How do you think not thinking? Just think. Barry Magid March 7^th 2015

Dogen picks up this story in his own instructions for recommending zazen to everyone who came to Eihei, when he says, Just think non-thinking. It’s a phrase that people stumble over and find esoteric or confusing, and in this talk, he tries to clarify it by saying what it’s not. “Specifically in recent years, foolish people say the practice of zazen is to keep our minds free of thoughts. Once that is accomplished, we attain the highest state.”

So what he really wants to say is not-thinking is not a matter of keeping the mind free of thought. So what is it? Years ago, three decades ago, when I first came upon Dogen, it was Francis Cook’s translation of How to Raise an Ox, and I thought at the time that it was a marvelous introduction to Dogen. Some years back, when Wisdom was going to reprint the book, they asked me for a blurb for it. I thought I’d go back and take a look again, and I recommended it and it turns out Cooke translated it as saying, how do you think non-thinking, and Dogen said, Don’t think. I was surprised that he had done that. I went back to the editor and said, This gives people the wrong idea. He has to change that back to non-thinking, and he did.

However, now if I was going to be asked that again, I would translate it as Just think. And I would do that to keep it parallel with the notion of Just sit, which is also not a simple phrase, although we mistake it for one. Just sitting is shikantaza, and we associate it with our Soto Zen practice as the basic form or method of what we do. Yet recently it was pointed out by a group of Dogen scholars, that Dogen never uses the word shikantaza when he describes how to sit. He never uses the word at all himself, actually. The only time the word shikantaza appears in Shobogenzo is when he’s quoting his own teacher, Riujing.

Here’s an example of that: “The Abbot Ruijing said, studying Zen is body and mind dropped off. Make no use of burning incense, repentances or sutra reading. Just sit, and that is all. Dogen respectfully inquired: What is body and mind dropped off? The Abbott said, Body and mind dropped off is seated meditation. When one just sits in meditation, one is separated from the five desires and rid of the five instructions.” So when one just sits, this is not obviously a matter of posture or breathing or concentration. There’s something about just sitting that is synonymous with realization, and sitting itself, the dropping off of body and mind, is the presentation of buddhahood.

In this Zazenchen section, a little further on, Dogen talks about the story of Basso and Nangaku. That’s the famous story of Basso sitting and sitting and not practicing. Why are you sitting so intensely? And Basso says, In order to become a buddha, and then we get the famous story of Nangaku sitting down and polishing the tile. What are you doing polishing the tile? I want to make a mirror out of it. You can’t make a mirror out of a tile by polishing it. How can you make a buddha by sitting?

Dogen zeroes in on this question of What is the purpose of doing zazen? He asks Nangaku: Are you expecting to make progress with zazen? Is there some other intention besides zazen? When you do zazen what is the intention? What is being actualized? Such points must be considered in great detail.

All of this is trying to clarify just sitting not as a means to an end like polishing a tile to become a buddha, but an expression of buddhahood. When we talk about just sitting, we’re not talking about anything that has to do with technique, such as sitting with a koan or counting your breath. That “just” is about seeing sitting as empty of intention or anything outside of itself.

We need to be able to go back to this first section, when he says Think non-thinking. I would say, Just think. Put it up next to Just sit. Our thinking is not something that is contaminating our mind. It’s not something we’re trying to get rid of. We’re letting it be there empty of intention. We’re letting thought just be thought, not something that we have to do anything about.

I thought of this also today in the context of our doing oryoki lunch, because you can get asked, why do we do oryoki? There’s a level at which you could imagine answering: We do it in order to practice concentration and meticulousness and the care of things. But that would make oryoki something again that we could do well or badly, and there’s no question we can see people doing it at that level, right? But we don’t do it in order to get good at it.

However, it is expressive and performative, like our zazen itself. In a sense, we allow ourselves to be expressed in our oryoki. We put ourselves on display, and it’s like our mind being on display. Some of our minds are a little messier than others. But the goal is not to have all the messy minds suddenly be neat and orderly. We do not need oryoki to be perfectly performed and choreographed any more than we need to have our minds be absolutely silent and calm and occasionally just full of compassionate thoughts.

We’re not aiming for meticulous or pure content or perfect performance. In a sense we’re allowing ourselves to simply put ourselves out there, very literally with oryoki, and tolerate it, to do it without judgment and comparison and intention and goals. At the same time we’re trying to get everything correct, the same way as we sit in the zendo we sit without moving or fidgeting or making distractions for other people. This word “Just”: just sitting, just thinking, just doing oryoki, is allowing each thing to be just what it is and to allow it to be a vehicle by which we express ourselves moment after moment, and when we express ourselves, we express the dharma.