Having completed a discussion of the Heart Sutra and being about to embark on a discussion of the Sandokai, with Suzuki Roshi’s book as our next reading, I thought in between I would take the opportunity to talk about the Four Practice Principles and the Great Vows for All.
Four Practice Principles, as I understand it, were loosely derived from the Four Noble Truths, written by Joko and some of her students as a new expression of their practice, and so some of it bears a particular stamp of her teaching in that period. It begins “Caught in a self-centered dream, only suffering.” Here, I think, the emphasis is on self-centered, where self-centered stands in primarily for separation. We’re centered on a separate idea of self as opposed to other. And this is a dream because it’s not a reality. The reality is of intrinsic non-separation, even though we imagine or dream that we are individual and separate.
The next line as they wrote it, is “Holding to self-centered thoughts, exactly the dream.” And here, the emphasis goes further into the idea of self-centered thoughts, where we can hear something about her emphasis on a practice of thought-labeling. Self-centered thoughts are exactly the dream, as we get self-preoccupied, as we believe our thoughts and focus on them. These embody and reinforce this dream of separation, and so her basic practice in those days was thought-labeling, a kind of decentering in which our focus stopped being on the content of thoughts and instead was on the activity of thinking itself.
Thought labeling involved meticulously noticing and repeating to ourselves a thought, thinking about what I’m going to have for lunch, and instead of zeroing in on bagel and cream cheese, what we’re trying to do is center it on Oh! I’m having a thought! And it happens to have such and such content, but I’m having a thought the way I’m having lunch, I’m having a pain. There’s just this thing happening, not moving back away from the content into just thinking, so thinking becomes itching and smelling and tasting and seeing and hearing, and all these things become part of a seamless ongoing present, and that present moment is neither inside or outside. It’s not about me in here thinking about something out there. It’s just thinking happening. That’s a description of the ongoing manifestation of life, of the world worlding.
I’ve deemphasized thought labeling as a practice because I think for a lot of people it became a kind of technique that they were either good or bad at, sort of always trying to do it right, to never quite getting to do it the way they’re supposed to be doing it, and I thought that was counterproductive for a lot of people, myself included. I didn’t like it after a point. And so I rewrote that second line and switched the emphasis onto this word, “dream,” and made it “waking to a dream within a dream,” taking the emphasis off the thought and putting it on, Well, if all this is a dream, what is the alternative? What does waking mean?
Now the paradox there, of waking to a dream within a dream, is that a dream is something that is insubstantial and ephemeral, fleeting. However, the content of our particular self-centered dream is of constancy and permanence, an essential separate self. We dream or imagine our separation. We dream of solidity. We dream autonomy. And so what happens when we wake up? Well, when we wake up, we see that the reality is actually more dream-like. We’re not solid, separate, autonomous individuals, but rather who and what we are is constantly changing, constantly embedded in a changing world, impermanent, interdependent, fleeting. So we wake up from this dream of permanence into a reality of impermanence, into something that is actually dream-like.
The next line, “Each moment, life as it is, the only teacher.” How do we understand that? Since I’m up here giving a talk, you’re listening, doesn’t that make me the teacher? I think, again, the essential issue is one of separation, and whether the whole relationship of student and teacher both embodies and reinforces separation and difference. Isn’t that the very thing we’re supposed to be trying to overcome, and yet by establishing these fixed categories, it seems like we’re endorsing separation. So I think that to say, “Life as it is the only teacher,” in part, was a reaction to a current tendency towards roshi-itis, a kind of prevalent mystification of the teacher as the embodiment of enlightenment, and almost a kind of qualitatively different being. And so you get, with that kind of idealized transference, projection onto the teacher, this big built-in split. It’s as bad as dog and buddha-nature, student and teacher.
So how do we overcome that? “Life as it is, the only teacher.” I probably wouldn’t say only teacher any more. I’d probably say: the ultimate teacher, the final teacher, or the ever-present teacher. Maybe ever-present is best. This life as it is is constantly manifesting the dharma, constantly manifesting impermanence and interdependence. Everything that is happening, everywhere you look, if you pay attention, impermanence and interdependence is the reality. That’s the teaching. That’s what we have to learn. But it’s on display everywhere, and truly, nothing is hidden. It’s not an esoteric teaching. You shouldn’t have to go to the mountain-top. It’s not a truth that only special enlightened people can understand or reveal. It’s when you know how to look, it’s on display all the time.
“Being just this moment, compassion’s way.” Here, I think the emphasis is on non-separation being just this moment as the complete expression of what practice is, what life is. We may think of compassion as something special and separate, a particular kind of activity that we have to train ourselves in, as if compassion was about specifically feeling or acting in a certain way. But being just this moment, is just living the life of non-separation, and we can say that when we’re non-separate, we’re not objectifying or reifying people or things, and the basic violence we do to others is to objectify them. In Martin Buber’s terms, treating them as an it, not a thou. So our basic compassionate functioning is to refrain from that objectification, that separation, and naturally respond out of that sense of non-separation, and that natural responsiveness is true compassion.
Now, let’s take a look at the Great Vows for All and see how we can put these two together. “Sentient beings are numberless. I vow to save them.” And here we’re presented with what looks like an endless or impossible task, and it’s as if we’re relied upon to do something that is going to be sisyphean, and sometimes practice is presented that way. Joko, I remember, liked telling this story of the little bird caught in a raging forest fire destroying her home and loved ones and everything she knew and grew up with, and the little bird’s response was to fly a mile away to a lake, dive into the lake and dip her wings into the lake, and then fly back to the forest fire and shake her wings so a couple of drops of water would come off into the flames, and then she’d go back to the lake for another couple of drops and shake them into the forest fire over and over again until she died of exhaustion.
So that’s a kind of picture of endless whole-hearted responsiveness, but again, if you think about the outcome, it’s sisyphean. It’s certainly the case that sometimes life throws us into a situation where that’s all we can do, but I don’t think the vow calls us only to that kind of endless exhausting activity that we must engage in until we drop. The vows also have a koan dimension. As you know, over the years I’ve tried to distinguish problems from koans. Problems have solutions, something that has to be discovered or solved. But a koan dissolves the problem, sees it in a different light. Perhaps dissolves it by becoming non-separate with it, but basically breaking down a seemingly inevitable dualism or dichotomy of some sort.
Then when we say “Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them all,” the presumption is that all these sentient beings are deluded, are in need of salvation, and I have this endless task of bringing them to awakening. But another perspective is that we remember from the Practice Principles: “Each moment life as it is, the only teacher.” Each moment, life as it is, manifests the buddha-dharma, each being just as they are is already displaying impermanence and interdependence. Paradoxically we save all beings when we stop seeing them as separate and deluded, and see them as already Buddha, as already just this. Just this.
“Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to put an end to them.” Again, delusions, we can say, are this dream of separation, of autonomy, independence. When we dream of those things, life is a constant obstacle or struggle, because life will not conform to the dream. “Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to put an end to them.” Another seemingly endless if not hopeless task – except the delusions are dreams. They’re unreal. They’re not solid things that are in our path, that have to be cleared away. They’re smoke. They’re clouds. They’re insubstantial. They drift away on their own, like all our thoughts. They come and go, They have no actual existence. Nothing has to change. We don’t have to get rid of anything at all. We just have to see them as they are and let them be.
“The dharma is boundless. I vow to master it.” Well, the dharma is this reality of impermanence and interdependence. What does it mean to master it? Are we supposed to be the master of every situation that arises in our life? What would that mean – to master every situation? Well, being just this moment. Mastery is not a matter of control. Mastery is paradoxically a matter of leaving everything just as it is. Of not resisting. Not fighting the dharma. Not fighting life as it is, but just being present, open. Now this. Now this.
“The Buddha way is unsurpassable. I vow to embody it.” Again, is this an impossible ideal? Is this something far out of reach? Attainable only by great Zen masters? Or, is the Buddha way simply what’s happening? Life at is, the Buddha way? What could you possibly do other than embody it?