Good morning!
Today is our last day of Rohatsu sesshin and we are going to have Jukai – receiving precepts. Earlier this morning we had denser fog and cloud with rain. It is troublesome to travel under such conditions – when conditions are dark and slippery. Similarly, our life is sometimes troubled by foggy and rainy situations.
When I visited Japanto attend the Global System Ethic Association conference, I talked to a taxi driver in Kyoto. He said that all are bonnô (煩悩). Bonnô (煩悩) is difficult translate, but it means a troubling passion, urging us to do something. Its original in Pali is âsava, flux or leak (ro: 漏), leaking from dense dark depth of our existence like fog and cloud.
The four fluxes of lust, becoming, view, and nescience are the major bonnô, three poisons and appropriation, a form of karma. Karmas are working in us. They are always troubling us, driving us for something, constantly pushing us to become something else than what we are, here and now. We are constantly driven and vexed by them, either for fight or flight.
The awakened way is to become awakened to it to reorient. The antidote against the three poisons is the triple learning. The first learning is morality. Ordination is putting things in order by following the Awakened One’s precepts of taking refuge in the triple treasure, embracing all with morality.
The Buddha said that we must go through samâdhi, concentration, the second of the triple learning, to reach nirvana, as one must go through a certain gate to the palace pleasure garden. Zazen (坐禅), sitting zen, jhâna, is ceasing our karmas, five coverings, four fluxes, etc. leading to equanimity, throwing off all karmic fluxes.
We eventually reach the primordial purity, peace, and prognosis through these meditation stages. The Buddha found that we are all karma machines, but that we can stop the trouble caused by our karmas. Anyone can do the same by practicing sitting, stopping karmas, and seeing the truth of this process.
Ordination is the key to realizing the awakened way with the triple learning of morality, concentration, and prognosis. Dogen said that by ordination we enter into the same rank as buddhas and the Great Awakened One. Embracing all beings and all virtues is the great virtue and merit of the Great Awakened One.
I attended the 49th day memorial service of my brother, who recently passed away. The priest read the Shushôgi, Significance of Cultivation and Verification, the collection of Dogen’s passages from his Shôbôgenzô, the Storage of True Dharma Eye, now used widely among Buddhist schools beyond Soto school.
My brother got the ordination name on his deceased title tablet. People there believe that we become buddhas, when we die, being freed from karmas and returning to the original state. We had better become buddhas before we die and live the awakened life, understanding and activating the true significance of our life.
It will be good to read it on the occasion of ordination. Some criticize it for not mentioning Zazen. However, the last part reads “Deliberately investigate who is ‘the mind being Buddha’ and then you will requite the Buddha’s grace genuinely.” Zazen is the correct concrete way to reach there and requite it.
Dogen said that we swim at the surface of the ocean and at the same time walk on the bottom of it. We must reach the ultimate ground, a realm beyond karmas, and still live our daily lives with all in the realm of karmas and bonnôs swirling around us– like a lotus in muddy water untouched by muddy water.
12/9/12
The text of the Shushogi (修証義) is available in our unloadable documents section of our website.
