When Dogen was fourteen, after having practiced in the Tendai monastery for about a year studying both Mahayana and earlier Buddhism, a deep doubt surfaced which took this form: If all people are endowed with Buddha Nature, as the sutras teach, why is it that we have to train so strenuously to realize that Buddha Nature? His teacher was unable to respond in a way that satisfied his question, and Dogen was referred to Master Eisai, a Rinzai Zen teacher. Rinzai Zen became established in Japan with Eisai’s return from practicing in China in 1187. Before that several Japanese monks traveled to China and practiced Rinzai Zen, but when they returned they were not able to establish a lineage, so Zen practice disappeared when they died.

Dogen brought his question to Eisai, "If all people are endowed with Buddha Nature, why do we have to train so strenuously to realize it?" Eisai answered, "All Buddhas in the three times are unaware that they are endowed with the Buddha Nature, but cats and oxen are well aware of it indeed!" This is taken to mean that the Buddhas, precisely because they are Buddhas, no longer think of having or not having Buddha Nature, that only the animal-like or grossly deluded think in terms [of acquiring enlightenment]. Upon hearing this, Dogen had his first realization and decided to stay and become Eisai’s disciple; but, unfortunately, Eisai died the following year. This was accepted as history until recently; but more recent scholarship hasn’t been able to confirm whether or not Dogen actually met Eisai. However, about this time Dogen did begin studying with Eisai’s disciple Myozen which he did for nine years, until they both decided to make the dangerous trip to China, when Dogen was twenty-three, seeking a mature teacher.

After arriving in China, Dogen traveled and practiced in several monasteries with different teachers before finding Ru Jing, or Tendo Nyojo, who was to be his main teacher. According to Dogen’s diary, one morning when Ru Jing was circumambulating the zendo, doing the morning greeting at the beginning of zazen, he found a monk dozing. Dogen heard Ru Jing scolding the dozing monk, "The practice of zazen is the dropping away of body and mind. What do you expect to accomplish by dozing?" We don’t know if Ru Jing was aware of the ripeness of Dogen’s mind and was deliberately trying stimulate his realization. I’ve heard that when Suzuki Roshi wanted to correct or point something out to one student, that sometimes he would say something to a nearby person instead. But in any case, when Dogen heard this, he had a realization and went to Ru Jing’s room and offered incense and bowed. When Ru Jing asked why he was doing this, Dogen said, "Body and mind have been dropped, that is why I have come!" Ru Jing approved saying, "Body and mind have been dropped; you have dropped body and mind!" But Dogen, maybe thinking that Ru Jing was being too agreeable said, "Don’t give me your sanction so readily" And Ru Jing said, "I am not sanctioning you so readily."

I find this role reversal, of Dogen, at age twenty-four or twenty-five, scolding his elderly, eminent Chinese teacher for not being strict enough...strange. It makes me suspicious about whether this actually happened or happened like this. But according to Dogen’s account, Dogen then said, "Show me that you are not sanctioning me too readily." And Ru Jing approving Dogen’s realization said, "This is body and mind dropped." Whereupon Dogen bowed again. Ru Jing added, "That is dropping dropped."

In Buddhist practice, not only do we drop our delusions, we also let go of our realizations, leaving us with no place to get stuck or with anything to attach to, so no trace of realization is left. Sometimes when people are immature in their practice and they experience an early or partial realization, they feel pride with their realization that is referred to as the stink of realization or the stink of enlightenment. Zen values humility and ordinariness. After this, Dogen continued training with Ru Jing for two more years. In zen, practicing with a teacher both before and after realization is considered important for the student to mature.

This dialogue is the first time Dogen used the phrase shinjin datsuraku which is translated as, "dropping body and mind," "the falling away of body and mind," and "freeing body and mind," and Dogen used it frequently in his teaching. Sometimes when people hear this, they imagine some kind of literal, physical metamorphosis in which the body falls apart or disintegrates during enlightenment, but that’s not what Dogen meant. Uchiyama Roshi uses the metaphor of opening the hand of thought. He said that if we open the hand of thought, the things we make up inside our head fall away, this is the "the falling away of body and mind." Letting go of our conceptualizations, or conceptualized world, is how we drop body and mind. What we are dropping is separation, the self that creates the feeling of separation. When we let go of the artificial separation created by discrimination, the boundaries of our own body and mind as well as the boundaries we perceive between inside and outside fall away, and we are left with our direct, unmediated experience.

Shokaku Okumura talks about this idea saying that we grasp our selves, or define our selves, through categories such as rich or poor, capable, competent or incompetent, being a parent, and so on. He said, "These are the selves created by karma. When we sit in zazen and let go, all these self images are ungrasped....all these concepts drop off. Our body and mind are released from karmic bonds. This is what datsuraku, or dropping, means." Going back to Dogen in China, at a later meeting Dogen asked Ru Jing, "What is the mind of a bodhisattva?" Ru Jing replied, "It is soft, flexible mind." and he said that [soft, flexible mind] "... is the willingness to let go of body and mind."

In 1227, Dogen returned to Japan to teach what he called the "true Buddhism" he had learned from Ru Jing. As was the tradition, Ru Jing recognized Dogen’s realization and his entrustment of the teaching to Dogen by giving Dogen his own teacher’s okesa or ordination robe, copies of Soto texts including the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, and a portrait of himself. Ru Jing died less than a year after Dogen returned to Japan.

Japanese Soto Zen is considered to have begun when Dogen returned to Japan. Soon after his return, Dogen began writing the Fukanzazengi, or the "Universal Guidelines for the Practice of Zazen." This two page teaching is Dogen’s main meditation manual and it is the most cherished text in Soto Zen, coming close to being treated as a sutra. In Japanese monasteries it is traditional to chant it each night during the last ten minutes of zazen. Even though it is a short work, Dogen considered it important enough to continue working on it for almost twenty-six years until it reached the form we now chant.

The Fukanzazengi actually begins with a phrase that was commonly used as a formal opening in Buddhist writings, but which is not included in our translation, "After searching exhaustively, he came to realize...." If we add this opening phrase to the translation we use it would be, "After searching exhaustively, he came to realize that the Way is basically perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent upon practice and realization? The Dharma-vehicle is free and untrammeled. What need is there for concentrated effort? Indeed, the Whole Body is far beyond the world’s dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from one right where one is. What is the use of going off here and there to practice?

Dogen begins with these four questions that restate his own early doubt, "if enlightened mind is inherent, why do we have to practice so diligently to realize it?" but he offers no answer. In these four questions, there are several references to earlier Zen dialogues. In the first, the word "Way" means original awakening, enlightenment, or reality. The first line means, "Reality is fundamentally perfect and complete, unhindered and all-pervading." How could it be contingent upon practice and realization?

This refers to a dialogue between Huai-rang, or Nangaku Ejo, and his teacher, the sixth ancestor Hui Neng, or Daikan Eno Daiosho in Japanese. After Huai-rang had been practicing for some time, and his practice was fairly mature, he met Hui Neng. During their first meeting, Hui Neng asked, "Where are you from?" Huai-rang replied, "From Mt. Song." Hui Neng asked, "Who is it that thus comes?" (referring to original nature.) But Huai-rang didn’t have a response, and, according to the story, he continued practicing for eight years when one day he had an insight. He went to Hui Neng to respond to the question, "Who is it that thus comes?" By saying, "Speaking about it won’t hit the mark." (or any explanation misses it.) Hui Neng then asked, "If so, is there practice and enlightenment?" Or "Is...(original nature) contingent upon practice and realization?" Huai-rang replied, "It is not that there is no practice and realization, it’s just that they cannot be defiled." The word "defiled" refers to duality, so this means that practice and enlightenment aren’t stained by dualistic separation.

Original Nature or inherent enlightenment does not increase or improve with practice, nor is it diminished by our ignorance or lack of practice. Original Nature itself is not dependent upon practice—it’s not in a cause and effect relationship with practice. Our awareness of, or experience, of Original Nature is strengthened by practice. Dogen’s teaching of the non-dual nature of practice and realization is based on this story, and he comments on it in Bendowa saying, "You should know that in order not to defile realization, which is inseparable from practice, Buddha ancestors always caution not to be slack in your practice. If you release the inconceivable practice, original realization fills your hands; if you become free from original realization, inconceivable practice is upheld with your whole body."

Going back to Fukanzazengi, Dogen’s third question, The Whole Body is far beyond the world’s dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? refers to a story about Hui Neng and his teacher the Fifth Ancestor. "The Whole Body" means the Whole Body of reality or Buddha Nature. "The world’s dust" means delusion or our conditioned states of mind that experience things as objects. This story is from the Platform Sutra which begins with what is presented as an autobiography of Hui Neng who was a young man from Southern China which was considered the frontier, far away from the center of civilized China. Hui Neng’s father died when he was a child, and he supported himself and his mother by gathering and selling firewood. One day when he was at the market place, he heard a monk reciting the Diamond Sutra and he had sudden realization upon hearing the stanza, "A bodhisattva should develop a pure, lucid mind that doesn’t depend upon sight, sound, touch, flavor, smell, or on any thought that arises in it. A bodhisattva should develop a mind that functions freely, without depending on any thing or any place." This is sometimes referred to as an "unsupported thought." When Hui Neng asked the monk where he had gotten this sutra, he was told, from the Fifth Ancestor, Hong-ren, or Daiman Konin Daiosho. Hui Neng is depicted as a poor, illiterate peasant, who, when having heard the Diamond Sutra, was so moved that he walked hundreds of miles to meet the Fifth Ancestor.

According to the legend, when Hui Neng arrived at the monastery, the Fifth Ancestor asked him, "What do you want?" and Hui Neng replied, "I want to be Buddha." The Fifth Ancestor asked, "How could someone like you from the south become a Buddha?" Hui Neng replied, "There may be north and south among people, but there’s no north and south in Buddha nature." When the Fifth Ancestor heard this, he knew that Hui Neng was a "vessel of the Dharma," but he didn’t tell Hui Neng, "Now you should get ordained and practice Zen with me." Instead he sent Hui Neng out in back of the monastery to work with other peasants husking rice.

After a while, the Fifth Ancestor decided to retire so he needed to choose a successor. He called his monks together and asked each of them to write a poem to express their understanding so he could choose his Dharma Heir based on the insight of the poem. The head monk of the monastery had been studying with the Fifth Ancestor for a long time and all the monks looked up to him as the obvious heir. So the other monks didn’t even try to write a poem. But the head monk was not so confident, so he wrote his poem on a wall during the night without signing it. His poem was, "The body is the bodhi tree, The mind a bright mirror standing. Constantly strive to brush it clean, not allowing dust to collect."

This poem also has a number of Buddhist references. Buddha was enlightened sitting under a bodhi tree. "The body is the bodhi tree" means that this very body, our own body, is the place of Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment. "The mind is like a bright mirror" refers to the reflective quality of the enlightened mind which sees things as they really are without the distortions of our hopes and fears and individual conditioning. This means our own mind is the enlightened mind of Buddha. "At all times we must strive to brush it clean or polish it so dust cannot collect" describes the work of practice as striving to keep the mind clear, free of distraction and confusion.

When the Fifth Ancestor saw the poem, he told everyone that it was pretty good and asked the monks to memorize it and put it into practice, but secretly he had doubts. Hui Neng, while in the kitchen storeroom, heard a monk reciting the poem and asked the monk if he would take him to the wall where the poem was written so he could pay homage to it. When they got to the wall, Hui Neng who was illiterate asked the monk if he would write a poem for him to commemorate the head monk’s poem. Hui Neng’s poem, which refutes the head monk’s poem, was, "Originally Bodhi is not a tree, The mirror also has no stand, Buddha Nature is always clean and pure, Where is there any room for dust to alight?" The word "bodhi" literally means "enlighten" or "awaken," so "Originally Bodhi is not a tree" means that enlightenment has no fixed point or location. "The mirror has no stand" means that the clear, reflective quality of enlightened mind is neither contained by a frame nor dependent upon anything for support. "Buddha Nature is always clean and pure." From the beginning, original nature– Buddha nature–is the undefiled, where is there any room for dust?

When the Fifth Ancestor read Hui Neng’s poem, he had it painted over to hide it, and he went to Hui Neng in the kitchen storeroom and gave him a signal to come see him in the middle of the night. Because of the hierarchy within the monastic community, which Hui Neng was near the bottom of, the Fifth Ancestor arranged a secret meeting with Hui Neng when everyone else was sleeping. Hui Neng received Dharma Transmission, and was given the robe and bowl of Bodhidharma. This myth, of the Fifth Ancestor entrusting the dharma to an illiterate peasant, passing over the head monk who had been his disciple for many years, supports the idea of Zen being a face-to-face transmission outside the scriptures. At this point, the Fifth Ancestor then told Hui Neng to hide in the mountains, in anticipation of an uprising among the other monks. According to the story, the Fifth Ancestor rowed Hui Neng across the river, to the other shore, where he could hide in the mountains. The Fifth Ancestor rowing Hui Neng is acting out the first Bodhisattva Vow–of the bodhisattva saving beings by ferrying them across the river to the shore of liberation. This alerts me to the mythic rather than historic nature of this story, but it is a great image. After this Hui Neng lived by himself practicing in the mountains for fifteen years before he began teaching and before he was finally ordained.

I would like to end by summing up the answer to Dogen’s early question this way: Because we are already Buddha, our practice is not a technique or a method of cultivating enlightenment. Rather, practice is a manifestation of our enlightened nature; it’s the function or activity of enlightenment. Therefore, it’s not even we who do the practice, but the Buddha we already are who practices. Because of this, realization is the practice of non-dual effort, not the result or accumulation of some earlier practice. Dogen said, "Realization, neither general nor particular, is effort without desire."