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Just This Is It: Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness / Taigen Dan Leighton

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Just This Is It: Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness / Taigen Dan Leighton “What a delight to have this thorough, wise, and deep work on the teaching of Zen Master Dongshan from the pen of Taigen Dan Leighton! As always, he relates his discussion of traditional Zen materials to contemporary social, ecological, and political issues, bringing up, among many others, Jack London, Lewis Carroll, echinoderms, and, of course, his beloved Bob Dylan. This is a must-have book for all serious students of Zen. It is an education in itself.” —Norman Fischer, author of Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong “A masterful exposition of the life and teachings of Chinese Chan master Dongshan, the ninth century founder of the Caodong school, later transmitted by Dōgen to Japan as the Sōtō sect. Leighton carefully examines in ways that are true to the traditional sources yet have a distinctively contemporary flavor a variety of material attributed to Dongshan. Leighton is masterful in weaving together specific approaches evoked through stories about and sayings by Dongshan to create a powerful and inspiring religious vision that is useful for students and researchers as well as practitioners of Zen. Through his thoughtful reflections, Leighton brings to light the panoramic approach to kōans characteristic of this lineage, including the works of Dōgen. This book also serves as a significant contribution to Dōgen studies, brilliantly explicating his views throughout.” —Steven Heine, author of Did Dōgen Go to China? What He Wrote and When He Wrote It “In his wonderful new book, Just This Is It, Buddhist scholar and teacher Taigen Dan Leighton launches a fresh inquiry into the Zen teachings of Dongshan, drawing new relevance from these ancient tales. His inclusive and wide-ranging commentary applies these ancient Tang dynasty teachings of sentience and suchness to the problems of materialism and climate change that we face on our planet, today. Time- traveling from Dongshan to Dōgen to Bob Dylan, by way of Rimbaud and others, Leighton’s approach brings this old Zen ancestor to life with immediacy and intimacy, strengthening our vital connections through lineage and across time.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being ABOUT THE BOOK The joy of “suchness”—the absolute and true nature inherent in all appearance—shines through the teachings attributed to Dongshan Liangjie (807–869), the legendary founder of the Caodong lineage of Chan Buddhism (the predecessor of Sōtō Zen). Taigen Dan Leighton looks at the teachings attributed to Dongshan —in his Recorded Sayings and in the numerous koans in which he is featured as a character—to reveal the subtlety and depth of the teaching on the nature of reality that Dongshan expresses. Included are an analysis of the well-known teaching poem “Jewel Mirror Samadhi” and of the understanding of particular and universal expressed in the teaching of the Five Degrees. “The teachings embedded in the stories about Dongshan provide a rich legacy that has been sustained in practice traditions,” says Taigen. “Dongshan’s subtle teachings about engagement with suchness remain vital today for Zen people and are available for all those who wish to find meaning amid the challenges to modern life.” TAIGEN DAN LEIGHTON is an adjunct professor at the Institute of Buddhist Studies of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and has taught widely elsewhere, including at the University of Chicago, the California Institute of Integral Studies, Loyola University, the University of San Francisco, and Otani University in Kyoto. He's also a priest and dharma teacher in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki and a dharma heir of Tenshin Reb Anderson. He is the author or translator of numerous academic books on Zen, along with others that straddle the line between scholarly and popular, most prominent among which is his Bodhisattva Archetypes (Penguin, 1998, reissued by Wisdom in 2003 as Faces of Compassion: Classic Bodhisattva Archetypes and Their Modern Expression). Sign up to receive weekly Zen teachings and special offers from Shambhala Publications. Or visit us online to sign up at shambhala.com/ezenquotes. Shambhala Publications, Inc. Horticultural Hall 300 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 www.shambhala.com © 2015 by Taigen Dan Leighton Cover art “The Priest Dongshan Wading across a Stream” by Ma Yuan, courtesy of the Tokyo National Museum (TNM) Image Archives. Cover design by Mary Belibasakis FRONTISPIECE: Traditional Chinese Woodcut of Dongshan Liangjie. Dongshan Looking into the Stream (Horayama Do-sui View, partial; in Japanese: ) image reproduced by permission of TNM (Tokyo National Museum, ) Image Archives. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Leighton, Taigen Daniel, author. Just this is it: Dongshan and the practice of suchness / Taigen Dan Leighton. pages cm eISBN 978-0-8348-0089-2 ISBN 978-1-61180-228-3 (paperback) 1. Liangjie, 807–869—Teachings. 2. Caodong (Sect) I. Title. BQ9449.L527L45 2015 294.3′420427—dc23 2014019630 This work is Gratefully Dedicated to my Teacher, Tenshin Reb Anderson Roshi, who adeptly introduced me to the depths of Dongshan’s subtle teachings. I am not him, but he actually is me. Contents Major Figures Mentioned from the Caodong/Sōtō Lineage Acknowledgments Introduction: Dongshan’s Context in Zen PART ONE The Search for Suchness 1. Nonsentient Beings Expounding Dharma 2. Depicting This Reality 3. Yunyan’s Journey to Suchness PART TWO Teachings of Suchness 4. No Grass for Ten Thousand Miles 5. Beyond Heat or Cold 6. The White Rabbit 7. The Bird’s Path 8. On the Mountaintop 9. A Person of Suchness 10. Always Close 11. Caring for the One Not Ill PART THREE The Fivefold Suchness 12. The Jewel Mirror Samādhi 13. The Five Degrees Notes Selected Bibliography Index About the Author E-mail Sign-Up Major Figures Mentioned from the Caodong/Sōtō Lineage Acknowledgments I first express appreciation to all the students at Mountain Source Sangha in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1995 to 2006, as well as the students at Ancient Dragon Zen Gate in Chicago from 2007 through the present. In both sanghas I spoke on many occasions about Dongshan’s stories and his teaching, and their various responses certainly have benefited this book. Thanks to Jennifer Obst of Ancient Dragon Zen Gate for transcribing a number of talks of mine related to Dongshan, which helped with the writing of this book. I am deeply grateful to the anonymous donor whose generous grant allowed me to initiate and make significant progress on this project. A number of readers or others who heard portions of this material helped clarify and improve this work in various ways with their suggestions and encouragement. These included especially Tonen O’Connor, Gib Robinson, Douglas Floyd, Roy Wyman, Rosalind Leighton, Nyozan Eric Shutt, Keizan Titus O’Brien, Alan Senauke, Tenkei Coppens, Naomi Leighton, Harry Miller, Norman Fischer, Brook Ziporyn, and my bright late student Harry Jackson. Kenshu Shimada of DePaul University and Paul Mayer of the Field Museum provided helpful information about echinoderms and their history. I am very grateful to Steven Heine, Paul Copp, and Andy Ferguson for a variety of valuable scholarly and historical assistance. Of course, any errors regarding source information, and all misguided or misleading interpretations or commentaries concerning Dongshan’s teachings, are solely my own responsibility. Thanks to my agent, Victoria Shoemaker, for helpful encouragement and a range of practical assistance. I am grateful to Dave O’Neal of Shambhala Publications, along with Hazel Bercholz, Ben Gleason, and many others at Shambhala for the actual production of this book. Many thanks to Bob Dylan for permission to use the lines from “All I Really Want to Do,” and also for five decades of profound and ongoing inspiration. Thanks to my friends Preston and Michiyo Houser for their kind assistance and support with permissions issues. Thanks to Ven. Heng Sure and the Buddhist Text Translation Society / Dharma Realm Buddhist University for providing the traditional Chinese woodcut image of Dongshan. Henry Frum kindly provided permission to use his photographs from Dongshan’s temple. The painting of Dongshan crossing the stream by Mayuan is used with the permission of the Tokyo National Museum and TNM Image Archives. I am grateful to editors Steven Heine and Dale Wright, and to Oxford University Press, for publishing an abbreviated version of portions of the material in this book as the article “Dongshan and the Teaching of Suchness” in their book Zen Masters, published by Oxford University Press in 2010. I want to express my deep appreciation for the work of Thomas Cleary, whose incisive translations of the Dongshan-related stories in the Book of Serenity have considerably benefited this book. In addition to the Book of Serenity, Dr. Cleary’s monumental translations of the Flower Ornament Scripture and the Blue Cliff Record (in collaboration with his brother J. C. Cleary), along with his translations of Dōgen, have all been important to my own work. My deep thanks go to William Powell for his translation of Dongshan’s Recorded Sayings, the base text for my commentaries. Much thanks to Charlie Pokorny for his helpful, extensive notes on the Dongshan and related materials available in English. I am deeply indebted to all of my Buddhist teachers, too numerous to name. Especially I am thankful to my friends Shohaku Okumura and Kaz Tanahashi. The privilege of working with each of them cotranslating and thereby closely studying the writings of Eihei Dōgen was helpful background for the study of Dongshan. I am grateful to my wife, Naomi, for her patience and all her gracious support throughout the long work required on this book.
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