Dont be a jerk, p.17
Don't Be a Jerk, page 17
I wasn’t hallucinating. It wasn’t as if I heard human voices in the sound of the stream. It still sounded like a stream. And yet the sounds the stream was making had a depth of meaning that surpassed anything any sutra chanted by mere human voices could have equaled.
In this piece Dōgen says, “I suspect that Joso’s words hadn’t stopped echoing but were mixed into the sounds of the river valley.” This just means that So Toba might not have noticed that the stream was chanting sutras if his teacher had not previously told him about how nature preaches the dharma. Yet just because he’d heard the principle before doesn’t mean that So didn’t authentically hear it for himself.
This is one of the values of a teacher. One of the most important ideas in all of Buddhism is the idea of “original enlightenment.” We are all intrinsically enlightened, whether or not we are aware of it. What is often called “kensho” or “satori” or an “enlightenment experience” is not the introduction of a novel event into our otherwise mundane lives. Rather, it is the momentary recognition of our actual state from “before our parents were born,” to paraphrase Isan’s question to Kyogen from the story Dōgen tells in this chapter.
The phrase “before our parents were born” sounds pretty weird. I remember seeing some kind of a Christian book for kids when I was a child. It had a drawing of angels waiting to be born to human parents. I later learned that a lot of Christians hotly dispute this idea, saying the soul is formed at conception. But in any case, the first time I heard that phrase my mind flashed back to that image. In many Buddhist societies there’s a belief in reincarnation or of an endless cycle of births and deaths. So they too have an idea of an existence before our parents were born.
But that’s not what this phrase is pointing to. Rather, it’s referring to our most genuine, original nature, completely unadorned and indefinable. It’s so ancient and basic that it is you before you were even you. That probably sounds pretty bizarre. But just keep it in your back pocket for the time being.
We all have this original nature. We are this original nature. But we might miss it if someone didn’t point it out to us. It’s ironic that this should be so. You’d think that if it was something that had been there all along you wouldn’t need anyone to help you discover it. But in actual practice that’s not the case.
In fact, within the Zen tradition there is a strong belief that no one ever gets this without some help, not even Buddha himself. The lineage of ancestors we chant in Zen temples includes six names that come before that of Shakyamuni Buddha to emphasize the belief that even the founder of our tradition had a teacher and that his teacher also had a teacher, and so on. These names are, of course, drawn from mythology rather than history. But still, the point they’re intended to emphasize is important. You need a teacher.
Our friend Mr. So had to hear his teacher’s words before he could experience the sound of the river chanting sutras for himself, and so did I. So will you.
Just after this story we get another story that explains why Zen teachers are always so frustratingly vague. Isan says to his student Kyogen, “I could tell you all kinds of things. But if I did you’d bear a grudge against me later.” When Kyogen hears the pebble hitting the bamboo and suddenly gets it, he thanks his teacher for not answering his questions about original enlightenment. If his teacher Isan had filled Kyogen with too many stories of his own experiences, Kyogen would not have been able to truly experience his unique understanding because he’d have been too busy looking for his teacher’s truth.
Dōgen then kind of shifts gears and moves into a discussion about people who get into Buddhist practice just to become famous. This seems to be a perennial problem with anything religious or spiritual. There’s always a certain amount of fame to be attained by playing the role of the “enlightened master.” In America and Europe we see all kinds of spiritual celebrities selling themselves to the masses as their saviors. This sort of thing is nothing new. It was going on in Dōgen’s day too and for thousands of years before his time.
Dōgen spends a lot more time on this than I have indicated in my paraphrasing of this chapter. My guess is that in Japan during Dōgen’s time there must have been a lot of guys setting themselves up as Buddhist masters in order to get close to the seat of political power. Dōgen must have thought there was a danger of some of his students going down this dark road.
He therefore suggests making vows that we will not get caught up in such things. Although Zen Buddhism is widely regarded as the kind of philosophy in which you’d never find anyone praying, these vows sound a lot like prayers. Dōgen advises us to ask for assistance from the Buddhist ancestors, from people who have been dead a very long time.
But this doesn’t mean we are praying to the spirits of these dead guys to reach down from heaven and help us. Rather, we make a vow to learn from their examples and follow in their footsteps. Whether or not they are hanging out in the Buddha World listening to us invoking their names is irrelevant. We can still learn from them just by knowing what they did in the past.
Finally, Dōgen reminds us of the words of Master Ryuge Koton, who said, “Before their enlightenment the ancient masters were like us. After enlightenment we’ll be like the ancient masters.”
This line is part of what is known as “Eihei Dōgen’s Great Vow” (Eihei Koso Hotsuganmon). This particular part of this chapter of Shōbōgenzō is now used as part of the morning chanting liturgy in many Zen temples. They take the parts from what I’ve paraphrased as, “Although my accumulated bad actions hinder me” through the paragraph that in my version begins, “Quietly reflect on this direct understanding” and chant them during certain services as a way of renewing their own vows and taking encouragement from Dōgen’s words.
These days whenever I read these lines I can’t help but think of cold, early mornings inside the zendo at Tassajara with incense in the air and big bells ringing, and me chanting these words along with all the other poor souls who woke up way too early in the morning to attend service. As cynical as I am about things that other people gush about as being “moving,” it is sort of . . . y’know . . . moving.
It’s yet another reminder that the people who founded the Buddhist way of life were never to be regarded as anything beyond us. They weren’t superhuman saviors or sacred prophets. Nothing they attained is unavailable to anyone else who seriously wants to pursue it.
Finally, I paraphrased one line of this piece as, “It’s all about attitude. What Buddha transmitted to us is really just that, an attitude.” This is a very crucial point. The word I’m paraphrasing as “attitude” is (shōbō no shinjutsu). The first word, shōbō, is the first two characters in the word Shōbōgenzō. It means something like “correct dharma.” The word shinjutsu means “heart surgery” in modern Japanese, but in Chinese and ancient Japanese it’s usually translated as “intention.” I prefer “attitude.” The Japanese word no just means “of,” so the whole thing means “attitude of correct dharma.”
What Dōgen is trying to convey to us across the span of eight hundred years is not facts or information. He’s trying to pass along an attitude. That’s why he says again and again that it doesn’t matter how smart or dumb a person is. It doesn’t matter how many facts you’ve got in your head or how many sutras you can quote. Dōgen could quote all kinds of texts. But he still praises teachers who were illiterate and completely unschooled because they had the proper attitude.
This is why it’s very good to have an in-person teacher. Without a teacher you can still absorb all kinds of facts and learn to regurgitate quotations on command. But you might never cop the proper attitude unless you see it in action in the form of an actual human being who lives it.
*Actually he said, “A painted rice cake can’t cure hunger.” But since the painting he probably had in his mind was the kind one would see at a shop that sold sweet rice cakes as snacks, I think my version is pretty close.
16. DON’T BE A JERK
Shoaku Makusa
Not Doing Wrong
THIS IS ONE of my all-time favorite parts of Shōbōgenzō. It’s about how the Buddhist precepts have one very simple message. Don’t be a jerk. That’s pretty much all there is to it.
You officially become a Buddhist by making a vow to uphold ten precepts, which are, once again: Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t have excessive wants, don’t lie, don’t get high, don’t criticize others, don’t praise yourself and berate others, don’t be stingy, don’t give in to anger, and don’t abuse the Three Treasures, which are Buddha, dharma, and sangha. In some sects the last five are different, but the first five are common to every form of Buddhism.
That’s the set of vows you take nowadays. In the early days of the Buddhist order, there were no specific rules of conduct for monks. Whenever a dispute came up, someone would ask the Buddha his opinion. His answers were memorized by his followers and formed the first rules for the monks. By the end of his life there were hundreds of these rules, ranging from practical advice on maintaining good relations to weird stuff like whether or not it was a breach of decorum for a monk to run up a tree when being chased by an elephant (the Buddha said that it was okay).
At the end of his life, the Buddha told his fans and followers that it was important to keep the major rules but that the minor ones could be set aside. Unfortunately for the more pedantic and rule-bound of his followers, he never got around to explaining which rules were the important ones. This was left to future generations, which is how the precepts were winnowed down to just ten.
I could write a book just on the precepts. In fact, I have written a whole book just about the third precept. It’s called Sex, Sin, and Zen. But you don’t really need a lot of words explaining each precept if you get the basic idea behind all of them — don’t be a jerk.
The title of this chapter is in four Chinese characters that break down as follows (sho), meaning “various,” (aku), meaning “bad” or “wrong” or “evil,” (maku), meaning “don’t,” and (sa), meaning “do.” So the phrase I’m translating in this chapter as “don’t be a jerk” would probably be translated by a more philosophical type as “do not enact evil” or more generally as “don’t do wrong things.” Because Japanese doesn’t have true plurals, Dōgen has to add a character meaning “various” to the word “wrong” in order to make clear that he is talking about individual wrong actions rather than the more generalized concept of evil. We’ll talk about that later.
Within the text Dōgen takes this title phrase and sometimes uses it as a noun. I’ve tried to preserve that sense by hyphenating the phrase when it’s used that way (being-a-jerk) or adding -ness to the end (being-a-jerk-ness), along with a few other variations on the same idea. I hope that’s not too confusing. Take heart, though. It’s way more confusing in Japanese! Dōgen often disrespects the grammatical rules of his own language. But it does help make the point he is trying to get across here.
Ethics and morality are practical matters. People get wrapped up in the words used to describe ethical action. But being ethical is just doing what’s right and not doing what’s not right. Simple as that. Of course, sometimes it’s hard to know what’s right. That’s when we rely on the precepts.
In this chapter, Dōgen tries to indicate the basis of all ethical action. And it turns out it’s as simple as just not being a jerk.
The phrase “be a jerk” has some unfortunate connotations due to the peculiarities of the English language. I’d like to address those by indulging in a bit of Dōgen-ism before we begin. Ahem.
A jerk is not something you are. Being-a-jerk is something you do. There is no jerk outside of you being a jerk. When you cease to be a jerk, the jerk that you were when you were being a jerk vanishes instantly. I’ll let Dōgen take over from here.
The Buddha said:
Don’t be a jerk
Do the right thing
Then the mind is not irked
And the enlightened ones sing
We should consider this ancient teaching in practice. This is the real message that has been transmitted through the ages to this concrete time and place. It’s what the ten thousand Buddhas have been practicing all along.
Among rightness, wrongness, and it-doesn’t-matter-ness, there is wrongness. Wrongness is what happens at the very moment you do something wrong. It’s not an abstraction that sits around waiting to be done. It’s the same with rightness and it-doesn’t-matter-ness.
There are similarities between real wrong actions, no matter where or when they occur. And there is a big difference between right, wrong, and it-doesn’t-matter-type actions. Right and wrong are time, but time is neither right nor wrong. Right and wrong are the dharma, but the dharma is neither right nor wrong.
When you yourself are in balance, you know right from wrong absolutely. The state of enlightenment is immense and includes everything.
We hear of this supreme state from our teachers and from what we read. Right from the start it sounds like “don’t be a jerk.” If it doesn’t sound like “don’t be a jerk” it’s not Buddhist teaching.
“Don’t be a jerk” wasn’t a teaching someone intentionally invented. It existed before anyone put it into words. When we hear it, we hope that we can learn to do the right thing and not be a jerk. This is a pretty big deal. It’s on the scale of the whole of time and the entire universe. The scale of not being a jerk is in the “not being” part. Just don’t do jerklike things.
When jerk-type actions are not done by someone, jerk-type actions do not exist. Even if you live in a place where you could act like a jerk, even if you face circumstances in which you could be a jerk, even if you hang out with nothing but a bunch of jerks, the power of not doing jerk-type things conquers all.
Jerk-type action has no fixed form. It has no existence until someone does it. If we don’t act like jerks, jerk-type acts cannot exist.
You can do jerk-type things, or you can avoid doing jerk-type things. The moment you know that jerk-type action does not exist outside your own conduct, that is realization of the truth.
This is not a once-and-for-all realization. It appears dynamically, moment after moment. When enlightened people understand that not being a jerk requires not doing jerk-type things, they behave like decent people at each moment in the past, present, and future.
At every moment, no matter what we’re doing, we need to understand that not being a jerk is how someone becomes enlightened. This state has always belonged to us. Cause and effect makes us act. By not being a jerk now, you create the cause of not being a jerk in the future. Our action is not predestined, nor does it spontaneously occur.
By not being a jerk at this very moment, you enact non-jerk-ness and make it appear in the world. It’s not that you, as a regular person, are destroyed by doing the right thing, and yet you, as a regular person, have dropped away and what remains is an enlightened being.
When you look at it this way, you realize that being-a-jerk is refrained from. Aided by this understanding we can penetrate “not-being-a-jerk” and realize it decisively through Zen practice.
There is no being-a-jerk apart from what you actually do. Being-a-jerk doesn’t vanish as if it were a thing in and of itself. You just stop doing jerk-type things.
Some people think that being-a-jerk arises out of past causes and conditions but don’t see how they themselves are those causes and conditions. Those guys are pretty sad cases. The seeds of Buddhahood also come from causes and conditions. Jerk-type actions neither exist nor don’t exist. Evil doesn’t exist or not exist. It is either done or not done.
Learning this in practice is the great universal realization. You can look at it subjectively or objectively.
When you finally grasp this point, even the thought, “Oh, hell, I was a jerk back then” is just energy arising from your desire not to be a jerk again. However, to say that this realization is some kind of weird rationale for being a jerk is totally stupid.
The relationship between being-a-jerk and the not of not-being-a-jerk isn’t one of a donkey looking at a well. It’s like a well looking at a donkey, a well looking at a well, a donkey looking at a donkey, a person looking at a person, and a mountain looking at a mountain. In other words, it’s the mutual relationship of all things involved.
It is said, “The Buddha’s true body is like space; it manifests its form according to circumstances like the moon’s reflection in a pond.” That means there’s no division between subject and object. You can never doubt such instances of non-jerk-ness.
As for doing the right thing, there are all sorts of right things that can be done. But there has never been any kind of right thing that just sits around waiting for someone to do it.
The right thing never fails to appear once someone actually does it. The many kinds of right things converge like iron to a magnet, upon the place where doing them happens. Nothing can hinder them, not even all the bad things you’ve ever done in your whole life.
Different people in different places may have different ideas about what is the right thing to do. It’s the same deal with what constitutes being a jerk.
What we can recognize as right, we call right. It’s like how Buddhas preach the appropriate thing according to who they’re preaching to and according to the era in which they appear. Nevertheless, underneath it all the dharma they preach is always fundamentally the same.
It’s kind of like devotional practice and meditation practice. Though they’re different, they’re still the same thing.
Doing the right thing doesn’t arise from causes and conditions, nor does it cease due to causes and conditions. Many kinds of right action are all phenomena, even though all phenomena are not examples of right action. What is truly right is right at the beginning, right in the middle, and right in the end.
