Oswin Hollenbeck, Rev. Master

This writing was adapted from a Dharma talk offered at Shasta Abbey on 1 September 2019, available at https://shastaabbey.org/audio/rmoswinASoftAndFlexibleMind.mp3

I want to talk this morning about ‘a soft & flexible mind’. This phrase is said to have been coined by Great Master Dōgen when he was asked what he had brought back from China to Japan. Dōgen lived at a time when Japan was still looking to China for the importation of ‘civilization’. Since the 9^th century, Japanese Buddhist monks had been making the dangerous journey by sea to acquire the latest Buddhist teachings then available in the ‘Middle Kingdom’. These monks usually brought back crates of stuff – scriptures & commentaries, paintings, statues, scrolls, religious implements, etc. – all the items deemed necessary to practice the new teachings. Therefore it must have been quite a surprise to hear Dōgen say that all he had brought back was “a soft & flexible mind”.

Was this adage original to Dōgen? In the Hōkyōki, a diary of sorts of Dōgen’s initial attribution of this phrase to his Master, Tendo Nyojō, in a conversation about compassion: [Nyojō] “In [the Buddhas’ and Bodhisattvas’] vow to save all sentient beings, they transfer their every merit to the salvation of all sentient beings…[and thus] attain a flexible mind.” When Dōgen asked: “What is this flexibility of mind?” his master replied, “The will of the buddhas and patriarchs to drop the body and the mind leads to the attainment of this flexible mind.”¹

 In studying the Lotus Scripture recently, I found several lines which may have inspired Nyojō and Dōgen. We know how devotedly Dōgen esteemed the Lotus Scripture, even calling it the ‘king of Scriptures’. Its words and phrases emphasizing compassion would have easily come to mind.

The first instance is in the Skillful Means chapter. The Buddha is explaining the myriad ways people connect to the truth – skillful means – and how even the smallest act of devotion to the Dharma assures one’s eventual full realization – and even already is full realization.

After the extinction [nirvana] of buddhas,

Humans with good and soft minds for the truth,

Such living beings as these

Have all realized the Buddha-way.²

This soft compassionate mind for the truth is what Nyojō and Dōgen are pointing to. It may help to remember that in Chinese and Japanese the same character xin (shin) can be translated as ‘mind’ or ‘heart’ depending on context. Here it is clearly referring to the heart-mind, not the intellective or discriminative mind.

We find references to this soft or gentle mind as well in the Immeasurable Life of the Tathagatha chapter:

When these sentient beings in faith and humility, honest      and forthright in manner, gentle in thought, wholeheartedly yearn to see the Buddha…³

 This reference can also be seen as an echo of that quality advocated in the Metta Sutta: “straightforward and gentle in speech”.

The gentle or soft mind is the mind of tenderness highlighted as one of the Four Wisdoms in the Shushogi, based on Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō discourse “Bodhisatta Shishōbō (The Four Ways a Bodhisattva Benefits Sentient Beings)”: “Beholding all beings with the mind of compassion and speaking kindly to them is the meaning of tenderness.”⁴ This tender mind is the parental or nurturing mind which Dōgen also teaches in the “Tenzo-kyōkun (Instructions to the Chief Cook).”⁵ Like the love of a parent, it is not sentimental, patronizing, or indulgent. This deeply caring mind genuinely wishes for the welfare of the child, just as we do when we treat other beings as if they were our own children. Dōgen says that this kind of mind can have a “revolutionary impact upon the mind of man.”⁶

Now let’s examine the flexible mind, which is also described in the Lotus Scripture. A different translation of the above quote from the Immeasurable Life chapter reads:

When living beings have believed and [surrendered],

Being simple and straight, and flexible in mind,

And they wholeheartedly want to meet Buddha…⁷

 In Zen, the strength of the bamboo has always been held to be superior to that of the oak. The bamboo bends, it’s flexible. We’re not talking here about bamboo fishing rods, but bamboo that can grow to the size of a person’s arm. Although the oak tree is magnificent and has a deep tap root, it can be blown over by a high wind. In contrast, the bamboo bends, this way and that, depending on the direction of the wind. Likewise, a flood will uproot and wash away the oak, but it can only bend the bamboo. This is the sort of mind that we wish to develop in meditation, one that accords with conditions and does not see them as separate from the Way.⁸

I view this flexible mind to be that which Rev. Master Jiyu translated as the ‘kaleidoscopic mind’ in the “Tenzo-kyōkun.” The valuable feature of this translation is that it describes a mind which in its nature—continually shifting and changing—accords with the nature of reality. All is in flux (anicca, or impermanence), and all is brilliant in color and form. A more literal translation of ‘kaleidoscopic mind’ in this writing is “to minutely observe from different viewpoints without absentmindedness.”⁹ I don’t know if kaleidoscopes existed in Dōgen’s day, but I feel that this image surely captures what he meant. Dōgen teaches,

The chief cook must be so kaleidoscopic that, from only a stalk of cabbage, he seems to produce a sixteen-foot-long body of the Buddha. Even in the present day and age it is possible for him to develop a kaleidoscopic nature to such a degree that he helps all livings things thereby.¹⁰

 As in Dōgen’s monastery, the kitchen is still a prime place to learn moving or active meditation. Once when as a novice monk I served in the kitchen at Shasta Abbey, the chief cook asked me to do five things at once, including watching a pot about to boil and going outside to fetch something. All were equally important, some impacting the other trainees working in the kitchen, and we also had the press of getting lunch out on time. My mind had to be one-pointed, single-minded, whole-hearted, quickly responding to each activity. This was not multi-tasking, as there was a still core of meditation that enabled me to intuitively sense which thing needed immediate response, and then the next thing, and so on. The mind had to be empty of any self-concern or self-preoccupation. As the Scripture of Great Wisdom teaches, this is not a negative emptiness, but also not a ‘something’ either. Practicing in this way develops prajna—wisdom, or wise discernment.

This flexible mind is also traditionally taught to monks through ceremonial. The instructions for each ceremony are a blueprint which needs to be adapted to the occasion. For example, how one performs a given ceremony in a small temple is going to be of necessity smaller in dimension and possibly shorter in length. And outside the instructions and order of ceremony is the challenge of following a given celebrant on each occasion. Particularly when one is a chaplain (assistant), one has to remain on the alert and sensitive to any unforeseen needs or wishes of the celebrant. The celebrant may wish a window or door opened, ask for an extra stick of incense, give instructions for adding or deleting a scripture, or make an unexpected visit to the Founder’s Shrine. And different celebrants may do things slightly differently. Rev. Master Jiyu taught us that we never do the same ceremony twice, and it is especially the responsibility of the celebrant to make the ceremony live. This is moving or dynamic meditation. Given the same shared root word as dynamite – Greek for ‘power’ – the term ‘dynamic can give one the sense that the ceremony should be powerful, not necessarily loud, but vigorous. Even if one is simply chanting the scriptures for morning service, one puts one’s whole heart and energy into the activity.

In a recent senior monks’ tea discussing the pros and cons of changing the schedule and calendar to make it more rigorous, this quality of adaptability and flexibility is what came up strongest for me as the central teaching regarding daily life we wish to impart to younger monks. It’s much more important than how early we get up or the specific activities we take part in. In daily monastic life, this practice is constantly necessary. It’s a vinaya or discipline centered on the heart of meditation rather than rigid adherence to an external set of ancient rules and regulations.

Rev. Master Jiyu gave us many examples of this soft and flexible mind. One can view her whole teaching life as devoted to manifesting this quality. She taught us to do what needs to be done, without attachment to personal wishes or ideals. In my novice years at Shasta Abbey, each term would have a different focus: sometimes helping a dying monk, other times constructing a building, yet again once publishing our liturgy book, learning new ceremonial, or just simply doing a lot of formal meditation. And when Rev. Master was old and dying, we learned how to train with the ever-changing vicissitudes of chronic and disabling illness. She gave us a memorable example from her own experience while training at Soji-ji Temple in Japan. During one of the monks’ sesshins, a week normally devoted exclusively to intense meditation and a sacrosanct monastic activity if ever there was one, the monks spent the entire week matching up body parts of victims of a nearby train wreck. I took away from these experiences the importance of responding to the needs of the situation and bowing to circumstances. And these teachings stood me in good stead when I later served as the prior at a small temple where I was continually called upon to respond creatively to a variety of changing conditions.

A soft and flexible mind is of course relevant to both lay and monastics and is one of the greatest gifts we can learn through practice in a temple setting. Who does not have a life buffeted by circumstances? Who does not eventually face the changes of illness, aging, and death, when our bodies (and sometimes our minds) do not conform to our expectations?

This soft and flexible mind is also the heart of ‘perfect faith’, as Rev. Master Jiyu once explained in a Dharma talk:

Perfect faith is full of lightness and acceptance. It is softer than a cloud yet harder than a diamond. It is all these things law of anicca applies as well as the law of no-self….Perfect faith is always changing and always the same, always interesting and always joyful, never seeing an opposite because it has indeed gone beyond the opposites. Opposites can only exist when we have not yet transcended them; when they have been transcended, every day is a good day, as Keizan says, and all work is the work of the Buddha.¹¹

I’ll close with a final admonition Dōgen offered the chief cook: “All day and all night things come to mind and the mind attends to them; at one with them all, diligently carry on the Way.”¹²

Notes

2. 1. Kusa, Michiko, Dōgen and the Feminine Presence: Taking a Fresh Look into His Sermons and Other Writings (Bellingham, Washington: Western Washington University, 2018) p. 21. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/8/232/htm
3. The Threefold Lotus Sutra, trans. Kato, et al. (New York: Weatherhill/Kosei, 1975) p. 67.
4. 3. The Scripture on the Immeasurable Life of the Tathagata, Rev. Hubert Nearman, Buddhist Writings for Meditation and Daily Practice (Mt. Shasta, CA: Shasta Abbey Press, 1994) p. 35.
5. 4. Shushogi: What is Truly Meant by Training & Enlightenment, Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett, Zen is Eternal Life, 4^th edition, (Mt Shasta, CA: Shasta Abbey Press, 1999) p. 100. https://www.shastaabbey.org/pdf/bookZel.pdf
6. 5. Zen is Eternal Life, pp. 145-161.
7. 6. Shushogi, What is Truly Meant by Training & Enlightenment
8. 7. The Scripture of Brahma’s Net, Part 1, trans. in Buddhist Writings for Meditation and Daily Practice, 70.
9. 8. “Lotus Sutra References,” in Master Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, Book 1, Nishijima & Cross (London: Windbell, 1994) p. 314.
10. 9. Instructions for the Tenzo (Tenzo kyōkun), in Dōgen’s Pure Standards for the Monastic Community: A Translation of the Eihei Shingi, trans. Leighton & Okumura (Albany: State Univ. of New York) p. 35.
11. 10. Tenzo-kyōkun, Zen is Eternal Life, p. 150.
12. 11. Perfect Faith in An Introduction to the Tradition of Serene Reflection Meditation, 5^th (Mt Shasta, CA: Shasta Abbey Press, 1997) pp. 38-39. This is available at: https://www.shastaabbey.org/pdf/IntroSRM13.pdf
13. 12. “Instructions to the Tenzo,” Dōgen’s Pure Standards, p. 36.

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