An edited transcript of teaching given during the lay trainees’ sesshin in August 2024.

I’d like to look at what Dōgen means when he says, in Rules for Meditation: “The kōan appears naturally in daily life”.¹ This is a clue to the meaning of the title ‘Genjō kōan’ and is a key to understanding what role the question has in Sōtō Zen.

In contemporary life the word ‘kōan’ has become associated with such paradoxes as ‘the sound of one hand clapping’ etc. that have been used in the Rinzai Zen tradition.

We can have the sense that we have a significant question in our lives and are seeking a definite answer, for example ending a sense of persistent sadness: or wondering if there is a meaning to life, when it seems so senseless. Calling something a kōan can conjure up the stereotype of breaking through some great barrier of doubt and then having all your problems cleared up forever. But by saying, “the kōan arises naturally in daily life”, Dōgen is actually saying the meaning of our lives is actualized or expressed through our daily lives.  There is not a separate meaning to life we find in words that is then applied to life.  Life itself is the questioning and the resolution.

This is a radical understanding: we so want someone else to give us the answer to ‘the meaning of life’ or to find it in an experience, after which we hope everything will be easy. But the meaning is manifest through the actual doing of life itself. The word ‘actualized’ is used.

Without life there is no question and response. We are the question and response, if you like. We must live our lives as an expression of understanding – not something separate. Hence translators render Genjō kōan as “the realized kōan”² or, “to answer the question from true reality through the practice of our everyday life”.³

So “The kōan arises naturally in daily life” points us in the direction of engaging with life itself as meaning. We do not seek to answer the question of existence through any kind of escape or just ‘finding the answer’ in books or another’s words. “What is the meaning and expression of my life as it is now?” –  this is the question we are encouraged to ask.

Sesshin is a time when we choose to deliberately simplify our lives. We are not trying to do several things at once. In this way we can experience a taste of liberation and see that freedom does not come from having lots of different options, but in learning to live in a way that is straightforward: Just doing what is good to do – without being constantly distracted by thoughts about all the other things we could be doing.

Dōgen says in Rules for Meditation: “It is futile to travel to other dusty countries, thus forsaking your own seat”. He means that we should stop looking to see if the truth is elsewhere. He encourages us to engage directly with our lives as they are and learn to appreciate them as an expression of Truth.

Dōgen uses many metaphors in Genjō kōan. Here he uses the fish swimming in the water and the bird flying in the sky:

When a fish moves in water, however far it goes, the water has no boundaries; when a bird flies in the sky, fly as it may, the sky has no boundaries. However, from long ago, fish and birds have never been separated from the water and the sky. It is just that, when their function is great, their use is great; when their need is small, their use is small.

In this way, while none of them fails to reach its limits, and nowhere do they fail to overturn it, if the bird were to leave the sky, it would quickly die, and if the fish were to leave the water, it would quickly die. We should know that they take water as life; we should know that they take the sky as life. There is taking the bird as life; there is taking the fish as life. It should be taking life as the bird; it should be taking life as the fish. Other than these, there should be further steps forward. That there are practice and verification, and that they have those with lifespans, those with lives, are like this.⁴

The fish swimming in the water could be seen as two separate things: the fish and its environment – the pond or lake. But Dōgen points out that the fish is inseparable from the water. It could not breathe or function without water. Therefore, the life of the fish is not just its own individual being, but its connection with the water. Life then is the totality.

In the same way it can seem like we exist independently, but everything we do is dependent on something else. We come into being as a result of our family. We are partly the result of education etc. Even if we earn a living our job is still connected to many other jobs. We talk of ‘my life’, but can we say where ‘what is mine’ and ‘what is not mine’ end?

Within the water of the pond the fish does not feel limited by its environment, for it is the entire world. From the outside it may seem small and limited, but from the fish’s point of view it is immeasurable and has no boundaries.

Dōgen uses a special meaning of ‘limit’, ‘obstacles’ or ‘boundaries’ in his writings. We can have an ideal of freedom as not being limited by anything, but Dōgen points out that our existence itself is ‘limitation’.  We exist, as particular beings at a particular time, in unique circum-stances – none of us are the same. Therefore what we are, and our functioning, are determined by what could be called ‘limits’. But these boundaries are, in a sense, what define us, and they are what enables us to be what we are.

Because this being is not separate from conditions, the conditions and the being function together just like the fish in water and the bird in the sky. Is the fish dependent on water or does it exist freely and express its being through water? Only if we try and stand outside being, and imagine some objective viewpoint, can we say the fish is limited by the water it swims through.

Likewise, with ourselves – only if we imagine ourselves as a separate life, as abstract beings, and stand outside, do we feel we are trapped by our connection with all that supports us. Each of us lives in a web of connections. Our so-called ‘life’ is connected to a world of relationships: family, job, culture. Within this we can feel restricted but this can be because we envisage ourselves as a separate life: as an individual.

It is true that sometimes we do need to change our circumstances – if there is prejudice against you at work for example, but many people find they are never satisfied however many changes they make. Dōgen continues:

Nevertheless, if there were birds or fish that thought to go through the water or sky after reaching the limits of the water or sky, they could get no way, could get no place, to do so in either water or sky. When we get this place, our actions accordingly realize the kōan; when we get this way, our actions accordingly are the realized kōan. This way and this place are neither great nor small, are neither self nor other; it is not that they existed before, nor that they appear now. Hence, they exist like this. In this way, when a person practices and verifies the way of the Buddhas, it is to get one dharma is to penetrate one dharma; to meet one practice is to cultivate one practice.

We experience this during sesshin directly. Although life is extremely limited, as we sit in the same place every day, we come to sense that we exist within limitless life. By concentrating the mind on one thing we become more aware of our connection with all things. Once the rigid sense of a self begins to loosen we can know we sit together with life and existence and yet remain exactly the same apparently ‘limited’ being. This place, which is “neither great nor small, neither self nor other”, is the very place of your sitting now.

“To get one dharma is to penetrate one dharma” sounds like no achievement: until you understand that there is only Dharma. This is brought out in another translation:

When a person engages in practice-enlightenment in the Buddha Way, as the person realizes one dharma, the person permeates that dharma; as the person encounters one practice, the person [fully] practices that practice. [For this] there is a place and a path.⁵

“Each moment is one practice and one Dharma.” If we fully engage with it, we can ‘permeate’ that Dharma – we become inseparable from it. This is endless as situations change moment-to-moment, and yet there is only ever one practice that we can do now.

As this time and place is sufficient, each dharma that arises within your life – each event – is sufficient as well. We bring this to working meditation as well. We do not wish to be anywhere else. The important thing is not to try and burst out through the water or the sky. It is only in our imagination that we think it is possible for the self to be separate from its environment.

This is not just passivity, i.e. that we need to learn what our place is, and just accept things like low pay or perhaps an abusive boss.  In those situations it is good to change job.

What Dōgen is saying is that we are always going to be connected and functioning within a framework, and that this is not a limitation but an expression. It is Genjō kōan: expressing truth through the living of our lives.  He is making the point that our lives cannot be separate from expressing the truth, just as a fish cannot separate itself from water. So we must value our lives deeply and study how we live them.

Are we actually ‘here’ in our lives, or are we half-heartedly wishing we were somewhere else – doing something else? If we are doing something menial like the laundry, how do we actually do it? Are we trying to get it over with to do something more important?

What is our life – but the actual moment-to-moment doing of it?  Whilst on retreat we can appreciate the simpler things we do, like washing up. There is satisfaction in being, and this being is already connected. We do not need anything extra. It is enough; it is more than enough. It is the expression of gratitude for all that we have been given, all that we are.

*          *          *

It is natural to seek for Truth, and we can see that as Dharma: something a teacher says or some experience we have that will help cure our suffering. There’s also the recognition that we fall over ourselves in seeking for something to end suffering; that the desperation to find is another form of grasping. This can lead to a cycle of seeking and disappointment, and some find it very hard to just sit every day: always finding a reason to do something else.

Seeking the Truth from externals is never satisfying, and yet in Buddhism we do often seem to encourage this. We do talk of experiences and teaching that can help. But all of these imply there is a separation between ourselves and something external, called ‘The Truth’ or The Teaching’.

It is not possible for us to really possess Truth like an object – like a house that we can buy with a mortgage – so what is our relation to Truth? It is only after some time that we come across this spiritual question, and realize that we must go deeper: Truth cannot be an object outside ourselves that we are always grasping after.

Do not think that you are alone in this: the Zen ancestors came across a similar barrier in their training. For example the Author of The Most Excellent Mirror–Samādhi, Tōzan, asked his master Ungan, “Later on, if I am asked to describe your reality [or teaching], how should I respond?” After some pause, Ungan said, “Just this is it.” The narration states that Tōzan was then lost in thought, and Ungan said, “You are now in charge of this great matter; you must be most thoroughgoing.” Tōzan departed without further comment. Later while wading across a stream, he looked down, saw his reflection, and “awakened to the meaning of the previous exchange.”

He then wrote the following verse:

Just don’t seek from others, or you’ll be far estranged from self. I now go on alone; everywhere I meet it. It now is me; I now am not it. One must understand in this way to merge with suchness.⁶

Tōzan’s master, when asked to describe his teaching to pass on, did not talk of an experience or a particular Dharma teaching, but said ‘Just this is It’. ‘This’ is the one practice and one Dharma I was talking about from Dōgen’s Genjō kōan.

When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point; for the place, the way, is neither large nor small, neither yours nor others. The place, the way, has not carried over from the past, and it is not merely arising now. Accordingly, in the practice-enlightenment of the buddha way, to attain one thing is to penetrate one thing; to meet one practice is to sustain one practice.⁷

It is the one Dharma of this moment, the one practice of this moment. Tōzan’s master refused to give him some Teaching that he could hang on to. He was basically saying you must find the Truth for yourself moment-by-moment, through your own practice. There is no real Truth but ‘This’: the truth appearing in your life now.

We long to be intimate with Truth, to know the unity that may make sense of the differences and divisions we see in the world. This longing cannot be wrong, for it is inseparable from what we are, and yet in seeking to be close to the Truth we may look for it in someone or something, and miss the Treasure that is always being offered, the ‘priceless jewel already stitched into the lining of our clothes’ that the Lotus Sutra talks about.

Tōzan says: “Just don’t seek from others, or you’ll be far estranged from self. I now go on alone.”  There is no choice but to ‘go on alone’ as truth is not something that can be owned by one person and given to another. We speak of knowing something or having something. Although these phrases have meaning when we speak of object (we can own a house, or know about computer programming for example) they mislead us when applied to Truth itself.  For Truth, in its nature, can never be the possession of anyone, it is not a thing that can be given. It can be pointed to like the proverbial ‘finger pointing at the moon’. But the metaphor is significant – why focus on the finger when the moon is already there hanging round and clear in the sky?

Tōzan continues:

I now go on alone; everywhere I meet it. It now is me; I now am not it. One must understand in this way to merge with suchness.⁶

Realizing he cannot seek the Truth in externals he goes alone, but ‘everywhere I meet it’.           He is not really alone, because having dropped the seeking he is immersed in the Teaching – everywhere he meets the Truth. This is the same as Dōgen’s teaching in Genjō Kōan, “That myriad things come forth and illuminate the self is awakening.” It is the same as “To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away.”

In the version we chant in The Most Excellent Mirror– Samādhi, it goes: “I am not it; it is all of me.” We are not the Truth: we cannot possess or own it in any way.  And yet there is nothing in us that is apart from the Truth. Remember in our tradition we do not have Buddha nature, like a thing or a seed in us; we are Buddha nature. No aspect or part of us, down to each thought and cell in our body, is apart from Truth. Nothing is left out: worries, fears, sexuality, all are included. And yet we cannot say the ‘I’ is the Truth – that I can own it in anyway.

So how does this apply to your lives when you go home, but find it difficult to encourage yourself to sit? We may hope to ‘take something away with us’ as they say, from this retreat. Perhaps some experience or understanding. But whatever experience we have becomes a memory that fades, and we can feel disappointed, wondering where it has gone. Rather reflect that the Truth is ‘just This’.

Reflect that it appears now in the context of your actual life. This may seem a cheat if you still want to possess the Truth.   But consider that ‘just this’ can never be taken away from you. It is the asking and receiving of Truth through the living of your actual life. Which is what Genjō kōan means. The universal can only be expressed in the particular – the nitty gritty of your lives. It is just there when you open your hearts and minds.

To be verified or actualized by the myriad dharmas means that the Truth can be there just when you feel the rain and wind on your skin walking to work. It can be there just sitting quietly in the garden. It can be there on the train going into work. It can be there in relationships with partners and family.

The confirmation of the myriad things only depends on whether we have an open mind and heart, and whether we give space to the Truth, time to sit and just be:  it does not depend on having some great experience or understanding lots of Scriptures.

So if you want to take something away from this retreat, I hope that you can take away the open heart and mind – the soft and flexible mind for the Truth. Really you need nothing else.

Notes

1. The Liturgy of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives for the Laity. Shasta Abbey Press, 1990. P. 99.
2. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō. The Sōtō Zen Text Project, Stanford, 2023.
3. Okumura, Shohaku, Realizing Genjōkōan. Wisdom Publications, 2010. P. 21.
4. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō. The Sōtō Zen Text Project, Stanford, 2023.
5. Okumura, Shohaku, Realizing Genjōkōan. Wisdom Publications, 2010. P. 175.
6. Leighton, Taigen Dan, Just This is it, Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness. Shambala, 2015. P. 34.
7. Genjokoan, or “Actualizing the Fundamental Point, Aitken, Robert and Tanahashi, Kazuaki, in Enlightenment Unfolds. Shambhala, Boston, 2000.