Zen and Nonduality — Kazuaki Tanahashi

uh i am a student of the master dogen 13th century japanese monk who brought then teaching from china to japan and then started the monastic tradition in japan and then later it is called soto school so one of the two major schools of zen along with rinzai i've been translating his work for more than 50 years so publishing some books starting with moon nina dew drop and recently treachery of the true dharma eye his life work so dogen's teaching is i think any kind of zen teaching is a came from the chinese taoist but also buddhist tradition which came from india which also started from vedic tradition along with traditions in buddhism and hinduism and so yes non-duality is an important most basic part of his teaching and dogen especially is very clear about um inseparableness of practice and then enlightenment so he has a concept of circle of the way which is in every moment of our practice we experience four elements aspiration for enlightenment practice enlightenment and nirvana nirvana can mean many things according to different teachers different traditions but for dogen it means non-dual experience so his idea is that each moment we experience aspiration practice enlightenment unknown deal experience so that's good news every moment of our practice is uh enlightenment bad news is that we usually are not aware of it and then think about pains or sleepiness or thinking of some other things and then think that we we had a bad meditation experience but dogen never talks about uh bad meditation bad jazzy for him every moment when we take a form of an awakened one and then practice that is full awakening so according to dogan's teaching in meditation the distinction between large and small others and then self momentariness and timelessness life and death becomes rather obscure and insignificant and that is non-dual experience i i myself feel that dualism that means thing uh to see things as two two means many i guess you know um and non-dualism to see things not separate or maybe one there's some kind of a huge difference between one and the not separate but not separate it's one in a way arguably so i like to call this um kind of dualism and non-dualism polar pluralism because we are talking about dualism as kind of seeing things many so plural realism may be more accurate and then non-dualism singular reason but maybe with all respect non-dualism is fine you have this confidence well the uh reality is uh maybe uh is whole and then but our consciousness we we divide them and then we that's how we function every day language and then intellect is by nature dualistic we experience our normal experiences dualistic so there is certainly duality and then there is through this dualistic thinking we we experience non-derivative they may not be separate and they cannot be separated but we separate them so there is separation we cannot deny separation the circle in the zen tradition represents completeness of each moment we could say enlightenment represents enlightenment or represent maybe the wholeness of experience maybe you call it non-duality or singularism but i think it's more kind of direct you know just drawing a circle in the air or doing a circle on the paper with the brush and ink and it's an experience of going beyond intellectual divisions you know and because it does not depend upon language you can maybe communicate more directory kind of bypassing intellect so i think viewing the uh zen circle called the enso meaning circle simple um is a kind of very demanding experience because there is no explanation so you need to um live with it yesterday um we did this um drawing zen circle workshop here at the conference and so i asked everyone to draw circles on their own and then explain maybe what they think about circles so such a kind of diverse view of circles and then different ways of creating circles and then i asked them to draw a zen circle which is done decisively just once not going back and correcting and just one so it's a simple exercise and in a way it's not so creative because just drawing a circle about the same size as everything else so it's a drawing zen circle it's yesterday i sort of discovered that it's a creative experience without using creativity yeah this freedom is a kind of enigma um the deep maybe deepest part of freedom it's not like uh okay you um you you draw in your in the way you like you know many or different uh colors different shapes um but just maybe you do it just once maybe with the same size and then you uh do it decisively of course you can try many times so there is a restriction you don't have to think about okay how thick how big what color how fast how to improve you don't have to think about it you just do it and then that's what you have that what you you have created that you what you see your experience a complete experience of that moment and that is freedom and then in a way this freedom is comes from all the restrictions you know the size color and then not being able to correct later but somehow it's free and i think you know the meditation experience is something like that you sit without moving and being still quiet and not thinking of projects or problems but you kind of sit still and then we become free and this freedom comes from restrictions sitting in one place fairly straight up without moving so we are just confined it's almost like we are in prison but there is some kind of deep sense of freedom well i think each moment is practice but somebody has to make it and each moment of practice is complete but somebody has to make it complete there needs to be a conscious effort to live each moment fully and i think and then freedom free of thinking free of intellectual investigations just kind of go beyond thinking and even go beyond pursuing but also you are pursuing too because you are consciously sitting still and straight up so yeah and then always there's a kind of question if everyone is already enlightened why do we have to practice and that's a good dilemma but maybe the zen is that practice is enlightenment but enlightenment is practice also so you need to have an endeavor and this freedom makes us kind of enjoyable in life and then uh humorous too you know there's always some humor and paradox i think the you know among uh different schools of buddhism maybe the uniqueness of zen is paradox to view everything as paradox so and paradox is sometimes funny you know like okay hunting dog is running around the forest but if you put it upside down and then say the forest is running around the hunting dog that is funny right but in a way that both are true we uh normally see only one one way but there is always the other way so when we hear about zen uh teacher saying mountain walks mountain floors on the water it's strange and then weird but in a way it's true i mean there's always uh the truth on the other side and then in a way being free from the normal conception uh we can see the other side which is often strange and funny so i'm an artist so um i like to uh do things differently and say things differently so if you excuse me that's sort of um what usually artists do so um traditionally this zen circle is done by a gym master usually a male the master and then with black ink on white paper then i thought well why not colors in fact i was asked by zen hospice uh in san francisco to put some circle thinkings and then i thought well maybe black circle is not really cheerful for people who are in the process of dying so why not using colors so i started using multi colors sometimes like red and orange with some gold i like to put gold which is my signature color and why so because i live in california so i you know i i feel that we live in this very diverse society you know so uh different colors seems right you know and then so i did the rainbow circle rainbow colors which became a symbol for our diversity practice at san francisco so and then i really enjoy creating um circles and then often people ask me to let them use as their logos and book covers and so forth so uh about a month ago maybe two weeks ago in antwerp i had a workshop and then showed people how to do this multicolored circle and then i told them well somebody invented the wheel we don't know who but but i invented the circle yeah of course it's a silly joke but anyway i think uh maybe first time i think people were maybe a few people who are kind of against the traditional things so you know just say i don't like it in this multi-color circle and then i said don't worry i live in california sorry i can give it to you and then one of the teachers said beyond my corpse something like that maybe if you push i will be dead or something like that that's what he said um but not so much people like i think multicolor circles that are in many zen centers i recently wrote a book the heart sutra a comprehensive guide to the classic of mahayana buddhism which is coming from shambhala publications next year and then i talk about the inspiration of the sutra and then i'm addressing that the sutra really presents this maybe experience of non-duality no eyes no ears and kind of denying everything you know um and um john halifax and i re-translated the heart sutra usually it so it sounds so negative and realistic all the negations and we kind of try to make it more positive you know the hat sutra is a positive experience of going beyond duality to me so uh more like use the word beyond or freedom from so i'll be presenting this new translation and then the heart sutra in my view mostly focus on this non-duality singularity however it also if you read it carefully it really talks about being free from singularity free from non-duality and free from actually duality and non-duality which was you are talking about so what what is it you know what is uh freedom from um singularity and non-duality and i think we need uh singularity and fluority we need plurality we need ethics boundaries you know distinctions which is better which is correct which is more just we we need in our daily lives definitely plural views and then on the other hand if we are stuck to this we are limited we become just us and then other others are not important so we need singularity so often it is thought as okay maybe take one step that is fluidity another step you go beyond and it's singularity and then if you uh it's like a dance if you misstep it creates a problem real you know boundaries are uh violated and what kind of mistakes happen so this distinction is very important you know when we become one and we when we become separate it's very important so the dance is in a way not easy you know because often we misstep so ideally we become so familiar with it you know maybe boundaries we don't have to worry about it because we don't violate and we become free from boundaries it's not that we violate boundary and become free but we just become free because we don't kind of think of violating and then the maybe singularity and plurality kind of dancing gracefully and freely and then they are not separate they are not in opposition and i think that is the maybe uh what we need to experience and then that is the lessons we can draw from the heart sutra