“Sansuikyo,” a chapter of the Shobogenzo which has now been published as a separate book titled The Mountains and Waters Sutra, was written by Dogen in 1240, after he had established his own monastery, Koshoji, at “the beginning of his most creative years, which continued till 1245.” “Sansui” means “mountains and waters” and “kyo” means “sutra” or “sutras.”
“Sansuikyo” means “Mountains and Waters are Sutra”
In 1243, Shohaku Okumura tells us, Dogen moved to the Echizen mountains where he “started a new monastery. He first named it Daibutsuji, Great Buddha Temple, then changed the name to Eiheiji, Temple of Eternal Peace.” Only then did Dogen live in the midst of mountains. Koshoji was located in the southern part of Kyoto, where there are no mountains, only hills.
Okumura comments: “So, [Dogen] is not talking about a particular mountain where he actually lived … It seems that the mountains and waters in “Sansuikyo” were not real mountains and waters but a metaphor or symbol. This is important for understanding “Sansuikyo”: ‘mountains and waters’ is a Buddhist expression rather than a reference to real mountains where Dogen lived.”
In China, a tradition of landscape painting similarly known as shan shui (mountain-water) had developed historically with Chan as a method of Chan practice and teaching. It used brush and ink rather than paint and represented mountains, rivers and waterfalls emerging out of empty space – mist, cloud or sky – to convey the experience of the thousand things arising out of emptiness. In Chinese, the expression “mountains and waters” usually stands for “landscape,” and here refers to the natural world as such. “Sansuikyo,” then, is not a sutra about mountains and waters. Rather, Dogen says mountains and waters are the many forms of the ten thousand things arising out of the formless emptiness, “[they] are themselves sutra – they unceasingly expound the Buddha’s teaching … Dogen is saying that the mountains and the waters are themselves sutras.”
Dogen’s source for “Sansuikyo” is a poem by Su Shi
Okumura explains that “One source of Dogen’s inspiration for writing ‘Sansuikyo’ is a poem by the well-known Chinese poet Su Shi or Su Dongpo (in Japanese he’s known as So Shoku or So Toba) called ‘The Verse of Keisei Sanshoku’. Keisei sanshoku literally means ‘sounds of valley streams, color of mountains’ or ‘sounds of valley streams, form of mountains’. This is a poem that Su Shi had presented to his master as evidence of his enlightenment after having spent an entire night out in nature, and be struck by the sound of valley streams somewhere in the darkness. “The original poem in Chinese and the Japanese way of reading it is as follows:
The murmuring brook is the Buddha’s long, broad tongue.
And is not the shapely mountain the body of purity?
Through the night I listen to eighty thousand gathas,
When dawn breaks, how will I explain it to the others?
Okumura in fact provides five translations of this poem which all share the same point that “our views are limited, biased by our karmic consciousness.” So, “Is there any absolutely true understanding, when each of us hears differently? This is a very important point in ‘Sansuikyo’ … We are very uncertain about almost everything; this uncertainty is a key element of the reality of our life … this uncertainty is a very important experience of the Buddhist teaching of emptiness.”
What early Buddhists summarized in the records of Sakyamuni’s teachings, Mahayana Buddhists sought in a direct seeing of reality with the “Dharma Eye.”
Okumura writes: “Mahayana Buddhists believed they could see the Buddha, that they could hear the voice of the Buddha in a different way, that they didn’t have to rely on written records … How can we see the Buddha’s body? How can we hear the Buddha’s voice? Is it possible or not? Mahayana Buddhists, including Dogen, thought that it is. At least in Dogen’s tradition, the sounds of valley streams – the sounds of everything in nature, like wind, birdsong, temple bells – expound what the Buddha taught. They expound the reality that the Buddha awakened to. If our eyes are open to see, whatever we see is the Buddha’s body.”
In Shobogenzo “Kenbutsu” (“Seeing Buddha”), “Dogen quotes a sentence from the Diamond Sutra: ‘To see all forms as no form is to see Tathagata’. And he suggests that this sentence should be read as, ‘To see both all forms and no-form is to see Tathagata’.”
The ears and eyes we need to hear the Buddha in the sounds of the valley streams, or see him in the forms and colours of the mountains, are not simply our karmic ears and eyes. Okumura explains: “Shobogen, from the title Shobogenzo, means ‘true Dharma eye’. We need the eyes that can see true Dharma; then we can see the Buddha’s body in everything. If we have the ears to hear Buddha’s teaching, then we can really hear the sutra. When we have these eyes and ears, we can see and hear the Buddha’s teaching even through negative things.”
Yet, Okumura insists that “Su Shi and Dogen did not see and hear some deep, secret, mysterious vision only special people can experience … The reality is always revealed. Nothing is hidden. What’s important is the condition of the person. Are we ready to listen to what the valley stream is really saying to us? Are we ready to see the Buddha’s body through the form of mountains – through the form of everything? … This way of seeing is, of course, the point of our zazen practice. Although it is nothing special, this is the profound transformation of opening the true Dharma eye.”
To obtain the Dharma Eye, we must free ourselves from the three poisons – greed, anger or hatred, and ignorance – that feed our sense of separatedness
Speaking in concrete terms, Dogen says that, “When the self does not cling to fame, profit, body, and mind, valleys and mountains as well do not withhold [their verses] in a similar way.” In reality we are not separated from other things, but, Okumura points out, “when we can get something good, we want to take it into my territory and keep it. This is our basic problem, caused by the three poisons: greed, anger or hatred, and ignorance. If we are free from these, we can see that the fence is only in our mind … And if we are free from this separation, then not only mountains and rivers but each and every thing in the world is always expounding Buddha’s teaching. This is the reality of impermanence, egolessness, and interdependent origination.” This “experience without self” is also called the “flow” state of “no-mind” where reality is approached through intuition, as opposed to the grasping by the intellect through the discursive thinking that relies exclusively on threading “representations” of reality into abstract theories.
All the activities in daily monastic life are the manifestation of zazen practice
While Zen practitioners in the West tend to equate zazen practice with a seated “contemplative” practice, for Dogen zazen covers one’s entire daily life, and more specifically that prescribed in a monastic setting. Even though Dogen is reputed for having included all people regardless of sex, class, or education in his sangha, he strongly believed that no one could ever gain full enlightenment outside a monastery where all the activities are “the manifestation of zazen practice: chanting sutras, listening to Dharma talks, eating with oryoki, cooking, cleaning, even resting and sleeping. Doing all these activities with awakening mind, being mindful and attentive – this is the way we transform our six sense organs into the true Dharma eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind.”Whereas, as Yuasa Yasuo points out in The Body, Self-Cultivation, and Ki-Energy, in the West religion is based on a “spirit-flesh dualism” and “the spirit is to be saved by torturing the flesh, the principle of sin,” in the East, where mind and body are taken to be inseparable, “training the body has been given positive meaning and value as a technical means of enhancing the spirit and personality.”
Sources:
Shohaku Okumura – The Mountains and Waters Sutra, A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s “Sansuikyo”
Yuasa Yasuo – The Body, Self-Cultivation, and Ki-Energy