Why Make A Name?

This is the first posting for the 100-day practice period study group on the Shobogenzo Genjokoan. I’ll mark these posts with the moon of the night we met (or the day of the posting if it is something pertaining to the study) in order to help identify them. I’m considering a separate blog for this … but not clear about that yet. Your thoughts welcome.

The moon on Thursday was a waxing gibbous. I talked a bit about the purpose of study, the commentarial text that we’d be digging into, and then together we dug into the first word of the title, Shobogenzo, and ended it all with a question.

The Purpose of Study

Study can be an important aide for reflecting deeply into our lives, opening our hearts to what’s true, and rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. Study can also inform zazen.

However, study often gets a bad name in Zen circles from it’s misuse – stuffing up our heads with knowledge in a futile attempt to shore up our walls of defense and separation.

There isn’t anything wrong with you if you do that – it just means that you are human.

Working with a teacher and a community who are willing to point out stinkiness can help us use study to really turn the light around. Getting stinky, letting go, and getting stinky again are all included in the circle of the Way.

That’s where Shobogenzo, True Dharma Eye Treasury, fits in. It is a phrase that comes from the story of Buddha holding up a flower and Mahakasyapa smiling. Click here to read the story and a bit about it’s origin.

Dharma study and zazen can come together in wholehearted inquiry bent on discovery of the true dharma eye treasury.

The Commentary

We’ll be studying the classic Soto text, Genjokoan, using Okikigaki-sho, “Notes on What Was Heard and Extracted,” by two of Dogen’s students, Sen’ne and Kyogo, to shed light on its original meaning. Click here if you’d like to learn more about these two important figures in Soto Zen and about the Okikigaki-sho.

To simplify, I’ll refer to the commentary simply as Notes.

The Notes are presented as a dialogue between Sen’ne and Kyogo. Like a real dialogue, it isn’t always apparent that they are listening to each other. In the first couple pages, however, they are beating the same drum, attempting to call our school by its true name.

True Dharma Eye Treasury

Kyogo begins,

“Since the Buddha held up a flower and blinked his eyes, we may call our school Holding Flower School or because Mahakasyapa smiled we may call our tradition the Smiling School. But we don’t call our school with such names.”

Sen’ne continues this thread, maybe correcting his disciple, “We should not use our personal wordings. What shall we take and what shall we throw away among the Buddha’s words?”

That’s a tough one. Can we avoid using our personal wordings? Can we digest the whole of the Buddha dharma, no part left out?

Sen’ne then raises a fundamental issue. “Why do we have to make a name for our school?”

The study group kicked this around. On the one hand, naming something puts it in a box and closes down inquiry. The word is not the thing. Once we say “Zen” or “Soto” our formations might lock down and we see the thing as we are, not as it is.

This can be especially dangerous when we identify with something against something else. Democrat vs. Republican, Buddhist vs. Christian, Soto vs. Rinzai. Under the beautiful flag of our favorite thing, we fight.

On CNN last night, James Carville said that at this point in any campaign, the true believers on both sides are energized by hating the lies of the other side and loving their own.

Which of your own lies do you love?

On the other hand, without a name we might not notice the details of a thing or notice it at all or even see that it’s a lie. Living with a black lab, I now see labs much more often. Learning the names of people helps me see them more clearly as they are rather than in some category – Black, white, man, woman.

Question

But back to the issue at hand. Why make the name true dharma eye treasury?

Don’t respond only through the conditioning of your frontal lobe. Please dig into this question, allowing it to roll around in your belly during zazen (and letting it go), bringing it to heart from time to time your daily life, using the mind to clarify rather than obscure.

Why make a name?

Why Make a Name?