Dharma Rain - Fukanzazengi
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 such a thing, get to work on such
a thing 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? Nonthinking.
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 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 flint
stone? 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.
Eihei Dogen [21]
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