![]() turning, moving, and speaking. So what do we do? How the Teacher does what he or
she does has come about by their deep and continuous practise of the forms. When
we practise the forms, of course we should do so as the Teacher does so that we can
do them fully. But we ourselves have to do them. We cannot just follow our usual
ways of standing and moving or follow an image of how we should stand or move.
We have to actually practice the form, recognizing when we are shrinking back from
being present in a bow and also when we are inflating it by watching ourselves bow.
We have to observe how the Teacher bows and observe how we bow and let all of
this go and allow the bowing to fully present itself.
And so, we do not need to become someone else to Awaken to the Way but
we cannot hold ourselves back within habit and tendency. We cannot imitate the
Awakened Ancestors. But we have to be willing to learn from them. And we have to
apply what we learn even with how we stand and move.
All of the Awakened Ancestors were people of Suchness and so are we all. But
realizing this is a matter of allowing the realness of Reality to present itself. This is
what all of the Awakened Ancestors continuously practised. To encourage our own
continuous practice, Dogen zenji recalls their examples.
However, this can present us, I think, with a problem. Ill show you what I
mean. Dogen says:
The Sixth Ancestor, Huineng, had been a woodcutter in the Xin region and
could hardly be called learned. He lost his father when he was young, and had
been raised by his aged mother. He worked cutting wood to support her. One
day, at a crossroads, he heard a passage being recited from a sutra and he
left his mother and set out to seek the Dharma. He was a great vessel, the
kind of person rarely seen in any age, an exemplar in his practise of the Way.
It might have been easy for Huike to cut off an arm, but this severing of the
bonds of love must have been extremely difficult because abandoning filial
obligations is not easy. He joined Hongrens community on Mt. Huangmei
where he neither slept nor rested but pounded rice all night and day for eight
months. As a result, he received the authentic transmission of the robe and
bowl in the middle of the night. Even after receiving the Dharma, he carried
the same mortar on his back and pounded rice for eight years. Even after he
emerged in the world and became the abbot of a monastery¹ and taught the
Dharma for the people, he did not discard the mortar. This is truly rare
continuous practice in this world.
The problem is with what we might do with inspirational examples. We could
try to imitate them by never changing our clothes like Mahakasyapa, never lying
down like Parshva, or becoming a lumberjack and waiting around in the woods until
we overhear someone chant, Give rise to the mind which abides nowhere from the
Diamond Cutter sutra. But somehow I dont think this would do any of us much
good.
Another thing that we could do with these examples of great practitioners and
teachers is to use them to justify our own hesitation, our own laziness, our own
habits. For example, Dogen zenji says of Huineng, He was a great vessel, the kind
of person rarely seen in any age, an exemplar in his practise of the Way. This kind
of language occurs over and over in the various histories of the Transmission. So
and so daiosho was peerless, without compare, there are none to equal her. We can
have a sense that, as a student once put it me, but they were giants! and so their
giganticness is unmatchable. We can have a sense that one has to be born with
great qualities and a kind of genius for Zen or else one will never be able to really do
it, to really practice, to really wake up. How convenient.
1
Shusse. To emerge in the world means becoming visible as the abbot of a large monastery.
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