This is a transcript of a lecture given at the Jukai retreat at Throssel in September 2021 when, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the usual Sange Ceremony did not take place.

Already during this retreat, at each ceremony, we have all said a verse:

“All wrong actions, behaviour and karma, perpetrated by me from time immemorial, have been, and are, caused by greed, anger and delusion which have no beginning, born of my body, mouth and will; I now make full and open confession thereof.”

It refers to an aspect of practice often called ‘Sange’. The term Sange is untranslatable. In Japanese it has the connotations of revelation, patience and forbearance and also forgiveness and purification.

‘San’ means regret, and ‘ge’ means ‘resolve’. So it can be called ‘contrition and conversion’. They go together, there is no point in just wallowing in the mistakes of the past, we need to learn from them and use them to increase our resolve and understanding. In Dōgen’s Shushōgi, it is also called a gateway of liberation.

What I’d like to do here is put Sange in some sort of context, place it in a kind of roadmap of training. Each person will have their own way, but there are similarities we all share, and it allows us to learn from each other. Although this is based on my experience, I hope it will be useful.

Dōgen’s Shushōgi, starts with a section called ‘The reason for training’:

The most important question for all Buddhists is how to understand birth and death completely for then, should you be able to find the Buddha within birth and death, they both vanish. All you have to do is realise that birth and death, as such, should not be avoided and they will cease to exist for then, if you can understand birth and death are Nirvana itself, there is not only no necessity to avoid them but nothing to search for that is called Nirvana.

Later, Dōgen talks about how our experience of impermanence pushes us to consider the importance of birth and death:

“Life, which is controlled by time, never ceases even for an instant; youth vanishes forever once it is gone: it is impossible to bring back the past when one suddenly comes face to face with impermanence and it is impossible to look for assistance from kings, statesmen, relatives, servants, wife or children, let alone wealth and treasure. The kingdom of death must be entered by oneself alone with nothing for company but our own good and bad karma.”

As a young man I came to training after going through a period of desperately searching for meaning. I worried about everything, but there were very few jobs after I left University and I was unemployed for a year, which gave me time to reflect on things.

All of us search for some kind of truth which is not subject to the changing fortunes of life and fashions. As Dōgen puts it, “It would be criminal to waste the opportunity [of a human life] by leaving this weak life of ours exposed to impermanence through lack of faith and commitment.”

This is the mind that seeks the way, and is naturally pure. This truth we seek can be given many names: peace or stillness for example, Rev. Master Jiyu called it ‘the still small voice’. I only became more aware of it when I came to Throssel on retreat.

What I noticed about the monks at Throssel was that they were not afraid to say that we all have ‘Buddha nature’. They affirmed that all of us have our own spiritual compass, and the particular words for this – like Buddha nature, Lord of the House – were less important to me than the great relief that there was something I could rely upon – a True Refuge. I felt I was in touch with something much deeper, that did not depend on my fickle emotions and thoughts.

And, it is important to trust your own perceptions of what this ‘spiritual compass’ is – you do not have to use the words of others: for some it is gut sense of what is right, for others it is more like listening to a voice; none of these is better than another.

What is common to all of these experiences though, is a sense of limitless compassion and trust. It is a bit like finding a friend that will never judge you. And just as Kanzeon does not judge us for making mistakes, our spiritual compass will always point us away from blaming others or ourselves, and just prompt us to do what we can.

Also, we need to understand that the Refuge will never ask us to break the Precepts. As Rev. Master Jiyu puts it in a very important footnote to her commentary on the Kyōjukaimon in the booklet Serene Reflection Meditation, when we ‘ask’ “What is it good to do?” we must also carefully consider the consequences of our actions and especially consult and ask for the advice of the Sangha.

Once I had the sense of finding a Refuge, I also realised I needed to work on myself. This is where Sange comes into it.

The version of the Kyōjukaimon that I bought in the 1980s had an introduction that said:

We are, in fact, taking the Precepts simply by the act of looking honestly at ourselves and deciding wholeheartedly to do better. For this is the decision to truly listen to and follow the teaching of our True Nature.

If I was to summarise ‘Sange’ in one sentence, it would be this: “the act of looking honestly at ourselves and deciding wholeheartedly to do better.” Although words like repentance and confession sometimes get used in translations, there is actually no need to add concepts such as guilt and repentance to the mix. Having realised there is a true Refuge, we also see how we may have ignored this in the past and it’s natural to feel some regret at this time. But this regret is founded on an affirmation and commitment, and I believe this is why at Jukai, when we have been able to do all the ceremonial, the Sange ceremony follows Ordination.

The point is that looking honestly at ourselves comes from a recognition of our true wish, a place of sufficiency rather than doubt or guilt. If we woke up one morning and, looking out of the window, realised that everything had been given to us, the sky, trees, mountains and rivers, even the carpets and chairs in the room – that we were and had never been separate from ‘this’ – we may naturally feel foolish and regret that we had never noticed this great gift of existence before.

In many parables such as those in the Lotus Sūtra there are instances where someone has been working very hard all their lives and suddenly finds with joy, that they already have a great treasure. In one parable a man goes through great difficulties in life, having to take the most menial jobs, but then meets a friend who admonishes him, saying that when they last met, the friend had sewn a priceless jewel in the sleeves of his jacket. He had wealth all the time without realising it. Sange is based on a realisation of our deep potential and a sense of gratitude for the treasure we have been given. We do not wish to waste “the exceptional gift of a human body”, as Dōgen puts it.

In the second section of Shushōgi: “Freedom is gained by the recognition of our past wrongdoing and contrition therefor”, Dōgen talks of the way to make an act of contrition – encouraging us to say:

May all the Buddha and Ancestors, who have become enlightened, have compassion upon us, free us from the obstacle of suffering which we have inherited from our past existence and lead us in such a way that we may share the merit that fills the universe. For they, in the past, were as we are now, and we will be as they in the future.

Another way of expressing this would be to say: to free ourselves from the obstacles of suffering, we need to cease from making clouds in a clear sky. Something knows of the nature of the clear sky, we have something of the aspiration of the Buddhas and Ancestors already. This is reflected in Rev. Master Jiyu’s commentary on the Precept ‘Do not be angry’:

Just there is that going on which causes us to see unclearly; but if we truly look, if we look with care, we will see that the true and beautiful sky is shining behind the clouds.

Part of the natural sadness I sometimes feel about past actions is that much (perhaps all) of the suffering I created in the past was not necessary. The truth was actually there in the past, but for whatever reason I wasn’t able to see it clearly enough. But this sense of sadness is not the same as guilt. Guilt is the further creation of unnecessary suffering. It is more like a mental recycling of past mistakes – rather than blaming others, I blame myself: the point is to cease from blaming altogether.

Although we have not been able to do the Sange procession this year, the teaching of Sange is something we can still learn from. And we hope to be able to do this at future Jukai retreats. Do not feel that you are missing something essential. The ceremonies reflect something that is already going on within us – the real Sange is internal and comes upon us naturally at different times.

In the procession we first go to the shrine where Kanzeon gives us the piece of paper with the confession verse on it. This reads:

All wrong actions, behaviour and karma, perpetrated by me from time immemorial, have been and are, caused by greed, anger and delusion which have no beginning, born of my body, mouth and will; I now make full and open confession thereof.

This is the same as the verse we said at the Reading of the Precepts and at Ordination, so Sange is always included in the process of taking the next step forward. We are willing to see that we’ve made mistakes and take responsibility for them. We have to receive the paper from the celebrant.

We next go to the shrine of Samantabhadra who represents the activity of love, patience and forbearance: i.e. we have to offer our mistakes and move on. Samantabhadra receives the slip we offer. The slip of paper is later burned in a cauldron by the three celebrants who say:

Now, by the guidance of the Buddhas and Ancestors, you have discarded and purified all your karma of body, mouth and will and have obtained great immaculacy. This is by the power of confession.

This is not destroying our mistakes; fire represents the immaculacy of emptiness, ‘non substantial liberated existence’ as Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett called it. There is no self in our mistakes, they were only caused by beginningless confusion, and in recognising this we can acknowledge they always were immaculate.

The basis of Sange is compassion and acceptance – there is no judgement. Blame, or trying to find who or what caused suffering is an unnecessary indulgence. As the confession verse says there is just “beginningless greed, hate and delusion”, it is not originally caused by anything or anyone, but we just take on the responsibility for dealing with it when we see it.

Rev. Master Jiyu in her commentary says: “By accident someone made the course of karma; it is not intentionally set in motion.” Rev. Master Daizui – the former head of the Order – spoke of going for a walk in the woods and seeing someone had left some trash lying around. If you have a bag with you, you can just pick up the cans and paper and bring them back to put in the recycling: it doesn’t matter who left the trash out there, there is no point in grumbling about the sort of people that left it there. You see it so you deal with it.

This brings me to the section following the confession verse:

By this act of recognition of our past behaviour and our contrition therefor, we open the way for the Buddhas and Ancestors to help us naturally. Bearing this in mind, we should sit up straight in the presence of the Buddha, and repeat the above act of contrition, thereby cutting the roots of our evil doing.

It is by sitting up straight in the presence of the Buddha, that we see clearly and are able to let go and move on. Sitting up straight in zazen is not just the posture, but points to the straightforward mind, that does not veer left or right.

We do not get stuck in existence or non-existence, praise or blame, right or wrong. There is just the direct seeing and acknowledgement: “Yes, I did this and it was unnecessary, and having seen, I don’t need to do it again.”

In sitting up straight, there is also the sense that this is not so much about ‘me and my mistakes’. Yes, we look inwards, but once we are willing to just pick up the rubbish and deal with it, questions of “Is it my rubbish, or someone else’s?” are not so relevant. It is just dealing with what is there.

So, we just keep sitting up straight in the presence of the Buddha. Being willing to look at ourselves with this sort of clarity is already an expression of confidence in our true nature; we can follow that; there is something we can trust.

We don’t need to worry about the details of our life. We have the confidence to face things as they arise. We are willing to sit up straight in the presence of the Buddha, and that is all we need to do, moment by moment. This is expressed in the Kyōjukaimon, the reading of the Precepts:

The Great Precepts of the Buddhas are kept carefully by the Buddhas. Buddhas give them to Buddhas, Ancestors give them to Ancestors. The Transmission of the Precepts is beyond the three existences of past, present and future; enlightenment ranges from time eternal and is even now.

We have aspiration, the wish to train, to do something about ourselves, which is expressed in the Shushōgi: “They in the past were as we are now and we will be as they in the future.” Even though we may naturally feel ashamed of some things we have done in the past, that is no excuse to get bogged down because “Enlightenment ranges from time eternal and is even now.”

In each step of the path we can also sense a completeness, a rightness, and there are still steps to take. There is something that can be trusted – something that you already have. This becomes clearer when we sit up straight in the presence of the Buddha and are willing to be straightforward with ourselves, and straightforward with others.