Shinjin Gakudō

The necessity of practice

The Way of the Buddha: wishing to do without it is impossible. To seek to distance oneself from it through non-learning is to distance oneself further still. The great Chan master Nanyue Dahui said: "It is not true that practice and awakening are absent — simply, they cannot be defiled." If one does not study the Way of the Buddha, one immediately falls into the way of non-Buddhists or of the icchantika. This is why all buddhas, past and future, necessarily practice the Way of the Buddha.

The two modes of study

Studying the Way of the Buddha — there are provisionally two aspects. Namely: studying with the mind, and studying with the body. Studying with the mind means studying with all possible minds, in their totality.

Walls and rubble — the mind of the ancient buddhas

What is called "the mind of the ancient buddhas": there was a time when a monk asked the national master Dazheng: "What then is the mind of the ancient buddhas?" The national master replied: "Walls and rubble (shōheki garetsu)."

One must know this: the mind of the ancient buddhas is not walls and rubble — and yet it is not the case either that walls and rubble are called the mind of the ancient buddhas. It is in this way that the mind of the ancient buddhas must be studied.

The ordinary mind

What is called "the ordinary mind" (byōjō shin): without distinguishing this world from the other world, it is the ordinary mind as it is. Yesterday, one departed from here. Today, one has arrived from here.

Studying the Way with the body

Studying the Way with the body (shin gakudō) means studying the Way through the body. It is the study of the Way by the mass of living red flesh. The body comes from the study of the Way — and what comes from the study of the Way is, itself, entirely body.

The entire expanse of the ten directions: this is the true body of the real person (shinno jintai, 眞實人體). Birth, death, going, coming — this is the true body of the real person.

Birth-and-death is the true body

To say that birth, death, going, coming are the true body of the real person: certainly, birth-and-death is the flux-and-return of the ordinary being — but it is also that from which the great sage has liberated himself.

Birth resembles the juniper tree (hakujushi). Death resembles the iron man. This birth-and-death, and the view one has of it — where then would we wish to place them?

Full function — according to Yuanwu

The Chan master Yuanwu said:

Birth? Full function manifests.
Death? Full function manifests.
It fills and presses against the great void.
The naked heart — always in luminous fragments.

(Zenki gen, 全機現: the integral unfolding of all reality, without withholding. The "naked heart always in luminous fragments" (shakushin tsune ni henhen): not broken, but irreducibly particular, alive, present at every moment.)