Clarification on Zazen

[Tomás ESP]

I'd say Shikantaza has no goal while meditation us often goal oriented.
Gassho
Onka

As Onka puts it, when I have doubts about the efficacy of the practice, I go back to what Shohaku Okumura says: "Zazen is good for nothing". Might sound like a crazy practice to our goal-oriented minds, but it is really mind-blowingly simple once you really sit with it. I have much sitting to do.

Gassho, Tomás
Sat

[Inshin]

Thank you all.
I have a faith in Shikantaza that grows deeper day by day, every sit is new and unreplicable. Yet do we stop learning when we stop asking questions? I imagine Dogen and even Hakuin at the end of their lives must have had questions. I sense that through Zazen the Tung-shan’s Five Ranks can be actualised:
1. Phenomenal within Universal (Shōchūhen),
2. Universal within Phenomenal (Henchūshō)
3. Coming from
within the Universal (Shōchūrai)
4. Arriving at Mutual Integration(Kenchūshi)
5. Mutual Integration Attained (Kenchūtō).

Or as Dogen puts it:

. To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to

forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad
things. When actualized by the myriad things, your body and mind as
well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of
realization exists, and this no-trace continues endlessly

. Practicing the steps in the Dance of the Middle Way.
Gassho
Sat

[Kokuu]

As Onka puts it, when I have doubts about the efficacy of the practice, I go back to what Shohaku Okumura says: "Zazen is good for nothing"

I think it was Kodo Sawaki but, yes, that sentence really hits deep.

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-

[Jundo]

Thank you all.
I have a faith in Shikantaza that grows deeper day by day, every sit is new and unreplicable. Yet do we stop learning when we stop asking questions? I imagine Dogen and even Hakuin at the end of their lives must have had questions. I sense that through Zazen the Tung-shan’s Five Ranks can be actualised:
1. Phenomenal within Universal (Shōchūhen),
2. Universal within Phenomenal (Henchūshō)
3. Coming from
within the Universal (Shōchūrai)
4. Arriving at Mutual Integration(Kenchūshi)
5. Mutual Integration Attained (Kenchūtō).

Or as Dogen puts it:

. Practicing the steps in the Dance of the Middle Way.
Gassho
Sat

Shikantaza is, and must be, beyond all doubt ... even when we doubt!

Why?

When one holds Zazen as whole and complete, it is. When one holds Zazen as somehow lacking, it is.

Why?

Because the judgment of "whole" or "lacking" is wholly between one's ears. Zazen is Zazen, and when we find in our heart that Zazen is complete ... it is completely Zazen. Likewise for all people, things and events of life. When we judge it lacking, it is ... and likewise for all people, things and events of life.

However, there is much of life that cannot be known, that we fear, regret, mourn or doubt. Simultaneously, unkowning is thoroughly unknowing that's known, fear is perfectly fearful, regret is a shining jewel of regret, mourning contains no wishing, doubt is beyond doubt. We learn to live in a world of sometime unknowing, fear, regret, mourning and doubt that is SIMULTANEOUSLY, TWO SIDES OF A NO SIDED COIN, beyond all unknowing, fear, regret, sorrow or doubt fully known.

Why?

Because fear, regret, mourning and doubt exist only between our two ears.

Of this, do not doubt!

The emphasis on "Great Doubt" in Rinzai Zen is meant to force oneself into a mental dead-end, a breakdown which breaks into a state Beyond Doubt. Soto folks are Beyond Doubt even in a world of sometime fear, regret, mourning or doubt.

Sorry to run long (this do not doubt)

Gassho, J

STLah

[Kokuu]

I sense that through Zazen the Tung-shan’s Five Ranks can be actualised:
1. Phenomenal within Universal (Shōchūhen),
2. Universal within Phenomenal (Henchūshō)
3. Coming from
within the Universal (Shōchūrai)
4. Arriving at Mutual Integration(Kenchūshi)
5. Mutual Integration Attained (Kenchūtō).

Jundo, how do you feel about the five ranks?

I don't recall them being talked about much in Sōtō teachings or Dōgen focusing on them.

Ania, I think it is nice having someone here who can bring some of the Rinzai flavour.

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-

[Inshin]

Deep bows.

Gassho
Sat

[Jundo]

Jundo, how do you feel about the five ranks?

I don't recall them being talked about much in Sōtō teachings or Dōgen focusing on them.

Ania, I think it is nice having someone here who can bring some of the Rinzai flavour.

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-

Oh my. The Five Ranks of Dongshan are central to Soto Teachings. Master Dogen's writings are replete with the Relative and Absolute, however Dogen was a critic of the "Five Ranks" themselves as too formulaic.

I have written of the Five Ranks many times. I am convinced, however, that (as some scholars believe) they contain a copyist's error. 4 should be "Coming from within the phenomenal," and 5 is "Mutual Integration Attained/Mutual Integration Attained." Such an interpretation achieves symmetry between the relationships of relative and absolute described.

JUNDO NOTE on DONGSHAN'S "FIVE RANKS" or "FIVE POSITIONS"

Although sometimes layered with all manner of esoteric symbolism and strange interpretations, the "FIVE RANKS" of Ancestor Dongshan is basically a formulaic interpretation of the relationship and inter-identity of the world of "Relative" things and events, and the "Absolute" in which all separation is swept away. Zen folks have been debating, and finding different meanings in the "5 Ranks" or "5 Positions" for centuries and centuries.

I am rather a simpleton on the "5 positions," which I believe just try to convey a bit of the dance of the "relative" world of this and that, me and you, and the "absolute" beyond all categories and divisions, whereby the relative is the relative, the relative is absolute, the absolute is the relative and the absolute is the absolute, all seen and experienced to various depths (sometimes both with a prevalence of absolute or a prevalence of experience of the relative, sometimes just relative alone or absolute alone), and yet we leap beyond even those categories too. Dogen very much upheld such a view, as did about all Mahayana Buddhists. Dogen's criticism of the 5 Ranks was probably both because it was being turned too much into a formula, as well as too much of a fetish on to which folks were loading all manner of esoteric interpretations.

If you would like to read a short essay on Dongshan's "Five Positions," Soto Teacher Judith Ragir has this ...

http://www.judithragir.org/2012/06/dongshans-five-ranks/

Wiki Roshi is also not too bad in describing some of the varied interpretations and symbolism that was later added on ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ranks

...

Zen folks have been debating, and finding different meanings in the "5 Ranks" or "5 Positions" for centuries and centuries. In fact, the content of the Ranks have changed from time to time. If you would like to read a paper on the wild, rather esoteric interpretations that some of Keizan's successors found in the "5 Ranks," this is interesting.

Multiple Layers of Transmission Gasan Jōseki and the Goi Doctrine in the Medieval Sōtō school

https://www.academia.edu/38596585/Multiple_Layers_of_Transmission_Gasan_J%C5%8Dseki_and_the_Goi_Doctrine_in_the_Medieval_S%C5%8Dt%C5%8D_school

I am rather a simpleton on the "5 positions," which I believe just try to convey a bit of the dance of the "relative" world of this and that, me and you, and the "absolute" beyond all categories and divisions, whereby the relative is the relative, the relative is absolute, the absolute is the relative, the absolute is the absolute, all seen and experienced to various depths, and yet we leap beyond even those categories too. Dogen very much upheld such a view, as did about all Mahayana Buddhists. Dogen's criticism of the 5 Ranks was probably both because it was being turned too much into a formula, as well as too much of a fetish on to which folks were loading all manner of esoteric interpretations.

In a nutshell, sometimes one knows only the separate phenomena without a hint of union in the absolute (although such is present even though unseen), sometimes one knows the absolute with not a hint of phenomena (although they are too although unseen), sometimes one knows phenomena with a sense of the absolute, sometimes the absolute with a shadow of phenomena, and sometimes all are perfectly identical. Very simple. Folks like to complicate things.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

A little more here from an old thread ...

===============


Taigen Dan Leighton makes this point, citing another scholar:

Most discussions of Dongshan focus on this five ranks teaching.[iii] One modern Chinese commentator, just before presenting an extensive discussion of the five ranks and Dongshan's related teachings, ironically states, "This doctrine and others like it are not of central importance in the teachings of Tung-shan's school [Tung-shan is the older Wade-Giles transliteration for Dongshan]. They are merely expedient means or pedagogical schemata for the guidance of the less intelligent students. It is regrettable that historians of Ch'an have a tendency to treat these incidents as essentials and to ignore the true essentials altogether."[iv]
http://www.ancientdragon.org/dharma/...suchness#_edn4

It is clear that later writers added all kinds of interpretations, poetic embellishments and esoteric meanings and diagrams to the 5 Ranks. It got quite complicated, almost like Jews interpreting Kabbalah or fortune tellers reading the I-Ching.

It is actually my understanding that Dogen was --not-- a fan of the "Five Ranks" or any too pat and clean model of things. Taigen again comments ...

Dôgen clearly criticizes such analysis, saying, "If buddha-dharma had been transmitted merely through the investigation of differentiation and oneness, how could it have reached this day?" and "Do not mistakenly say that Dongshan's buddha-dharma is the five ranks of oneness and differentiation."[xlv] It is intriguing that Dôgen titles his essay "Spring and Autumn," the seasons when heat or cold are least intense. And yet, in his introduction Dôgen extols Dongshan's summit of cold or heat, and says that "Cold is the vital eye of the ancestor school. Heat is the warm skin and flesh of my late master."[xlvi] This concerns direct experience, beyond systematic formulations such as the five ranks.

James Mitchell writes in Soto Zen Ancestors in China (he uses the Chinese term "principle" referring to the "absolute" and "phenomena" to mean "the relative"):

In addition to the various statements regarding emptiness, Buddha-nature and thusness, which
conform in every respect to the commonly accepted teachings of all the chan schools,
Dongshan also develops the teaching of the Five Ranks, represented in the Sung histories as
the characterizing philosophical doctrine of the emergent Cao-Dong School. The Five Ranks
of Dongshan are a set of five modes in which apparent or phenomenal reality interacts with
ultimate or absolute reality. In traditional Buddhist terms, the teaching demonstrates five
possibilities for the construction of form and emptiness. In traditional Chinese terms, the
Five Ranks show the interactive relations of li (principle) and shi (phenomena). The recorded
teachings of Caoshan Benji likewise indicate the importance of the Five Ranks in the early
years of Cao-Dong School. They contain extensive elaboration, through the systematic use
of metaphor and symbol, of Dongshan's original theory.
...
Its [the Five Rank's] popularity and employment as a teaching device seems to have varied
enormously from generation to generation – Dogen Zenji seems to have been little
impressed with it – but it is reasonable to say that it has always had at the very least a
background presence throughout the later history of Cao-Dong School. Indeed the Sung period
chan histories agree in emphasizing Dongshan's Five Ranks as the original teaching
of the school, which alone probably would have precluded the possibility of its complete
disappearance afterwards

The point here is not that Dogen rejected insight into the "relative" and "absolute" .... because no Mahayana Buddhist teacher would do so. It is fundamental. What is more, so many of Dogen's writings express this dance of the "relative and absolute". I believe that the first lines of Genjo Koan, as the essay points out, do express this dance of relative and absolute as discussed in the essay you link to ...

As all things are buddha-dharma, there are delusion, realization, practice, birth and death, buddhas and sentient beings. As myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death. The buddha way, in essence, is leaping clear of abundance and lack; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas. Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.

It is simply that Dogen was not a fan of formulas or models to express this living dance of "relative" and "absolute". I do not think he was a big fan of the "Five Ranks" as a good way to capture this vibrant vibrant interpenetrating wholeness flowing dance. The essay you posted says the following, and I do not think it particularly wrong. It says ...

Dōgen outwardly rejected the formulaic and structured approach of
the Five Ranks as a teaching method. However, he covertly inserted them into many areas of his
writings, especially the Shobogenzo, because he understood their value in undermining deep-seated
misconceptions even though he considered systematic and academic forms not to be consistent with
traditional teachings of the Buddhadharma.

... but I would say that Dogen's vision of the intricated intimate dance of form-emptiness was much more than 5 or 50 or 500000 or 1/5th of a Rank. I am also not particularly a fan of the rest of the essay, which seems convoluted and loses me. Statements like this in the essay seem a bit like psycho-babble ...

The Universal becomes powerful enough to
permit a practitioner to use its positive and thoroughgoing vision to directly perceive the nonfabricated
voice of nature. Forgetting the self of accumulated habits and conditioned states permits
the voice to resound clearly. The strong Universal perspective allows a vigorous and close
examination of conditioned states without getting trapped by them. Their harmful effects are not
quite put to rest as yet. Nevertheless, they are for the most part recognized for what they are and
appropriately dealt with.

Hmmm.

[Kokuu]

Thank you, Jundo

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-

[Seikan]

Thank you all for this dialogue. I haven't really studied the "Five Ranks" before, so this has been a very interesting read.

And while I do love to exercise my analytical mind like this from time to time, I also can't help but share this meme, which "may" also sum up the practice from another point of view.

Gassho,
Rob

-stlah-


Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[Tairin]

Wonderful thread. Thank you.

Rob... I like the meme.


Tairin
Sat today and lah