Wednesday, May 14, 2008

58. Rules of Sitting-Zen

Zen practice is sitting-zen. For sitting-zen a quiet place is good. Lay out a thick sitting mat. Do not let wind and smoke get in, and do not let rain or dew seep through. Preserve an area big enough to contain the body. There are traces of ancients sitting on a diamond seat or sitting on a bed of rock, but they all spread out a thick carpet of grass and sat on that. The sitting place should be bright; it should not be dark, day or night. To be warm in winter and cool in summer is the way. Cast aside all involvements and cease the ten thousand things. Good is not considered. Bad is not considered. Mind, intention, consciousness, is not it. Awareness, thought, reflection, is not it. Do not have designs on becoming buddha. Drop off sitting down and lying down. Eat and drink sparingly, and guard time closely. Enjoy sitting-zen unreservedly -- as if putting a fire out, on your head. The fifth ancestor on Obai-zan mountain had no other occupation: he practised nothing but sitting-zen.

For sitting-zen wear a kasaya and use a round cushion. The cushion does not go under the whole of the crossed legs; it goes under the backside. So the underside of the folded legs is on the sitting mat, and the sitting bones are on the cushion. This, in the time of the sitting-zen of the buddhas and the ancestors, is THE Method of Sitting -- whether it is full lotus sitting or whether it is half lotus sitting. In full lotus sitting the right foot goes on the left thigh and the left foot goes on the right thigh, with the toes placed symmetrically on each thigh, not out of proportion. In half lotus sitting the left foot just goes on the right thigh. Let robe and gown hang loosely and keep them neat. The right hand goes over the left foot and the left hand goes over the right hand. The thumbs at their tips connect into each other. The hands, like this, are drawn in towards the body, and placed so that the tips of the thumbs meet opposite the navel. Letting the body right itself, practise upright sitting -- neither leaning left nor leaning right, neither slumping forward nor arching backward. Allow without fail the ears and the shoulders to be opposed and the nose and the navel to be opposed. Let the tongue rest against the roof of the mouth. Let the breath pass through the nose. Let the lips and teeth come together. Let the eyes be open -- not wide open and not half-closed. Having readied the body-mind like this, let there be one full out-breath. Sit totally still, thinking into that zone which is the negation of thinking. How is it possible to think into the zone that negates thinking? It is by non-thinking, which is the key to Sitting in sitting-zen. Sitting-zen is not the zen that is learned. It is the gate to the great and effortless ease of Sitting. It is untainted practice-and-experience.

Treasury of the Eye of True Sitting;
Rules of Sitting-Zen


Delivered to the assembly at Kippo temple in the Yoshida district of Esshu [Fukui prefecture], in the 11th lunar month, in the winter of the first year of Kangen [1243].










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Sitting with a small 's' is the sitting of sitting down and standing up, sitting that we should drop off.

Sitting with a big 'S' is sometimes called, by people who have never realized it even in a dream, "the Buddha-Dharma."

Thy key to realizing the latter, Sitting with a big 'S', is non-thinking.

So what non-thinking is, and what it is not, what Sitting is, and what it is not, are questions that I wish to raise by publishing this translation.


This translation copyright Mike Cross, 2008.
If you wish to use it, please ask. If you would like clarification of anything, please ask. If you object to anything, speak up. If you notice any typos or other mistakes, please let me know.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

At home after work
Cook dinner, sit down to eat
Mind is restless
Turn on computer for distraction
while eating
I wonder what's on Mike's new blog?
So excellent to read these words!

Thanks

Mike Cross said...

Thank you, voidengineering.

I also find it so excellent to read these words -- especially when I read them out loud. I have tried to phrase them in such a way as to be easily read out loud, in such a way as to stimulate maximum resonance in reader/listener.

Now we are able to read Master Dogen's most concise expression of the rules of sitting-zen, to read them out loud, stripped of all confusion of L and R, in our own mother-tongue.

Excellent!

To read them out loud in our own mother-tongue, to feel our body resonating with the effortlessly-produced bone-conducted sound of those rules; to hear, with as long a delay as possible, the reverberating air-conducted sound of those rules -- to hear them in our own mother-ear, and to feel them in our own mother bones...

Excellent! Excellent in the beginning, middle, and end!!!

It is clear to me from the words you write, voidengineering, that English is your mother-tongue. You belong to an English-speaking people, as I do. I don't give a shit what race you are, but my desire to communicate something as a translator is aimed just at you -- because you are the same as me, your ear and tongue and bones are my ear and tongue and bones.

I have struggled with Japanese Zen Patriarchy, Japanese Zen politics, for 25 years in order to be able do this translation. I really appreciate the fact that a real English-speaking person such as yourself is able to appreciate it.

A sitting skeleton
Singing out alone
Into a void
After a while
Hears an echo
Coming back.
Buzz of bone,
Sound of echo:
One ear, one tongue, one voice.


Thank you!

Harry said...

Oh, yes, Mike. Very good to be able to read this.

Regards,

Harry.