[from a talk given by John Genyo Sprague at GRZC in April, 2024]
Greetings everyone. In this talk we are addressing the theme of “Raising the Bodhi Mind in Everyday Activity, and How” — which is also the subject of a short chapter in Maezumi Roshi’s book, Appreciate Your Life, the text for the Winter Intensive. When I was first asked to consider this topic, I felt an immediate happy response, “yes!” and a rush of thoughts, “oh this is where I’ll go with that,” and honestly I wish I had recorded some of that, because the first immediate, intuitive response to things is often the best. In fact in Japanese Zen teachings and analysis they have the notion of nen, the mind of the moment. There is the first nen, the immediate response to the present moment. This in its essence is the bodhi mind. And then after that there is the second nen, where we are thinking about the first nen, and then there is the third nen, thinking about the first two, and we get a train of thought, and we’re all familiar with trains of thought.
This theme invites us to raise the bodhi mind. The word in Sanskrit is bodhicitta. Bodhi — awakened, awakening. This is the same root as the word Buddha. The Buddha is the awakened one, the one who has realized in a more or less stable way, this bodhi mind. And citta — mind. Raise the bodhi mind (raises the arms), raise the bodhi mind, raise the bodhi mind, over and over again. Maezumi quotes Dogen who says you don’t just raise the bodhi mind just once (snapping fingers) your raise it 10 times, your raise it a hundred times, a thousand times, you raise it ten thousand times, over and over again. (snapping fingers again and again.)
I first heard this word Bodhicitta a long time ago, when I started studying Buddhism — in the Tibetan world. And there was an explanation made between the relative bodhicitta and the absolute bodhicitta. The relative bodhicitta is the way seeking mind, the desire to awaken, the aspiration to enlightenment for the benefit of all. This is the mind that wants to be free of suffering, and to alleviate the suffering of others. And this is a central feature of the mind of a bodhisattva, who is driven by a desire to alleviate suffering, and be of benefit to others. This is most frequently what is meant by the word bodhicitta. At the same, there is the notion of the absolute bodhicitta, which is the awakened mind itself, You can find both understandings in Maezumi’s book. In the glossary in the back Bodhi Mind is explained as how I first learned it — the mind in which an aspiration to enlightenment is awakenedd. But in the text of the book, it is described more directly as the the awakened mind itself. Ultimately, Mahayana Buddhism affirms that the two are ultimately inseparable. This is wonderful news. The very mind that seeks to awaken is the buddha mind itself. Our aspiration is none other than the activity of the bodhi mind. And thus it’s not that we have to go look for somewhere else, but rather find within ourselves. Consider how we say that we raise our arm (demonstrates). I do this zigong excercise most days. I raise my arms, breathing in, and then on the exhale the arms come down, but the energy that has been raised stays up. So I love this “raise the bodhi mind.” It implies that we can do it.
I love how Maezumi speaks of the very first moment you feel a desire to seek the way, and explains that this way is how to live your best life. Beautiful! I found this very moving. That first moment, the beginner’s mind is the bodhicitta. and so I want to invite us all to reflect on that, to notice that in ourselves.
There’s a very famous text in Mahayana Buddhism which is Shantideva on the Way of the Bodhisatva. And here is a passage from that:
No one should ever forsake bodhichitta
Who wants to dispel beings’ unhappiness,
Vanquish the hundreds of miseries of existence,
And partake in the many hundreds of joys.
If they rouse bodhichitta, in an instant
The wretched, fettered in samsara’s prison,
Are named the offspring of the sugatas [buddhas]
And revered in the worlds of gods and humans.
Just like the greatest kind of alchemy,
It takes this unclean body and transforms it
Into a priceless jewel, a buddha’s body,
[This reminds me how at the end of our Jukai ceremony, we circumambulate the
recipients, and chant, ‘Buddha bow to Buddha’]
So firmly grasp ahold of bodhichitta….
Like those who in great danger, rely on heroes.
Why would the careful not rely on that
Which liberates them in a single instant,
[Yeah, right now. That is the invitation.]
Even if they have done horrendous wrongs?
Like the inferno at an age’s end,
It burns up great misdeeds in a single instant.
Shantideva. You know sometimes when we read such passages it can feel like such matters are far away from our daily life, which is why I appreciated the request to consider how do we do this. How do we raise the bodhi mind in our daily lives?
Maezumi’s short essay is basically a pep talk, he offers three main qualities to rely upon. One is great faith. One is great doubt. (Anyone have a problem locating great doubt? Anyone want to join me in the great doubt club?) In fact we need great doubt to raise the bodhi mind. You also need great faith, faith that your life is in fact the way. This is so important and interesting to see how we have such a strong tendency to think that which we’re looking for is somewhere else. But the truth is that we’re never going to be apart from our own life. The only life we have is our own. Of course we are in relationship with others and their lives, but we always have our own. So if the way exists anywhere, it must exist in, and as, our own life. Having faith in that. But then at the same time we have great doubt most of the time. So we have faith, and doubt. So finally we have great determination to practice, to raise the bodhi mind, to come back to that faith in the light of that great doubt.
When I was a young adult and had some wondrous mystical experiences, I thought it so clear that everything is interconnected, and that we’re all one. So obvious. But since then everything got harder, because one sees how great doubt and insecurity and suffering abound everywhere. But this in fact is so essential to the path. In Zen we have koans, and in fact many, if not all koans are meant to point us to the great doubt. They say you’re meant to feel it like a hot iron ball stuck in your throat. Isn’t it true that we feel that way, some part of us? So then we turn to great faith and determination. Maezumi tells us “that’s it, your life is it. Go for it. Raise the bodhi, raise the bodhi mind.”
Okay, but then still there is that final question, how? How? Okay, yes, we sit, we practice zazen. Let’s take a moment to reflect on your zazen. Different sits have different qualities, and we keep sitting. Through it all one can ask, “what is it that is aware?” This is what we are pointing to. What is it that is awake?
Zazen has been sometimes described as the method of no method, we just sit. But sometimes we do say something about it, how it functions and so forth. One of my favorites is described by a Japanese phrase eko hensho. What it means is turn the light around to illuminate within. It’s a very important phrase and appears in Dogen’s writings on zazen. But in fact it goes back to the Taoist tradition. Zen ancestors borrowed it, Buddhists who came to China. There is a famous early text on Taost inner “yoga” called the Can Ton Qi. Some of it uses alchemical language, but it is really a treatise on inner practice, and this phrase and another similar phrase appear in it. The purpose of the text is to show people how to reflect back their own brightness, their attention. The question is, where is our attention. You can liken your attention to a spotlight. Now you’re directing it on the screen, hearing my words, with the light of your attention. So now the instruction is to turn it around and light up within. We want to learn to reflect back our brightness to light up within so that the outbreath and inbreath merge together in a state of utmost peace. Sit with that for a moment. Take a few breaths, turning the attention inward, letting the inbreath and outbreath merge.… This is eko hensho. Turning the light around. It’s a root of our zazen practice. We have this thread in the Soto Zen tradition. But even before the official founding of the Soto linage we see it in Zen exemplified in Shitou’s poem, The Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage, where it describes very simply this practice:
"I built myself a 10 ft square hut, and I sit. And the whole universe is in it. And that’s all I need. Thought the hut is small it includes the entire world. In 10 ft square an old man sits and illumines forms and their nature.” (Sitting, being present with what’s going on, in his own mind, and no doubt in the “outer” world — the rain, and the bugs, the food he eats, and interactions with fellow monks. We find this phrase here: Turn the light around to shine within, and then just return."
Thus the practice is not to stay in an inward state of introspection. Why do we turn the light around? Not to go away from the world. But because we have an understandable tendency to get hypnotized by, lost in, distressed by, and conditioned by, all the happenings going on in the world. So we remember, “wait, turn the light around” and remember, and take a breath, centering within, and then return to whatever needs to be met. Return to your life. And it can happen in a single breath. This is a beautiful practice. It’s not just zazen practice, that happens only at certain times of the day. Just as Taoism influenced Zen, so Zen influences Taoism. There is a famous later Taoist text called the Secret of the Golden Flower, which in Thomas Cleary’s explanation is basically a Taoist take on zazen practice. The whole book is an explication of turning the light around — the whole text.
What are we doing when we turn the light around? We are momentarily letting go of our fixations on the seeming external world, and we’re also noticing that we are aware. We look towards the source of this awareness. We have another relevant notion — reverse gazing. Hongzhi, writes about the same practice: “We must take the backward step. Turn the light around, and directly reach the middle of the circle from where the light issues forth.” We think we are turning the light around to shine inward, and then we discover that the source of the light is within ourselves. Your own attention, your own awareness. Once you’ve done that you can settle there. Relax there. At its heart this aware mind we find within ourselves is the bodhi mind.
From there, with that you can meet the world, mediated by our committments, such as the precepts. Through our zazen, and by practicing turning the light around again and again, we are raising the bodhi mind again and again. Honzhi goes on to say, then “you can share yourself, and manage affairs” . . . from this center, from the bodhi mind which you can find in your practice. In the Secret of the Golden Flower it says, “Look back again and again, into the source of mind. Whatever you are doing. Not sticking to any image of person or self. This is turning the light around. And it can be done in any moment, wherever you are. I remember our dharma sister Inzan. She had her red light practice. She’d be driving and get to a red light. And she’d remember, take a breath, ahhh. This is a key answer to the question of how to raise the bodhi mind. Great faith, Great doubt. Great determination to practice. Practice zazen. Practice turning the light around, breathe, center within, recognize the heart of your own awareness — the bodhi mind. Return to meet the world, loving actions, raising the bodhi mind again and again as you go.
Thank you for your practice.
Greetings everyone. In this talk we are addressing the theme of “Raising the Bodhi Mind in Everyday Activity, and How” — which is also the subject of a short chapter in Maezumi Roshi’s book, Appreciate Your Life, the text for the Winter Intensive. When I was first asked to consider this topic, I felt an immediate happy response, “yes!” and a rush of thoughts, “oh this is where I’ll go with that,” and honestly I wish I had recorded some of that, because the first immediate, intuitive response to things is often the best. In fact in Japanese Zen teachings and analysis they have the notion of nen, the mind of the moment. There is the first nen, the immediate response to the present moment. This in its essence is the bodhi mind. And then after that there is the second nen, where we are thinking about the first nen, and then there is the third nen, thinking about the first two, and we get a train of thought, and we’re all familiar with trains of thought.
This theme invites us to raise the bodhi mind. The word in Sanskrit is bodhicitta. Bodhi — awakened, awakening. This is the same root as the word Buddha. The Buddha is the awakened one, the one who has realized in a more or less stable way, this bodhi mind. And citta — mind. Raise the bodhi mind (raises the arms), raise the bodhi mind, raise the bodhi mind, over and over again. Maezumi quotes Dogen who says you don’t just raise the bodhi mind just once (snapping fingers) your raise it 10 times, your raise it a hundred times, a thousand times, you raise it ten thousand times, over and over again. (snapping fingers again and again.)
I first heard this word Bodhicitta a long time ago, when I started studying Buddhism — in the Tibetan world. And there was an explanation made between the relative bodhicitta and the absolute bodhicitta. The relative bodhicitta is the way seeking mind, the desire to awaken, the aspiration to enlightenment for the benefit of all. This is the mind that wants to be free of suffering, and to alleviate the suffering of others. And this is a central feature of the mind of a bodhisattva, who is driven by a desire to alleviate suffering, and be of benefit to others. This is most frequently what is meant by the word bodhicitta. At the same, there is the notion of the absolute bodhicitta, which is the awakened mind itself, You can find both understandings in Maezumi’s book. In the glossary in the back Bodhi Mind is explained as how I first learned it — the mind in which an aspiration to enlightenment is awakenedd. But in the text of the book, it is described more directly as the the awakened mind itself. Ultimately, Mahayana Buddhism affirms that the two are ultimately inseparable. This is wonderful news. The very mind that seeks to awaken is the buddha mind itself. Our aspiration is none other than the activity of the bodhi mind. And thus it’s not that we have to go look for somewhere else, but rather find within ourselves. Consider how we say that we raise our arm (demonstrates). I do this zigong excercise most days. I raise my arms, breathing in, and then on the exhale the arms come down, but the energy that has been raised stays up. So I love this “raise the bodhi mind.” It implies that we can do it.
I love how Maezumi speaks of the very first moment you feel a desire to seek the way, and explains that this way is how to live your best life. Beautiful! I found this very moving. That first moment, the beginner’s mind is the bodhicitta. and so I want to invite us all to reflect on that, to notice that in ourselves.
There’s a very famous text in Mahayana Buddhism which is Shantideva on the Way of the Bodhisatva. And here is a passage from that:
No one should ever forsake bodhichitta
Who wants to dispel beings’ unhappiness,
Vanquish the hundreds of miseries of existence,
And partake in the many hundreds of joys.
If they rouse bodhichitta, in an instant
The wretched, fettered in samsara’s prison,
Are named the offspring of the sugatas [buddhas]
And revered in the worlds of gods and humans.
Just like the greatest kind of alchemy,
It takes this unclean body and transforms it
Into a priceless jewel, a buddha’s body,
[This reminds me how at the end of our Jukai ceremony, we circumambulate the
recipients, and chant, ‘Buddha bow to Buddha’]
So firmly grasp ahold of bodhichitta….
Like those who in great danger, rely on heroes.
Why would the careful not rely on that
Which liberates them in a single instant,
[Yeah, right now. That is the invitation.]
Even if they have done horrendous wrongs?
Like the inferno at an age’s end,
It burns up great misdeeds in a single instant.
Shantideva. You know sometimes when we read such passages it can feel like such matters are far away from our daily life, which is why I appreciated the request to consider how do we do this. How do we raise the bodhi mind in our daily lives?
Maezumi’s short essay is basically a pep talk, he offers three main qualities to rely upon. One is great faith. One is great doubt. (Anyone have a problem locating great doubt? Anyone want to join me in the great doubt club?) In fact we need great doubt to raise the bodhi mind. You also need great faith, faith that your life is in fact the way. This is so important and interesting to see how we have such a strong tendency to think that which we’re looking for is somewhere else. But the truth is that we’re never going to be apart from our own life. The only life we have is our own. Of course we are in relationship with others and their lives, but we always have our own. So if the way exists anywhere, it must exist in, and as, our own life. Having faith in that. But then at the same time we have great doubt most of the time. So we have faith, and doubt. So finally we have great determination to practice, to raise the bodhi mind, to come back to that faith in the light of that great doubt.
When I was a young adult and had some wondrous mystical experiences, I thought it so clear that everything is interconnected, and that we’re all one. So obvious. But since then everything got harder, because one sees how great doubt and insecurity and suffering abound everywhere. But this in fact is so essential to the path. In Zen we have koans, and in fact many, if not all koans are meant to point us to the great doubt. They say you’re meant to feel it like a hot iron ball stuck in your throat. Isn’t it true that we feel that way, some part of us? So then we turn to great faith and determination. Maezumi tells us “that’s it, your life is it. Go for it. Raise the bodhi, raise the bodhi mind.”
Okay, but then still there is that final question, how? How? Okay, yes, we sit, we practice zazen. Let’s take a moment to reflect on your zazen. Different sits have different qualities, and we keep sitting. Through it all one can ask, “what is it that is aware?” This is what we are pointing to. What is it that is awake?
Zazen has been sometimes described as the method of no method, we just sit. But sometimes we do say something about it, how it functions and so forth. One of my favorites is described by a Japanese phrase eko hensho. What it means is turn the light around to illuminate within. It’s a very important phrase and appears in Dogen’s writings on zazen. But in fact it goes back to the Taoist tradition. Zen ancestors borrowed it, Buddhists who came to China. There is a famous early text on Taost inner “yoga” called the Can Ton Qi. Some of it uses alchemical language, but it is really a treatise on inner practice, and this phrase and another similar phrase appear in it. The purpose of the text is to show people how to reflect back their own brightness, their attention. The question is, where is our attention. You can liken your attention to a spotlight. Now you’re directing it on the screen, hearing my words, with the light of your attention. So now the instruction is to turn it around and light up within. We want to learn to reflect back our brightness to light up within so that the outbreath and inbreath merge together in a state of utmost peace. Sit with that for a moment. Take a few breaths, turning the attention inward, letting the inbreath and outbreath merge.… This is eko hensho. Turning the light around. It’s a root of our zazen practice. We have this thread in the Soto Zen tradition. But even before the official founding of the Soto linage we see it in Zen exemplified in Shitou’s poem, The Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage, where it describes very simply this practice:
"I built myself a 10 ft square hut, and I sit. And the whole universe is in it. And that’s all I need. Thought the hut is small it includes the entire world. In 10 ft square an old man sits and illumines forms and their nature.” (Sitting, being present with what’s going on, in his own mind, and no doubt in the “outer” world — the rain, and the bugs, the food he eats, and interactions with fellow monks. We find this phrase here: Turn the light around to shine within, and then just return."
Thus the practice is not to stay in an inward state of introspection. Why do we turn the light around? Not to go away from the world. But because we have an understandable tendency to get hypnotized by, lost in, distressed by, and conditioned by, all the happenings going on in the world. So we remember, “wait, turn the light around” and remember, and take a breath, centering within, and then return to whatever needs to be met. Return to your life. And it can happen in a single breath. This is a beautiful practice. It’s not just zazen practice, that happens only at certain times of the day. Just as Taoism influenced Zen, so Zen influences Taoism. There is a famous later Taoist text called the Secret of the Golden Flower, which in Thomas Cleary’s explanation is basically a Taoist take on zazen practice. The whole book is an explication of turning the light around — the whole text.
What are we doing when we turn the light around? We are momentarily letting go of our fixations on the seeming external world, and we’re also noticing that we are aware. We look towards the source of this awareness. We have another relevant notion — reverse gazing. Hongzhi, writes about the same practice: “We must take the backward step. Turn the light around, and directly reach the middle of the circle from where the light issues forth.” We think we are turning the light around to shine inward, and then we discover that the source of the light is within ourselves. Your own attention, your own awareness. Once you’ve done that you can settle there. Relax there. At its heart this aware mind we find within ourselves is the bodhi mind.
From there, with that you can meet the world, mediated by our committments, such as the precepts. Through our zazen, and by practicing turning the light around again and again, we are raising the bodhi mind again and again. Honzhi goes on to say, then “you can share yourself, and manage affairs” . . . from this center, from the bodhi mind which you can find in your practice. In the Secret of the Golden Flower it says, “Look back again and again, into the source of mind. Whatever you are doing. Not sticking to any image of person or self. This is turning the light around. And it can be done in any moment, wherever you are. I remember our dharma sister Inzan. She had her red light practice. She’d be driving and get to a red light. And she’d remember, take a breath, ahhh. This is a key answer to the question of how to raise the bodhi mind. Great faith, Great doubt. Great determination to practice. Practice zazen. Practice turning the light around, breathe, center within, recognize the heart of your own awareness — the bodhi mind. Return to meet the world, loving actions, raising the bodhi mind again and again as you go.
Thank you for your practice.