Zen Boat and Zafu

This track supports Zen meditation practice by drawing from the teachings of Eihei Dogen, the 13th Century founder of the Soto Zen Tradition in Japan and includes a commentary in his article, Zenki, or Total Function," on his use of sailing a boat as a metaphor for his radical action-oriented, relational and non-dualistic Zen meditation practice

Transcript

Thank you for your presence and for your practice.

Here's an excerpt from Zenki or Total Function,

Written by Ehei Dogen,

The 13th century founder of the Soto Zen School of Buddhism in Japan.

This excerpt and my commentary is intended to support your meditation practice.

He writes,

Life can be likened to a time when a person is sailing in a boat.

On this boat I am operating the sail.

I have taken the rudder.

I am pushing the pole.

At the same time the boat is carrying me,

And there is no I beyond the boat.

Through my sailing of the boat,

This boat is caused to be a boat.

Let us consider and learn in practice just this moment of the present.

At this very moment there is nothing other than the world of the boat.

The sky,

The water,

The shore have all become the moment of the boat.

So life is what I am making it,

And I am what life is making me.

While I'm sailing in the boat,

My body and mind and circumstances and self are all essential parts of the boat.

What has been described like this is that life is the self and the self is life.

Now I'm going to substitute Zazen or Zen meditation for the boat.

Zazen is a stripped down simplified version of life.

In this way,

Life can be likened to a time when a person is sitting upright in the still still state on the Zafu,

The meditation cushion.

On this Zafu I have taken a seat.

My hands are in the Zazen Mudra,

Left hand resting in the right palm with my thumb tips lightly touching.

I am sitting on the Zafu and opening the hand of thought.

At the same time,

The Zafu is holding me and there is no I beyond the Zafu.

This is the basic fact of sitting.

Through the activity of just sitting and breathing gently through the abdomen,

The Zafu becomes a Zafu.

Please consider and learn in practice,

Just this moment of sitting,

Just this moment of the present,

In this very moment,

There is nothing other than the world of the Zafu,

The floor,

The Zabuton,

The larger cushion that the Zafu is placed on,

And the Zafu,

The sky,

The birds,

And the mountains and rivers have all become the moment of the Zafu.

Life is what I am making it and I am what life is making me.

While sitting in Zazen on the Zafu,

Body,

Mind,

Conditions,

And self are all essential parts of the Zafu.

What has been described like this is that life is the self and the self is life.

In each moment,

Realizational transformation is happening.

The true reality of being is being fully expressed.

Just to study,

Even if we are looking for an answer,

Simply reveals and expresses the true reality of all being and the total manifestation of the reality of this moment of sitting on the Zafu.

In Zazen-shin,

The acupuncture needle of Zazen,

Dogen shares this old story.

One day,

Nangaku visited Baso's hut.

Baso stood and greeted him.

Nangaku asked,

What have you been doing recently?

And Baso replied,

I've done nothing but sit in Zazen.

Nangaku asked,

Why do you continually sit in Zazen?

And Baso answered,

I sit in Zazen in order to become a Buddha.

Nangaku picked up a roof tile he found by the side of Baso's hut and started to polish it.

Baso asked,

Master,

What are you doing?

Nangaku answered,

I'm polishing this roof tile.

Baso asked,

Why are you polishing the tile?

Nangaku answered,

To make a mirror.

Baso said,

How can you make a mirror by polishing a tile?

And Nangaku replied,

How can you become a Buddha by doing Zazen?

Dogen then comments on this old story.

He says,

In this practice,

When the polishing of the tile becomes a mirror,

Matsu makes a Buddha.

And when Matsu makes a Buddha,

Matsu quickly becomes Matsu.

When Matsu becomes Matsu,

Zazen quickly becomes Zazen.

Just as the act of steering the boat makes the boat the total manifestation of the boat,

And the act of sitting on the Zafu is the total manifestation of the Zafu,

So polishing the tile to make a mirror is the essence of the Buddhas and Patriarchs.

Accordingly,

The tile becomes the ancient mirror,

Which is a symbol for enlightenment.

The act of polishing is untainted and pure practice.

This is done not because there is dust on the tile,

But simply to polish the tile for its own sake.

In this,

The virtue of becoming the mirror will be realized.

Clearly,

The mirror as a static state or goal is shifted to the activity of polishing,

Which becomes an expression of realized being.

The dynamic act of sailing,

The dynamic act of sitting,

Or any activity that you are engaged in becomes an expression of realized being.

The sixth ancestor of Zen in China,

Huining,

Warns not to be attached to the form of Zazen,

But to bring the mind of Zazen to all activities that he represents as standing,

Sitting,

Walking,

Or lying down.

Thus,

To reiterate,

At the same time the boat is carrying me along,

There is no I that is outside this boat.

Similarly,

There is no outside of sitting on the Zafu.

There is no I outside of polishing the tile.

My sailing in a boat is what makes the boat be a boat.

My sitting on the Zafu makes it a Zafu.

There is no I outside of my sitting.

Life is what I am making life to be,

And I am what life is making me to be.

All supported by the Zafu,

My body and mind,

With their inner causes and outer conditions,

Are all together a part of the way Zafu functions.

What this metaphor is saying is that life is what I is and I is what life is.

To repeat,

Thus,

Life is what I am making life to be,

And I am what life is making me to be.

Or as the Buddhist scholar Sally King describes in her commentary on Buddha Nature,

In terms of subjectivity and objectivity,

Which we can extrapolate to sailor,

Boat,

Meditator,

Zafu,

Polisher,

Tile,

Matsu being Matsu,

You being you,

Me being me,

The union of the two in experience is prior to the separation of the two in analysis.

They function as an inseparable primitive unity in the sense that they are bound together in what is experientially given.

Sangha,

The Zen community of practitioners,

One of the three gems of Buddha,

Dharma,

And Sangha serves as an example of this point.

We are all living and we are conditioned by living within the context of this time and this space.

We are unique individuals based on the causes and conditions that contribute to and influence who we are as individuals in the world.

Yet according to Dogen,

We are simultaneously one with all beings.

We are living individual lives,

Being born,

Living,

And dying,

And at the same time we are part of the interconnectedness of all beings.

That is,

We are all in this together,

Supporting and being supported by all beings.

The Sangha is representative of this fact.

Whether we know it or not,

We influence and impact each other.

One common image for Sangha among many teachers is a tumbler for polishing stones.

The stones are all placed in the tumbler.

They are rough-edged and unfinished.

However,

When the tumbler turns,

The stones rub against each other and the rough edges eventually become smooth.

The Sangha,

Like the tumbler,

Provides a safe container for this to happen.

Zazen,

As I see it,

Is the switch that turns the tumbler on.

We come to realize how we impact each other.

Sometimes it feels good.

At other moments,

We may become upset as our rough edges rub against each other.

However,

Over time,

These rough edges become identified and smoothened out.

We come to feel all of these impacts and gradually our mode of being in the world shifts.

The implication of what Dogen is saying here is that like the stones in the tumbler,

We are all unique.

We all have our own edges to work on.

Yet at the same time,

We are all part of one interconnected reality and impact each other,

Often in very subtle ways.

This is what Buddha intelligence means for Dogen and why the three gems,

Buddha,

Dharma,

And Sangha are so important.

So I encourage you all to stay in the tumbler and just keep practicing no matter what.

Thank you.

Reviews

Thank you for these explanations and your practical encouragement I really appreciate it!

Enjoyed this talk very much. It's given me much to think about - thank you 🙏

Tried to think of something clever and failed. It just works, doesn’t it? Thank you