Eihei Dogen and the Eyes Horizontal

Keizan's commentary

The teacher was a man of Yue—that is, of the region across the sea. His personal name was Dōgen and his lay surname was Minamoto. He was said to descend in the ninth generation from Emperor Murakami and in the eighth from the Later Prince of the Central Secretariat.⁴ When he was born in the second year of Shōji, a physiognomist saw him and said, “This child is a sacred child. He has double pupils in his eyes and will necessarily become a great vessel.” An old book said, “When a woman gives birth to a sacred child, the mother's life is endangered. When this child is seven, his mother will necessarily die.” His mother heard this without surprise or fear and increased her love and respect. In fact, when the teacher was eight his mother died. Everyone said, “Although the prediction missed by a year, it finally accorded with the physiognomist's words.”⁵ In the winter when he was four, he first read Li Jiao's Hundred Odes on his grandmother's lap. In the autumn when he was seven, he first presented a piece of Zhou-style poetry in his compassionate father's chambers. Elderly scholars and eminent Confucians all said, “This child is not of the ordinary stream. He should be called a divine prodigy.” At eight he met the grief of his mother's death and lamented deeply. Seeing incense smoke rise at Takaosanji, he awakened to arising, ceasing, and impermanence. From then he aroused the aspiration. In the spring when he was nine, he first read Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa. Senior elders of established virtue said, “His acuity is like Mañjuśrī's. He is truly a vessel of the Great Vehicle.” Still young, he stored such words in his ears and studied strenuously.⁶ At the time Matsudono Zenjō was a regent of the house that supplied regents and chief advisers. He was unequaled under heaven and a model for rulers and ministers. He took the teacher in as an adopted son, transmitted the family's secret traditions, and taught him the country's essential affairs. In the spring when Dōgen was thirteen, he intended to give him the coming-of-age ceremony and make him an important minister of the court. Without letting anyone know, the teacher secretly left the estate on Mount Kohata and sought his way to the foot of Mount Hiei. At the time there was one called Dharma-Eye Ryōkan, a senior administrator of the mountain gate and leader in exoteric and esoteric teachings. He was the teacher's maternal uncle. Dōgen went to his room and asked to leave home. Greatly surprised, Ryōkan asked, “Your coming-of-age is near. Surely your birth father and adoptive father will be angry. What of that?” The teacher said, “When my grieving mother died, she charged me, ‘Leave home and study the way.’ I also think this way. I do not wish to mingle vainly with dusty convention. I wish only to leave home. I think I will leave home to repay the kindness of my grieving mother, grandmother, aunt, and others.” Ryōkan shed tears of feeling, permitted him to enter the room, and kept him to study at Senkōbō in Hannyadani, Shuryōgon'in, Yokawa. At fourteen, on the ninth day of the fourth month of the first year of Kenpō, he bowed to Abbot Kōen and shaved his head. On the tenth, at Enryakuji's ordination platform, he received the bodhisattva precepts and became a monk. From then he studied the Tendai practice of calm and insight and learned the esoteric teaching transmitted from southern India.⁷ From age eighteen he read once through the entire Buddhist canon. His maternal uncle Abbot Kōin of Miidera was an eminent master of the time, unequaled in the world. Dōgen asked him about the great matter of the school. Kōin showed him: “The ultimate point of our school is precisely the place of your present doubt. It has been transmitted as an oral key generation after generation from Dengyō and Jikaku. But this doubt cannot be resolved here. “I hear that long ago Great Master Bodhidharma came from western India to the eastern land and transmitted the buddha-seal. That house style now spreads under heaven and is called the Zen school. “If you wish to resolve this affair, enter the room of Abbot Eisai at Kenninji and inquire into its precedents. Then seek the way far away in another country.” Accordingly, in the autumn when he was eighteen—on the twenty-fifth day of the eighth month of the fifth year of Kenpō—he joined Reverend Myōzen's assembly at Kenninji and took on monastic deportment. When the founder of Kenninji presided there, those who first entered the various study groups changed robes only after three years. Yet when Dōgen entered, he changed robes in the ninth month, and in the eleventh Myōzen gave him the saṃghāṭī robe, regarding him as a vessel. Reverend Myōzen had transmitted the exoteric, esoteric, and mind schools and alone was Eisai's legitimate successor. In Abbot Eisai's record of Kenninji it was written, “The Dharma treasury is entrusted only to Myōzen. Those wishing to inquire into Eisai's Dharma should inquire of Master Myōzen.” Dōgen studied in his room, again received the bodhisattva precepts, and received robe, bowl, and other articles. He also received the Tani-stream secret Dharma, the practices of one hundred thirty-four deities, homa rites, and related teachings. He studied the Vinaya treasury and also calm and insight. For the first time he heard the Rinzai house style. Broadly, he received the true lineages of the exoteric, esoteric, and mind schools and alone became Myōzen's legitimate successor.⁸ After almost seven years, in the spring when he was twenty-four—on the twenty-second day of the second month of the second year of Jōō—he bowed farewell at Kenninji's ancestral stūpa and went to the Song dynasty. It was the sixteenth year of Jiading in Great Song, cyclical year guihai. He hung his staff at Tendō. Among the various teachers he visited in Song, he first met Reverend Yan of Jingshan. Yan asked, “When did you arrive here?” The teacher replied, “Fourth month of last year.” Yan said, “Did you just come this way following the crowd?” The teacher said, “I did not follow the crowd. What is it like when one comes this way?” Yan said, “That too is coming this way following the crowd.” The teacher asked, “Since it is following the crowd and coming this way, what is it?” Yan slapped him once and said, “What a talkative ācārya!” The teacher said, “A talkative ācārya I certainly am. What is it?” Yan said, “For now, sit and drink tea.”⁹ He also went to Xiaocuiyan in Taizhou and met Reverend Zhuo. He immediately asked, “What is buddha?” Zhuo said, “The one inside the hall.” The teacher said, “Since it is the one inside the hall, why does it pervade worlds as numerous as Ganges sands?” Zhuo said, “It pervades the worlds of sand.” The teacher said, “Your words have fallen.” Going back and forth in questions and answers with teachers in this way, Dōgen generated great arrogance and thought no one in Japan or Great Song equaled him. As he prepared to return home, there was an elder called Jin who urged him: “Within the whole country of Great Song, the one person who possesses the eye of the way is old Rujing. If you meet him, you will necessarily have a place of attainment.” Although he said this, more than a year passed without leisure to study with Rujing. After Wuji Liaopai had departed, Reverend Rujing of Jingci came to preside at Tendō. Dōgen thought this a karmic affinity and former covenant. He studied with him and questioned his doubts. At their first meeting, his spearpoint was broken, and he took on the conduct of teacher and disciple.¹⁰ Wishing to study in full detail, he presented a letter: “From childhood I aroused the thought of awakening. In my own country I sought the way from various teachers and came to know a little of the workings of cause and effect, but I still did not know the true return of buddha-Dharma. I remained obstructed by attachment to names and forms. “Later I entered the room of Zen Master Senkō and first heard the Rinzai house style. Now I have followed Dharma Master Myōzen into Great Song and have been able to join the reverend's Dharma seat. This is the joyful blessing of former lives. “Reverend, in your great compassion, pity this insignificant person from a distant foreign region. Without restricting me by the hour or choosing between proper and improper deportment, permit me frequently to ascend to the abbot's quarters and respectfully ask about the essentials of Dharma. In great kindness and compassion, mercifully grant permission.” Rujing showed him: “Gen, from now on, whether dressed formally or informally, you may question me day and night. I will permit the informality of father and son.”¹¹ From then Dōgen studied day and night in the inner chamber and personally received the true key. At one time Rujing asked him to serve as attendant. The teacher declined, saying, “I am a person from a foreign country. To become an attendant in a great monastery of a great nation may well create doubts and difficulties in the public monastery. I wish only to study day and night.” Rujing said, “What you say is truly humble and not without reason.” Thereafter Dōgen only exchanged questions and answers with him and received his training. One day, during late-night seated meditation, Rujing entered the hall and admonished the sleeping assembly: “To study Zen is body and mind dropping away. There is no need to burn incense, bow, recite the Buddha's name, practice repentance, or read scriptures. Just sit wholeheartedly and you will attain it.” Hearing this, the teacher suddenly greatly awakened. This is the encounter given above.¹² Generally, from the time he met Rujing, Dōgen practiced the way day and night without discarding even a little time. Therefore his side did not reach the mat. Rujing ordinarily instructed him, “You have the conduct of an ancient buddha. You will necessarily spread the ancestral way. My obtaining you is like Śākyamuni obtaining Kāśyapa.” Thus, in the first year of Baoqing, cyclical year yichou—the first year of Karoku in Japan—Dōgen suddenly entered the ancestral rank in the fifty-first generation. Rujing charged him, “Return quickly to your native country and spread the ancestral way. Live hidden in deep mountains and nurture the sacred embryo.”¹³ Moreover, in Great Song Dōgen venerated succession documents of the Five Houses. First he met former Guangfu abbot and senior monk Weiyi. Weiyi said, “Ancient traces worthy of viewing are rare treasures among human beings. How many have you seen?” The teacher said, “I have never seen one.” Weiyi said, “At my place there is one scroll of an ancient trace. I will show it to you, elder brother.” He brought it, and Dōgen saw that it was a succession document of the Hōgen line. Weiyi said, “It was obtained from the robe and bowl of an old master. It does not belong to me.” It had a particular written format, but there is no leisure to present it in detail here. Zongyue, then head monk at Tendō, also showed him a succession document of the Unmon line. Dōgen asked Zongyue, “Now the lineages of the Five Houses have certain similarities and differences. What is their meaning? If western India and the eastern land transmit legitimately from heir to heir, why should there be similarities and differences?” Zongyue said, “Even if similarities and differences are remote from one another, simply study that the buddha-Dharma of Mount Unmon is like this. Why is old Śākyamuni honored? He is honored because he awakened to the way. Why is Great Master Unmon honored? He is honored because he awakened to the way.” Hearing this, the teacher had some understanding.¹⁴ There was also a person called Librarian Chuan, a distant descendant of Reverend Seigen, the Buddha-Eye Zen Master of Longmen. Librarian Chuan also possessed a succession document. At the beginning of the Jiading era, when Librarian Chuan fell ill, the Japanese monk Senior Longchan cared for him devotedly. To thank Longchan for his labor, Chuan brought out the succession document and allowed him to bow before it, saying, “This is something difficult to see. I will allow you to venerate it.” Half a year later, around autumn of Jiading sixteen, while the teacher was staying at Mount Tendō, Senior Longchan earnestly asked Librarian Chuan to show it to Dōgen. This was a succession document of the Yangqi line. On the twenty-first day of the first month of Jiading seventeen, Dōgen also venerated the succession document of Zen Master Wuji, Reverend Liaopai. Wuji said, “Few get to see and know this one matter. Now, elder brother, you have known it. This is the true return of studying the way.” The teacher's joy and gratitude were unsurpassed.¹⁵ During the Baoqing era, while traveling among Mount Tiantai, Yandang, and other places, the teacher reached Wannian Monastery at Pingtian. Its abbot at the time was Reverend Yuannai of Fuzhou. During the exchange of courtesies, they discussed the house styles of buddhas and ancestors from ancient times. When Dōgen brought up the succession discourse of Dagui and Kyōzan, Yuannai asked, “Have you ever seen the succession document at my place?” The teacher said, “How could I be able to see it?” Yuannai stood up himself, raised the document, and said: “Even if someone is intimate with me, even if an attendant monk has served many years, I do not show this. This is the Dharma instruction of buddhas and ancestors. “Yet some time ago, while I was away from the monastery visiting the prefect, I received a dream. A lofty monk who seemed to be Zen Master Daibai Hōjō raised a branch of plum blossoms and said, ‘If there is a true person who has already crossed a ship's gunwale, do not begrudge him the flower.’ He gave me the plum blossom. “Without thinking, in the dream I chanted, ‘Before he has crossed the ship's gunwale, it is well to give him thirty blows.’ “Yet fewer than five days later I met you, elder brother. Moreover, you have already crossed a ship's gunwale to come here. This succession document is also mounted on plum-blossom-patterned damask. It must be what Daibai instructed. “Because this corresponds with the dream, I bring it out. Elder brother, do you wish to receive my Dharma succession? Even if you seek it, I would not begrudge it.” The teacher's trusting gratitude had no limit. Although he might have asked for the succession document, he only burned incense, bowed, and reverently made offerings. An incense attendant called Faning was present. He said it was the first time he too had seen the document.¹⁶ At the time Dōgen secretly thought, “This one matter is difficult even to see or hear without the hidden assistance of buddhas and ancestors. As a foolish person from a borderland, what good fortune enables me to see it repeatedly?” Tears of gratitude soaked his sleeves. For this reason, while traveling among mountains he once lodged in the guest quarters of Husheng Monastery on Mount Daibai and received a numinous dream: the founding teacher Daibai came and gave him a flowering branch of plum. Because the teacher truly opened the eye of the way equal to the ancient sages, he venerated several succession scrolls and received signs of hidden response.¹⁷ Having received the permission of these teachers, obtained Tendō's confirmation, completed the great matter of a lifetime, and received the Dharma instructions of successive ancestors, he returned to Japan in the third year of Baoqing—the first year of Antei in Japan, cyclical year dinghai. He first settled at Kenninji, the remains of his original teacher, and trained there for a while. He was twenty-eight. Afterward, seeking an excellent place for secluded residence, he inspected thirteen sites offered by affiliated donors in distant provinces and the capital region. None accorded with his intention. For a while he lived near Gokurakuji in the village of Fukakusa, Uji district, in the capital. He was then thirty-four. The house style gradually rose, and cloud-and-water monks gathered. After ten years he descended to Echizen. In Shibi estate he opened a deep mountain, cleared thorn and bramble, roofed buildings with thatch, drew together earth and timber, and opened and expounded the ancestral way. This is the present Eiheiji.¹⁸ While he resided at Kōshōji, divine beings came to hear the precepts and appeared at each poṣadha ceremony. At Eiheiji a dragon deity came to request the eight precepts and asked to share in the daily dedication. Therefore the eight precepts were written out and dedicated every day; this has not ceased to the present.¹⁹ More than seven hundred years after buddha-Dharma began to spread in Japan, the teacher first raised the true Dharma. That is to say, fifteen hundred years after the Buddha's extinction, in the thirteenth year of Emperor Kinmei, cyclical year jinshin, buddha images and related objects first crossed from the kingdom of Silla. In the fourteenth year, cyclical year guiyou, two scrolls of buddha images were brought across.²⁰ From then the sacred efficacy of buddha-Dharma gradually appeared. Eleven years afterward, Prince Shōtoku was born grasping a buddha relic in his hand. It was the third year of Emperor Yōmei. From the time he lectured on the Lotus, Śrīmālā, and other sūtras, teaching texts of names and forms spread under heaven. At Empress Tachibana's request, a person in the line of National Teacher Qian of Tang came to Nara. Yet only his inscription remained; because descendants did not succeed one another, the style was not transmitted. Later the holy man Kakua returned as a true child of Reverend Xiatang Huiyuan, the Buddha-Eye Zen Master, but his house style did not arise. Again, Abbot Tōrin Eshō's house style was succeeded by Abbot Eisai. As eighth in the Huanglong line, Eisai sought to raise the house style. He composed the Treatise on Promoting Zen for the Protection of the Nation and other works and submitted them to the court, but he was obstructed by Nara and Mount Hiei and could not be single and pure. He established the three schools of exoteric teaching, esoteric teaching, and mind.²¹ The teacher was his legitimate descendant and had penetrated the atmosphere of Rinzai. Yet he still visited Rujing, completed the matter of a lifetime, returned to his country, and spread the true Dharma. Truly, this was the country's good fortune and the people's blessing, just as when Great Master Bodhidharma, the twenty-eighth ancestor in western India, first entered China and became China's First Ancestor. The teacher was likewise the fifty-first ancestor in Great Song, but now he became Japan's founding ancestor. Therefore we honor him as the First Ancestor of this gate.²² Even if true teachers filled Great Song and the house style spread throughout the land, had Dōgen not met a true teacher and penetrated through, how could the ancestral teachers' treasury of the true Dharma eye have been opened and clarified today? He encountered an age of decline and the latter Dharma. Buddha-Dharma had already weakened even in Great Song, and teachers with clear eyes were rare. Therefore, although Wuji Liaopai, Jingshan Yan, Zhe Weng, and others presided over first-rank monasteries, they still had places they had not reached. Dōgen consequently thought there was no person even in Great Song and was preparing to return home. Yet Rujing alone, as twelfth in Dongshan's line, maintained the ancestral teachers' true line. Although Rujing kept it secret and did not publicly reveal his succession, he concealed nothing from Dōgen and omitted none of the intimate instructions. He transmitted the ancestral wind. Truly, this was extraordinary and exceptional.²³ Fortunately, as descendants of that branch, we can respectfully inquire into the ancestral wind as though meeting China's Third and Fourth Ancestors face to face. The house style has not fallen to the ground. Although it has left tracks in three countries, what is transmitted has not changed by so much as a hair-tip. What other matter could there be in penetrating it completely? First, you must clarify mind. The encounter through which the teacher first attained the way says, “To study Zen is body and mind dropping away.” Truly, Zen study means abandoning body and leaving mind. If you have not yet dropped body and mind, it is not the way.²⁴ You ordinarily think the body is skin, flesh, bones, and marrow. When seen in detail, not so much as a hair-tip or a single breath can be obtained. There is also what you now think of as mind. First, there is thought and discrimination. You take this discriminating consciousness to be mind. Second, there is clear, calm stillness that does not move, without a bit of knowledge or half an understanding. You take this exquisitely lucid calm to be mind. You do not know that this still has not escaped the root of consciousness. Ancient people called it “the place of exquisite clarity, calm and unmoving.” Do not remain here and think it is mind.²⁵ Seen in detail, there are three distinctions: mind, mentation, and consciousness. What is called consciousness is the present mind of hate and love, right and wrong. What is called mentation presently knows cold and warmth and feels pain and itching. What is called mind does not distinguish right and wrong and does not feel pain or itching. It is like a wall, like wood or stone. People truly think this is silent stillness. This mind seems to have no ears or eyes. Thus, when acting through it, one is like a wooden person or iron fellow: though possessing eyes, one does not see; though possessing ears, one does not hear. At this place words and thought have no way through. Although something like this is called mind, it is the seed that knows cold and warmth and feels pain and itching. Mentation and consciousness are established from here. Do not think this is original mind.²⁶ Studying the way is said to leave mind, mentation, and consciousness. Do not think these are the body and mind meant in “dropping body and mind.” There is a further numinous light, long enduring through kalpas. Examine it intimately and in maturity, and you will necessarily arrive.²⁷ If you can clarify this mind, body and mind cannot be brought forth, and self and objects do not come carrying one another. Therefore it is said, “Body and mind have dropped away.” When seen maturely at this place, even if you turn a thousand eyes to look, there is not a dust mote that can be called skin, flesh, bones, or marrow, and nothing that can be divided as mind, mentation, or consciousness. How would cold and warmth be known? How would pain and itching be distinguished? What would affirm or deny, hate or love? Therefore it is said, “Looking, not one thing is found.” Having shouldered this place, Dōgen said, “Body and mind have dropped away.” Rujing immediately sealed it, saying, “Body and mind dropping away; dropping away body and mind.” Finally he said, “Dropped away, dropped away.” Once you arrive at this ground, you should become like a bottomless basket or a bowl pierced through its center: though it leaks and leaks, it is never emptied; though things are put in and put in, it is never filled. When you reach this time, it is said that the bottom falls out of the bucket.²⁸ If you think there remains by so much as a hair any place of awakening or attainment, it is not the way. It is only the livelihood of manipulating the vital spirit. Venerable practitioners, shoulder this in detail and investigate it fully. Know that there is a body that does not bear skin, flesh, bones, or marrow. Although you try to drop this body, it cannot be dropped. Although you try to discard it, it cannot be discarded. Therefore of this place it is said: everything is completely exhausted, yet there is a place that cannot be emptied. If you clarify it precisely, you will not doubt the tongues of old reverends under heaven or the buddhas of the three times. What is this principle like? Do you wish to hear?