicts a saying attributed to Hakuin Zenji, whose writing is unusually descriptive for the Zen canon, where he asserted that there is no inside and/or outside, something like that. But we have to assume that the great master was perfectly capable of expressing himself on both relative and absolute levels. And zazen, it must be admitted, at least begins with a turning away from other distractions, and to that degree, turning “inward.” Wherein, of course, the rabbit hole we go down ends up coming out on the other side, or back where we started. Like a living Klein bottle.

Here he affirms, and reconfirms, that our “True Self is no-self,” hyphenated, so as to indicate an innate state, rather than an outright denial of self. No-self would then capture the emptiness that is at the heart of our so-called own self, as it is for everything else. This is going past any self-identification, or ego, no matter how sophisticated or clever our attributions. Here, the “oneness” of cause-and-effect, again hyphenated, I think indicates his understanding that they are not-two, as we heard in the poem Hsinhsinming — Trust in Mind, of the third ancestor in China. “Straight ahead” is the “Moving forward is not a matter of far or near” of Master Kisen’s Sandokai — Harmony of Difference and Sameness.

Our form now being no-form, in going and returning we never leave home.
Our thought now being no-thought, our dancing and songs are the Voice of the Dharma.

Form is the first of the five skandhas, or aggregates, of sentient existence. It is the space in which we all begin practicing zazen. But eventually, the boundaries of our own form become fuzzy, to the point of joining us to — rather than separating us from — everything else. When sensation sets in, it overtakes form, much as energy trumps matter. Segueing through the skandha of thought, impulse, and even, eventually, consciousness itself, it becomes clear that the whole enchilada is nothing more than the Dharma. Whatever we say and do expounds the buddha-dharma, whether we know it or not.

How vast is the heaven of boundless Samadhi!
How bright and transparent the moonlight of wisdom!

Here are Hakuin’s descriptive powers in full flower. Elsewhere I have read that, walking without a lantern on a dark, moonless night (remembering that there were no city lights in those days), if the surrounding darkness suddenly is infused with what seems to be moonlight, enlightenment is near. Matsuoka Roshi made the startling declaration that, “The light by which you see things comes from you!” Buddha was said to have told his students, after praising them for their progress in meditation, “But your minds have not yet begun to shine.” The moonlight brightening the night earth has long symbolized enlightenment.

What is there outside us? What is there we lack?
Nirvana is openly shown to our eyes.

Here is the inside-outside illusion again, expressed as the all-inclusive “don’t know,” “not-two” Mind of Zen. “Nothing lacking, and nothing in excess.” That this is the much-vaunted Nirvana relieves us of any notion that we have to go elsewhere, somewhere special, to find it. This is how the other shore comes to us, as promised by Master Dogen. There is no secret anywhere, no trick up the Masters’ sleeves.

This earth where we stand is the pure lotus land!
And this very body, the body of Buddha.

The “pure lotus land,” here not capitalized, perhaps intentionally, is nothing more than this very planet, that is our contemporaneous, and temporary, home. Again, not an imaginary paradise in some other dimension, an afterlife. This life, and this body, if we are to believe the great master, is the only true life and body of Buddha. It is only that we have to wake up to this truth. That is, we have to die to the limited self, with its attachment to body and mind as conceived, in order to be reborn in our original body, which is our true life, and our true home. “Outside us, no Buddhas. Like water and ice, without water, no ice.” This is already true, according to Zen, so all we have to do is to realize it.

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Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to [e-mail]. Gassho.

Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell