Faith & Vow in Zen Practice

Faith & Vow in Zen Practice

Sesshin Lecture by Josho Pat Phelan

For the past twenty-five-hundred years and for many, many generations, people such as Shakyamuni Buddha, Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who helped establish Zen, a new form of Buddhist practice in China; Eihei Dogen Zenji who brought Soto Zen from China to Japan; Shogaku Shunryu or Suzuki Roshi who brought Dogen’s Way of practice from Japan to the United States, and other countless, nameless Ancestors have kept this tradition alive. Because of this, we, today, can meet practice, as we hope that countless others in generations to come will be able to do. As we sit here this week, our intention to practice and our endeavor to wake up, is joining a vast network of others’ intentions and efforts encompassing a span from the beginningless past to the endless future. The Zen precepts ceremony begins, "Invoking the presence and compassion of our ancestors, in faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha’s Way." Entering "Buddha’s Way" can be characterized by choosing, moment by moment, to live based on vow, on our deep intention to wake up, rather than living by default based on our karmic or habitual reactions and preferences.

In Returning to Silence, Katagiri Roshi has a section on the precepts, and I am really struck by how much Katagiri Roshi used the term "faith" in this section. The Sanskrit word that is translated as "faith" is shraddha. The meaning of faith in Buddhism is the conviction that grows through our own direct experience with the teaching. This doesn’t mean just hearing the teaching and liking it, or even understanding it – it means knowing how the teaching applies and works in our own lives. In Zen we tend to use the word "faith" to mean trust, or the confidence that practice works – that the fundamental nature of our mind is awakened; and because of this, we can throw ourselves fully into practice without expectations. Practice then becomes an endeavor that isn’t dependent on what it can do for us. We, ourselves, have the ability to practice and to awaken, so our trust or faith is not in something outside ourselves; or, maybe it means trusting everything, including ourselves and our practice.

The word "faith" is one of many words in English whose Asian counterpart has a different meaning than the way the word is commonly used in English. The Buddhist scholar, Taitetsu Unno, who is also a Pure Land Buddhist priest said that "The word ‘save’ is used in a very different sense in Shin or Pure Land Buddhism than it is in the Judeo-Christian tradition." And he said that instead of "faith," he uses "the word entrust to avoid confusion." For him, "entrusting the Name of Amida [Buddha] is trusting life itself." He said, "Normally in the working of our ego self we don’t trust ourselves. We are shut out from life. So, this trust is not something created as a personal story; it is trusting life itself; it is trust that comes from the Buddha, a trust" he said, "that I am complete just as I am."

Katagiri Roshi said that our effort – yours and mine, i.e. our effort to practice is supported by the whole universe, and that if our effort weren’t supported by the universe as a whole, we couldn’t make real effort. I feel encouraged and moved by these words. But even though I am used to this idea, when I read Katagiri Roshi’s teaching on the precepts, I was still surprised to find how much he referred to the nature of the universe in benevolent terms.

He didn’t use the word "benevolence" or "the nature of the universe," – that’s how I characterize it. I’ve always thought that in Zen, the universe was treated in a neutral way, not as bad or good, but simply as it is. So I was surprised to find such a positive, benevolent attitude.

A good example of Katagiri Roshi’s benevolent attitude is in his discussion of repentance. Before receiving the precepts formally, first, there is repentance in which we acknowledge our endless and continuous actions arising from ignorance. Katagiri Roshi said, "Repentance is to realize exactly the oneness of ... all sentient beings and buddha, delusion and enlightenment." He said, "all sentient beings are allowed to live and are, from the beginning, forgiven for living their lives in this world." "...the self must readily accept the compassion of Buddha’s world." He said, "Buddha’s world" means the "Truth, or the same and one ground, or that which is beyond good and bad." So another way of wording this is "the self must readily accept the compassion of Truth or that which is beyond good and bad." Katagiri Roshi said, to readily accept Buddha’s compassion "means we must actualize Buddha’s compassion in our everyday lives. We have to live our lives in the complete realization that we are already forgiven, that we are already allowed to live..." He said, "We are already embraced....our bodies and minds are embraced by the universe." It occurred to me that if we are fundamentally forgiven, what does this say about what our attitude should be to others. Again, he said that "We have to live our lives in the...realization that we are already forgiven, that we are already allowed to live..." "....our bodies and minds are embraced by the universe" This seems like such a warm, caring, inclusive attitude for being in the world. I believe that this view goes hand-in-hand with self acceptance, with forgiving ourselves, and deep trust –that these three, self-acceptance, forgiveness and trust, mutually condition and support each other.

Perhaps in Zen practice one of the greatest leaps of faith is the willingness to let go of thought, including our story; and letting go of our story is a fundamental form of renunciation. Once someone described the story-line as the story of me, starring me, directed by me, told by me... and heard by me. When I get involved in telling myself a detailed description of something I did or was involved in, and when I "come to" and realize what I am doing, it just seems so strange to be telling myself what happened – as if I weren’t there when it happened. Repeating our stories strengthens our point of view, justifies our actions, and perpetuates our pain. I think to some extent, to let go of our story is, to let go of the self. One way of defining the self is, our personal, organizing principle that structures how we do what we do; and I think the self also projects something like an organizing structure and power onto the universe, including that which gives meaning to our lives, and that this is what we tend to interpret as "God." When we practice zazen, the more we are able to settle into this body and mind, the more we are able to trust; and the stronger our trust becomes, the more we can feel where we hold back, how we try to protect and defend the identity that we have created. The 9th precept in Zen concerns vengeful anger and it is characterized by contriving reality for the self. And the problem of the self and what happened to it, what it likes and doesn’t like and why, normally is a big part of our mental world.

One of the tangible forms our faith takes is sitting zazen. What allows us to settle into this experience, into this moment fully is to let go of our explanations and interpretations, just sitting here with the unknown. To do this, we need to let go of any expectations and hopes of what our zazen will do for us. This is a radical letting go of any ideas we may have about the results of our efforts. Faith or trust is what allows us to let go, to drop anything outside this present moment. During zazen this means mentally letting go of our strategies, plans, and even our orientation in time and space. It means physically letting go of muscular or psychological holding or tension. We sit facing the wall which, I think, gives us freedom to unfold, deeply unfold, and meet the unknown within ourselves. One way to begin is to relax physically, letting go of any kind of facial expression or holding of the muscles in the face; let it all drop away. Let the gaze of your eyes soften, without trying to focus on anything. We are sitting here with the fundamental ground of being – actually, sitting is the most fundamental element of being, which is much more essential than the story of the "self." During zazen when any kind of any tension or holding comes up in your body, try to let it go. If that doesn’t work, instead try to relax or settle into the holding as a way to learn more about it. A helpful attitude might be, "How do ‘I’ do ‘me’...How do ‘I’ do ‘me’ in such a way that needs this holding?" Or, "What would happen if I didn’t hold right here?" – wherever that is in your body or mind.

I’m reminded of the koan, "Stepping from the Top of the Hundred-Foot Pole" which is very simple, "One day Master Sekiso said, ‘How do you step forward from the top of a hundred-foot pole?’ Another master commented, "Even though one who is sitting on top of a hundred-foot pole has entered the Way, or has entered realization, it is not yet genuine. Take a step from the top of the pole and the world of the Ten Directions is your total body.’"

"Sitting on top of a hundred-foot pole" refers to realization, or enlightenment, or emptiness. The point of this story is not to get stuck in emptiness – not to be attached to enlightenment. Realization is a direct experience of living reality... a kind of gift; but if we hold on to it, it stops being alive and instead becomes a theory, a memory. Stepping forward from the pole refers to letting go and staying in the present with whatever this moment brings. In the book, not always so, Suzuki Roshi referred to this koan saying, "If (one) stays at the top, he is not the enlightened one. When he jumps off the top of the pole, he may be the enlightened one..." Then he said, "Actually there is no top of the pole. The pole continues forever, so you cannot stop there.""And even though you try to stop at the top of the pole, you cannot stay there because it is growing continuously." "To forget about the top of the pole is to be where you are right now....not to be in the past or the future, but to be right here." He said, "This is shikantaza."

Shikantaza, or just sitting, is the complete, unambivalent willingness to just sit, letting go of layer upon layer of grasping, both physically and mentally. This tension or grasping can take the form of trying to maintain our personality, as well as anything that goes into putting together what we think is expected of us. When you sit, relax that expectation "muscle." Uchiyama Roshi expresses this as opening the hand of thought.

In this endeavor of just sitting, in the midst of uprightness, we don’t do anything, we don’t even breathe. So, we don’t interfere or try to make anything happen – we allow breathing to happen the way it wants to happen.

We just sit, laying down anything that interferes with this. This can be a profound allowing of the self to rest, just rest. I think, especially when we begin practicing zazen, we need to trust that everything we let go of will be there at the end of zazen, when we need it. Our memory will return, we will know how to start our car and find our way home. It may sound silly, but in the beginning I think there is a fear that if we let go too much, "we" or "I" may not return. Maybe we will forget how to be who we are, or who people remember us being. When we sit, we give thinking back to thought, we give memories back to memory, trusting and entrusting our being to the unknown, to the universe which is supporting and embracing us.

One of my high school math teachers told us about a theorem, the premise of which was that it is impossible to leave the room – because no matter how close we get to the door, there is still some space between us and the doorway, and that distance can be divided in half ... endlessly. So the space in the room is infinite and because of that, we can never leave it. But, we have left the room many times – achieving the "impossible." At some point, we just do it. We ignore theories about life and we live. When you sit, if you have a hard time letting go of tracking what’s going on, or letting go of thinking in general, don’t worry. Accept whatever your experience is, as part of the universe.

Katagiri Roshi said, "Right faith is not waiting until we understand something and then doing it; faith is to do something even though our consciousness tells us we don’t have faith, even though we don’t know what right faith is. Right faith is to do something because it is exactly the total manifestation of the ultimate nature of existence." He said, "We have to get out of this small well .... even if it is only once..."

In our everyday activity, letting go of thinking, or our story-line, is very close to letting go of self-consciousness, which isn’t so easy since most of us are strongly conditioned to be aware of how we are being seen by others. We feel judged for our size, our clothes, our athletic ability, attractiveness, grooming, intelligence, competence, personality, humor and so on. Sometimes we carry around the painful attitude, "How am I doing?" "Am I worthy, do I fit in, am I really acceptable?" In practice, we try to let go of self-consciousness by inhabiting our bodies. Strangely enough, connecting with our physical presence unifies our body and mind, it closes the mental gap that creates our sense of separation from others.

Zen Master Dogen used the phrase, "our whole faith-like body" or "our whole vow-like body." Katagiri Roshi said this "means your whole body and mind are exactly faith." Or we could say exactly vow. He said, "You cannot discriminate between you and faith, you and zazen." "Faith means tranquility, and complete tranquility is the source of ... our existence." "Faith in Buddhism is to trust perfect tranquility [or imperturbability], which is to trust something greater than just our conceptualization." "...this tranquility comes up just like spring water from the earth because we already have it underground, regardless of whether we are conscious of it or not." When we say, "In faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha’s Way," we enter life based on vow, reconnecting with this deep spring; without seeing it or hearing it, still we reconnect with it.