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The
Four Great Vows
A
Series of Four Dharma Talks
Presented
by Ven. Shikai Zuiko osho
[When
this Dharma Talk was presented Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi was still referred
to as “the Sensei” and Ven. Shikai Zuiko osho was training in the monastic
training post of “Godo” (head monk)]
1:
All Beings
Dainen-ji,
October 18, 1997
[Following
three strikes of the gong, the Godo chants “The Four Great Vows” in Japanese
and then in English]:
Shi
Gu Sei Gan
SHU
JO MU HEN SEI GAN DO
BON
NO MU JIN SEI GAN DAN
HO
MON MU RYO SEI GAN GAKU
BUTSUDO
MU JO SEI GAN JO
[One
gong strike]
All
beings without number I vow to liberate.
Endless
obsessions I vow to release.
Dharma
Gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate.
Limitless
awakening I vow to unfold.
[Three
gong strikes]
The
“Shi Gu Sei Gan: The Four Great Vows”, is chanted in this monastery and
in many, if not all, other Zen monasteries to end formal sittings. Here
at Dainen-ji, we chant this at the end of the formal sitting in the morning
and we chant it at the end of the formal sitting in the evening. We chant
“The Four Great Vows” during sesshin, at the end of oryoki. Some of you
have attended the formal sittings and some of you have heard “The Four
Great Vows” chanted before. And some of you have chanted “The Four Great
Vows” yourself or with the Sangha. For example “The Four Great Vows” are
chanted by students doing retreats.
Chanting,
of course, is a form of practice and, as with any of the forms, chanting
is an opportunity to align body, breath, speech and mind with the Teacher
and the Teachings, the Lineage, and with this moment. This Saturday morning
we are in the Hatto at Dainen-ji. The Hatto is completely full today;
every zabuton and zafu is occupied and we are sitting zazen.
Now
if zazen were all that there were to practice then that would be convenient.
Zazen is essential to practice but it is not the only form. As associate
students and general students, you are already familiar with other forms
of practice: you are familiar with kinhin, practice whilst walking or
walking practice; you bow in gassho monjin at the entrance to the Hatto,
yet another opportunity to see how you are. Chanting practice is a bit
different in that what we're doing is making sounds and although Anzan
Hoshin sensei has said that we could chant the phone book and still make
very good use of that form of practice, we actually chant, particularly
in the case of “The Four Great Vows”, words which actually show us what
it is we are doing when we are practicing, actually instruct us in how
to practice.
Our
topic is “The Four Great Vows”. I hope that it will be useful to start
by explaining what “The Four Great Vows” are not. “The Four Great Vows”
are not a creed, they are not a dogma, they are not an article of faith,
nor are they prayers or hymns. This is a vow and a vow is a solemn promise
to do something. In the case of this practice, each time we chant or hear
“The Four Great Vows” we are vowing to practise and Wake Up to who and
what this is, to who and what this life that is living us all is.
“The
Four Great Vows” provide us with instruction and a reminder of that instruction,
a reminder of what we are doing. Now, what we understand of “The Four
Great Vows”, of course, will depend on what we understand of practice.
Zen Master Anzan Hoshin's understanding and practice and expression of
“The Four Great Vows” will necessarily be vaster than yours. Next year
or perhaps if you become a general student or a probationary formal student
or formal student or take lay monk's vows, you will be doing this because
your understanding of the vows is deeper and therefore your understanding
of your practice is deeper. And because your practice is deeper, your
understanding of what is being spoken of each time you hear “The Four
Great Vows”, is deeper and different and vaster. Something that I believe
to be the case is that each one of us sitting here has come to practice,
has sought instruction because there was a realization of the truth of
“The Four Great Vows”. We may not have known what the words were but there
was something that we knew, that when we hear “The Four Great Vows” makes
us perhaps go “Yes! Yes! That's it!”
It
would be useful at this point if we were all to have a look at “The Four
Great Vows”. So if you direct your eyes down to your right knee, you will
see your chanting text. Please notice how the chanting text is placed
so that you can return it to exactly the same place so that you do not
cause anyone else, the next person to come along any entanglement because
of how you have had a lapse of attention. Now lift the text up and turn
to page 15.
[Students
pick up texts]
So
we will just read through this. I will read and you can follow along just
with your eyes.
Shi
Gu Sei Gan: The Four Great Vows
SHU
JO MU HEN SEI GAN DO
BON
NO MU JIN SEI GAN DAN
HO
MON MU RYO SEI GAN GAKU
BUTSUDO
MU JO SEI GAN JO
And
in English,
All
beings without number I vow to liberate.
Endless
obsessions I vow to release.
Dharma
Gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate.
Limitless
awakening I vow to unfold.
So
now you can put your text down and should you attend a formal sitting
you will know how to pick up the text. You will know that the text should
be placed so that the cover without the printing on it is facing out and
you will know that page 15 is the page upon which “The Four Great Vows”
is printed.
As
you also know from reading “Before Thinking” and in particular Anzan sensei's
teisho, “The Five Styles of Zen”, the fourth mode of Zen practice is “Daijo
Zen” which is the practice of the “Mahayana” or the “Great and Open Way
”. As Anzan Sensei says,
“This
way embraces everything that is arising for us and is not simply concerned
with our own liberation but recognizes that the liberation of all beings
is inseparable from our own because we are inseparable from all beings
and work for that liberation”.
The
whole of the Mahayana is embodied in the “Shi Gu Sei Gan: The Four Great
Vows”. But you don't just memorize them then spout them forth. As the
Sensei says, we embody them. We are those vows; that is what we do.
Today
we're looking at the first line, the first vow: “All beings without number
I vow to liberate.” And that raises questions. It shows that in the Mahayana,
the Great and Open Way , practice is not just for your own benefit but
it is for the benefit of all beings. Now we do understand that how we
are - how you are - affects everybody else and the way everybody else
is affects us - affects you - and there is no clear line separating us
from everything else. There couldn't be. Someone twitches in the Hatto
and we feel it. We might twitch as well. Someone breathes next to us and
we find ourselves affected by it. We notice a presencing of experiencing,
a movement of knowing. Perhaps we notice ourselves becoming edgy or irritated.
Our attention starts to move towards that and we find ourselves becoming
something or something coming into being; something that's irritated.
The
first great vow reminds us that “All beings without number I vow to liberate”.
At the moment of noticing that becoming, that coming into being of a separate
self, a self that is separate from everyone and everything else (which
of course is impossible; each thing does make everything else what it
is)...at the moment of noticing that becoming, that coming into being,
we have noticed something about our experiencing and we practice mindfulness
of breath in that moment, As attention ceases to move towards that being,
that becoming, that being is liberated, it is released. All other beings
in the Hatto are of course liberated from the possible effects of that
irritated being. Moment after moment we practise “The Four Great Vows”
for just as all the Mahayana is contained in “The Four Great Vows”, all
of practice is spoken of in each Great Vow and each Great Vow speaks of
the other three. They are all talking about Awakening, about Waking Up,
about recognizing that you are Buddha in this moment and this moment and
the next.
Continuing
our investigation of the first of “The Four Great Vows”: “All beings without
number”? Wow! Is that even possible? Now hold on! What exactly is a being?
OK, I can understand the movement of attention into becoming something
that is irritated at the person next to me...”
But
that's not all it is. It can also mean recognizing when someone else is
stuck and offering our help, knowing that perhaps they have other things
to do which you can't do and doing what you can do, can help free them,
can help them do something else that will be of benefit to someone else.
So it reminds us to pay attention to those around. But it also means paying
attention to anything, any presencing, any moment of knowing - colours,
forms, sounds - they come into being and then are gone. We can't hang
onto them. By noticing we can only liberate. By noticing and practising
we can notice that there is more and more available to us.
Practice
is also about taking responsibility. Taking responsibility means looking
at what we do and how we do it and looking at how we are. There are many
facets to this taking responsibility and to this liberating of beings;
it's not as simple as it sounds. In the newspapers recently there have
been a number of articles about laboratory animals. Now, liberating beings
doesn't mean storming a lab and releasing the lab animals and indeed,
when we think about it, we can recognize very clearly that that can cause
more suffering for the very creatures whose suffering we wish to ease.
By releasing animals into a world of which they have no knowledge we perhaps
are putting them at greater danger.
There
is a story that I heard some time ago and it was about a chimpanzee. This
is when there was a lot of money available in the United States in particular
for interspecies study and the study of the communication between species.
There were chimps who had been taught to sign.
One
particular chimp, Lucy, had been, since she was very young, in a lab with
her person. And this person was like a mother to her, had raised her,
cared for her, and taught her language. Well, the money ran out and the
experiment came to an end and the people and the person who had raised
and cared for and taught Lucy decided after a great deal of thought, because
they were certainly not uncaring people, that the best thing for all concerned
was to send Lucy to a retirement camp, a camp specifically for chimpanzee
who had been retired from labs and from zoos and other human endeavors
really, in her country of origin which was in Africa. Lucy had a very
difficult time and the reports were that although the other animals were
of her own species, they were strangers to her. They were savages and,
by her standards, illiterate. So she took to hanging about the periphery,
near the fence, spending most of her time alone. And she was there for
about six years.
The
people, particularly the person who had cared for her, came to that country
to visit and they went to see Lucy. Lucy saw them and recognized the woman
who had cared for her immediately and she went over to the fence and looked
at her with pleading eyes and signed to her: “HELP – HOME”.
We
must be very careful of everything that we do. We need to understand what
our practice is because as Anzan Sensei says “If we do not understand
our practice we will practice our misunderstanding.” With the first great
vow: “All beings without number I vow to liberate” you have a template;
you have something that you can use during this coming week to look at
how you are, how beings are, to notice interactions that you may previously
have not noticed.
“The
Four Great Vows” are useful for what they are not because what they are
not, teaches us. “The Four Great Vows” are not rules, they are not there
to help you generate a feeling tone about being a person who liberates
beings; they are not a strategy of how to be. They are instruction. Each
of the Great Vows is talking about the same thing; releasing colours,
forms, sounds, thoughts, feelings, all beings, into liberation. Practice
is growing up, taking responsibility for being a real human being.
The
Sensei says in Five Styles of Zen “Being human means dignity, compassion;
realizing that one's life is the life of all beings”.
Next
week we'll look at the second of “The Four Great Vows”: “Endless obsessions
I vow to release.”
Thank
you for listening.
[With
three strikes of the gong, the Godo chants]:
All
beings without number I vow to liberate.
Endless
obsessions I vow to release.
Dharma
Gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate.
Limitless
awakening I vow to unfold.
2:
Endless Obsessions
Dainen-ji,
October 25, 1997
Welcome.
You've come back! And for the same reason you came to practice in the
first place. There was recognition of the truth of the Teachings, the
truth that is made explicit by “The Four Great Vows”.
As
you walked through the nippy October air there may have been thoughts
about what you'd rather be doing, perhaps there might have been an occasional
thought about how inconvenient it is to come on a Saturday morning to
practice. As I mentioned last week, it would be “convenient” if the only
form of practice was zazen. Then, of course, we would only practice when
we were sitting. It would be “convenient” if we could isolate practice
to something fixed. Anzan Hoshin sensei says that in order for our practice
to be the embodiment of reality, we must release our divisions between
self and other, this and that, formal and informal practice.
The
forms of practice are forms for the practice of reality: Chanting is speaking,
kinhin is walking, oryoki is eating, zazen is sitting. The forms are a
means to embody reality. “The Four Great Vows” speak of how we embody
the open formless space of who we are.
[Following
three strikes on the gong the Godo chants]:
All
beings without number I vow to liberate.
Endless
obsessions I vow to release.
Dharma
Gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate.
Limitless
awakening I vow to unfold.
[Two
gong strikes]
As
we discovered last week one way of looking at “The Four Great Vows” is
to see that each vow speaks of the same thing but in a different way.
After last week's examination of the first Great Vow, “All beings without
number I vow to liberate”, a student remarked that perhaps the first vow
should be the last because only after releasing obsessions, penetrating
Dharma Gates and unfolding limitless Awakenings are we able to practice
the first Great Vow to liberate all beings. In discussing this Zen Master
Anzan Hoshin said that another way of looking at this matter of “The Four
Great Vows” is that the first vow is the fundamental vow to realize who
we and all beings are and the next three vows speak of how we do this.
Practice
is the practise of our life as it arises moment-to-moment. As the Sensei
says in “Before Thinking: Beyond Convenience”, “Our life is very simple,
very direct, very beautiful, very vast and very terrifying, but it is
not at all convenient.”
Your
life inconveniently presents itself and practice inconveniently presents
itself when you are walking, working, in the bathroom, talking to someone,
watching television; not just when you're sitting zazen. But zazen is
the form that allows us to look into this moment-to-moment arising that
shows us how we are. Because our life is so vast and so terrifying, one
of the things that self-image will do is to try to make experiencing controllable
in the mistaken belief that it is possible to control our life; one thing
that self image will do is to occupy itself with obsessions and obsessions
are numberless.
As
the vow states, the second of the great vows: “Endless obsessions I vow
to release.” Now, obsession is the act of obsessing or the state of being
obsessed. Obsessed is to be preoccupied, haunted, to fill the mind continually,
to take control of, to torment, dominate, grip, possess, hold, plague.
An obsession is a persistent idea or thought dominating a person's mind.
Interestingly, the word “obsess”, which means “beset” or as a “besieging
force”, is from the Latin “obsedare” which means “to sit down before.”
So it is as though we have no choice but to sit down before these thoughts
or rather to have these obsessions sit upon us, making us incapable of
doing anything else. We human beings will obsess about anything: body
parts, illness, dirt, germs, animal, hoarding, saving, repetition, counting,
sexual fantasies, violence to self or other, horrifying images, a sense
of unworthiness, a sense of poverty, a sense of superiority, doing things
right. These are all thoughts, just as colours, sounds, music, names,
titles, numbers, phrases, memories, unpleasant images, impulses to hurt,
to harm, saying or not saying certain things, obsessing over needing to
remember, over losing things, over the way the person next to us is breathing,
are thoughts.
Practice,
all the forms of practice, and especially when you are establishing mindfulness
practice…zazen asks you to recognize that the reality of the presencing
of these thoughts and provide you instruction on what to do. Zazen sits
you down in front of what you believe to be uncontrollable, that which
you believe has sat you down or sat down on you and immobilized you. By
following instruction, by paying attention, you start to know a thought
as a thought, a story as a story, an obsession as a thought with a story,
and you start to understand because you can know this thought, this obsession.
You start to understand, maybe just a little bit and maybe not all the
time, what Anzan Sensei means when he says “There is nothing that knowing
can be because only knowing is”.
You
are not that thought or obsession about who or what you are or what the
world is. You remember to practise from time to time when you notice the
presencing of a favourite obsession because you know you are not that.
You feel the breath moving the body in and out, you see the seeing, hear
the hearing, know other bodily sensation and that obsessions is released
into the vast expanse of Knowing. You have embodied the second of “The
Four Great Vows”: “Endless obsessions I vow to release”.
“Endless
obsession” - Endless! Now “endless” can seem to present a daunting and
a formidable, impossible task. But what it really means is: Don't try
to put an end to them otherwise you have a story about what you would
be, what you would be like, without those obsessions. As Anzan Sensei
says “When obsessions cease we don't even notice because we're not obsessed
with defining ourselves in any way”.
Next
week the third of the great vows: “Dharma Gates without number I vow to
penetrate”.
Thank
you for listening.
[Following
two strikes on the gong, the Godo chants]:
Shi
Gu Sei Gan
SHU
JO MU HEN SEI GAN DO
BON
NO MU JIN SEI GAN DAN
HO
MON MU RYO SEI GAN GAKU
BUTSUDO
MU JO SEI GAN JO
3:
Dharma Gates
November
1, 1997, Dainen-ji
The
First Great Vow, ‘All Beings without number I vow to liberate”, states
our intention. The second, “Endless obsessions I vow to release”, reminds
us of what we are going to do. The third, “Dharma Gates beyond measure
I vow to penetrate”, again Teaches us, instructs us, as to what we will
do.
“Dharma
Gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate”.
When
we are obsessed, when we are dominated by our thoughts and feelings in
a cycle that is seemingly endless, we can feel as if we are sat upon,
as if we are squashed by the weight of our obsessions. All we need to
do is to sit up; to sit up straight in zazen.
Sitting
up straight, Dharma Gates open everywhere; reality presents itself everywhere.
Being sat down upon by obsession is like having a monkey on our back,
but by just sitting up straight whatever tries to sit upon us just slides
off. When we sit up straight in the posture of zazen, in balance point,
everything slides off.
Following
this thought, that thought, the body bows and sways with the disposition
of attention. Coming back to where we are, right now, right here, we just
sit up straight without trying to shrug anything off or put anything on.
When we sit up straight richness presents itself; infinite opportunities
of the moment present themselves; Dharma Gates. We recognize that how
we understand and how we misunderstand are all opportunities to be entered
into.
In
“The Four Gates of Zen Practice”, Zen Master Anzan Hoshin defines “Dharma”
in Sanskrit, “Dhamma” in Pali, and “Ho” in Japanese, as having many levels
of meaning. When the “d” is in small case, “dharma”, “dhamma”, means “phenomena,
mental events, things, experience”. When the “D” is capitalized, or the
word Dharma is used in conjunction with the word Buddha, it means the
Way, or the Teachings. The Sensei says, in “Before Thinking”, in the teisho
entitled “Shamata and Vipashana”, that in Zen we are concerned with the
essence of “Buddhadharma”. “Buddhadharma” means “The Way of Waking Up”.
The way of experiencing directly what our life is, and the way of penetrating
into what it is that is experiencing it. And so we sit up straight in
zazen.
There
are so many dharmas arising and falling, moment after moment, that there
is no need to measure them or count them. That would be impossible. So,
Dharma Gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate.
The
tradition says that there are one thousand and eight Gates to reality.
As the Sensei says, “One thousand and eight Dharma Gates: Why one thousand
and eight? Picture one thing. Now picture two things; four things; eight
things; sixteen things; thirty-two things. You can't. One thousand and
eight simply means numberless, infinite”. And so as we sit in the posture
of zazen, these numberless, infinite Dharma Gates present themselves;
colours, forms, sounds, thoughts, feelings, memories, sadness, anger,
hope, fear, a pain in the knee.
This
third of “The Four Great Vows” calls us to penetrate each dharma, each
moment, and we penetrate, we pierce each dharma with this posture of zazen,
with kinhin, with teisho. We practice penetrating this moment with the
needle of attention, penetrating this moment completely; the breath, sensations
in the fingers and the toes, this moment, are all the tip of the needle.
Penetrate; pierce so completely that there is no separation between body,
mind and moment.
In
the teisho “Needle in a Bag”, Anzan Sensei says: “If we pierce this moment
of hope and fear with the needle of zazen, with the needle of mindfulness,
we are also pierced to the heart”.
He
goes on to say: “As we stitch together these moments of our lives with
the needle of Wakefulness, we will find more and more that everything
is unbound”.
The
Dharma, the Teachings of Reality, show us over and over again that reality
is so rich. We are provided with endless opportunities to take responsibility
for the treasury of who we are, to allow us to express this richness.
“Dharma
Gates Beyond Measure I Vow to Penetrate”.
Next
week, the fourth of the Great Vows, “Limitless Awakening I Vow To
Unfold”.
Thank
you for listening.
4:
Limitless Awakening
November
8, 1997, Dainen-ji
All
beings without number I vow to liberate.
Endless
obsessions I vow to release.
Dharma
Gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate.
Limitless
Awakening, I vow to unfold.
The
first of The Vows proclaims our intention to liberate all beings. The
second and third speak of what we are going to do and of how we are going
to do it. And the fourth, “Limitless Awakening I Vow to Unfold”, reminds
us that we will do this without limit, never stopping until all beings
are liberated. This progressive relationship between the Four Vows is,
of course, an interpretation we might find useful rather than how “The
Four Great Vows” are formally structured.
Anzan
Sensei says,
“In
Zen we are concerned with the essence of Buddhadharma. Buddhadharma means
The Way of Waking Up. The Way of experiencing directly what our life is,
and the Way of penetrating into what it is that is experiencing it”.
In
“Needle in a Bag” Anzan Sensei instructs us to
“Pierce
this moment of hope and fear with the needle of zazen, with the needle
of mindfulness and then, as we stitch together these moments of our lives
with the needle of Wakefulness, we will find more and more that everything
is unbound.”
As
everything is unbound, released everywhere around as reality, practice
must be unbound. Practice is simply seeing this moment, penetrating into
this moment, not only on the zafu, not only in the Monastery, but in the
street, in our homes, in our workplaces, on the toilet, shopping. Opportunities
to practice, innumerable opportunities to practice present themselves
moment after moment. Some opportunities are more attractive to self-image
than others. The more attractive, invariably seem to be those which involve
content, and the content found most interesting by self-image seems to
be in the area of thoughts and feelings, story lines, self-obsessed film
scripts, and novels about yourself: “How are you doing? How do you think
the other person is doing? How do you think I'm doing? What do they mean?
What's going on?”
Most
of our day to day activity, however, necessarily involves questions of
what to do about our everyday - and by definition - mundane or worldly
activities such as shopping, cleaning, laundry, getting dressed, brushing
our teeth, eating and shitting.
Did
you replace the used up toilet paper roll? Or were you so concerned with
your own obsessions about what's going on that you were not even thinking
about the next person who may use the washroom? Wake up! Did you leave
your shoes askew, directly in the path of the door to be opened by the
next person? Wake up! Did you notice a leaf lying on the floor of the
entranceway and decide to ignore it? Wake up! Did someone bring you an
egg and some toast, and rather than seeing the generosity of that moment
did you choose to speak of why it wasn't appropriate? Wake up!
Did
you notice a person behind you in the grocery line becoming agitated and
irritated and you yourself become agitated and irritated in return thus
helping them to propagate their state? Why not let them go before you?
Why not just let go? Wake up!
As
Anzan Sensei says, “It's everywhere. It is what you are. You are the richness
of this moment and this moment, each and every moment is very rich.”
Each
moment presents beings to be liberated, obsessions to release, Dharma
Gates to penetrate, limitless awakening to unfold. WAKE UP!!!
“Butsudo”,
“Buddhaway”, the Sensei translates as “Limitless Awakening”. Why? Well,
it's not the Buddha's Way alone, but our Way as well - yours and mine
- of Awakening to who we are. We are each and all Buddha. “Buddha”: one
who has Woken Up. It reminds us each time we hear the Vow that we must
Wake Up. We must recognize when we are dreaming. Butsudo: The Way of Awakening.
The Way goes out limitless past all horizons. Our Way embraces all beings
through releasing our images of “self” and “other”, “this” and “that”,
into the limitless and radiant expanse of Reality. Each moment, unfold,
Wake Up.
A
great bow to the Buddhas and Dharma Ancestors and to Zen Master Anzan
Hoshin for the Teachings of the Buddhadharma, for the gift of the priceless
jewel of practice and Awakening, for “The Four Great Vows”.
All
beings without number I vow to liberate.
Endless
obsessions I vow to release.
Dharma
Gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate.
Limitless
Awakening, I vow to unfold.
Thank
you for listening.
©
2004 White Wind Zen Community. All rights reserved.
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