To study the way is to study the self

Before I enter into the sutras, it will be good for you to know something about Dogen. That background will help you to understand his very condensed sutras. Apparently they look contradictory. Without the background of Dogen’s life pattern they are like trees without roots, they cannot bring flowers. So first I will talk about Dogen’s life structure.

Dogen was born into an aristocratic family in Kyoto, eight hundred years ago. His father was a high-ranking government minister and he himself was a uniquely intelligent child. It is said that he began to read Chinese poetry at the age of four – another Mozart. […]

At the age of four, Dogen’s understanding of Chinese poetry immediately showed that he was not going to be an ordinary human being. From that very age his behavior was not that of a mediocre child; he behaved like a buddha, so serene, so graceful, not interested in toys. All children are interested in toys, teddy-bears… who cares about poetry?

But, fortunately or unfortunately, his father died when he was only two years old and his mother died when he was seven. Dogen used to say later on to his disciples, when he became a fully-fledged master in his own right, that everybody thought it was a misfortune: “What will happen to this beautiful, intelligent child?” But in his deepest heart he felt it was an opportunity; now there was no barrier.

Modern psychologists will perhaps understand it: you may be grown up – fifty, sixty, seventy – your father and mother may be dead… still they dominate you in a very psychological way. If you silently listen to the voices within you can work out that, “This voice comes from my father, or from my mother, or from my uncle, or from my teacher, or from the priest.”

Dogen used to say, “It was a great opportunity that both the people who could have distracted me, who loved me and I loved them… and that was the danger. They died at the right time. I am infinitely grateful to them just because they died at the right time without destroying me.”

It is something very strange for a seven-year-old child to understand this. It has been discovered only now by the psychologists that man’s greatest barriers are the father, the mother. […]

When his mother died, Dogen was translating the most significant Buddhist scripture, Abhidharma – “the essence of religion” – from Chinese into Japanese. He showed every sign of a tremendous future. And at the age of seven, when his father and mother had both died, the first thing he did – which is unbelievable – was to become a sannyasin. Even the neighbors, relatives, could not believe it. And Dogen said, “I will not miss this opportunity. Perhaps if my father and mother were alive, I might not have left the world in search of truth.” He became a sannyasin and started searching for the master.

There are two kinds of seekers who become interested in truth. One starts looking for scriptures: he may become a great intellectual, he may become a giant, but inside there will be darkness. All his light is borrowed, and a borrowed light is not going to help in the real crises of life. […]

The second type of seeker does not go towards the scriptures, but starts searching for a master. These are two different dimensions: one is looking for knowledge, the other is looking for a source which is still alive. One is looking for dead scriptures, the other is looking for a living scripture whose heart is still beating and dancing, in whose eyes you can still see the depth, in whose presence you can see your own potential.

This second type is authentically the seeker for truth. The first type is only a seeker for knowledge.

You can have tons of knowledge and still you will remain ignorant. The man who has found the master may have to drop all his knowledge so that he can become open and vulnerable to the master’s presence, so that he can dance with the master’s heart. In this dance there happens a synchronicity, both the hearts slowly settle into the same rhythm. This rhythm is called the transmission. Nothing visible is given – no teaching, no doctrine – but invisibly two hearts have started dancing in the same tune. All that the master knows slowly goes on this invisible track and pours into the hearts of the disciples to the point of overflowing. […]

It is so unbelievable. A seven-year-old child had the great insight that, “Words won’t quench my thirst. I have to go in search of a living source, of someone who has known not by words, but by actual experience; one who is existentially a buddha.”

The search for the master is the search for the buddha.

At the age of thirteen Dogen was formally initiated.

It was not easy to be initiated, one had to prove one’s capacity, potentiality, possibility. One had to prove that one will not betray on the path, that one will not waste the time of the master, that one will wait infinitely. So he had to wait until the age of thirteen, and then:

He was formally initiated into the monkhood on mount Hiei, the center of Tendai Buddhist learning in Japan. For the next several years he studied the schools of Mahayana and Hinayana, versions of Buddhism, under the guidance of his teacher, Abbot Koen. By the time he was fourteen Dogen had become troubled by a deep doubt concerning one aspect of the Buddhist teaching.

This is the sutra that made him troubled to the very core of his being. If, as the sutras say, “All human beings are endowed with the buddha-nature,” why is it that one must train oneself so strenuously to realize that buddha-nature, to attain enlightenment?

A very significant question. If everybody is a buddha, then to recognize it should be the simplest thing in the world. If you are potentially a buddha, then the barriers cannot be much; they cannot hinder you. Nothing can hinder you. A rose bush brings roses, a lotus seed brings the lotus. If every man is a seed buddha, then why so much discipline?

He was only fourteen years of age, and just one year before he had been initiated, but this sutra disturbed him immensely.

It is obvious that if to be a buddha is our nature, then it should be the simplest thing… without any discipline, without any effort – just a natural phenomenon, as you breathe, as your heart beats, as your blood runs in the body. There is no need of all the nonsense that has been forced upon people to become buddhas, to achieve buddhahood.

At this point he left his teacher because the teacher could not answer him. The teacher was just a teacher. He could teach the sutras, but he could not answer. He could realize the great significance of the question. Either buddhahood is not everybody’s nature… it is some faraway mountaintop, that you have to travel through all kinds of hardships to reach. But if it is your very nature, then this very moment you can realize it – there is no need even to wait for a single moment. But the teacher could not say that, because he himself had not realized buddhahood. He had been teaching Buddhist scriptures, and not a single student had ever said, “This sutra is contradictory.”

In search of someone who could help rid him of his doubt, Dogen found himself with another teacher, Myozen.

Teachers are many. Just to graduate into a certain branch of knowledge is not anything unique or special. But to find a master is really arduous, in that they both speak the same language – the teacher, the master. And sometimes it may be that the teacher speaks more clearly, because he is not worried about his own experience. The master speaks hesitantly, because he knows whatever he is saying is not perfectly appropriate, does not express the experience itself… that it is a little way off.

The teacher can speak with full confidence because he knows nothing. The master either remains silent or, if he speaks, he speaks with a great responsibility, knowing that he is going to make statements which appear to be contradictory, but which are not.

But every teacher wants to be known as a master. For the seeker this creates a problem. Myozen also proclaimed himself a master, but time proved that he was not a master.

In spite of long years of training under Myozen, Dogen still felt unfulfilled. At the age of twenty-three he decided to make the journey to China with Myozen, in order to study Zen Buddhism further. Leaving the ship, Dogen found his way to T’ien-T’ung monastery, where he trained under master Wu-Chi. 
Still unsatisfied, for the next several months he visited numerous monasteries. Just as he was about to give up his search and return to Japan, he happened to hear that the former abbot of T’ien-T’ung had died, and that his successor, Ju-Ching, was said to be one of China’s finest Zen masters.

He changed his plan to go back to Japan and went again to the same monastery where he had been.

The old master, who was just a teacher, was dead, and he had been succeeded by Ju-Ching – a man who had soared high and touched the peaks of consciousness, who had dived deep and touched the depths of his being, who had moved vertically upwards and downwards, who had traveled through all his conscious territory. This man Ju-Ching proved to be a man who answered doubts, settled them, because Dogen was still carrying the same question that if buddhahood is your nature, then why is any discipline needed?

It was Ju-Ching who said, “No discipline is needed. No discipline, nowhere to go, no way to be traveled… just be, silent, settled, at the very center of your being, and you are a buddha. You are missing it because you are looking and trying everywhere else except within you. You will never find your buddhahood by changing this monastery for another monastery, this master for another master. Go in!”

Ju-Ching is known as one of the finest masters, a very fine sword that cuts things immediately.

His presence, his fragrance, his grace… Dogen remained with him, never asking a question, just drinking the very presence of the master, the very atmosphere, the very climate – getting drowned.

And a moment always comes…

An ancient Tibetan proverb says, “If the disciple is ready, the master appears.” The whole question is of the disciple being ready. But the disciple can be ready only if he comes across a man of consciousness – not a man only of words, but a man of the experience – who has been to the highest peaks, to the lowest depths. And just being close to him one can feel the vibe, the coolness.

He radiates the truth; and if you are ready, suddenly something clicks. All doubts disappear, you know you have found the master. Now there is nothing to be asked. Whatever is needed, the master will give it. In fact, it is only because of the poverty of language that we say, “The master will give it.” The truth is, when you are ready it simply showers on you – the master cannot even prevent it. The master is already radiating, just the doors of your being are closed. So those vibrations, and they are simply vibrations, return back. If the doors are open, nothing is said and everything is understood.

When Dogen became a master in his own right, when Ju-Ching declared to him, “Now, no more play the role of being a disciple,” at that moment he hit Dogen and said, “You have come to understand; now be compassionate on the blind humanity. Now don’t go on sitting by my side. You are a buddha. Just because you were wandering here and there, you could not understand. Then sitting by my side, silently… I have not given you anything. You have simply become centered, and in this centering is the inner revolution.” […]

Osho, Dogen, the Zen Master: A Search and a Fulfillment, Ch 1 (abridged)