2012 Ango: The Wholehearted Way
During this intensive practice period, Jisho Warner roshi and other priests at Stone Creek Zen Center give a series of talks on The Wholehearted Way (Bendowa), a key early essay by Dogen Zenji laying out his immense vision of the meaning of zazen in the life both of the individual and of the universe of all beings. The core teachings are:
- First, at every moment when a person wholeheartedly takes on the attitude, outlook, and practice of awakening, the whole body and mind and space and all beings everywhere awaken.
- Second, all beings are always singing the song of the dharma to each other, in endless reciprocity.
- Third, the key practice for people to express and transmit this radiant activity is whole-self samadhi or self-fulfilling samadhi (jijuyu zanmai).
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I: The Wholehearted Buddha Way, by Jisho Warner roshi
You are constantly having to choose a direction to go in your life in this one precious and limited body. The Buddha Way is a true gate to awakening to life and finding direction in the values embedded there. Wholeheartedness is an energetic embrace of this moment, your full self, and all others. To be changed by life this way requires surrendering the dominance of the air-traffic controller in your head. How do you investigate what is safe and appropriate to surrender? How do you verify what is a true direction for you to go in, to open your life? How do you learn to hear the quiet voice of your original self whispering to you about truth and beauty?
II: The Buddha Mudra, by Jisho Warner roshi
The heart of Bendowa, Dogen’s Wholehearted Way, is the section called Jijuyu Samadhi (or Zanmai), the samadhi of the whole giving-and-receiving self. He lays out his immense vision of the meaning of zazen in the life of the individual practitioner and of the universe of all beings. He says that when a person takes on the buddha-mudra with their whole body and mind, all space and all beings awaken. What is the buddha-mudra?
III: This Wondrous Unfabricated Means, by Jisho Warner roshi
Dogen never holds back, and most often presents his ideas in concentric circles. The first paragraph summarizes the essay, and the first sentence is the keystone of the first paragraph, so every word is worth tasting closely. He starts: All buddhas directly transmit inconceivable dharma…by a wondrous unfabricated means whose touchstone is the samadhi of the whole self. The inconceivable dharma has its conception, gestation, and flowering everywhere and at all times. It is unfabricated—a great word meaning not built up out of planks and opinions. We wear ourselves out fabricating our lives, building walls we get trapped behind. Zazen is a true gate to the unfabricated, innocent self we encounter in whole-self samadhi.
IV: The Gate of Kindness, by Toan Flynn
When delusion and enlightenment are not seen as opposed to one another, interdependence opens the life of the whole self.
V: Inconceivable Giving and Receiving, by Jisho Warner roshi
The Wholehearted Way is a love song to the world. All beings awaken, each in our own way. We humans awaken into awareness of the underlying natural fabric of the world by wholeheartedly participating in life. The world we wake up to is immeasurable, incomprehensibly grander than we can possibly think. The land, trees and grasses, fences and walls, tiles and pebbles, all the various things in the ten directions perform the work of the buddhas. Those who receive the benefits produced by these wind and water elements are inconceivably helped by the buddhas’ wondrous guidance, and all awaken intimately to themselves.