The fourth Field of Zen practice is Dharma[i] Study, which is becoming familiar with and investigating Buddhist teachings. The texts and teachings in Buddhism include tools we can use for practice and inspirational guidance for our behavior, but the most critical part of Dharma Study is challenging the ideas and views we already hold, not acquiring new ones. The teachings describe Reality-with-a-Capital-R and invite us to investigate and verify the truth for ourselves. We don’t seek to acquire insight into Reality for its own sake, but because it is liberating and transformative.
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Why Dharma Study?
How to Approach Dharma Study
What Teachings to Study?
Some people are eager to engage in Dharma Study, some people resist it, others are ambivalent, and most are daunted. The sheer number of Buddhist texts and teachings is difficult to even approximate. Jews have their Torah, Christians their Bible, Muslims their Quran, and Hindus their Vedas, but Buddhists have no central text – or even a collection of texts – we consider to be divinely inspired and therefore a definitive source of orthodox teachings. Even the texts believed to be the words of Shakyamuni Buddha fill many volumes, and the texts considered authoritative in at least one sect of Buddhism would fill a mid-sized public library.
Why is Dharma Study important? How should you go about such study? Giving the vast number of texts and teachings, how do you decide what to study? I’ll address these questions in this episode, and in the next I’ll talk share a list of what I see as the fundamental Buddhist teachings as a way for you to structure and focus your study, along with some suggested texts.
Why Dharma Study?
If Zen practice is about what you do, not about what you believe, why is it important to engage in Dharma Study? Essentially, study is important because of the way the teachings expand your view of the world and your place in it – challenging your assumptions, encouraging you to ask questions you have never considered before, and stimulating your imagination.
Your views about the world are inseparable from the way you experience things and from your behavior. One of the central teachings of Buddhism is that your suffering is caused by critical misunderstandings about Reality. Often called “ignorance” or “delusion,” such misunderstandings keep us trapped in a self-centered dream. A Buddha, or an awakened being, is someone who has seen through their delusions and is thereby freed from fear, greed, anger, and hatred.
The most profound teachers and teachings are those which show you what you didn’t know you didn’t know. Dharma Study can expose you to countless such teachings. They are the accumulated wisdom of over 2,500 years’ worth of Buddhist practitioners. They encourage subtle shifts in perspective that you are extremely unlikely to experience on your own. Dharma Study lays out a path for you to walk, step by step, leading you toward a destination you can’t know exists until you reach it for yourself. Without the reassurance of our Dharma ancestors, in the form of the teachings, few of us would have the courage or imagination to go very far on the transformative journey of practice.
Here’s a short list summarizing the some of the valuable things you can find when you study the Dharma:
- Guidance for meditation and mindfulness, including many practices you can try
- Guidance for behavior that is conducive to living a moral life and to deep spiritual introspection
- Language and imagery that describe and frame your subjective experience as a human being in useful ways – language you can then use to explore your experience more deeply, and communicate about it to others
- Teachings that challenge your ideas about the world, including the nature of self, the origin of dissatisfaction, your relationship to others, the accuracy of your perceptions, and even the nature of time and space
- Teachings that are difficult to understand but which inspire and intrigue you, stimulating your Bodhicitta, because at some intuitive level you know they point toward the truth
- Teachings that address questions you never even thought to ask
- Encouragement and consolation from Dharma teachers and ancestors who experienced the same doubts and challenges you do
How to Approach Dharma Study
There’s no denying that certain approaches to Dharma Study can be less than helpful. If you’re someone who tries to master things by learning as much as you can about them, you may find yourself absorbed in Dharma Study while neglecting other aspects of practice. This is likely to be unfulfilling for two reasons. First, the huge number of texts and teachings means you could devote the rest of your life to study and still not exhaust them. Becoming a comprehensive Dharma expert is likely to be an elusive goal; even Buddhist scholars have to specialize.
The second reason over-emphasizing Dharma Study ends up unfulfilling is because you are meant to be exploring each teaching in your own, direct experience. This takes time, and you need to give plenty of energy to efforts in the other nine Fields of practice. Too much Dharma Study too quickly is like racing through a big art museum, quickly cataloging each exhibit with your eyes, and wondering afterwards why you don’t feel particularly touched or inspired by the art. If you’re only studying Dharma teachings intellectually, you can consume a whole lot of them without it making much of a difference in your life.
Another less-than-helpful approach to Dharma Study involves searching through the texts and teachings for a solution to your problems. This may sound like exactly what you’re meant to do – and in a certain way you are – but sometimes you can use Dharma Study in a way that’s intended as a shortcut. Instead of sitting Zazen even when its uncomfortable, instead of steadfastly cultivating Bodhicitta when years of practice don’t give you the results you want, instead of facing your own painful issues and working with them, you search for the answer someone else has already come up with. You explore all kinds of Dharma texts, podcasts, traditions, and teachers, looking for the key teaching that will suddenly make sense of everything, relieve your suffering, and allow you to awaken. Chances are you keep seeking and seeking, never finding what you’re looking for, because no matter what wonderful teaching you run into, you’re still going to have to settle down and do the hard work of practice if you want to awaken yourself.
On the other hand, you may resist study. Maybe you are wary – for good reason – of over-intellectualizing Zen. Alternatively, because there are so many teachings, and they are so disorganized, you may conclude that only someone with a special aptitude or interest is really meant to study them. You might perceive the teachings as peripheral or optional, regarding things like Zazen, ethical behavior, and practice in daily life as the real “meat” of practice. If you resist study, you may avoid it entirely, or engage in it halfheartedly only when your teacher or Sangha are doing it.
Fortunately, Dharma Study can be rewarding for anyone if approached in the right way. It helps to think of study like an essential ingredient in your practice – like yeast in bread. If you leave it out, your practice may stop growing and developing. Over time, with experience, you can learn just how much Dharma Study keeps your practice lively. Sometimes you may emphasize study a little too much, finding yourself burned out on it or frustrated that the teachings refuse to open themselves up to you. Then you can set aside the texts and teachings for a while, putting more energy into other Fields of practice. Sometimes you may neglect study, becoming complacent in your current view of the world and your place in it, wondering what the big deal about practice is, anyway. Then you can seek out a challenging text or teaching to encourage, challenge, or inspire you.
You won’t understand most of the teachings at first, and you certainly don’t need to read every text or memorize all the teachings (which is impossible in any case). It’s enough to gradually expose yourself to the essential teachings over the course of many years. This requires patience as you encounter new terminology, new ways of thinking, and a wide variety of texts contributed to the Buddhist tradition over the last 2,500 years – some of which may seem to have been written in a way to deliberately obscure their meaning! Some study you will enjoy, some of it you may not like at all, and that’s fine. Just keep including Dharma Study as an ingredient in your practice, and over time your understanding of Buddhist teachings will grow.
What Teachings to Study?
Assuming you want to make some effort in the Field of Dharma Study, where do you begin? What should you study, and in what order?
If you’re lucky, you’re involved with a Sangha (Buddhist community) that offers Dharma talks and classes. Participating in these can help expose you to a variety of teachings over time. You might want to take college classes, although compared to offerings at a Buddhist center, these tend to be more focused on academic rigor than on the exploration of the teachings in your practice and daily life. The advantage of studying Dharma based on what’s on offer at a Buddhist center or an academic institution is that you will encounter texts and teachings you might never have found or chosen to study on your own. The expertise of teachers and the peer support of other students can also make study much less daunting, especially when it comes to older texts that may be unlike anything you have studied before.
More or less self-guided Dharma study can also be fruitful. You might start with some basic recommendations for texts and topics from other teachers or this book, and then “follow your nose,” investigating next whatever Dharma comes across your path that interests you. It’s not necessary to follow an exact syllabus, although you may want to keep in mind the list I will offer in the next episode of fundamental teachings which build on one another. Try to include at least some “source texts” in your study – generally speaking, these are texts anywhere from 150 to 2,500 years old. These are texts which have stood the test of time; if Buddhists continue to study them, there’s a good reason. Source texts can be challenging, but you can look for modern commentaries on source texts to help.
Your approach to Dharma Study is going to depend on your interests. If you enjoy an ecumenical approach to your spirituality, you will get plenty of benefit from picking up any Buddhist text or teaching, regardless of which tradition it comes from. Alternatively, you may wish to commit to deepening your understanding of a particular lineage – because of personal affinity, because you prioritize depth of understanding over breadth, or because you would like to help share that lineage’s teachings.
If you want to develop a deep understanding of your lineage of Zen, it helps to compare the Buddhist tradition to a tree. The trunk of the tree are the most ancient texts and teachings, attributed to Shakyamuni Buddha from 2,500 years ago. At the top of the trunk, the tree splits into two major branches, analogous to Mahayana Buddhism as opposed to those traditions which seek to preserve Buddhism as the Buddha taught it, such as Theravada. Each of those major branches then splits into further large branches (especially the Mahayana, including Vajrayana, Pure Land, and Chan/Zen). Every branch keeps dividing, and the tiny outermost branches – the furthest in time from the trunk – represent extant lineages of Buddhism.
Buddhism is a lineage tradition, with a strong emphasis on the legitimate passage of the teachings and practices from teacher to student through time. Therefore, most teachers, temples, or Buddhist centers will be able to trace a lineage of teachers back to Shakyamuni Buddha. Part of this lineage will be apocryphal (we are talking about 2,500 years), but the concept of lineage is taken seriously. Like distant relatives in a family tree, Buddhist lineages have diverged greatly over time in many ways, including which teachings and texts are treasured and emphasized, the central practices, the inclusion of women and lay people, the culture of the Sangha, and even the ultimate goal of the practice. A terminal branch far from yours on the tree may be a form of Buddhism you barely recognize.
All the Buddhist branches trace back to common ancestors and all revere the original teachings of the Buddha, but Dharma Study focused on a widely divergent lineages may present you with apparent contradictions and competing messages. If you want to simplify and focus your Dharma Study, consider concentrating on teachings and texts that have been created and valued in your lineage. Even as a Zen student, the original teachings of the Buddha are fair game. Then you could focus on major Mahayana Sutras, major Chan teachings, then texts that are especially valued in your school of Zen (such as Chinese Chan, Korean Seon, or Japanese Rinzai or Soto), and then texts and teachings by your own teachers or recent Dharma ancestors. This still leaves a lot of material to study!
I’ll be back soon with Part 2! In the next episode I’ll go over a list of what I see as the most important Buddhist and Zen teachings for a Zen student to become familiar with, along with some suggested texts for study. I’ll then finish up with a discussion of how to engage the teachings you encounter in your study.
Read/listen to Chapter 3 or Chapter 4, Part 2
See all Ten Fields of Zen Practice
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[i] “Dharma” usually refers to Buddhist and Zen teachings, but in a deeper sense it refers to truth itself.
