The Way of Zen - Alan Watts [79]
At intervals, the sitting posture is interrupted, and the monks fall into ranks for a swift march around the floor between the platforms to keep themselves from sluggishness. The periods of za-zen are also interrupted for work in the monastery grounds, cleaning the premises, services in the main shrine or “Buddha hall,” and other duties–as well as for meals and short hours of sleep. At certain times of year za-zen is kept up almost continuously from 3:30 a.m. until 10 p.m., and these long periods are called sesshin, or “collecting the mind.” Every aspect of the monks’ lives is conducted according to a precise, though not ostentatious, ritual which gives the atmosphere of the sodo a slightly military air. The rituals are signaled and accompanied by about a dozen different kinds of bells, clappers, and wooden gongs, struck in various rhythms to announce the times for za-zen, meals, services, lectures, or sanzen interviews with the master.
The ritualistic or ceremonious style is so characteristic of Zen that it may need some explanation in a culture which has come to associate it with affectation or superstition. In Buddhism the four principal activities of man-walking, standing, sitting, and lying–are called the four “dignities,” since they are the postures assumed by the Buddha nature in its human (nirmanakaya) body. The ritualistic style of conducting one’s everyday activities is therefore a celebration of the fact that “the ordinary man is a Buddha,” and is, furthermore, a style that comes almost naturally to a person who is doing everything with total presence of mind. Thus if in something so simple and trivial as lighting a cigarette one is fully aware, seeing the flame, the curling smoke, and the regulation of the breath as the most important things in the universe, it will seem to an observer that the action has a ritualistic style.
This attitude of “acting as a Buddha” is particularly stressed in the Soto School, where both za-zen and the round of daily activities are not at all seen as means to an end but as the actual realization of Buddhahood. As Dogen says in the Shobogenzo:
Without looking forward to tomorrow every moment, you must think only of this day and this hour. Because tomorrow is difficult and unfixed and difficult to know, you must think of following the Buddhist way while you live today.… You must concentrate on Zen practice without wasting time, thinking that there is only this day and this hour. After that it becomes truly easy. You must forget about the good and bad of your nature, the strength or weakness of your power.2
In za-zen there must be no thought either of aiming at satori or of avoiding birth-and-death, no striving for anything in future time.
If life comes, this is life. If death comes, this is death. There is no reason for your being under their control. Don’t put any hope in them. This life and death are the life of the Buddha. If you try to throw them away in denial, you lose the life of the Buddha.3
The “three worlds” of past, present, and future are not, as is commonly supposed, stretched out to inaccessible distances.
The so-called past is the top of the heart; the present is the top of the fist; and the future is the back of the brain.4
All time is here in this body, which is the body of Buddha. The past exists in its memory and the future