Polishing a tile is making a Buddha mirror?

If you need more proof that Dogen is really confused about Buddhism and Zen, here is a little Zen story about Ma-tzu/Mazu doing zazen.  

One day while on Nan-yueh Mountain Ma-tsu was practicing seated meditation.  Upon seeing Ma-tsu in zazen the Abbot of Prajna Temple, Huai-jang, asked Ma-tsu, “In doing zazen what do you hope to accomplish?”  Ma-tsu quickly replied, “To attain Buddhahood.”  Huai-jang then bent down and took up a piece of tile and began to polish it.  When asked by Ma-tsu what he was doing, Huai-jang responded by saying, “I am trying to polish this tile into a mirror.”  Amused by all of this, Ma-tsu asked, “How can you hope to polish a tile and make it into a mirror?”  Huai-jang promptly shot back with, “Since a tile cannot be polished into a mirror how can you sit yourself into a Buddha?”  “So what must I do?” asked Ma-tsu.  “Well, take the example of an oxcart.  If it doesn’t move what to you whip, the cart or the ox?”  Ma-tsu was silent.  Then Huai-jang said something quite remarkable.

In learning seated meditation do you aspire to learn zazen or do you aspire to imitate the sitting Buddha.  If the former, Zen does not consist in sitting or in lying down.  If the latter, the Buddha has no fixed postures.  The Dharma goes on forever, and never abides in anything.  You must not therefore be attached to nor abandon any particular phase of it.  To sit yourself into Buddha this is to kill the Buddha.  To be attached to the sitting posture is to fail to comprehend the essential principle.

So how does Dogen treat this rather interesting Zen koan?  In a rather bizarre way.  The following is taken from the book, Zen Ritual. 

"In one of his two verse comments, Dogen inverts Nanyue's action by saying, "How can people plan to take a mirror and make it a tile?" implying that such effort denigrates the Buddha already present.  In "Zazenshin," commenting after Nanyue says, "How can you make a Buddha through zazen?"  Dogen declares, "There is a principle that seated meditation does not await making a Buddha; there is nothing obscure about the essential message that making a Buddha is not connected with seated meditation."  For Dogen, zazen is adamantly not merely a means to achieve buddhahood.  But after commenting in detail on this story, Dogen says, "It is the seated Buddha that Buddha after Buddha and Patriarch after Patriarch have taken as their essential activity…for it is the essential function."  Although it is not an instrumental activity for gaining awakening, zazen is still the fundamental activity of buddhas for Dogen" (pp. 171–172).

Perhaps a clearer if not a different explanation of Dogen’s strange analysis of the same Zen koan comes from the book, Eihei Dogen by Hee-Jin Kim.

“Commenting on this story, Dogen gave an unconventional interpretation that was characteristic of his treatment of other koan stories as well.  He contended that the story advocated not only the Zen dictum "Do not attempt to become a Buddha" (fuzu-sabutsu) but more important, the necessity of zazen undefiled.  He wrote:

'Indeed we know that when a tile, as it is being polished, becomes a mirror, Ma-tsu becomes a Buddha.  When Ma-tsu becomes a Buddha, Ma-tsu becomes Ma-tsu instantly.  When Ma-tsu becomes Ma-tsu, zazen becomes zazen immediately. Therefore, the tradition of making a mirror by polishing a tile has been kept alive at the core of ancient Buddhas'.

In the activity of zazen undefiled, a tile and a mirror or Ma-tsu and Buddha are one, though not dissolved.  Although the tile is not transformed into the mirror, the tile is the mirror; the act of polishing the tile itself unfolds the purity of the mirror.  Consequently, zazen, likened to the act of polishing the tile in this case, is nothing less than the unfolding enactment of original enlightenment, or in other words the mirror" (pp. 67–68).

Putting this another way, we are bright mirrors and tiles.  When we do  zazen, i.e., the polishing, the mirrorness is manifest.  We are Buddhas.  

In truth, zazen which is the physical act of just sitting has nothing to do with the realization of Buddhahood since Buddhahood is transcendent.  Buddhahood is the complete and full awakening of Mind to itself beginning with becoming a first stage (bhumi) Bodhisattva having accomplished bodhicittotpada, that is, the inception of the Mind that is bodhi.  This hardly conflicts with Ma-tsu's sublime understanding of meditation when he said: “Not cultivation and not sitting is the Tathagata’s pure meditation.”  This meditation is a meditation that goes beyond all forms and postures.  It is certainly not Dogen's confused meditation.

 

Comments

[Kojizen]

Clyde, you're aware that Soto Zen has more or less been split. The Soto of Dogen and the Soto of Keizan. The Soto that is in the U.S. stinks of Dogen. I am sure The Zennist had Dogen's Soto in mind.

[clyde]

Koji; Do you read what Zennist writes? Look at the previous post by Zennist (dated August 8, 2011). Here is the first sentence: “Soto Zen is certainly capable of muddling up the profound and yet simple (never simplistic) teachings of the Buddha.”

[K Grey]

There is no disagreement between your position and Dogen's. Only misunderstanding. You seem to miss his irony/purposeful use of contradictions, sort of like an American who can't fully appreciate Brit humor because of the language barrier.

No harm, but as the other commenter notes, there are endless paths. Beating this dead horse raises a stink that drifts over you other more insightful posts.

[Kojizen]

Clyde, I don't think The Zennist has anything against Soto Zen. Ejo, for example, is spiritually coherent as were others who tried to distance themselves from Dogen. Face it Clyde, Dogen is teaching wrong view with his emphasis on just sitting zazen which he takes quite literally. It is entirely external.

[clyde]

Fortunately, if Dogen and (Japanese) Soto Zen are not suitable for you, there are other Zen sects/lineages, including (Chinese) Ch’an, (Japanese) Rinzai, (Korean) Soen, (Vietnamese) Thien, and several others. The American Zen Teachers Association has a list here: http://www.americanzenteachers.org/practice.cfm .

And Sweeping Zen has both a list of authors/scholars/teachers here: http://sweepingzen.com/category/biographies/zen-biographies-by-tradition/ which can be searched by tradition and a list of sanghas here: http://sweepingzen.com/zen-centers/ .

“It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”