A teaching by the great Zen Master Dogen.
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]