Before Dogen there was Zongmi saying "practice and proof."

Bursting another bubble here. Dogen did not coin the phrase "practice and realization" (修證, PY. xiūzhèng, J. shusho) or as I prefer to translate it, "practice and proof” (could also be “cultivation and confirmation” or "practice and verification"). Virtually every phrase or slogan that Dogen is famous for in his writings (circa 1230 to his death in 1254) was not coined by him, but picked up and used by him in his unique stylization of poetic prose. This also applies to what is perhaps his most famous phrase “practice and realization” (sometimes “practice and enlightenment” or “practice and verification” depending on the translator).  The term 證 zhèng (J. sho) is a subject of some controversy because it means “proof, witness, verification, confirmation,” etc, but is very loosely translated as “realization” or even “enlightenment.”  Dogen specially emphasized that practice and its proof are one (修證一如), that is, we don’t practice to be able to prove enlightenment later, but that our correct practice is itself the proof of enlightenment.   This is just like the English idiom “the proof is in the pudding.”

This teaching of Japanese Zen Master Dogen is so famously known in Zen circles by its Japanese pronunciation “shusho” that many Western Zen students and teachers erroneously believe that Dogen coined the phrase. Not so.  I have not done an extensive search for the origin of the phrase, but I did come across it in the opus text written 400 years before Dogen, circa 835, by Chinese Zen Master Gjuifeng Zongmi titled Introduction to the Collection of the Various Expositions of the Fountainhead of Zen.

Sadly, the voluminous collection of the main text has been lost and only the introduction remains extant.  In his “Introduction to the Fountainhead of Chan” Zongmi details how Chan/Zen is the stream of Buddhism related to the direct awakening to mind and how the Chan/Zen stream relates to the stream of the teachings of the sutras and treatises. In doing so, Zongmi distinguishes the characteristics of the various branches of the Chan/Zen lineages stemming from Bodhidharma and correlates them to the various categories and teachings of the sutras and treatises.

In a section naming the Diamond-Cutter Sutra and the Lankavatara Sutra and affirming that “these two sutras are the essence of our mind,” Zongmi points out how disciples of the time have confused ideas about this and who practice or cultivate mind consider the sutras and treatises as a separate lineage and those who explain and articulate the sutras and treatises consider the Chan/Zen Gate as a separate Dharma.  Zongmi then says, 

“Hearing discussion of cause and effect and of practice and proof, they immediately suppose it belongs to the family of sutras and treatises. They don’t know that practice and proof are directly the root matter of the Chan gate.

Hearing the articulation ‘exactly Mind is exactly Buddha,’ they immediately suppose it belongs to the Chan of inner feelings. They don’t know Mind and Buddha are directly the root mentation of the sutras and treatises.”

So it looks like Zongmi’s phrase “practice and proof (修證, J. shusho) are directly the root matter of the Chan gate” struck a chord with Dogen and he elaborated on the theme.

So the Universe rests on imperfection, who would have guessed?

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The Dharma, incomparably profound and minutely subtle,

Is rarely encountered, even in hundreds of thousands of millions of kalpas.

We now can see it, listen to it, accept and hold it,

May we completely realize the true meaning of the Tathagata.

This (or a close variation) is the verse chanted before Dharma talks in Zen centers through out the world. The line about the rarity of being able to encounter the Dharma is often taken as some kind of self-aggrandizing hyperbole. A kalpa is an eon of very long time with several colorful analogies, such as the length of time it would take for a butterfly's wing brushing up against Mt. Everest to erode it to smooth ground   But the article, "This One Imperfection In Nuclear Physics Allowed Earth To Exist" by Ethan Siegel, explains how the rarity is literally true, because of the crazy quilt of conditions that must occur in order for planets to arise and for life on those planets to appear.

Of course, it begs the question of how those early sages of India were able to conceive of the inconceivable eons of time and the innumerable numbers of galaxies as many as the sands of the Ganges River that are the context for this one precious life, a couple thousand years before Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for daring to propose that the universe is infinite.  

The article describes the rarity like this:

In order to create a rocky planet that's teeming with life, the Universe needed to create large amounts of the heavy elements required for life's processes. To make many of those elements, such as Tin, Iodine, Selenium, Molybdenum, Zinc, and Copper, you need supernovae to have occurred many times in our galaxy's past. To get many more, such as Iron, Calcium, Cobalt, Sulfur, and Potassium, you need stars massive enough to create them....The only reason we can exist, today, is because one tiny imperfection in the early Universe allows the stars to grow hundreds of times as massive.

 

Since we are only able to appear on the basis of that one original "imperfection" then all appearances can be said to be the continuation of that imperfection, which gives credence to Zen master Dogen's phrase, ‘Shoshaku jushaku,” which according to Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in his book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, means “'to succeed wrong with wrong,' or one continuous mistake.”

Buddhism is the religion of the science of mind, or the psychological religion.  I recognize that is a controversial claim, even for some Buddhists, but it is stated from a perspective in which it is a valid statement, so instead of saying why it appears invalid from one perspective, I would ask that the critic make the effort to stand, if only for a moment, in the spot where the view makes sense. Here are a couple Tibetan Buddhist perspectives adopting the Buddhism is a science of mind approach.

Buddhism, as the science of mind, empirically observes, investigates, and analyzes mind with its mental states, conditions, and phenomena, that comprise all our cognitions, thoughts, emotions, feelings, views, desires, joys, etc. (i.e., the Tin, Iodine, Selenium, Molybdenum, Zinc, and Copper of our mind). This empirical study of mind was Carl G. Jung's definition of the science of psychology (i.e., "psych" = mind; "ology" = study or science).  In other words, Buddhism explores the universe as mind not as matter.  What we are now discovering by Western Science's exploration of the universe as matter, not mind, is that there is a confluence and congruence of findings.  Over the preceding 400 years,(Bruno was killed by the Catholic Church in 1600 C.E.)  the exploration of the universe as matter has grown to include such previously inconceivable (at least to the West) ideas as infinity, laws of cause and effect, unseen forces of gravity, the strange nature of light (constant speed and indeterminacy as wave or particle),  dark matter and dark energy, etc., all of which have their analogues in the discoveries of Buddhism's exploration of the universe as mind.

The classic early Buddhist scripture The Dhammapada begins in the first two verses from this startling vantage point:

1. Mentation is the precursor of things; mentation is the ringleader; mentation is the producer.

If mentation is corrupted, just so the voice, just so the act,

Thereupon unease is enabled, just as the wheel follows the transporter’s (e.g., ox or man) foot.

2. Mentation is the precursor of things; mentation is the ringleader; mentation is the producer.

If mentation is clear, just so the voice, just so the act,

Thereupon ease is enabled, just as the shadow follows and does not depart.

Here, "mentation" (Pali and Sanskrit, mano & mana(s)) means the cognitive activity of mind, and "things" (P. dhamma, Skt. dharma) means both discrete things and the thingness of all phenomena.  So we find many variations in translation from the strict to the loose, from the prosaic to the poetic, such as:

All the phenomena of existence have mind as their precursor, mind as their supreme leader, and of mind are they made.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought.

The important point here is that mentation (manas, also known as the 7th consciousness in Mahayana analysis), as the basic cognitive activity of mind, can be either corrupted or clear, and when it is corrupted all manners of antithetical conceptions and oppositional dualities arise that are taken as literal, fixed, and substantial.  This is what Buddhism calls the primordial ignorance, or in the words of Siegel's article "a tiny imperfection," in the arising of consciousness that leads to the 'creation' of the universe and life on a planet.  But there is the inherent possibility that what begins as corrupted and the source of all unease (dukkha) in life, can become clear and the source of ease (sukkha).

The Treatise on the Mahayana's Arousing of Faith (date unknown, translated into Chinese in 553 C.E. by the Indian monk Paramartha (499-569 C.E.)) contains an outline for how the universe appears (using the mind paradigm, not matter paradigm) that was elaborated on by Zen master Guifeng Zongmi (780 – 841 C.E.) and used by him to establish his taxonomy of the teachings (panjiao) of Buddhism.   In Zongmi's Treatise on the Origin of the Person (原人論 Yuan Ren Lun), based on the Arousing of Faith, the universe is the One True Mind and "initially there is only one true numionous nature, that is not born, does not die, does not increase, does not decrease, does not become, and does not change.  

The "big bang" of the appearance of consciousness occurs with the bifurcation of this unity into enlightenment, i.e., the clear mentation of the Dhammapada, on the one hand and unenlightenment, i.e. the corrupted mentation of the Dhammapada, on the other.  The word corrupt is used, not in a moral sense, but in a phenomenological sense of having a "broken" view of the phenomenon of thingness. This broken view is what is called "false conceptions" or "false thinking" and is taking the bifurcated view of consciousness as substantially existing and seeing things as fundamentally separate rather than unified.   Zongmi cites the Flower Garland Sutra's version of the Buddha's calling out upon his enlightenment:

“Children of the Buddha, there is not one of the multitude of beings who nevertheless does not completely possess the Tahtagata’s innate awareness and wisdom. Yet by means of false thinking and clinging they nevertheless do not verify getting it."     

The analogy to this question of unity or separation in the Western science of taking the universe as matter has been revealed through the changing nature of the theory of the universe from mechanics to quantum physics. Once things were taken as essentially separate, independent, and discrete things, and now their nature is seen as energetic fields of potential and actuality of non-thingness.

When the big bang of mental bifurcation takes place, the "world of birth and death" begins to appear, and by natural evolution, consciousness flows in a stream of ignorance called unenlightenment that reverberates into the condensation of subject and object (i.e., inner and outer orientations) and with further evolution becomes discrimination, continuation, attachments, conceptual elaborations, karma, and the fruit of karma in varying degrees of suffering within the six paths of birth and death (i.e., hell, ghosts, animals, humans, titans, and celestials).  

The Dhammapada's promise of clarifying mentation is seen by the Zen of Zongmi as the promise of enlightenment which begins (and ends) in the mind of enlightenment (bodhicitta) that first appears as a dawning intuition or intimation, then as a faith or trust in it's actual possibility, then as turning toward it as a path to cultivate, then the practical acts of cultivation, experiencing the fruit of that cultivation, and ultimately having one's own realization of enlightenment with its unassailable clarification of what had previously been thought of as broken ("mentation corrupted") and the manifestation of the mind of suchness.  As Zongmi points out, this teaching of the manifestation of the One True Mind, indistinguishable from one's own Buddha Nature, is the One Vehicle.         

"That Which Is The One Vehicle's (Ekayana) Teaching Of Manifesting Nature clarifies for everyone having sentience that everybody has the root enlightenment of True Mind.  Beginningless is how it comes, and it always abides clear and pure.  Its luminosity does not darken and is completely and constantly aware.  It is also called Buddha Nature, and is also called the Inner Tathagata (tathagatagarbha)."

So we can appreciate how this Dharma teaching is incomparably profound and minutely subtle and why it is so rarely encountered, even in hundreds of thousands of millions of eons, because, in the context of the universe as mind, the evolution of consciousness is synonymous with the evolution of the universe, and only after the process of evolution comes to the realization of its own nature can we see it, listen to it, accept and hold it, and completely realize the true meaning of the Tathagata as the coming and going of True Suchness.

The Unconscious in Buddha Dharma

            As we in the West are discovering the teachings of Buddha Dharma about mind and consciousness, we are confronted with the necessity of rediscovering our own repressed traditions of the study of the psyche, consciousness, and the unconscious.

Western explorers of the psyche discovered the unconscious in the 19^th century.  The Buddhist explorers of mind, through their deep meditation, discovered the unconscious over two thousand years ago.  Since then, the Buddhist admonition to “turn the light around and shine it on yourselves,” as stated by Linji in the 9^th century (or “take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward on your self,” as Dogen restated it in the 12th century, or “to personally turn around to face inward” as Hakuin restated it in the 18^th century) is the direction to study the unconscious by introspection.  In Buddhism, the unconscious is called the storehouse- or treasury-consciousness (Skt. alayavijnana) and the fruit of this introspective study was the Mahayana Sutras.    

In the 20^th century Carl G. Jung explored the unconscious more than any other psychologist. He identified two layers or poles of the unconscious, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious (the later he also called the impersonal, transpersonal, or universal features of the unconscious). [CW 7, §§ 102, 103, 445, & 452. See note.]  The first layer consists of those elements, features, or aspects of the unconscious that are acquired during one’s own lifetime and experience.  Jung emphasized that the deeper layer of the collective psyche is inherited, and he called this the region of the archetypal contents where these “primordial images are the most ancient and the most universal ‘thought-forms’ of humanity.” [CW 7, §§ 104.]  In Buddhist terminology (using agricultural metaphors of the time, as we would use computer metaphors for the mind today), the personal features are those seeds (Skt. bija) of the storehouse consciousness that are “planted” (continuing the cultivation metaphor) during one’s lifetime, and the impersonal features in the storehouse are the seeds placed there “from past lives” as immeasurable in number as the grains of sands of the Ganges river.   

Jung found that the personal unconscious contains all the material that was once conscious, e.g., memories, repressed material, subliminal sense perceptions, etc., while the collective unconscious contains “all the material which has not yet reached the threshold of consciousness.”  [CW 7, §§204 & 441.]  These structural elements of the deepest unconscious are the archetypes. They are psychic structures that are just as inherited, as impersonal, and as collective as the physical structures of our bodies, e.g., our bilateral symmetry,  our circulatory, skeletal, muscular, and nervous systems, etc..  As our individual bodies are unique expressions of these universal forms, so to are our individual consciousnesses unique expressions of the universal forms of mind.

In the Five Skandhas, one of the Buddhist’s schematic representations of mind, the structures of the unconscious are called the first four skandhas with consciousness designated the Fifth Skandha.  Early Buddhism through such schematics of mind as the Five Skandhas and the Eighteen Dhatus tacitly recognized that there is an unconscious dimension to mind, but it was the later Ekayana/Mahayana development of the schematic representation of the Eight Consciousnesses that made the unconscious explicit in Buddhism with the eighth storehouse consciousness as the storehouse of all the seeds that are present in mind either as submerged or as not yet conscious. Jung’s reference to inherited primordial “universal thought-forms” corresponds directly with samskara, the Fourth Skandha, which is often translated as “mental formations.”

A primary problem we have to face directly in Western culture, as we meet, accommodate, appropriate, and acculturate the Buddha Dharma, is this question of the unconscious, because in Western culture, as it is dominated by the scientism dogma stating that only the physical exists, the mind does not exist, and “the psychic” has had its relation to mind stripped away and is considered as nothing more than superstitious supernaturalism or hallucinatory imagination.  

The fact is that the study of the psyche is the study of mind “from the inside” while the study of neurophysiology is the study of mind “from the outside” as a brain.   The West is deeply confused about this distinction.  The two approaches to mind are not the same, and while there is value in correlating the discoveries made from each perspective in this field of study, the study from the outside can never and will never replace the need or importance of the study from the inside.  This study “from the inside” is exactly what Buddhism calls “turning the light around and shining it inward on ourselves” and points directly to the appeal that Buddhism has in the West for those who long to escape the domination of the field of the study of mind by the physicalist dogmas of physicists and other practitioners of the physical sciences.  

[Note: Jung quotes from The Collected Works of Carl G. Jung, Vol. 7. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. ]

[Edited 3/11/17]

Connected blogs:
Zen is the Art of Imagination

Linji on Turning the Light Around

Here's a passage from the Record of Linji that I have finished translating today.  This comes from near the end of the untitled Part One.   Various translators insert their own titles like "Discourses" or "Ascending the High Seat," but since the text itself does not have a title for the beginning section which is the largest section, I have not added one. Part Two is titled "Examining Differentiation" and Part Three is titled "Record of Travels."


The Record of the Words of Zen Master Linji Huizhao of Zhenzhou.
Collected by Huiran, a minor teacher of the inherited Dharma, dwelling at Sansheng. 

Greatly Virtuous Ones, what object are you searching for that you go splashing about on the land toward the various directions, treading on until your feet are [flat like] planks? 

Broadly, there is no Buddha that can be sought; there is no Way that can be accomplished; there is no Dharma that can be attained.  To seek outwardly for a Buddha with characteristics gives you unassociated appearances.  Desire to be conscious of your original mind.  It is not to be united with, likewise it is not to be separated from.

Drifters in the Way, the true Buddha has no shape; the true Way has no essence; the true Dharma has no characteristics.  The three things are blended harmoniously and united in one locus.  Since this discernment is not attained, you are called out as the multitude of beings who create bustling karma consciousness.

Question: “So what is the true Buddha, the true Dharma, and the true Way? We beg you to come down to open and reveal it.”

The master said, “That which is Buddha is the mind’s purity. That which is Dharma is the mind’s radiance.  That which is the Way is the clear light that is everywhere unhindered.  The three are exactly one, and in every case are empty names and have no solid existence.  Thus for the person who correctly studies the Way, from moment to moment mind is not interrupted.

When on his own, Great Master [Bodhi]Dharma came from the Western Land, he only searched for a fundamental person who did not receive people’s delusions. Afterwards he encountered the second ancestor who then understood at a single word and for the first time knew that previously he was a fellow who vainly used effort.

This mountain monk nowadays sees the locus as ‘not separate from the ancestors and Buddhas.’ If you attain within the first phrase, you become a teacher of Buddhas and ancestors.  If you attain within the second phrase, you become a teacher of humans and heavenly beings.  If you attain within the third phrase, your own deliverance is not completed!"

Question: “So what was the intention of [Bodhidharma] ‘coming from the West’?”

The master said, “If there was an intention, then his own deliverance was not completed!"

[The questioner] said, “Since there was no intention, say how did the second ancestor attain the Dharma?”

The master said, “That which is which is attainment is no-attainment.”

[The questioner] said, “Since it’s supposed to be no-attainment, say what is the basic meaning of no-attainment?”

The master said, “As you chase around everywhere seeking, mind is not able to rest. Wherefore the ancestral masters declared, ‘Bah! You disciples with a head going searching for a head.’  Put down your words, then turn the light around and shine it on yourselves.  Transformed by not separately seeking, you know that mind and body and the ancestors and Buddhas are not separate.  You will get down to having no affairs.  This method is called 'attaining the Dharma'.”

 [From CBETA T47n1985_p0501c22 to p0502a13]

NOTES: 

"Drifters in the Way" is my translation of 道流 daoliu.  The salutation 道流 daoliu is difficult to translate and has a double entendre. The character 道 dao is “the Way,” and 流 liu has the primary meaning of “flow, stream, current” (as either a noun or verb) and includes the connotations of “spread, float, drift, wander, meander,” as streams do or as things in streams do.  Related Buddhist terms are “the stream of wisdom”  and “the stream of the passions.”  So 道流 daoliu  is literally “Way–stream,” “Way-flow,” “the steam of the Way,” or “the drift of the Way,” which, when used as a salutation to address the audience members, means "You Who Are in the Stream of the Way" and can be translated as "Way Streaming Ones," “Way Streamers” or “Way Flow-ers” or “Streamers or Floaters in the Way,” etc. 

As this water image is perceived as somewhat clumsy in English, most translators use “Followers of the Way.” I don't like “Followers of the Way” for several reasons. First, because it has the connotation of "following behind" and not being personally immersed in the stream of the Way. Second, the term "follower" loses its root connection to the early water image used for the term designating beginning disciples, srota-apanna, 入流, i.e., Stream Entrants. I take it that Linji's use of the term 道流 daoliu for the Mahayana disciples in his assembly is harkening directly back to this earlier water based term for the sravaka disciples of the Early Schools.   

As a stream meanders in its way, it could be translated as “Meanderers of the Way.”  As a stream “seeks” lower ground as the gravitational direction to flow toward, the term 流 liu also has the connotation of “to seek, to search for,” so 道流 can be more loosely translated as “Seekers of the Way.”  But because 流 liu also means to drift in the flowing stream or current, and because the word drift captures the meaning of another favorite term of Linji's, 無事 wúshì, in Japanese buji, "to have no affairs" which also appears in this section, my current preference for translating 道流 daoliu is "Drifters in the Way." 

Also, it sounds cool to me and evokes personally pleasant nostalgia imagery from my childhood. For example, Paul Butterfield's "Drifting Blues."  And the popular phrase "drifting and dreaming," as used in poetry, song titles, and lyrics, combines the word "drifting" with another important word in Buddhism "dreaming," as when in the Diamond Cutter Sutra the Buddha says that the bodhisattva views this world as a dream. 

Lastly, of interest to Buddha nerds, there is a double entendre that occurs because the term 流 liu is sometimes used as a synonym for 漏 lou (flowing, running, discharge) to translate the Sanskrit technical term asrava, derived from the image of the foaming liquid that overflows a pot of cooking rice, and means “outflow” or “leakage” and is sometimes translated as “defilement” because the activity of the mind that objectifies an external environment is called “outflowing” and imagined like the outflowing, leakage, or discharge of fluids like pus, snot, or sweat from the body, and this leaking mental excretion is the source of the mind’s defilement as its mistaken perceptions about the world. So Linji’s double entendre lies in his slyly calling his audience “defilers or leakers of the Way” as he is teaching them about the Way.

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"Turn the light around and shine it on yourselves" is a colloquial way of describing the technical term asraya-paravrtti which means to "turn around or turn back to the seat, basis, or resting place" of what we call the light of knowing, consciousness, or awareness.  

Variations of the phrase "turn the light around and shine it on yourselves" are now well known in Western Zen communities. Whether sitting, standing, walking, or lying down, this is the essential method of practice in Zen and the common denominator of all Zen lineage schools.  This central teaching is found in the works of most of the Zen masters, such as in works after Linji of Dogen's 13th c. "Fukanzazengi or Rules for the Universal Recommendation of Sitting Meditation," and Hakuin's 18th c. "Zazen Wasan or Song of Zazen," as well as in works before Linji such as the 8th c. Chinese Zen foundational text The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor Huineng and Sengcan's famous 6th c. Zen verse "Inscription on Faith in Mind." Asraya-paravrtti or "return to the basis" is found as the phrase "return to True Suchness" and "return to the root" in the important 6th c. work <大乘起信論> "Treatise on the Mahayana Arousing of Faith" translated into Chinese by the Indian scholar-monk Paramartha.  


Before the Zen Masters of China asraya-paravrtti was a staple of Indian Masters such as the 4th c. half brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu, as found in the later's "Trimsika-Karika or Thirty Verses."   At its earliest appearance it was given canonical authority in the Mahayana Sutras espousing the One Vehicle or Ekayana such as the Lankavatara Sutra or The Sutra of Going Down to Lanka, and The Sutra of Queen Srimala's Lion's Roar.
Without the actual experience of turning the light around to shine it upon ourseves, our understanding remains at the intellectual level only.  To Mahayanists, asraya-paravrtti is the true meaning of the purification (visuddhi) espoused by the Early Schools, because in returning the light of awareness to its source or fountainhead, the contrived dualistic delusions are cast off and the purity of not-two is realized.  Thus Linji said "Buddha is the mind's purity."  As Zen Master Hui Hai said, this is "the ultimate purity" because "it is a state of beyond purity and impurity."

Turning the Light Around

In Zen, the most important function of consciousness is "to turn the light around," also known as "to turn yourself about" or "to take the backward step" (Sanskrit paravrtti).  But because of the very bifurcation function of our underlying “sub”-consciousness (the manas level of consciousness) that enables us to have self-consciousness,  we immediately make a mistake about this pointing out of what we must do if we want to comprehend our nature, our great meaning in life. That mistake is to literalize, objectify, or reify the pointing finger of “turn the light around” and look to an “inside” compared to the “outside.”  There is nothing wrong with this, except that we then create objectifications of “inside” and erroneously call our subjectivity our “inside” and vice versa.  This is why people mistake Buddhism as a kind of “subjective idealism” when we speak of mind, because they think Buddhism uses the term ‘mind” to mean subjectivity, when that is not the case at all.  

In the Buddhist context, the phrase “turn the light around” means to become free of that fundamental bifurcation of making reality into two sides: the objective-subjective or external-internal.  To turn the light around doesn’t mean to turn the light from the objective to the subjective, or to turn the light from the external to the internal; it means to turn the light around from our own deepest mental activity of dividing reality into an objective realm verses a subjective realm, or an external world opposed to internal world. We are taking a backward step that steps back from our instinctive need to polarize and reify our dualistic imagination.  When we are able to turn the light of our awareness around from our habitual bifurcation process, our awareness penetrates or “sees through” that veil created by this deepest polarizing activity of our own mind to awaken to, witness, and confirm with our own realization the unity throughout the root, branches, twigs, and leaves of the living universe of awareness.

The Misnomer of Dogen's "Practice is Enlightenment"

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The oft quoted Dogenism, “Practice is enlightenment,” or its variation “practice and enlightenment are one,” appears to be a misnomer and misunderstanding created by translators and was never actually stated by Dogen as far as I can tell. 

The original term is 修證, pronounced in Japanese as shusho,  The first character shu 修 means cultivation, practice, to cultivate, to practice, etc..  The second term sho 證 means to confirm, evidence, testify, witness, and proof and also includes both the noun and verb forms such as the nouns confirmation, evidence, proof, verification, testimony, witness, etc., and the verbs to confirm, to give evidence, to prove, to verify, to testify, to witness, etc.  Some accurate or valid translations when used as a single idea would be cultivation-confirmation, practice-proof, practice-evidence, etc. When used as two words of one phrase it could be translated as the confirmation of cultivation, the proof of practice, the evidence of practice, verification of practice, etc.

So the emphasis on the two being one is not at all a strange concept. Dogen is simply saying that practice and the confirmation of practice are one.  It is nothing other then the commonly known example of a physician’s “practice” being the confirmation, proof or evidence of the physician’s “practice” as training. Thus for the physician, practice and the proof of the practice are one. Likewise Dogen is saying that for the follower of the Buddha way,  the practice and the proof of the practice are one.  To say it colloquially, we can say, “the proof is in the pudding.”

Dogen is emphasizing that practice is not something that is done just as a preliminary stage to be followed later by the evidence or confirmation of that practice.  It is like saying learning to cook and what is cooked as the evidence of that learning one.  When little kids learn how to make their first pancakes, their cooking practice and the evidence in the pancake that is cooked are one.  Dogen is saying don’t denigrate a beginning cook or a beginning practitioner of the Buddha Dharma as just practicing to become cooks later because in their practice they are cooks today. Their practice and confirmation of their practice are one.  If someone asks, “What it the proof of the Buddha way?”, Dogen is answering “The practice of the Buddha Way.” And if someone asks, “What is the practice of the Buddha Way?” then Dogen is answering “The proof of the Buddha Way.”

So how did this idea of “practice is enlightenment” or “practice-realization” come about?  It is because translators decided to freely translate sho 證 as if it were one of two terms that are used interchangeably in Chinese Buddhism: “awakening” 悟, satori or go in Japanese (Ch. wu), or “enlightenment” 覺, kaku or gaku in Japanese,  (Ch. jue).  Sometimes the two terms are used together as the single word 覺悟, kakugo in Japanese (Ch. juéwù), and means to awaken or become enlightened.  The cause of the confusion is that in Japanese-English or Chinese-English dictionaries all three terms  share the minor connotation of “realization.”   This is because English term “realization” can be used with the different connotations pointing to either “confirmation” (sho) with the sense of “to make real” (for example, a math equation is made real by its proof)  or pointing to “awaken to” (satori or go) in the sense of “to grasp or understand clearly” (for example, to understand clearly what is real).  So it appears that when translators read “realization” as a connotation of sho 證 they immediately loosely translated it as “enlightenment” or “awakening” rather than the more accurate “evidence,” proof,” or “confirmation” and when they use the word “realization” they use it with the connotation of enlightenment rather that the connotation of proof or confirmation.   

For instance, this confusion is shown in the translation of Dogen’s famous short essay “Genjo Koan.”  In the book Moon in a Dew Drop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi, the translation is attributed to Robert Aitken and Kazuaki Tanahashi and revised at San Francisco Zen Center.  This translation begins strangely enough by translating the title as “Actualizing the Fundamental Point” thereby removing any reference to the word “koan” in the title.  Thus, the term “koan” is very loosely translated as “fundamental point” and the term “genjo” 現成 is translated as “actualizing.” 

Then in what is identified as section 2, the term  sho 證 (evidence, proof, or confirmation) is translated as “actualized” twice, and the term 悟, satori (awakening or enlightenment) is twice translated as “realization.”  In section 4 sho 證 is again translated as “actualized,” and 悟, satori, as “realization.” So between the title and the body, we see a confusion of the use of the term “actualize.”

Also the translation fails to acknowledge that when the term sho 證 is used by Dogen in that same section 2 that it is also in the combination form or 修證,  shusho,  but instead of being translated as the combination of “practice-realization” or “practice-enlightenment” it is translated simply as “experience.”  However, when 修證,  shusho,  is used in section 11, it is translated as “practice-enlightenment” and when it is used in section 10 it is translated as two words of the sequence, “practice, enlightenment, and people.”   There is just no basis for translating 修證,  shusho, as “practice-enlightenment” in the “Genjo Koan” when “enlightenment” should be a translation for either 悟, satori  or 覺, kaku or gaku. But apparently, since the translators of this version had already decided to use the English word “realization” for 悟, satori, instead of translating sho 證 as “experience” as they had done earlier, thus to make “practice-experience,” they substituted the word “enlightenment.” to make “practice-enlightenment.”   By comparison, Thomas Clearly translates 修證,  shusho, as “acting on and witnessing” in the earlier section, but as ”cultivation and realization” and “cultivates and realizes” in the later sections.  So while Cleary first translates the word sho 證 as “to witness,” “to prove,” etc. he then later uses the connotation of “realize” and “realization” that leads to confusion with the connotation of enlightenment or awakening. 

In 1890, the Soto School wrote a sort of introductory outline of excerpts from the Shobogenzo as a standard of faith for Dogen’s Soto teachings titled 修證義  Shusho Gi.  In the book Zen Master Dogen, An Introduction with Selected Writings, YuhoYokoi translates it as “The Meaning of Practice-Enlightenment,” while the Soto Zen Text Project translates it as “The Meaning of Practice and Verification.”  We see hear the two far different approaches to translating 修證  Shusho as either a single combination word or as two separate words.  When viewed as two separate words, it becomes far more difficult to maintain with a straight face that 證 sho can be translated as “enlightenment” or “realization.”

So by means of this kind of interpolated translation the basic meaning of Dogen’s use of 修證,  shusho, has become confused with a different concept entirely.  Traditionally there are many kinds of oppositions, and two of them are the opposition of “delusion and enlightenment (or awakening)” 迷悟 and the opposition of “practice and proof” 修證.  By translating “practice and proof” as “practice-enlightenment” the second half of the first pair has been transposed to the second pair. Each pair has its own corresponding declaration that the pair of opposites are one and not separate.  For the first pair there is the saying “delusion and enlightenment are one thusness” 迷悟一如; and for the second pair there is the same declaration that  “cultivation and confirmation are one thusness” 修證一如.   The importance of these traditional pairs is that they go together and should not be mix-and-matched like items in a supermarket.  

Dogen was trained as a Tendai priest, and the opposition of cultivation and confirmation 修證,  shusho, comes from the Tendai teachings attributed to the Chinese Tiantai ancestor  Zhanran Jingxi 湛然荆溪 (711–782 or 784),. The phrase “the gate of the ten non-duals” or “ten gates of nonduality” (十不二門) refers to ten oppositions based on the Lotus Sutra and Zhanran’s teaching that the ten pairs of supposed oppositions are actually unified from the beginning.  Each pair is thus “a gate to non-duality” (不二門).  The ten pairs of apparent oppositions that are actually non-dual are: (1) 色心 matter and mind, (2) 內外 internal and external, (3) 修證 practice and proof, (4) 因果cause and effect, (5) 染淨 impurity and purity, (6) 依正 objective and subjective, (7) 自他 self and other, (8) the three karmas 三業 of body action, speech action, and thought action, (9) 權實 provisional and real, and (10) 受潤 receiving and enriching. 

For Dogen, the third pair of 修證,  shusho, “preparation and proof,” “cultivating and confirming,” “doing and witnessing,” “practice and verification,” etc. was especially important because of his emphasis on the practical matter of Buddhist practice as the practice of the non-dual. Thus from Dogen’s perspective, anything that suggests a dualistic practice is to be eschewed from the outset, and that means especially a view of practice as a prelude to or merely a training for the real deal to come later on.  In a non-dual view of practice, the practice itself is what is to be proven or confirmed, not something separate from the practice in the sense that a product or by-product is the end result of an assembly line.  Practice does not produce anything separate from itself but is itself what is produced.  But this is really no more of foreign or strange idea than the idea that the means and ends are not separate.

One can argue that this identity of practice and its proof are the demonstration of realization or enlightenment, that is, enlightenment is the end of practice to be proved. But this threatens to backslide into a dualistic view of both practice and proof.  There is no need to insert the idea of enlightenment as an end in the standard formulation by Dogen, and so there is no basis to become confused about the actual words of Dogen who did not say “practice is enlightenment,” but rather “practice and proof are not two.”