Shitou's Harmony of Difference and Equality--The Background

By: Bob Zeglovitch

This Friday at JSU we will begin a long and slow process of unpacking, at some level, the meaning of the Harmony of Difference and Equality (“Harmony”), a seminal Chan teaching poem that is recited regularly in Soto Zen temples around the world. The authorship of Harmony is attributed to Shitou Xigian (700-790). All existing branches of Zen throughout the world are said to descend either from Shitou or from his contemporary Mazu Daoyi. Shitou was a student of Dajian Huineng, the illiterate and legendary “Sixth Ancestor” in China. See the blog entry dated September 21, 2023 and titled “Fukanzazengi: No Dust, No Mirror” for a description of the famous but likely apocryphal poetry contest that is recounted in the Soto Zen tradition as the basis for Huineng’s dharma transmission. After Huineng’s death, Shitou became a student of Huineng’s successor, Qingyuan Xingsi.

The title of Harmony is the same as that of a 2nd-century Taoist text on alchemy by the poet Wei Po Yang. This text detailed esoteric practices that were supposed to enable one to gain immortality or to become a deity. It was obviously still a recognized text in Shitou’s time, and we can see his borrowing of the title as part of the process through which Indian Buddhism mingled with Taoist understandings to form a new and culturally responsive form. Chan Master Sheng Yen (1931-2009) notes that when Buddhism came to China, Sakyamuni Buddha was given a Taoist name—-The Perfectly Enlightened Highest Deity—in order to form a connection between Buddhist teaching and Taoist tradition. Shitou was therefore drawing a metaphoric connection between becoming a deity and becoming a Buddha. Sheng Yen also notes that there is an allusion within the title of Harmony to becoming a buddha through meditation, which bears some similarities to Taoist practices.

The title of this poem in Japanese is Sandokai. Harmony of Difference and Equality is only one of many English translations. Some others include: Merging of Difference and Unity; Harmony of Difference and Sameness; Identity of Relative and Absolute; Agreement of Difference and Unity; and Inquiry Into Matching Halves.

At the risk of enormous oversimplification, Harmony delves into the relationship between the ultimate empty, boundless and wondrously unfathomable nature of reality on the one hand, and the particular and relative form world that is familiar to us on the other.

Our effort to better understand the meaning of the Harmony will be undertaken with the utmost humility. In this connection, Chan master Sheng Yen, who was a renowned scholar and practitioner, noted in his commentary on Harmony that it is a difficult work, and that since he was not Shitou, he was sure that he had not fully and clearly explained the poem. We will be using helpful commentary by Shohaku Okumura, a highly regarded Soto Zen teacher and scholar, from the book Living By Vow. Other excellent resources on this poem are Sheng Yen’s The Infinite Mirror and Suzuki Roshi’s Branching Streams Flow In the Darkness.

Introducing the Heart Sutra

By: Bob Zeglovitch

This morning, we began to chant the Heart Sutra as part of our regular practice, adding it to the Harmony of Difference and Equality which we have chanted regularly for several years. The Heart Sutra is the most recited and copied sutra in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, and is central in Zen liturgy. It dates to approximately 350 CE and originated in northern India, although its precise origins remain somewhat obscure. The short text is one of approximately 38 sutras in what are known as the Prajna Paramita sutras (the sutras of Transcendent Wisdom). These are core early texts in the Mahayana tradition, which centers around the teaching of emptiness and the bodhisattva ideal. The bodhisattva ideal was a response to the model of the arhat (person who has attained full enlightenment) prevalent in early Buddhism, in which the practitioner gained individual liberation. In the bodhisattva tradition, the practitioner works for the liberation of all beings.

The doctrine of emptiness (in the translation we are using this term is called boundlessness) was a philosophical response to the Abhidharma tradition in Buddhism. Abhidharma is an umbrella term for a number of systems that were developed to categorize what was understood to constitute the types of conscious experience in terms of various factors and relationships—called the “dharmas”. In a sense, the dharmas could be likened to the building blocks of our experience in the phenomenal world, appearing and disappearing rapidly and in an infinitely complex web of relationships and causal chains. At least some Buddhist schools held that these dharmas constituted actual fundamental and indivisible elements of reality. Nevertheless, because of their radically impermanent and complex nature, they were consistent with an understanding of not-self, or anatta. Under this approach, the understanding was that there was no ego, body or mind behind a collection of impermanent elements. The Mahayana tradition represented a radical break from this rationalistic approach, and held that all dharmas, all phenomena, are empty of intrinsic existence and nature.

The Soto Zen teacher Shohaku Okumura describes emptiness in this way: “Even the fundamental elements are empty. This means that eye, ear, nose and tongue don’t function separately, buy only as a whole. They are all connected with each other. That is one meaning of emptiness. Nothing can exist as an independent entity and everything functions as part of a larger system. This perspective is called nondiscrimination mind or nondiscrimination wisdom.

In the Heart Sutra, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara is addressing Shariputra and expounding on emptiness. Avalokiteshvara is the Bodhisattva of compassion—named Kuan Yin in China and Kannon or Kanzeon in Japan, male in India and female in China, Japan, Korea and Tibet. A translation which encompasses several meanings of the name is “the lord who beholds the doings of the phenomenal world and hears its cries of compassion.” Avalokiteshvara has a thousand arms and an eye in the palm of each hand, through which she is able to help all those in need, in a skillful manner appropriate to the individual situation.

Shariputra was one of the two principle disciples of the Buddha, and was known as the “Marshall of the Dhamma”, renowned for his ability to understand and teach the dharma, including the understanding of anatta or not self. Although scholars date the beginnings of the Abhidharma schools to a couple of hundred years after the Buddha, the Theravadin school maintains that the Buddha taught the Abhidharma to Shariputra, who was the founder of this scholastic approach based on the categories of “dharmas.” His appearance as the listener in this text therefore makes rhetorical sense, since he is being instructed by the Bodhisattva of compassion on the teachings of emptiness that go beyond the Abhidharma understanding.

There is another character that appears at various places in the sutra—Prajnaparamita. In the Kaz Tanahashi/Joan Halifax translation that we are using this appears simply as “wisdom beyond wisdom.” While it is accurately represented as describing the highest form of wisdom or the perfection of wisdom, it is also personified in Mahayana cosmology as “the mother of all buddhas.” In Mu Soeng’s excellent book The Heart of the Universe: Exploring the Heart Sutra, he states, “if we interpret the mother as a source from which all things are born, we will understand the wisdom of shunyata or emptiness as the source of liberation for all buddhas and bodhisattvas.”

The chant ends with the mantra, Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha! Gate, Gate means “gone, gone.” Paragate means “gone beyond.” Parasamgate means “gone completely beyond—to the other shore of samsara, the sea of suffering.” Bodhi means “the Awakened Mind.” Svaha is the Sanskrit word for homage or proclamation. Mu Soeng renders the complete mantra as follows: “Homage to the Awakend Mind which has gone over to the other shore.” He notes that the critical word is “beyond”, which can also be translated as “transcendent”. The other shore is a reference to the nirvanic realm, a place of ease and tranquility, refuge and safety. However, in Zen the understanding is that nirvana is to be found within samsara.

There is much more, of course, that could be said about this essential and dense sutra, but hopefully this provides some basic orientation. Mu Soeng’s book is excellent for a deeper dive, as is The Heart Sutra by Red Pine.

Our Genjo(koan) Sangha

By: Bob Zeglovitch

Shohaku Okumura translates the character for "Gen" in Eihei Dogen’s Genjokoan as "to appear", "to be in the present moment", and "to show up"!  So, the Just Show Up Zen Sangha name has this wonderful affinity with the title of this classic Soto Zen text.  ("Jo" means "to become", "to complete," or "to accomplish"--so Genjo as a compound means "to manifest,", "to actualize," or "to appear and become."). The complex and multifaceted meaning of “koan” is saved for another day.

To "Study" the Buddha Way is to Study the Self

By: Bob Zeglovitch

At our last session, we looked some at what it means to be a student of the dharma. One of our jumping off places was the famous line In Dogen’s Genjokoan (often translated as Actualizing the Fundamental Point), “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self.” Shohaku Okumura, in his book Realizing Genjokoan, unpacks the meaning of “study”, in part through his translations of the Japanese word and Chinese character.

The Japanese word translated as “study” is “narau,” which originates from the word “nareru,” which means: “to get accustomed to”, “to become familiar with”, “to get used to”, “to become intimate with.”  Study is therefore much more than just the intellectual investigation of a subject, although it can certainly include that.

In the Chinese character, the upper part is a symbol for the wings of a bird and the lower part means “self.”  So, it points to studying something in the way a baby bird “studies” flying with its parents.  The baby bird possesses the potential to fly, but must watch its parents to learn how to actually perform the action of flying.  The baby watches and tries until can fly.  This is the meaning of study as in “to study the self.” 

Okumura also points out that when we truly practice or study the Self, there is no separation between I, self, Buddha Way, study and practice. When we practice the self, I is the self and there is no I apart from the activity of studying. Subject, object, and activity are all completely one thing. However, he kindly acknowledges that to speak, we must use concepts and language and say “I study the self,” or “I study the Buddha Way.”

The entire verse from Genjokoan reads:

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self.

To study the Self is to forget the self.

To forget the self is to be verified by all things.

To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of others drop off.

There is a trace of realization that cannot be grasped.

We endlessly express the ungraspable trace of realization.