A Teisho from Bristol Zen Dojo
Master Dogen emphasises the importance of cultivating Bodaishin - the mind that turns towards awakening – to support our engagement with practice and wholehearted living. To use a more Western expression, you could say it’s our higher nature; our better nature. It’s the part of our selves, our mind, our ego, our personality, which is able to see that the games we play are not always helpful. It can see that the games of wanting, of rejecting, of chasing after achievement or gain that the mind plays are not fundamentally satisfying; that there is something more to life than this. It sees beyond these everyday games, towards a deeper lived reality.
It’s a part of ourselves which can see that all of us in some way suffer. We are all victims of dissatisfaction - duhkha, to use the Buddhist term. In the end, nothing in the relative world can permanently assuage that dissatisfaction. We can find pleasure, we can find happiness, we can find joy. But all these things are things that pass.
We can enjoy a nice piece of chocolate; we can have good friends and companions; we can fall in love and maybe even have a good relationship with someone over decades. All these are good things in life. It’s not to deny these things. It’s absolutely not to deny these things. But Bodaishin sees that these things, in and of themselves, do not provide the answer to our dissatisfaction.
When you have one piece of chocolate, and then eat three bars, you probably will find it does not give you as much pleasure as that first square gave you.
Everything passes. Everything passes. Even long-term friendships and relationships. We may be lucky enough to have a strong relationship through our entire life, but nonetheless in the end either we die before our partner or our partner dies before us. Everything passes. This is something that each of us must find the strength to face. Bodaishin, the mind that turns towards awakening, is exactly the aspect of ourselves that already has some intuition of this and can help find that strength. It sees that nothing we reach for in the relative world is perfectly able to cure the fundamental dissatisfaction that impermanence brings.
So Bodaishin sees that in the relative world there is no answer to the problem of dissatisfaction. And as a consequence of this, Bodaishin is the mind that leads us to practice; If there is no answer in the relative world, what can we do?
The mythical story of the Buddha is exactly about this, about his experience of the arising of Bodaishin. He was effectively imprisoned in his palace by his father. At the time of his birth a prediction was made that he would either be a great sage or a mighty ruler - and his father wanted the mighty ruler option. So, his father imprisoned him in the palace full of wonderful things, wonderful food, marvelous entertainment, the splendorous princess Yaśodharā as his wife, everything he wanted. But he escaped from the palace and saw the reality of suffering out in the world; he saw that even a palace of wonderful things could not free you from suffering, and in the end, death.
And, having seen ascetics beyond the walls of the palace engaged in practice, the Buddha too turned to practice. This is exactly Bodaishin – the mind of awakening which turns us to practice and sees that our everyday lives do not hold the answer, no matter how happy and fulfilled they are. It encourages us to seek an answer beyond the everyday, beyond the personality, beyond those things that society tends to value.
So that’s what brings us to practice. If you are drawn to meditative practice, then you too will have experienced Bodaishin like the Buddha, whether consciously or unconsciously. Everyone already has Bodaishin within them, but we don’t always connect with it. But if you are practising sincerely, you have already made that connection. Master Dogen spoke of it as ‘arousing Bodaishin within you’. It is already there. You’ve already touched it if you are practicing.
So Bodaishin leads us to practice. And practice in the end, helps us to see that there is no answer in the relative world. It helps us to see that when we practice, we also start playing games. We want to be a perfect Zen practitioner; We want to be enlightened; we want to be free of suffering. And all these wants, trying to find the answer outside us, are also destined to ultimately disappoint - because there is no answer in the relative world. But what practice also helps us to see is that this personality that we have - and this is the ultimate insight of the Buddha - this personality that we have is a relative, fleeting, constructed reality. And beyond and between and behind the thoughts, the discriminations, the wants, the don’t wants, the likes, the don’t likes that we have is an experience of an unconstructed reality which is always already beyond suffering. It is beyond suffering because in that ‘place’, there is no self that suffers.
In other words we are always, from a relative point of view, destined to suffer. But also we are always already beyond suffering. And the practice of Zen is to live with that koan: to realise that we are always destined to suffer from a relative perspective, but also through practice we can embody a reality which is beyond suffering, and that beyond suffering gives one strength to meet and accept the suffering that life inevitably provides.
This happens naturally, unconsciously and automatically through practice. It’s not something that one makes happen. It’s something that happens naturally, unconsciously and automatically, like drops of water dripping steadily over time onto a stone, smoothing it.
So this is what Bodaishin is. It’s the mind of awakening which brings us to practice. It helps us to see both that there is no perfect answerin the world of our relative personality, and also that we always alreadyare the answer, and practice manifests that answer within us. It is to live that contradiction, harmonizing the relative and absolute, the many and the one.
Thanks to Daniel Linker for the image, and Rick Szur for transcription support
