Our goal in practice is to live in accord with the truth, or the Dharma – not only while sitting in meditation or studying Buddhism, but every moment of our lives. In other words, we strive to make our practice continuous. It can be extremely challenging to maintain mindfulness and good behavior all the time. How can we make our practice more continuous? Not surprisingly, in his essay “Gyoji,” or Continuous Practice, Dogen does not give us practical tips but instead challenges our limited ideas about what practice is.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
The Nature of Zen Practice
Making Practice Continuous
Exploring What Practice Really Is
Dogen’s “Gyoji,” Continuous or Sustained Practice or Conduct
Dogen’s Points in Gyoji (2-4 next episode):
1. Practice Is Not Limited to Our Conscious, Willful, “Good Behavior”
The Nature of Zen Practice
Before we get to a discussion of what it means for our practice to be “continuous” and Dogen’s essay on the subject, let’s briefly review how we usually think about “practice.” In Zen, our goal is not spiritual insight divorced from our everyday activities; it’s living in accord with Reality-with-a-capital-R. Whether we are aware of the truth or not, all things – including ourselves – are impermanent, insubstantial, and ungraspable; when we expect them to be otherwise, we create suffering for ourselves and others. Whether we harmonize our behavior with the truth or not, all things are empty of inherent, enduring, autonomous self-nature and are therefore boundaryless, interdependent, and part of one, seamless Reality. Even when we don’t realize it, all things are precious just as they are and we are also thus, regardless of the heaviness of our karma or our inadequacy as judged by any worldly measure.
My favorite way to concisely define Buddhist practice is “living deliberately instead of by karma” – karma being the results of past actions of body, speech, and mind manifesting in current behavior and experience. Living deliberately can be seen as having two aspects. First is awareness – seeing things clearly, perceiving the truth. In the Buddha’s Eightfold Noble Path, this is “Right” or “appropriate” View, which is supported by Right Mindfulness (awareness of what is happening right now, inside yourself and around you) and Right Meditation (settling the mind so you can see through your delusions). You need to be aware of the nature of Reality, as well as aware of what’s happening right now, so you know how to respond. Awareness of the truth is cultivated through your meditation, your Dharma study, and your practice of mindfulness, moment by moment.
The second aspect is conduct – acting in harmony with Reality, making choices to minimize suffering for self and other, and to manifest wisdom and compassion. In the Buddha’s Eightfold Noble Path, this is “Right” or “appropriate” Intention, Speech, Effort, Action, and Livelihood. We have many models in Buddhism for our conduct, including moral precepts and the Brahmaviharas (goodwill, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity). Conduct in harmony with the truth not only improves the quality of our life, it informs and shapes our understanding of the truth.
In practice, awareness of the truth and appropriate conduct are not separate; you can’t have one without the other. Selfish, destructive behavior will prevent your clear vision, and you can’t act appropriately if you aren’t aware of what you’re doing, or the nature of the Reality of which you are a part. The ideal is to be informed by a deep understanding of the Dharma – the truth of Reality – and aware each and every moment of our lives. In other words: Continuous practice.
Making Practice Continuous
How do we make practice continuous? When I first began practice, I was passionately eager to maintain a conscious sense of practice throughout my days – as soon as I woke up; when I ate my meals and brushed my teeth; when I was driving, working, grocery shopping, going on a walk, or having a conversation, and when I needed to respond to something arising in front of me. I some success – paying attention like I never had before during mundane activities like washing the dishes or waiting in line at the store – but I become aware of the fact that my day was a flow of karma punctuated by what seemed like brief and relatively scarce interludes of the awareness I was aiming for. I was amazed, frustrated, and horrified at how much time I spent in states where I was completely unaware of my aspiration to practice. At such times I was much more likely to be drawn into old, less-than-helpful habit patterns and to experience dukkha, or existential dissatisfaction. My willful effort to increase the amount of time I spent in a consciously “mindful” state led to only incremental gains over the period of many years.
Living deliberately can be very challenging outside the simplified container of a shared, physical retreat setting. We are faced with many demands, unexpected circumstances, difficult relationships, complex decisions, and distractions. When we need to move quickly and deal with lots of things at once, we easily slip into habitual behaviors in an effort to cope. When life gets exhausting, it is very tempting to indulge in intoxicants, or lose ourselves in activities that entertain or absorb our attention and give us a break from consciousness. Before we realize it, another day is gone. I’m not suggesting most of us dislike our lives, but it’s very common for Buddhist practitioners living outside of monasteries to wonder how they can make practice feel more continuous as they go about their days.
This last week, I led a retreat at Bright Way Zen that was aimed at helping us make our practice feel more continuous over the course of four full days. For part of the retreat – mornings and evenings – we practiced at home, gathering online in our Cloud Zendo for zazen and chanting. Those who live locally had the option of coming to our Dirt Zendo (our physical space) for mid-morning zazen, formal lunch, and afternoon chanting and zazen, although that practice was also accessible in the Cloud Zendo. Even for those of us who spent part of the day together physically, the retreat container was flexible and permeable and incorporated a fair amount of time at home. This made it more challenging to maintain strict silence and mindfulness throughout our days, but it also offered an opportunity to blend the stillness of retreat with our everyday activities.
Many people in the Sangha made efforts to simplify their lives for the duration of the retreat, in support of their practice. Even if they weren’t able to join the communal schedule very often, they created a set of intentions for themselves that included things like maintaining silence as much as possible; doing without TV, movies, reading for entertainment, or listening to music; getting shopping and errands done ahead of time so there was no need to go out, and setting aside any unnecessary projects or worries for the duration. The most difficult but also impactful practice for people was going offline except for what was truly necessary for work or other responsibilities.
I’m sure all of us met with mixed results if you judge the “results” by asking, “How many moments out of each day, out of each zazen session, was I aware? How often was I living deliberately?”
Exploring What Practice Really Is
To assist us in our efforts to do continuous practice, it made sense to study Zen Master Dogen’s essay on the subject: Gyoji, or “Continuous Practice.” If you are at all familiar with Dogen, you won’t be surprised to learn that Gyoji doesn’t contain anything in the way of practical advice for maintaining mindfulness in the midst of everyday activities or freeing ourselves from mind-wandering in zazen. Instead, Dogen points us beyond our limited view of what it means to practice. What he talks about includes our individual efforts to live deliberately and consciously, but he points us toward something much, much deeper.
The continuous practice Dogen speaks of in Gyoji is yet another description of Reality-with-a-capital-R. As I’ve discussed in other episodes (see Episode 229), the Buddhist teachings of Impermanence, Insubstantiality, Emptiness, Suchness, and Buddha-Nature all point to different aspects of a single Reality. The teachings emphasize facets of Reality to which it is particularly valuable for sentient beings to awaken. Gyoji, the “continuous practice” Dogen discusses, is another description of Reality, this time emphasizing our conduct as human beings as it accords with the Dharma – our behavior, choices, and functioning, especially when it comes to our aspiration to live deliberately.
Gyoji is not just our normal sense of practice as something we’re conscious of, or something our internal sense of “Executive I” is causing to happen. Let’s explore more deeply what practice is. Is it when you are conscious of practicing? As in, “I am being mindful right now?” Are you practicing when you’re keeping the precepts out of habit, or bowing or chanting when your mind is wandering? In these cases, your behavior is in accord with the Dharma and your deeper aspirations, even though you’re not self-conscious about practicing. When you feel regret and sadness when you fail to act in accord with the Dharma, was the mistake you made not part of your practice? What about when you are absorbed in a task you are undertaking to care for yourself and your family? Does your effort only count as practice when it results in what you can label as greater equanimity, insight, or mindfulness? The aspiration to practice arises in you repeatedly – where does it come from? Are “you” responsible for it? If you are empty of any inherent, enduring, autonomous self-nature, who practices? Who moves your hand to grab a pillow in the night?
It’s important to remember that after this episode, after our study of Gyoji, we will not arrive at a definitive answer, “Ah yes, that is what practice is!” That is not the nature of true Dharma inquiry. We’re not aiming to acquire more ideas but to challenge the views we already have – leading us to active, living engagement with whatever question is before us.
Dogen’s “Gyoji,” Continuous or Sustained Practice or Conduct
To begin our exploration of Dogen’s Gyoji (行 持), let’s examine the title of the essay. There are numerous translations of this essay available, and clearly the interpretations of translators can differ significantly.
In a footnote to Gyoji in their translation of the Shobogenzo, Nishijima and Cross write:
行 (GYO), “conduct” or “practice,” can be interpreted as standing for BONGYO, which represent the Sanskrit brahma-carya, “pure conduct.” JI (持), “maintaining” or “keeping,” can be interpreted as standing in for JIKAI, “keeping the precepts,” or “observing the rules of discipline.”[i]
Thus, Nishijima and Cross translate Gyoji as “[Pure] Conduct and Observance [of Precepts],” with “pure” and “precepts” in brackets as implied. Throughout the essay, then, they use the term “conduct and observance,” although in their footnote they also say, “GYOJI can alternatively be interpreted as ‘maintaining the practice.’”
The newly released translation from the Japanese Soto Shu translation project renders Gyoji as “Sustained Practice” and says this:
The title term, gyoji 行 持, which in other contexts, might better be rendered “to observe” or “to uphold” (as in “uphold” the Buddhist precepts), is translated here in keeping with the common interpretation of Dogen’s use in the sense “spiritual practice that is constant (or endures or is continuously maintained).”[ii]
In this episode I will be quoting from the translation by Kaz Tanahashi and Mel Weitsman with David Schneider, and they offer the title “Continuous Practice.” In their translation, Dogen writes:
A hundred years lived in vain is a regrettable passage of time, a remorseful life as a living corpse. But even if you run around as a servant of sound and form for a hundred years, if you attain one day of continuous practice, you not only attain the practice of one hundred years, but you awaken others for a hundred years.[iii]
[And] …Why do the moments of time steal your endeavor? They not only steal one day but steal the merit of many kalpas [eons]. What kind of enemy is the passage of time? How regrettable! Your loss of time would all be because of your negligence of practice. If you were not intimate with yourself, you would resent yourself.[iv]
It might seem easy to conclude Dogen is saying we should strive for constant, unbroken mindfulness and impeccable conduct – that only the time spent living thus is worthwhile, the rest is a waste. Certainly, we are familiar with what he calls “resenting ourselves;” one part of us wants to learn the Dharma and to live in accord with it, but other parts want nothing more than to “run around as a servant of sound and form,” trying to get the most out of life while we’re here. This seems like a recipe for constant struggle and permanent dissatisfaction.
Fortunately, that’s not all there is to Gyoji. I have pulled out four points I think Dogen makes about practice in this teaching.
1. Practice Is Not Limited to Our Conscious, Willful, “Good Behavior”
Dogen says:
ON THE GREAT road of buddha ancestors there is always unsurpassable practice, continuous and sustained. It forms the circle of the way and is never cut off. Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment, and nirvana, there is not a moment’s gap; continuous practice is the circle of the way. This being so, continuous practice is undivided, not forced by you or others.[v]
On this path your heart calls you to follow, there is incomparable conduct, always maintained. This suggests that, somehow, sustained practice exists as part of the path and is not dependent on the imperfect conduct of you and me. This continuous practice forms the “circle of the way,” suggesting it is not a means to an end but worth doing in and of itself, and that it doesn’t differ in essence whether you have just aroused the aspiration for practice, or you have achieved complete liberation. Gyoji is not divided into beginner’s conduct, senior’s conduct, or sages conduct, and is not discipline you impose on yourself or that the tradition imposes on you. Dogen has just challenged all our typical views of practice. He continues:
Even if you might try to ignore [continuous practice] in order to hide a crooked intention and escape from it, this ignoring would also be continuous practice. To go off here and there looking for continuous practice appears similar to the aspiration for it. But it is like leaving behind the treasure at the home of your true parent and wandering poor in another land. Wandering through wind and water at the risk of your life, you should not discard the treasure of your own parent. While you were searching in this way, the dharma treasure would be missed. This being so, continuous practice should not slacken even for a moment.
What does it mean to ignore continuous practice? Certainly, sometimes you’re lazy and don’t put in the effort part of you knows would be good. Even in this situation, though, you can’t escape from yourself. You know what you know. You may try to deny the negative repercussions that come from refusing to live in accord with Reality, but eventually you experience them. Often, the ensuing discomfort is what brings you back to aligning with your deeper aspirations. Dogen seems to be suggesting that throughout this whole process you are never apart from Gyoji. Even the effort to ignore is continuous practice! Surely this points to how your selfish or unhealthy behaviors are usually motivated by your pure or understandable desires to be safe, comfortable, loved, and fulfilled. You only turn to less-than-skillful means to meet your desires because of your habit energy or ignorance.
What does it mean to “go off here and there looking for continuous practice?” The Soto Shu translation phrases this, “to try to move toward sustained practice.” This sounds like what you usually do whenever you’re not ignoring continuous practice: You conceive of what continuous practice should be and try to make that happen. Surely this makes sense! But Dogen compares this to the actions of the lost son in Lotus Sutra parable who wanders poor and destitute for many years, forgetting that his father is wealthy. The father longs for the son to return home, but when the son finally does return, he is so demoralized he can’t even conceive of himself as the father’s heir. It takes many years of gradually building his confidence before he can accept his birthright. The message of the parable is that what you are searching for is already right here. You lack for nothing; the only problem is you can’t recognize this is so because of your limited view of yourself. It appears, then, that Dogen is suggesting you are already manifesting Gyoji and your task is to recognize how that is so.
Dogen doesn’t stop there, though. He says:
The power of this continuous practice confirms you as well as others. It means your practice affects the entire earth and the entire sky in the ten directions. Although not noticed by others or by yourself, it is so. Because of this practice, there are the sun, the moon, and stars. Because of this practice, there are the great earth and the open sky. Because of this practice, there are body, mind, and their environs. Because of this practice, there are the four great elements [fire, earth, water, wind] and the five skandhas [form, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness].[vi]
If you stick only to ordinary frames of reference, none of this makes any sense. Your zazen doesn’t help someone suffering in a war zone on the other side of the planet. The sun, moon, and stars existed long before any sentient beings developed enough intelligence to cause themselves problems and therefore need to practice. Surely the body, mind, and environs are what need the benefits of practice or are what execute practice, not the results of practice. That would mean practice existed before the body, mind, and environs!
If you set aside usual frames of reference, though, and instead look to your direct experience, you may notice that in moments when you accord with the Dharma, Dogen’s words are quite literally true. As you show up, it seems natural to say, “Oh, hello sun, moon, great earth, and open sky! Hello body, mind, house, and dog! Hello thoughts and feelings!” It’s not that these things do not exist when you aren’t aware of them, but it’s as if, in your moments of unawareness, they are waiting for you to show up and participate.
That’s it for today. I will be back soon with Part 2, where I’ll discuss three more points I think Dogen is making in Gyoji:
- The Actualization of Continuous Practice Is Synonymous with Now
- The Effect of Continuous Practice Is Sometimes Apparent, Sometimes Not Apparent
- The Power of Continuous Practice Is Rejoicing – This Is What the Buddhas and Ancestors Were Doing
I hope you’ll tune in, thanks for listening!
Endnotes
[i] Nishijima, Gudo and Chodo Cross. Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo (in four volumes). London: Windbell Publications, 1994
[ii] Soto Zen Text Project. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, Dogen’s Shobogenzo: An annotated translation. Tokyo Japan: The Administrative Headquarters of Soto Zen Buddhism (Sotoshu Shumucho), 2023. Volume II, Gyoji, page 6.
[iii] Tanahashi, Kazuaki. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo (p. 547). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.
[iv] Ibid, page 548
[v] Tanahashi, Kazuaki. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo (p. 528). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.
[vi] Tanahashi, Kazuaki. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo (pp. 528-529). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.
Photo Credit
Hiten R, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Author states: “These caves [in India] are made in first century BCE to the 10th century CE. One hundred and nine caves have been carved from the basalt. In spite of being so old these caves and sculptures are considered holy and [are a] tourist place too. My photograph indicates that [despite] being so old our beliefs for them is never decreasing, it just increase with time. A lady bowing with faith.”
