Dogen's Private Notes from the Hokyo Era: Immediately Extinguish the Flames from Your Head
"With upright zazen, you return home and sit in peace."
In this, the ninth post in our Hokyo-ki series, we include two interactions between Rujing and Dogen that occur 90% of the way through the text. Due to one of the few time markers in Hokyo-ki, we know that Rujing is now 64 years old. He turned 64 in 1227 and died on July 18, 1227, so these encounters occurred a short time before his death.
As we've noted previously, Hokyo-ki has four themes of roughly equal weight: awakening and karmic obstructions; zazen and kinhin; the definition of Zen; and monastic issues. In this series, we've focused on the first two topics, but in the next post we will take up an issue related to the definition of Zen: "Are We All Buddhas Just the Way We Are—Or Not?"
In the passages we examine in this post, we again find Rujing encouraging diligent effort in zazen, specifically regarding "immediately extinguishing flames from your head" and "return home and sit in peace." He also predicts some auspicious experiences that Dogen might have. Rujing not only gets personal about his own practice, but gives Dogen a prophecy for his future diligent practice. Both of these passages are fresh out of the translation hopper and we also include annotations below.
As usual, by attending carefully to the details of what Rujing says, we arrive at uncommon conclusions.
The Venerable Abbot, Rujing, compassionately taught, "I see that in the Sangha Hall you are at your seat day and night, doing zazen without sleeping, obtaining that which is supremely good.[1] In the future, you might smell a wonderful fragrance that is not of this world. This is auspicious. You may experience the sensation that oil is dripping to the ground right before you.[2] This is also auspicious. If all kinds of physical sensations arise, this too will be auspicious. Negotiate the Way in zazen, immediately extinguish flames from your head."[3]
The Venerable Abbot presented, saying, "The World Honored One said, 'Listening and pondering [the dharma] are like living outside the door. With upright zazen, you return home and sit in peace.[4] Therefore, in an instant of zazen, in a flash, the merit is incalculable.'[5] I have been doing this for 30 years, diligently negotiating the Way, without backsliding. Now I’m 64 years old and still vigorous. You should also negotiate the Way with diligent practice as if this was a prophecy from the golden mouths of Buddhas and Ancestors."
The Sangha Hall, 僧堂, is an enormously important room, so we'll quote the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (DDB) at length: "In Song and Yuan dynasty Chinese monasteries and the medieval Japanese Zen monasteries (such as Dōgenʼs Eiheiji 永平寺) that were modeled after them, the saṃgha hall was the central facility on the west side of a monastery compound. It was a large structure divided internally into an inner and an outer hall and surrounded by enclosed corridors that connected it with nearby ancillary facilities. The inner hall was further divided into front and rear sections and featured low, wide sitting platforms arranged in several blocks in the center of the floor space and along the walls. Enshrined on an altar in the center of the inner hall was an image of Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva, called the Sacred Monk, who was treated both as the tutelary deity of the hall and the highest ranking 'monk' in the assembly. Registered monks of the great assembly spent much of their time at their individual places on the platforms, sitting in meditation, taking their meals, and spreading out bedding for sleep at night. Their bowls were hung above their seats, and their few personal effects and monkish implements were stored in boxes at the rear of the platforms [...]." ↩︎
This is unusual. Kodera has, "That you [shed tears] as if the oil drips on the ground when you come face to face with me [...]." Kato and Victoria have, "Seeing things like drops of oil falling to the ground before your eyes is also an auspicious omen." ↩︎
Tanahashi and Fischer have, "When you experience these things you should immediately increase your intensity of practice as if you were putting out a fire on your head." From "When" to "putting out" appears to be their rendering of just four characters, 坐禪辦道, Japanese, "zazen bendo," or as I have it more simply, "Negotiate the Way in zazen." ↩︎
return home and sit in peace, 歸家穩坐, DDB: "Used in Chan texts to describe one who has removed themselves from the world of discrimination to return to their ultimate self." ↩︎
merit is incalculable, 功德無量, DDB: "From 'Verse of Giving Wealth,' a verse chanted at mealtimes when there is a special donation of food from a lay patron:
'The two gifts of wealth and dharma,
are incalculable in their merit.
The perfection of giving
is completed and perfected.'" ↩︎
Extinguishing the flames
Rujing begins by praising Dogen for doing zazen night and day for the two years that Dogen trained under his direction. And Dogen clearly got something—that which is supremely good! Rujing then prepares Dogen for more auspicious signs—an extraordinary fragrance, oil dripping from the ceiling, and other physical sensations. In other words, the post-awakening process, characterized by the pliancy that comes at the very apex of the desire realm.
See this post for more about this essential—and often overlooked feature—of the Zen Way:
Dosho Port
This first paragraph (despite the misinformation in the current Zen swirl about Rujing and Dogen being all about nonattainment) rocks with attainment. And it goes beyond attainment, not through bypassing or denial, but through negotiating the Way in zazen with direct, immediate functioning—like a person would extinguish flames from the top of their head.
One of our important lineage stories also makes this point.
Daicho Roshi grunted, “No.”
This offer and response were repeated during the next bath and the next. Then Dainin didn’t ask. He directly took up the brush and scrubbed his master’s back. Daicho Roshi exhaled in delight, “Ahhhhh.”
Afterward, Dainin asked Daicho Roshi, “Why did you previously refuse my kindness when I asked, ‘Shall I scrub your back?’”
Daicho Roshi responded, “You fool! You are ridiculous! Don’t insert any extra thought in dealing with something.”
Just immediately extinguish the flames from the top of your head.
For more about this story, see Keep Me In Your Heart A While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri, "Chapter 8: Does Zen Have Morals?"
Return home, sit in peace
The second paragraph is equally rich. Rujing tells Dogen, "With upright zazen, you return home and sit in peace. Therefore, in an instant of zazen, in a flash, the merit is incalculable."
This passage might be understood to uphold the contemporary Soto notion that anytime anyone sits in the zazen pose, this is returning home and sitting in peace. That is, just assume the position and abracadabra, there's a flash of incalculable merit.
However, this is not Rujing's meaning. Quite the contrary, for Rujing and Dogen, "zazen" and "awakening" are synonyms. In other words, Rujing and Dogen use "zazen" to refer to "true zazen," aka, the practice of awakening. So the flash that Rujing refers to is the flash of sudden awakening.
As Dogen says in his "Disruptive Point of Zazen" (Shobogenzo, "Zazenshin") about people making Buddhas in zazen:
That Rujing shares this view, is further demonstrated by what he says next: "I have been doing this for 30 years, diligently negotiating the Way, without backsliding."
Now, Rujing became a monk at 19–about 45 years earlier, not 30. What happened 30 years previously was not the first time he put his butt on a zazen seat. Thirty years previously, he had already been practicing for about 15 years. What happened 30 years previously was that he realized great awakening. Before that, he was learning how to negotiate the Way in zazen and finally, immediately extinguished the flames from his head.
Here is a key point: when Rujing, the abbot of one of the foremost training monasteries in all of Song China, says he no longer backslides, he is not making a casual comment. Not only did this phrase, "without backsliding," have important significance in the context of the buddhadharma, but to make false claims about dharma attainments would have been a significant violation of both his monastic and bodhisattva precepts.
And because Rujing would not have uttered such a phrase in a glib manner, we too should allow Rujing's first-person account—that he was without backsliding—to land with its fully intended gravity.
"Backsliding" (退; Sanskrit, avaivartika), you see, is an important principle in Mahayana Buddhism. In order to reach the stage of being without backsliding is the heartfelt aspiration of many serious practitioners: "How can I stop taking one step forward and then one or two steps backward?"
For example, you go to sesshin and have a deep experience, calming the mind and even getting a glimpse of the truth. And then you go back into your life and experience your old bad habits and afflictions—and so faith in the Way might be reduced or even lost. Is it possible to reach a place in this journey where we just take steps forward, steadily advancing toward Buddhahood without backsliding (i.e., life after life, no matter how long the road seems to be)? In other words, is it possible to completely return home and sit in peace?
The simple answer is, "Yes!"
However, there are several views within the Mahayana about the point at which a devoted practitioner will attain a stage without backsliding. Some of the ancient trailblazers suggest that it occurs when we enter the first of 52 stages of the Bodhisattva path, the stage of nonretrogressive faith. Others argue that it occurs later.
Similarly, some regard "without backsliding" as arising during the second of five paths (preparation; accumulation; seeing; cultivation; and no-more learning), the path of accumulation. Others assert that no more backsliding is a characteristic of the path of seeing, the third of the five paths. And that makes the most sense to us.
Although Rujing's view on the matter isn't clear from the text, what is clear is that his testimony—that he is without backsliding—indicates he had realized a high level of attainment. Indeed, even in the Great Song China where hundreds of thousands of practitioners wore out their zazen seats, only a small number of practitioners reached the place of being without backsliding.
And then he died
Rujing concludes this teaching to Dogen by prophesying that Dogen will continue his diligent practice of the Way. There is a possibility here that although Rujing had verified Dogen's awakening, perhaps Dogen had yet to arrive at the stage of no more backsliding. If so, Rujing's implicit prophecy to Dogen is that he would arrive at being without backsliding. In addition, in the midst of diligent practice, Rujing tells him to rely on the words from "the golden mouths of Buddhas and Ancestors" – i.e., without inserting any extra thought.
Rujing also observes that even though he's been doing wholehearted, diligent zazen (aka, awakening) for decades, something he was well-known for in Chinese monastic circles in his day, and even though he was now an oldster at 64, he still felt vigorous.
Shortly after this, he died.
Keep that in mind.
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"Dogen's Private Notes from the Hokyo Era: Are We All Buddhas Just the Way We Are—Or Not?"
