![]() aloud to you the first case of the Denkoroku. I used to read you the Ariya Pariyesana
sutta. While the Denkoroku is in many ways much more beautiful and profound than the
sutta with its stilted language, invariably, when I come to the passage in which he
decides to stand up and walk out into the world to Teach my heart breaks and I often
weep. This is why I stopped reading it. You see, he did not have to do this. There was no
reason for him to do this at all. Despite the fact that most people would never listen to
what he had to say, despite the fact that amongst those few who listened, few would
practice it and amongst those few, fewer yet would practice the Dharma continuously,
he Taught. It would have been much easier to just turn away from the sufferings of
beings determined to make themselves and each other suffer, believing themselves to
be trapped in bodies and minds that inevitably decay and die. He did not have to do
what he did, to have given us what he has. I have a reason for doing what I do, just as
my own Teacher did. We each had Teachers. Without them, we would never have
realized the Dharma. Each Teacher has a debt, an obligation, and a responsibility to the
Lineage that has passed on the Dharma through these millennia and centuries through
the skin, meat, bones, and marrow of Teachers and students. And all of this began with
Sakyamuni Buddha, who himself had no Teacher and was under no such obligation. His
compassion was boundless, his continuous practice was beyond any depth of
understanding.
Who was Sakyamuni Buddha? We do not really know. He vanished into an
image of what he had woken up to. We find him most directly in our own practice.
For Dogen zenji, as for myself and most Zen monks the Buddha is inseparable from
our own experience of practice and our training with our own Teacher. In Menju:
Face-to-Face Transmission, Dogen zenji says,
Those who authentically transmit the true eye that directly sees Sakyamuni
Buddha are closer to us than is Sakyamuni Buddha; with this eye they can
see and reveal Sakyamuni Buddhas that are front and back, three by three.¹
As the process of Transmission ripens, Teacher and student become each
other and all of the Ancestors of the Lineage. My Teacher, the Old Buddha Joshu
Dainen, was very old during my years with him, so I never really see the Buddha as
the healthy young man depicted by rupas and paintings. I see him as an old man
with thin arms and legs with a round, slack old mans belly. I see him as stubbled on
chin and cheeks and a bit on the back of his head. I see liver spots on the backs of
his hands and along his arms. I see him as frail and weak, but ferocious and
relentless. His eyes are rheumy and his breath isnt necessarily sweet.
There is a passage in the Ariya Pariyesana sutta which is a favourite of mine.
The Buddha is an old man who has just finished washing and is standing in his
underwear talking with his elderly attendant, Ananda. He has come back to the forest
from a long round of begging in Savatthi and has eaten. Now he just wants to take a
1
Zengo-sansan. Usually, three by three in front, three by three behind (zensansan, gosansan). A reference
to Hekiganroku 35, Sanbyakasoku 127.
Manjusri asked Wuzhao, Where have you come from?
Wuzhao said, The south.
Manjusri asked, How is the Buddha Dharma being practised in the South?
Wuzhao said, In this Age of the Decay of the Teachings, monks barely observe the Precepts.
Manjusri asked, How large are the Communities?
Wuzhao said, Some are three hundred, others five hundred. Then Wuzhao asked Manjusri,
How does the Buddha Dharma fare here?
Manjusri said, Sacred and profane live together, snakes and dragons are intertwined.
Wuzhao asked, Are they many or few?
Manjusri answered, Three by three in front, three by three behind.
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