Buddhism, Women, and the Culture of Awakening

Women and The Culture of Awakening

The Buddha did not just teach Dharma- the theory and practice of Awakening-or establish a sangha- a community of awakened disciples and specialized renunciant community- the Buddha established a parisad- a culture of awakening (see Pasadika Sutta DN 29). When the Buddha spoke of the culture of awakening he intended to establish, he spoke of it as having four parts- bhikkhus, bhikkhunis, upasakas and upasikas, ie. monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen. It’s important to understand that when teachers spoke in ancient India- as in ancient Greece or Israel- they usually used the male pronoun to refer to “everyone”. The fact the Buddha did not do this- that every time he discusses the make-up of his culture of awakening he specifically mentions both men and women in both monastic and lay roles- is of great importance. The Buddha emphatically states that if any of these groups are missing from the culture of awakening it is incomplete, and his gift to the world would not last long. Further the Buddha said that creating a fourfold culture of awakening was not an innovation of his but was a distinctive feature of the teachings of all Buddhas past and future. In other words, establishing a fourfold culture of awakening is an inherent part of the very definition of “Buddha”. A Buddha establishes a culture of awakening, that is his gift to the world (sasanam). This culture must be, on all levels, inclusive of both men and women for it to fulfill the Buddha’s compassionate intention.

This position of the Buddha’s has been at times overlooked or, worse, covered up and hidden by those who aspired to make men as dominant in the culture of awakening as they were outside of it, or who believed, against the Buddha’s explicit statements to the contrary, that women were incapable of the higher levels of spiritual practice. One story in the Canon is a culprit in this regard: the story in the Vinaya of the fonding of the Nuns order. It presents the Buddha as having established it grudgingly and warning of the grave dangers associated with it. Recently several scholars have critically examined this narrative and different rescensions of it in the surviving Vinayas of differing schools. The consensus is that it is a late, polemical addition to the Vinaya. 

Recently Ven Analayo, a Theravadin monk-scholar, after examining the different rescensions of the story and other evidence from the canon, proposed a reconstruction of what was likely to have really happened in the founding of the nuns sangha:http://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/pdf/analayo/Mahapajapati.pdf. I retell the story below based on Analayo’s research. For more details on why the garudhammas (rules subjugating bhikkhunis) cannot date from the foundation of the bhikkhuni sangha by the Buddha: http://groups.google.com/group/dhammadharini/web/non-historicity-of-the-eight-garudhammas?hl=en&pli=1)

The Story

Thus have I heard: At one time the Buddha was dwelling in Kapilavatthu, in the Nigrodha park, in the territory of his own clan, the Shakyas. At that time his foster mother Mahapajapati Gotami, visited the Buddha. After bowing to him with her head at his feet she sat down and asked him if women could attain the four stages of awakening as men could. The Buddha affirmed that they could, as he had on other occasions. Mahapajapati then made a bold request which would be the first step in completing the Buddha’s vision for his culture of awakening. She requested that women be allowed to go forward as homeless wanderers like men were, leaving behind home and family and living a contemplative life in the jungles and forests.

Gotami must have been very disappointed with the Buddha’s answer. The Buddha told her not to make that request. “Shave your head like the bhikkhus, wear ochre robes, and live at home as a celibate renunciant.”, he told her according to one version of the story. Home was a more protected environment. The jungle was a dangerous place for women wandererers. The Jains would also come to accept women as homeless sadhus in their community. In their rules of discipline, the famously nonviolent Jains state that whenever women stay in an overnight dwelling without lockable doors they are to station their stoutest member by the entrance with a big stick to fend off intruders with sexual assault on their minds. The women of the jungle were not protected by association with the male holders of power- and were therefore easy prey for predators.

Mahapajapati returned home and did as the Buddha asked. A few weeks later she returned again to where he was dwelling for the rains retreat, this time with shaven head and ochre robes as the Buddha had suggested, and repeated her request, but was again turned away. Mahapajapati returned home and began to gather around her like-minded women, who she instructed to shave their hair and don monastic robes like hers.

After the end of the rains retreat when the Buddha once again took to the road Gotami followed with her band of holy women. They caught up to the sangha in Nadika (or perhaps Vesali). The Buddha, seeing the number of women who had taken up the renunciant life with Gotami and braved the hardships of the road, was put at ease about their readiness to enter the homeless life and complete the parisad. The women had shown that despite mostly being ladies of the Shakyan royal court, they could handle the rigours of the homeless life, and that they now had enough numbers to assure eachothers safety. This time the Buddha granted Gotami`s request.

The Buddha`s decision was not without risk and controversy. Early records show that some of the monks worried that the laity upon whom they depended for their survival would lose faith in the holiness of a sangha that included women. Some laypeople distrusted supposed renunciant communities which were inclusive of women, suspecting the community of licentiousness and perversity. Some monks believed that admitting women would corrupt the purity of the community and shorten the lifespan of the Buddha`s teachings in the world. The Buddha must have known of these fears, yet he acted to create a community of female monastics anyway.  

Before the Buddha’s passing away he famously refused to appoint a succesor or to freeze the Sangha in the form he created, disavowing any sense of ownership of the parisad or the monastic sangha. Since the Buddha’s time the men of the parisad have had a mixed track record with regards to maintaining the Buddha’s inclusivity of women and affirmation of their potential. Within a few centuries of the Buddha’s death the female monastics had been put under eight “grave decrees” subjugating them to the Bhikkhu sangha, and their inclusion within the community of the homeless was seen as a danger to the Buddhist mission which needed to be guarded against and kept under male monastic control. A sutta was composed stating that although women could attain arahantship, they could not be samma-sambuddhas, or awakened religious founders- they could not be creators of a culture of awakening- a future goal some practitioners aspired to (to be reborn at a time when the Dhamma had disappeared and rediscover and re-establish it). This was solely a male perogative. This strange assertion, largely dealing with the realm of theory- since Buddhism had been founded on earth at that time, as now, there will be no need for another samma-sambuddha until it dies out again- this assertion seems to serve no purpose but revenge.

More reassuringly, some great Buddhist masters did not fail to attain a Buddha’s vision of women’s potential and rights. Dogen Zenji (1200-1253), the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, wrote that those monks who refuse to pay homage to a nun even if she has aquired the Dharma “do not understand the dharma” and “are like animals far removed from the Buddhas and ancestors”. “What is there about a male intrinsically to esteem?”, he asked. “The female is no different from the male, so both female and male aquire the dharma without distinction.” Furthermore he argued, “If you detest women because they are objects of sexual desire, should you not also detest men, who are likewise objects of sexual desire?”

Bankei Kotaku (1622-1693), the great Rinzai Zen master, was once asked by a woman disciple how she could attain realization, obstructed as she was by her female body. Bankei replied:  "I can tell you something about this matter of women's Buddha Mind. I understand that women feel very distressed hearing it said that they can't become Buddhas. But it simply isn't so! How is there any difference between men and women? Men are the Buddha Body, and women are the Buddha Body too.” (Haskell, Peter. Unborn Zen)

In our time some Mahayana lineages have preserved the lineage of bhikkhunis and some haven't, or never even received it, as in the case of Tibet. In the Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese worlds there are full female monastics. In the Theravadin world the lineage was lost, and since the rules stipulate that only a bhikkuni can ordain a bhikkuni, there had been no movements to re-instate it until recently, when a number of women who wanted to be bhikkunis and bhikkus who support them conspired to restart the lineage by having Mahayana bhikshunis ordain them. This move has proven to be controversial, but is coming to be more and more accepted. A number of major Buddhist teachers support the principle, including HH the Dalai Lama, HH the Karmapa, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Bhikkhu Bodhi. The new Bhikkunis have gained significant support in the West and in Sri Lanka and India, and so far less so in Burma and Thailand. 

Most recently a renegade bhikkhu in the western Thai Forest Sangha, Ajahn Brahmavamso, broke with his fellows, who had created an interim type of Nun (shiladhara) in their monasteries and were awaiting the go ahead from the Thai Hierarchy to ordain full bhikkunis. His fellows included Ajahn Sumedho, Ajahn Amaro, Ajahn Sucitto and Ajahn Passano. He ordained some bhikkunis, but unfortunately his behaviour around the incident, which was apparently both hostile and deceptive to his former monastic comrades, as well as sensationalistic, has probably set back the general acceptance of ordaining bhikkunis in Thailand by a few more years. Nevertheless the over-all historical movement is clear, and it is only a matter of time before there are full bhikkunis throughout the Theravadin world again. Then there will be the issue of new rules for our day and age to sort out......

Issho Fujita: "Zazen is not Shuzen"

An interesting piece from the Dharma Eye magazine. I am posting it mostly because I think it is such a clear articulation of Zazen practice in modern Soto Zen, particularly in the Kodo Sawaki lineage. This is Dogen's Zazen according to that lineage.  I like this piece a lot. Enjoy:

My Footnotes on Zazen 1 Zazen is not Shuzen (1)
Rev. Issho Fujita
Director, Soto Zen Buddhism International Center


In my Zazen Sankyu Notebook (1)[Dharma Eye Number 2], I wrote, “Zazen as the body of text is always seeking to be freshly re-read with new footnotes under the renewed light of the present age. Those who practice zazen in this modern society are being requested by zazen itself to bring their own unique words to it”. More than ten years have passed since I wrote that impression and I still feel so. I would like to share with Dharma Eye readers some footnotes I have made during these years. I hope my little effort to add new footnotes to zazen will inspire, even a little bit, the readers to creatively make their own footnotes. 

Around early 6th century CE a strange Buddhist monk came to China from South India. Unlike other visiting monks, he did not bring any new Buddhist scriptures or commentaries. He did not translate nor give lectures on Buddhist scriptures, either. He did nothing that could be called “missionary work.” What he did was just sit all day long facing the wall in a room at Shaolin temple. So people gave him a nickname, “wall-gazing Brahman” (an Indian monk who indulged in meditation facing the wall). This monk was Bodhidharma who is now revered as the “First Ancestor of Zen”.

Except for his own disciples (small in number), very few could understand the true meaning of what he was doing by facing the  wall. For example, a famous Buddhist scholar- monk, Nanzan Dousen(Tang dynasty, a founder of Nanzan Vinaya School), classified Bodhidharma in a shuzen section when he complied The Sequel of Biography of Eminent Monks. That implies that Dousen thought of Bodhidharma as a shuzen practitioner, one who engaged in meditation to attain a special state of mind called “dhyana” (Sa. Jhana, Pa). But Dogen criticized Dousen, saying that such an understanding is completely wrong and irrelevant because zazen encompasses the whole Buddha Dharma, not a part of it. In Shobo- genzo Gyoji he wrote, “This was the utmost stupidity, which is lamentable.” According to Dogen, the sitting zazen facing the wall that Bodhidharma practiced in silence is totally different from what had been practiced as zazen to train (shu) a meditative state of dhyana (zen). What Bodhidharma did was authentic zazen, which had been correctly transmitted through generations of ancestors from Shakyamuni. “The ancestral teacher (Bodhidharma) alone embodied the treasury of the true dharma eye transmitted from buddha to buddha, from heir to heir”. Zazen is not a training of dhyana (shuzen) which is one genre of Buddhist practice, like the Three Studies (sila, samadhi, prajna) or Six Paramitas (dana, sila, kshanti, virya, dhyana, prajna) . It is a quite different practice from zazen. In other word shuzen is a personal training to achieve a human ideal (small vehicle, hinayana) and zazen is an expression of something transpersonal or universal (great vehicle, mahayana).

I believe that it is crucially important for us as zazen practitioners to distinguish zazen as the entirety of Buddha Dharma from shuzen as one genre of it, even though these two practices look similar at a glance. We should avoid confusing them. That is why Dogen repeatedly emphasized this point (zazen is not shuzen) in his writings (Fukanzazengi, Shobogenzo, Eihei Koroku, etc..). It could be said that the bulk of his wirings were written to clarify the criteria for discerning authentic zazen.

Then, what is the difference between zazen and shuzen? This is a very important question to consider when we practice zazen. Even if we are sitting with almost the same posture, it does not mean the content is also the same (“If there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth” Fukanzazengi). I am wondering how many zazen practitioners are keenly aware of the importance of this question. 

I stayed at a small zendo in western Massachusetts from 1987 until 2005 as a resident teacher and practiced zazen together with a group of people. That was a great experience for me to deepen my understanding of zazen. Luckily in that area many people were inter- ested in Buddhism and many Buddhist centers and groups (large and small, Theravada, Ma- hayana, Tibetan) were full of activities. Moreover, the colleges nearby all offered introductory courses in Buddhism and seminars on Buddhist philosophy. Those classes were very popular and many students attended them.

Because I was living in such a “hot place” of Buddhism, I was often visited by people who had already studied and practiced various traditions of Buddhism such as Theravada, Tibetan Buddhism, or Rinzai koan practice before coming to my zendo. I was, in a sense, forced to distinguish shikantaza (just sitting) from those types of sitting meditations. It is not a matter of showing off the superiority of my practice to the other but I needed to clarify what shikantaza is all about in comparison with other kinds of practice. Otherwise I could not fulfill my responsibility as a teacher of that practice.

In English speaking countries zazen is usually translated as “zen meditation” or “sitting meditation”. But this translation makes it almost inevitable that people think of zazen as an effort to control the mind and attain a certain state of mind by applying a certain method. This is exactly what shuzen means. Therefore I had to explain that zazen was different from meditation. When I talked about zazen, I decided to use Japanese word, zazen, instead of using English translations. Then it was quite natural that people started asking me, “Ok. Then what is zazen? What should we do to do zazen?”


I realized that when people tried to do zazen based on the shuzen-like assumption they first physically sat down with a certain posture and then applied some mental technique (with emphasis on the mental technique). They thought they had to do some psychological work l in addition to physically sitting. But zazen should be practiced within a totally different framework. So I had to clarify the difference between zazen and their deeply held assumptions.

Near the zendo where I resided there was a vippassana meditaion center founded by S. N. Goenka in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin. This center, formally called Dhammadhara (land of Dhamma), was the first meditation center in North America (founded in 1982) among about 100 centers worldwide. The center consists of 108 acres of land and many buildings, including a bathhouse, two dining rooms, meditation hall for 200 people, a 60 cell pagoda, separate residences for men and women and a center manager's house. Every year around 2,000 people participate in their 10-day course of vipassana meditation. (for more information, see their website at http://www.dhara.dhamma.org/ns/index.shtml). I attended 10-day courses offered by this center twice.

During the 10-day course, for the first three days they practice anapanasati, focusing the attention to the physical sensations around the nostril and the rest of the period they keep “scanning” the whole body by using the cultivated attention to the sensations ( for the details of this technique, see Art of Living by William Hart).


Later I met Larry Rosenberg, a guiding teacher at Cambridge Insight Meditation Center and an author of an excellent book, Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation. He kindly invited me as a guest participant to the 10-day course for advanced yogis he led at Insight Meditation Center in Barre, MA. There I experienced another style of vipassana called “labeling” in the tradition of Mahasi Sayadaw. In this practice practitioners are encouraged to keep noting/labeling every activity all day long.

Before I came to America, I had experienced 5 day or a week long Zen sesshin many times. But I never had a chance to experience 10-day meditation retreat in Japan. Physically it was not so hard for me to sit for many hours for 10 days. But it was the first time I had to apply a certain meditation technique for that long period. These were practices such as exclusively focusing on the sensations around the nostrils, or keeping scanning the whole body for a long time, or labeling whatever is happening in body and mind. Metaphorically speaking, I used “mental muscles” a lot which I seldom use during zazen. And I felt mental “muscular pain” from overusing them. In zazen our mind pervades throughout, resting with the body that is sitting and breathing. It does not engage with any other activity. In zazen we do not intentionally use or actively control our mind, applying a certain method and technique. In those two types of vipassana practice I had a different “taste” of sitting, compare to the one I had in zazen. Where does this difference in taste come from? It was very informative to think about it. Of course this is but my personal impression as a complete beginner of this practice. It is highly likely that the “taste” will change as I deepen the practice further. And also it could be that vipassana is quite different from shuzen. 

Another helpful hint for me in clarifying the difference between zazen and shuzen is Uchiyama Roshi’s definition of zazen. He says it is “an effort to continuously aim at a correct sitting posture with flesh and bones and to totally leave everything to that.” In his definition there is no shuzen element which assumes the central role of mind in shuzen practice. In opposition, the somatic element of zazen is strongly emphasized. If we can understand Bodhidharma’s “wall gazing” as an effort“ to keep sitting with bodymind being like a wall, whatever happens, let it flow as it is, without clinging to or fighting against it”, it is very similar to Uchiyama roshi’s definition of zazen. In this kind of practice, to do zazen means just to sit solely aiming at a correct posture. There is no other need to reach a certain state of mind as a goal or to attain a special experience. Therefore we are freed from anxiety and frustration which comes from seeking for a special state of mind and experience which we have not yet attained and are able to peacefully rest in the here-and-now as it is, nothing special. There can be no competition or ranking based on what is achieved because there is no fixed attainment target. All those human struggles are totally suspended in zazen. That is why zazen is called the “dharma gate of joyful ease”. We simply make a sincere and straightforward effort to sit zazen with body and mind all together without desiring to get something however lofty it may be. This is the way of zazen and in that sense it is quite different from shuzen.

This is easy to say but very difficult to do for us because we are usually driven by a desire to achieve something which does not exist here and now. When we hear that zazen is about no achievement, we immediately ask, “If zazen is that, how can I do it?” But this is a question exactly stemming from the framework based on “means and end” which is always behind the shuzen approach. It is nothing but an undertaking to grasp zazen using the shuzen concept. This shuzen attitude is deeply rooted in our way of behavior and thinking. That is why we should take a radically different approach to zazen so that we can avoid changing zazen into shuzen, consciously or unconsciously.


How can we clearly understand total difference in quality between zazen and shuzen?

(to be continued)

My Footnotes on Zazen 2
Zazen is not Shuzen (2)


Rev. Issho Fujita
Director, Soto Zen Buddhism International Center


I often use “Magic Eye” to illustrate a difference in quality between zazen and shuzen. “Magic Eye” is a picture of a two- dimensional pattern generated by a computer graphics. When you continue looking at it in a certain way, a three-dimensional image emerges out of the pattern. In Japan, it has become popular thanks to a sales pitch - “Good for improving your vision.” Some of you might have already had “Magic Eye experience”.


If you look at a Magic Eye picture in an ordinary way, the three-dimensional image hidden in the picture will never come out. If you stop seeing it in the usual way, tensing the muscles around the eyeballs to focus on the object and find out something – if you relax those muscles, giving up the effort to find something and wait patiently with a soft- focused eye (this kind of eye is called “Magic Eye”), a three-dimensional image suddenly emerges from nowhere. When we try to see the image more clearly, thinking “Wow, this is interesting!” and return to the ordinary way of seeing, the image immediately disappears. The attitude, the way of seeing and what is seen are interrelated. There is no way of cheating this relation.


An interesting thing about this “Magic Eye” phenomenon is that, depending on how we see the same picture - with ordinary eyes or with “Magic Eye” – a totally different visual world unfolds. I don’t know how we can see a three- dimensional image in a two-dimensional picture, but I am sure it is not just psychological but a matter of the physical way in which we use our eyes.

I think “Magic Eye” is an interesting and helpful metaphor for the whole different world of experience that unfolds depending on whether we sit zazen, in the shuzen way of using bodymind or in zazen way of “dropped- away bodymind.” In an old commentary to Shobogenzo, there is a phrase, “When sitting zazen, zazen becomes the self. It is not the self at ordinary times.” If we replace “self” with “bodymind,” it would go like this:” When sitting zazen, zazen becomes the bodymind. It is not bodymind at ordinary times”.


By extending the metaphor of the two types of eyes, ordinary eyes and “Magic Eye” and applying it to describe the characteristics and differences between ordinary bodymind and magic-eye-like bodymind, it is possible to say that shuzen is done with the former bodymind and zazen with the latter. With ordinary bodymind, we first set up the goal, control our body and mind in a certain way to accomplish the goal, and make a conscious effort to make result of our action match with the goal through comparing the two. Whatever we do, there is a basic structure of “I (consciously) operate my bodymind to accomplish a purpose.” In the case of shuzen, the purpose is to produce a certain state of mind which can be clearly described as “dhyana” and the practitioner applies a various methods (Dogen Zenji called it “means to brush it clean”), like counting breath, following breath, body-scanning, mental noting, etc.. With these methods, body and mind are consciously and purposely used to make progress toward the goal. It is an act of self-control - “I” control “my body and mind” - and an approach of actively doing something to achieve a goal.

In contrast, magic-eye-like bodymind is an approach of undoing what we do not need to do or what we should not do. Physically speaking, it is a state of deep relaxation with unnecessary tension totally released. Psychologically speaking, it is a state of resting ease in a relaxed way in which the ordinary way of actively run- ning the mind is put aside (Dogen Zenji called it “give up the operations of mind, intellect, and consciousness”). In Dogen Zenji’s “Birth-Death”, he wrote, “Just letting go of and forgeting body and mind, casting them into the house of Buddha, being activated by the Buddha - when we go along in accord with this, then without applying effort or expending the mind we part from birth and death and become Buddhas”. I think this is a wonderful descrip- tion of magic-eye-like bodymind. Therefore zazen should not be a “job done by self-power.” Essentially zazen is not what we can ”do” directly by exerting our own power. Keizan Zenji wrote, “Just sit zazen. Do not fabricate anything. This is the essential art of zazen” in Zazen Yojinki (Notes on What to be Aware of in Zazen).


To give zazen instruction, we often say, “straighten your back,” “keep your eyes half- open, half-closed” to regulate the body, “make your out-breath long,” “do abdominal breathing” to regulate breath, and “do not think anything,” “focus your attention on your breath” to regulate the mind. I think there is a big problem here. Zazen should not be something forcefully built up by imposing a ready-made mold onto our body-mind from outside. It should be what is naturally and freely generated from inside as a result of non-fabrication. There is a danger that a rote way of giving instruction is leading us to change zazen into shuzen.

In zazen, the spine should elongate by itself instead of our lengthening it by effort. I would like to briefly touch upon the topic of “outer” and “inner” muscles. When we try to lengthen our spine consciously, we use the “outer muscles” – the volitional muscles. These are designed for purposeful movement. When the spine elongates by itself, the body is using the autonomously-controlled “inner muscles.” These are the muscles of “being” – the non- volitional muscles - designed as a system of supportive movement (Jeremy Chance, “Alexander Technique”).


In many cases the natural function of inner muscles is blocked by unnecessary tensions of outer muscles. We must reactivate and fully develop the intrinsic functions of inner muscles by undoing unnecessary tensions in the outer muscles. The fundamental problem of human beings is that the outer muscles tend to take every chance to intrude where the inner muscles are supposed to play a main role. I think this is closely related to saying that zazen (inner muscle dominant) is not shuzen (outer muscle dominant).

Anyway, the principle of “it is good to spontaneously become so but not good to artificially make it be so” should be applied not only to spine but also head, eyes, hands, arms, legs and the all other parts of zazen posture, breath, and the mind. In zazen, we should not perform a special breathing method to control the breath but leave everything to the natural breathing, which is a life-sustaining activity of the body sitting with a correct posture. Dogen Zenji never tells us to breathe this way or that way. He just says, “breathe softly through your nose” or “your in-breath and out-breath are not long nor short (leave them alone).”


The idea of outer and inner muscles is about the body but I think we can also apply this idea to the mind. When we are absorbed in our thoughts, thinking of this or that - as usual - it is a function of “outer-muscle mind.” In everyday expression, we say “use your head.” In contrast, “inner-muscle mind” functions to support the appearing and disappearing of thoughts at the basic level. It enables intuition, awareness, and mindfulness to arise. Here again in zazen, we can say that we are calming down an excessive activity of outer-muscle mind and activating and manifesting the func- tion of inner-muscle mind which has been sup- pressed. Therefore as Dogen Zenji said, “stop measuring with thoughts, ideas and views.” We should avoid bringing the “side job” of various meditation techniques like the four foundations of mindfulness, Sun meditation, Ajikan meditation and so on, into zazen. When we engage in these meditation techniques, our mind inevitably becomes active and is dominated by “outer-muscle mind.” In zazen, the mind is dominated by “inner-muscle mind.” It is not focused on any particular spot. It evenly and softly permeates inside and outside the body, calmly receiving sensory inputs (including all kinds of thoughts) with equanimity. It suspends any reaction and control against the inputs whatever they may be.

So far I have been using strange metaphors like “Magic-Eye-like bodymind” and “outer muscle, inner muscle.” I did this to help you become familiar with the zazen approach in which we practice zazen as zazen, not as shuzen. For us the shuzen approach is much easier to grasp than zazen approach and we are much more familiar with it. Because it’s difficult to understand and unfamiliar, we often lose sight of shuzen being totally different from the zazen Dogen Zenji recommended so highly.
As a result, we are actually doing shuzen very hard believing it is zazen or zazen becomes “a dead letter,” a matter of appearance, or just an imitation of the form. I think something has to be done to change such a sad situation. It is the main reason why I started writing this article.


Of course, I do not have an ultimate answer to the problem. As I quoted earlier, “when we sit zazen, zazen becomes bodymind.” I am now exploring one step further to discover what kind of bodymind arises during zazen and what we should do in order to have such a bodymind. Zazen is not just a training or exercise for us to attain some preferable goals but a spiritual practice of “immediately entering into Buddhahood.” I really hope that we can open up the way we, today, can practice such zazen as a template of following what the buddhas and ancestral teachers practiced . 


another talk by Rev. Fujita on the same topic: http://www.milwaukeezencenter.org/pdf%20files/Newsletters/2011/mzc_news_9-11.pdf

What is Zen?

Below is my response to the following post, "That's Not Zen" on the excellent Nyoho Zen blog:

http://nyoho.com/2012/05/25/thats-not-zen/#comment-77

When I first started practicing Zen I felt clear about what it was. I read Roshi Philip Kapleau’s Three Pillars of Zen, and thought Zen was a set of practices which would lead to a direct experience of your “true nature” or “original face”. I had read of this concept before in earlier and extremely crude readings of Zen when I was 13 and 14- I remember explaining to an assuredly perplexed father when I was 16 that I did not want to go to school and pursue a normal job, I wanted to see “my face before my parents were born”.  When I started practicing Zazen, at the age of 18 or 19, I thought it would be a way to experience the essence, the true reality, of my self and of life.

I’ll insert a spoiler here and tell you that more than 15 years later, after many changes of view and path, I have come back to this same opinion: Zen is a set of practices which aim at a realization, an understanding, a direct experience, and an embodiment, of the reality of the self and of life. This reality is sometimes called “buddha nature” “one mind” “mind ground” “tathagatagarbha”, and goes hand in hand with the understanding of the emptiness of self and things, of subject and object. Put another way, the self is ungraspable, and things too are ungraspable. The reason this realization is important is that it frees us from our deluded grasping, which is the source of the suffering of both ourselves and of others, and also the source of our inability to truly serve others, which is the same thing as serving that which is deepest within us.

After I began sitting Zazen I continued reading books on Zen, and after an initial ecstacy of love became more and more confused. Within about a year I felt I no longer had any idea how to practice Zen. When I tried I found I was trying to fake various Zen-like attitudes I didn’t really understand. It was then that the late Patrick O’ Connel, great Manitoban poet, Buddhist, and sometimes Christian, handed me a copy of Nyaniponika Thera’s Heart of Buddhist Meditation.
The Burmese Mindfulness meditation of that book was a revelation. The gentle attentiveness, the pursuit of reality, the whole body and mind presence, and the promise of self knowledge and freedom I had also found in Zen, but here it was without the pretense and obfuscation!

I took up Mindfulness meditation and read Goldstein, Kornfield, Salzburg and crew. I felt relieved and energized by the clear, simple teachings. When I applied them my clarity increased and my afflictive emotions decreased. All aspects of my life improved.

I took up Theravadin practice and ultimately ordained as a bhikkhu (monk) in the Thai Forest Tradition under the brilliant scholar and meditation master, Thanissaro Bhikkhu. I benefitted tremendously from his teachings and from Buddhist practice as taught in the Pali Canon (the earliest, pre-Mahayana scriptures) and Thai masters like Ajaan Lee, Ajaan Chah, and Ajaan Maha Boowa.

The other side of the story was that I slowly became a slave to technique, form and dogma. I lost sight of the possibility of radical insight here and now, of direct penetration, freedom, and contemplative creativity. I felt I had to perfect my monastic discipline, my renunciation, and my jhana (sankrit: dhyana) before I could hope to have any real insight or freedom beyond character development and increased skillfulness and happiness.

To simplify the story considerably this was what led me back to Zen, which I keep on coming back to like an old lover ever since I tremblingly took the four Bodhisattva vows as a teenager. To my thinking Zen is exactly as it was described by Bodhidharma: “Not depending on words and scriptures, a special transmission outside the teachings, direct pointing to the heart and becoming Buddha.” Zen goes to the same place as other forms of Buddhism, but does it not by relying on the Buddha’s techniques and philosophies but by direct realization of the Buddha’s mind of freedom. The Buddha’s mind is the mind of non-grasping, the mind of nirvana. The only difference between Zen realization and Theravadin realization, in my opinion (whose worth is questionable and you will question very justifiably) is that Zen takes the mind of non-duality and non-grasping further, going beyond realization of nirvana to the Mahayana ideal of non-grasping to nirvana or samsara, to emptiness or form, to rejecion of the world or addiction to to it. This is the path of the Bodhisattva- endless non-abiding practicefor the sake of self and other, beyond self and other, the ultimate mind of non-grasping.

I believe that Zen attempts to keep practices to a minimum, well aware of the tendency to worship the means and forget the end. Of course this happens in Zen still, but no one is perfect and everything flowing in the stream of samsara is relentlessly pulled into the muddy waters. Only the steel guts of the Bodhisattvas pull Zen out again and pass it along until the next muddy wave.

I understand Koan study to be a technique for transmitting understanding of that which leads to the non-grasping mind- understanding of the ever-free nature of our own awareness, our Buddha nature; understanding of the illusory and projected nature of our concepts and perceptions; understanding the emptiness of self and phenomena; understanding our non-seperation from all things; understanding the non-grasping compassion of a Bodhisattva. It is a thorough training in the seeing through, in barrier-lessness, in letting go.

Shikantaza is a direct taking up of the mind of a Buddha, the non-grasping, luminous mind. Even though Shikantaza by definition must be done without desiring attainments, without doing, and without grasping to any ecstacies, insights, or even any simple ease and pleasure, that comes with it, I believe that shikantaza properly done leads to a real “dropping off of body and mind” where one realizes directly the always and ever free Buddha nature and the emptiness of self and other.  I believe that the writings or teachings of Dogen Zenji and Keizan Jokin, Hongzhi Zhenjue, or for that matter Obaku Zenji (Huangpo) or Eko Zenji (Huineng) amply point in this direction.

I do not believe that this means Zen rejects monasteries, precepts, sutra study, chanting, or for that matter psychotherapy, psychiatric medication, yoga or tooth brushing. It just means that these things, though they help stabilize and put in order body and mind for practice, do not lead to freedom are not Zen. Zen is the direct realization of the Buddha’s heart. It is the wholehearted effort to let nothing else get in the way.

Some may argue, rightly, that Zen says there is nothing to attain. That is true. We are already free and all of our suffering is an illusion. But until we know that we must practice. We will not gain anything, but we will lose every thing, which is exactly what we need.

Ajahn Sumedho: The Way It Is

An excerpt from Ajahn Sumedho's 1988 talk "Accepting the Way Things Are", from the book "The Way It Is", available free online (google it). How many of you have been practising today trying to become something 'I have got to do this ... or become that ... or get rid of something ... or got to do something...' That compulsiveness takes over, even in our practice of Dhamma. 'This is the way it is' isn't a fatalistic attitude of not caring or being indifferent, but is a real openness to the way things have to be at this moment. For example, right now at this moment this is the way it is and it can't be any other way at this moment. It's so obvious, isn't it? Right now, no matter whether you are feeling high or low or indifferent, happy or depressed, enlightened or totally deluded, half-enlightened, half-deluded, three-quarters deluded, one-quarter enlightened, hopeful or despairing - this is the way it is. And it can't be any other way at this moment. How does your body feel? Just notice that the body is this way. It's heavy, it's earthbound, it's coarse, it gets hungry, it feels heat and cold, it gets sick, sometimes it feels very nice, sometimes it feels very horrible. This is the way it is. Human bodies are like this; so that this tendency to want it to be otherwise falls away. It doesn't mean we can't try to make things better, but we do so from understanding and wisdom rather than from an ignorant desire. The world is this way and things happen, and it snows and the sun comes out, and people come and go, people have misunderstandings, people's feelings get hurt. People get lazy, and inspired and people get depressed and disillusioned, people gossip and disappoint each other and there is adultery and there's theft, drunkenness and drug addiction and there are wars, and there always have been. Here in a community like Amaravati we can see the way things are. Now it's the weekend and more people come to offer alms-food and it's more crowded and noisy and sometimes there are children running up and down screaming and people pounding vegetables and chopping things and everything going all over the place. You can observe 'this is the way it is' rather than 'these people are impinging on my silence.' 'I don't want it to be like that, I want it to be otherwise,' might be the reaction if you like the quiet orderliness of the meal where there's none of that going on and there are no loud noises or harsh sounds. But life is like this, this is the way life is, this is human existence. So in our minds we embrace the whole of it, and 'this is the way it is' allows us to accept the changes and movements from the silent to the noisy, from the controlled and ordered to the confused and muddled. One can be a very selfish Buddhist and want life to be very quiet and want to be able to 'practise' and have plenty of time for sitting, plenty of time for studying the Dhamma and 'I don't want to have to receive guests and talk to people about silly things' and 'I don't want to ... blah blah blah.' You can really be a very, very selfish person as a Buddhist monk. You can want the world to align itself with your dreams and ideals and, when it doesn't, you don't want it anymore. But rather than make things the way you want them, the Buddha way is to notice the way things are. And it's a great relief when you accept the way it is, even if it's not very nice; because the only real misery is not wanting it to be like that.

Free From Activity: A Teaching From Ajaan Mun

Activityless-ness is the end point of the world, beyond supposing and formulation.

saccanam caturo pada
khinasava jutimanto te loke parinibbuta

The four Noble Truths — suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation — are activities in that each truth has an aspect that has to be done: Suffering has to be understood, its cause abandoned, its cessation made clear, and the path to its cessation developed. All of these are aspects that have to be done — and if they have to be done, they must be activities. So we can conclude that all four truths are activities. This is in keeping with the first verse quoted above, which speaks of the four truths as feet, stair treads, or steps that must be taken for the task to be finished. What follows is thus termed activityless-ness — like writing the numerals 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0, then erasing 1-9, leaving just 0, and not writing anything more. What is left is read as 'zero,' but it doesn't have any value at all. You can't use it to add, subtract, multiply, or divide with any other numerals, yet at the same time you can't say that it doesn't exist, for there it is: 0 (zero).
This is like the discernment that knows all around, because it destroys the activity of supposing. In other words, it erases supposing completely and doesn't become involved with or hold on to any supposings at all. With the words 'erasing' or 'destroying' the activity of supposing, the question arises, 'When supposing is entirely destroyed, where will we stay?' The answer is that we will stay in a place that isn't supposed: right there with activityless-ness.
This explanation is in line with the aspects of reality that appear clearly only to those who practice, and that people who don't practice can't know. Only when we listen and then practice accordingly until we see and know of our own accord will we be able to understand.
The meaning of the next verse is this: 'Those who have no more effluents extinguish the three realms and are dazzling.' In other words, they have practiced persistence and made an investigation 'bhavito bahulikato.' In other words, they have worked at it and developed it repeatedly to the point where the mind has the strength capable of analyzing and destroying all supposings so as to reach activityless-ness. They can thus gain release from the three realms.
In extinguishing the three realms, arahants don't fly up into the realms of sensuality, form, and formlessness. They stay right where they are. The same was true of the Buddha: When he extinguished the three realms, he was sitting in one spot, under the Bodhi tree. He didn't fly up into the three realms. He extinguished them at the mind — for right there in the mind is where the three realms exist.
Those who aim at extinguishing the three realms should thus extinguish them in their own hearts. Only then will they obliterate activity — the act of supposing — from the heart, leaving just activityless-ness. This is the primal heart, the primal Dhamma, which knows no death.