One of the most important things I learned from climbing in the high Himalayas has turned out to be for me a metaphor for life. It is this: every step you take in the high mountains brings a different view. A few hundred steps and you can see around the big peak in front of you and see the path as it unfolds in front, appearing to wind upwards. Another five hundred metres, and you see that the path drops down to the right. Half an hour further on and you notice the path climbing to the left and disappearing over what looks like the top of the rise. Five minutes later, you can see that what you thought was the top of the rise is in fact only a slight change of slope, and the hill continues ever upwards towards the invisible summit… 

Every time you stop and look around, the scene changes, sometimes showing a completely different aspect of the terrain that was impossible to see an hour ago. So to find your way through high mountains, especially through unmapped terrain, you need to constantly stop to look around and take in the view – to “feel” your way through to your destination, which may not be visible to you for large parts of your journey. 

Life is unmapped terrain. Although we think we have a good map and know where we are going, no one has been this way before. So metaphorically to stop and notice the terrain as I journey onwards is, for me, essential. And as each vista unfolds in front of me, I notice where life is leading me next. I have learned through experience that most of the maps I have been given in my life have not been very accurate; in fact, I wonder if it is possible to map out our journey through life. I wonder if it is not just as valid to move forward step by step without a map, noticing which way life is leading at every moment. And to do this, it is important to be present; that is, to be here where I am now, not lost in maps, plans, thoughts, hopes and regrets. This is why I practice zazen. For me it is a practice of returning to the present moment again and again at every moment. Leaving my life story behind and returning to the simple reality in front of me. It is a dynamic practice, and this is what Dogen meant when he wrote 800 years ago that zazen has no fixed form. Because we live in society, a constructed reality that is always pulling us this way and that, we practice finding our balance again at every new moment. And from this moment we step forward. 

The reason that I have found the teachings of the ancient master so useful is that they have provided me with pointers on how to live. For me, the pointers need to be practical. I am not by nature an academic, and I find it difficult to study through books. That is why I was happy to take on the role of editor and publisher for Sensei’s project to translate Dogen’s teachings into English. Editing, formatting and publishing the chapters of the Shobogenzo allowed me to become familiar with Dogen’s writings without having to study them academically. Improbable as it may sound, my way of studying the teachings has been to let them pass in front of my eyes again and again as I edited, proofread and prepared them for printing. Although I cannot claim to have a complete understanding, my method of studying, which is rather like throwing mud at a wall – eventually some of it will stick, has given me some pointers to live by. 

One of the most valuable of these pointers has been an understanding of how to live without a map. The ancients taught about something that they called “prajna” in Sanskrit. The term is often translated as “wisdom”, “intelligence” or “understanding”. In Dogen’s work, it is sometimes 般若 (HANNYA), a phonetic rendering, or 智慧 (CHIE), which we translate as “real wisdom”. However, the way that Dogen refers to it in his writings suggest something somewhat difference from the traditional meaning of wisdom. He talks about the “ultimate, unadorned and profound state of prajna”; he says that “all human beings have the right seeds of prajna in abundance”. He says that the “…secretly working concrete mind, at this moment is… prajna itself…” This points to some kind of intuitional faculty that human beings possess. The Sanskrit word prajna is made up of the prefix “pra” which means “before” and the verb “jna” which means “to know, comprehend or understand”. So one interpretation of the meaning of prajna is “before knowing, before comprehending, before understanding”. This interpretation fits in well with the way that Dogen uses the term in his writings. Before we start to think about or consider what to do, there is present in our consciousness an intuitional realisation of something that is not readily apparent to our thinking mind. It is subtle and fragile. We can easily override it with our intentions, hopes and fears and habitual views. It is easier to notice it when we are balanced; when our mind is not separate from our body; when we are whole. 

Around a decade ago, I started to notice that I appeared to be living without a map, and I wondered whether what I was using to guide me through life could be described as prajna. Now, I can say clearly that this seems to be the case, judging from the evidence. I do seem to be living my life according to the metaphor I outlined at the start of this post. 

I feel rather conscious of using the word “I” so many times in my posts. The reason I am writing almost completely in the first person is that I have no wish to teach you, the reader, how to live. But I feel some kind of urge to tell you how I am living, and how I came to be living in this way. I don’t want to tell you to live in this way – it feels rather insecure and at times frightening to live without a map. On the bad days, I wonder where I am going and how I ended up here in this place. But on the good days, it brings with it a sense of freedom that is unique and that I can only recommend to you.

 

In the early days, Nishijima Roshi (Sensei) didn’t really care much about the rituals that accompanied temple life. He said that after attending Koda Sawaki’s retreats when he was young, he thought that it would be impossible to follow Dogen’s teachings in a temple setting. He spent his time in the evenings after work translating Dogen’s writings into modern Japanese. Then, when he was 55 and retired from his job as a fund manager in Japan’s Ministry of Finance, he decided he wanted to become a priest. Searching for a master who would accept him as a priest, he came across Master Rempo Niwa, who at that time was head of a country temple called Tokei-in near the city of Shizuoka, where Sensei had attended school as a boy. By a fortunate coincidence, Master Niwa had just completed building a new zazen hall in the temple and was pleased to accept Sensei and allowed him to use the new zazen hall for weekend retreats. For the next two decades, Sensei held all his retreats at Tokei-in, which is where I attended several hundred retreats with Sensei and the group of foreign students that formed around him in the 1970s and 80s and that grew in size into the 90s. 

It was always Sensei’s intention to form a group that was separate from the Soto Sect. He felt that the young western people he had begun to teach from 1977 were enthusiastic in practicing Zazen and learning about Dogen Zenji’s teachings, but that the hierarchy and bureaucracy of the official Japanese organisation would weigh them down. As a result, in 1987, in concert with setting up the Ida Zazen Dojo in the outskirts of Tokyo, he and five of his students formed Dogen Sangha as a group centred around the teachings of Dogen Zenji and the practice of Zazen as a new school of teachings. As members of that original group, on returning to the UK in 1999, Yoko and I decided to use the name Dogen Sangha for the small sitting group we started in Bristol. In the early 2000s I was fortunate enought to meet two people running already established groups who supported me in starting to teach and became my first two dharma heirs. In 2013, I gave dharma transmission (Shiho) to 12 of the people who had been sitting with me regularly over the previous 10 years, and to another 5 people in the time since then. Some of them have gone on to form and run their own groups. Now, 20 years later, we have several small groups here and there, all following the same practice and teachings. 

As my interest in Dogen’s teachings came through my experience with mountaineering, I was never interested in the ceremonial side of Buddhism. For that reason, I found it easy to follow what Sensei was teaching, centred around what he called “the philosophy of action”. It fitted in well with my life experience and helped me to understand the feelings of balance and contentment I had experienced in my life as a rock climber and mountaineer and how valuable those experiences were in guiding my life. It wasn’t difficult for me to follow his ideas about action in the present moment, and I had no strong feelings about following the simple Buddhist ceremonies that he introduced, always based on what Dogen had written down. It was a relaxed attitude that I liked a lot. He didn’t care about chanting, except with the formal temple meals at Tokei-in during retreats. We didn’t need to follow the kind of formal zen behaviour that has been adopted by many zen groups in the west. He encouraged us to make the kasaya, which Dogen revered, using a sewing machine rather than by hand. He didn’t teach us how to make a rakusu, but presented us with one when we took the simple precepts ceremony, again based on Dogen’s description. This relaxed attitude was ideal for me, as I had no interest in formal zen behaviour beyond the simple conduct associated with practicing zazen. 

When we set up the Ida Zazen Dojo in 1989, the only condition placed on the young people who came to live there was that they should practice zazen at least twice a day – usually morning and evening. Looking back, I realise that Sensei gradually adopted more of a traditional approach as he became older. It may have started when his assistant, Taijun, returned from her two-year training as a nun, and she told him that he should start to chant the Heart Sutra after morning zazen. Then, as some of his foreign students asked if he would give them the ceremony to become priests (tokudo), he obliged. He would always try to meet the requests of his students. As he passed into old age and stopped going to his office in the city every day, he started wearing the robes of a priest. 

I had never been attracted to zen as a religion. I had discovered Sensei’s Saturday seminars in Tokyo by chance and had been attracted to this practice that gave me the same balance and contentment I had already experienced in the great outdoors. I don’t feel that this attitude has changed for me. When I returned to the UK in 2000 and started to teach people how to sit, I brought with me the simple practices that I had become used to in my life in Japan – bowing before and after sitting and chanting at mealtimes during zazen retreats. But these practices are for me not central and not so important. At home, I usually bow before and after I sit because it has become a habit. Like saying hello to people when you meet them. But if I don’t do it, it doesn’t change my zazen. Equally, you can still have a nice zazen retreat even if you don’t chant at mealtimes. I think that chanting, which is a form of singing, unites those who are going to eat, and therefore has value. However, what I would really like to say is that if we concentrate on these Japanese customs without understanding their role or function, then the practices become formulaic and lose their vitality. 

To me, it is more important to find a balance in our lives than to follow any “path”. I have read accounts by respected teachers that suggest that we should follow the Buddhist path, and if we stray from it, we should repent and return to the path. Then our life will be happy. For me, there is no path that I should follow. My life itself is unfolding moment by moment, day by day, and my behaviour depends, not on an understanding that I should act properly or that I should do right and should not do wrong. To me, my behaviour depends on my state at this moment – whether I am acting sincerely. To act sincerely, I practice zazen, the practice of dynamic balance. Whether my actions are the right ones or not I cannot tell. This is a simple way to live, that may sound a bit stupid. Well, my teacher took the name Gudo, which means “stupid way” and he gave me the name “Eido” which means “excellent way” (The character Ei also means English). So I am the excellent student of a stupid teacher. I am excellent at following a stupid way of life. 

It is true that I cannot even tell you that I am sure that this way of living is good or not, or that it will make me happy or not. But there is something undefinable, ineffable, that makes me continue to live like this. Even though I sometimes wonder what I am doing. I will write more about this ineffable something that has become so central to my life in a later post.