Dogen's Fukanzazengi: Section One

Dogen's Fukanzazengi is fundamental to Soto Zen, due to the emphasis this school places on practice (zazen) being not a means to attaining realisation, but as being realisation itself.

There are a number of translations of this fascicle of the Shobogenzo available - many of them are collected together on this page which I shall use as a reference for comparing the various translations. I shall be using the first of these, marked as 'English Translation 1', as my principle text - it's the most commonly commented translation I've come across. Unfortunately I've so far been unable to find the origin of the various translations.

There is a danger with taking a single statement or passage of Dogen out of context and using it to support a viewpoint because his writings often jump from one viewpoint to another - expressing a truth that goes beyond the limited scope of any single viewpoint. Most importantly, the relative and ultimate viewpoints are expressed together without contradiction, even if they appear to do so - they are both true in their own terms.

Section One

The Way is basically perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent upon practice and realization? The Dharma-vehicle is free and untrammelled. What need is there for concentrated effort? Indeed, the whole body is far beyond the world's dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from one, right where one is. What is the use of going off here and there to practice?

And yet, if there is the slightest discrepancy, the Way is as distant as heaven from earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the Mind is lost in confusion. Suppose one gains pride of understanding and inflates one's own enlightenment, glimpsing the wisdom that runs through all things, attaining the Way and clarifying the Mind, raising an aspiration to escalade the very sky. One is making the initial, partial excursions about the frontiers but is still somewhat deficient in the vital Way of total emancipation.

Dogen leaps straight to the fundamental point. The doctrines of Buddhism as they had been taught to Dogen stated that nothing is hidden, that all beings are already Buddha and that we are in the midst of enlightenment. And this lead some to conclude that it was unnecessary to practice. Yet all the Ancestors including Shakyamuni Buddha practiced with great dedication. How do we make sense of this paradox? This is the 'Great Doubt' that drove Dogen to cross the dangerous Sea of Japan to China.

We can make sense of this apparent contradiction by using a principle sometimes known as the Doctrine of Two Truths - Conventional Truth and Ultimate Truth. From the perspective of Ultimate Truth, everything is already lacking inherent nature, nothing is separate, despite appearances nothing comes into being, nothing continues and nothing stops being, all is the Unconditioned, the Unborn. This is the perspective of Sunyata as expressed in the Heart Sutra. This is how things already are, whether we realise it or not. Nothing can obstruct or eliminate this reality as even an apparent ending or obscuration is 'it' too. So from this perspective, all things are Buddha irrespective of what we do. This perspective is sometimes called 'Primordial Buddha', 'Buddha Embryo', 'Buddha Nature' or 'Original Mind'. It also corresponds to the principle of 'Sudden Enlightenment' emphasised by Master Eno (Hui Neng) - all surviving Zen schools descended from him. This is the perspective that Dogen opens with.

The Way is basically perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent upon practice and realization? The Dharma-vehicle is free and untrammelled. What need is there for concentrated effort? Indeed, the whole body is far beyond the world's dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from one, right where one is. What is the use of going off here and there to practice?

This also corresponds to the second statement of the Genjo Koan:

As myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.

And yet, human beings simply do not see this reality clearly all the time. There is delusion, aversion and greed, which, even though (from the ultimate perspective) cannot obstruct 'Buddha', from the perspective of the mind afflicted by them they appear to do so. Being told that we are already in Nirvana is all very well, but to someone in the midst of hell this is little comfort - a merely intellectual or docrinal acceptance of this 'fact' is not enough to end suffering. We need to realise Buddha ourselves. We need to feel it. We need to experience suchness directly, to breathe it in and breathe it out, knowing in every cell that we are Buddha. This is why we practice. This relative or conventional perspective is the viewpoint of Dogen's second statement:

And yet, if there is the slightest discrepancy, the Way is as distant as heaven from earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the Mind is lost in confusion.

This also corresponds to the principle of acquired or attained enlightenment, the progressive path emphasised in the Pali Canon and in the so-called Gradual School of Zen. It also corresponds to Dogen's opening statement in the Genjo Koan:

As all things are buddha-dharma, there are delusion, realization, practice, birth and death, buddhas and sentient beings.

Dogen then goes on to give an example of a mind that tastes awakening - realising primordial enlightenment and then, through clinging to this as an attainment, falls back into delusion, seeing awakening as something remote and limited, the world becoming fractured and dualistic once more.

Suppose one gains pride of understanding and inflates one's own enlightenment, glimpsing the wisdom that runs through all things, attaining the Way and clarifying the Mind, raising an aspiration to escalade the very sky. One is making the initial, partial excursions about the frontiers but is still somewhat deficient in the vital Way of total emancipation.

Such a one has a partial attainment in Dogen's view, but is not yet fully awakened.

Note that Dogen does not deny attainment or the concept of enlightenment as some commentators occasionally suggest. To take this view would be to get stuck to an idea of ultimate reality, a rather nihilistic idea at that.