Verse of the Robe
Great robe of liberation,
A formless field of merit.
Wrapping ourselves in Buddha's teaching,
We free all living beings.

Formless Atonement
All the karma ever created by me since of old
Through beginningless greed, anger, and ignorance
Born of my body, speech, and thought
I now fully and openly atone with it all.

Three Refuges
I take refuge in Buddha;
       May all living beings embody the great way, resolving to awaken. I take refuge in Dharma;
       May all living beings deeply enter the truth, wisdom like the sea.
I take refuge in Sangha;
       May all living beings support harmony in the community, free from all hindrance.

Great Vows for All
The many beings are numberless; vowing to carry them across.
Greed, anger, and ignorance arise endlessly; vowing to cut off the mind road.
Dharma gates are countless; vowing to wake to them all.
Buddha's Way is all embracing; vowing to follow through.

The Heart of Great Wisdom Beyond Wisdom

The great Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, in the deep course of wisdom beyond wisdom, seeing that the five aggregates are also empty of inherent nature, overcame all suffering and distress.

Shariputra, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is not other than emptiness. Emptiness is not other than form. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness.

All phenomena are marked with emptiness. They are neither produced nor destroyed, neither defiled nor pure, neither increasing nor decreasing.

Therefore in emptiness there is no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no formations, no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind; no realm of eye, no realm of mind-consciousness, nor anything in between. There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, no old-age-and-death, no extinction of old-age-and-death, nor any of the twelve links.

Likewise there is no suffering, no origination, no cessation, and no path; no understanding, no attainment, and no non-attainment.

With nothing to attain the bodhisattva relies on wisdom beyond wisdom and the mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance, there is no fear. Passing beyond every upside-down view, the bodhisattva abides in Nirvana.

All Buddhas in the past, present and future, relying on wisdom beyond wisdom, realize unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment.

Therefore this is the mantra of wisdom beyond wisdom, the mantra of great knowledge, the mantra that is unsurpassed, the mantra that is equal to the unequalled, the mantra that pacifies all suffering. Free from deception, it is the simple truth:

Harmony of Difference and Sameness

The mind of the great sage of India
    is intimately transmitted from west to east.
While human faculties are sharp or dull,
    the Way has no northern or southern ancestors.
The spiritual source shines clear in the light;
    the branching streams flow on in the dark.
Grasping at things is surely delusion;
    according with sameness is still not enlightenment.
All the objects of the senses
    interact and yet do not.
Interacting brings involvement.
    Otherwise, each keeps its place.
Sights vary in quality and form,
    sounds differ as pleasing or harsh.
Refined and common speech come together in the dark,
    clear and murky phrases are distinguished in the light.
The four elements return to their natures
    just as a child turns to its mother;
Fire heats, wind moves,
    water wets, earth is solid.
Eye and sights, ear and sounds,
    nose and smells, tongue and tastes;
Thus with each and every thing,
    depending on these roots, the leaves spread forth.
Trunk and branches share the essence;
    revered and common, each has its speech.
In the light there is darkness,
    but don't take it as darkness;
In the dark there is light,
    but don't see it as light.
Light and dark oppose one another
    like the front and back foot in walking.
Each of the myriad things has its merit,
    expressed according to function and place.
Phenomena exist like box and lid fit.
    Principle responds like arrowpoints meet.
Hearing the words, understand the meaning;
    don't set up standards of your own.
If you don't understand the Way right before you,
    how will you know the path as you walk?
Progress is not a matter of far or near,
    but if you are confused, mountains and rivers block your way.
I respectfully urge you who study the mystery,
    do not pass your days and nights in vain.

The dharma of thusness is intimately transmitted by buddhas and ancestors;
Now you have it; preserve it well.
Filling a silver bowl with snow; hiding a heron in the moonlight.
Taken as similar, they are not the same; Not distinguished, you know where they are.
The meaning does not reside in the words, but a pivotal moment brings it forth.
Excited you are trapped; miss and you fall into doubt and vacillation.
Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a massive fire.
Just to portray it in literary form is to stain it with defilement.
In darkest night it is perfectly light; in the light of dawn it shows no trace.
It acts as a guide for beings; its use removes all suffering.
Although it is not fabricated, it is not beyond words.
Like facing a jeweled mirror; form and reflection behold each other.
You are not it, but in truth it is you.
Like a newborn child, endowed with five aspects:
No going, no coming, no arising, no abiding;
"Baba wawa"--is anything said or not?
In the end it says nothing, for the words are not yet right.
In the illumination hexagram, phenomenal and real interact,
Piled up they become three, the permutations make five,
Like the taste of the five-flavored herb, like the five-pronged vajra.
Wondrously embraced within the real, drumming and singing spring forth together.
Penetrate the source and travel the pathways; embrace the connections and treasure the roads.
Respect this; do not neglect it.
Naturally genuine yet wondrous, it is not a matter of delusion or enlightenment.
Within causes and conditions, time and season, it is serene and illuminating.
So minute it enters where there is no gap, so vast it transcends dimension.
A hairsbreadth's deviation, and you miss attuning with it.
In both sudden and gradual, basic approaches are set up.
Once basic approaches are distinguished, then there are guiding rules.
But whether or not the essence is reached and the approaches mastered, reality constantly flows.
Outwardly still and inwardly trembling, like tethered colts or cowering rats,
The ancient sages grieved for them, and offered them the dharma.
Led by their inverted views, they took black for white.
When inverted thinking stops, the acquiescent heart realizes itself.
If you want to follow in the ancient tracks, please observe the sages of the past.
One on the verge of realizing the Buddha Way gazed at a tree for ten kalpas,
Like a battle-scarred tiger, like a horse with shanks gone grey.
Because some are vulgar, jeweled tables and ornate robes;
Because some are wide-eyed, cats and white oxen.
With his archer's skill Yi hit the mark at a hundred paces,
But when arrows meet head-on, how could it be a matter of skill?
The wooden man begins to sing; the stone woman gets up to dance.
It is not reached by feelings or consciousness, how could it involve deliberation?
Ministers serve their lords, children obey their parents;
Not obeying is not filial, not serving is no help.
Practice secretly, working within, like a fool, like an idiot;
Continuously doing just this is the host within the host.

GATHAS AND PRAYERS

Opening the Teaching Sutra
The Dharma is vast and subtle.
We now have a chance to see this,
Study this and practice this.
May we realize this true meaning.

The Diamond That Cuts Through Illusion (Last Verse)
So you should view this fleeting world
a star at dawn
a bubble in a stream
a flash of lightning in a summer cloud
a flickering lamp
a phantom
and a dream.

Waking Up
Waking up this morning
I vow with all beings
To realize everything without exception,
Embracing the 10 directions.

Before Eating
Earth, water, air and fire combined to make this food.
Numberless beings have died and labored that we may eat.
May we be nourished that we may nourish life.

Before Sleeping
Going to sleep tonight
I vow with all beings
To calm all things,
Allowing the Mind to be clear and pure.

The Five Remembrances

   I am of the nature to grow old.
        There is no way to escape growing old.
    I am of the nature to have ill-health.
        There is no way to escape having ill-health.
    I am of the nature to die.
        There is no way to escape death.
    All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change.
        There is no way to escape being separated from them.
    My deeds are my closest companions.
        I am the beneficiary of my deeds. My deeds are the ground on which I stand.

    Birth will end in death.
    Youth will end in old age.
    Wealth will end in loss.
    Meetings will end in separation.
    All things in cyclic existence are transient, are impermanent.

    The Buddhas cannot wash our sins with water.
    They cannot remove our suffering with their hands.
    They cannot transfer their insights to us.
    All they can do is teach the dharma.
    I am my own protector.

The Universal Recommendations for Zazen (Fukanzazengi) by Eihei Dogen-zenji

The Way is basically perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent on practice and realization? The ancestral vehicle is free and at ease. What need is there to waste our worthy effort? Indeed, the whole body is far beyond the world's dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from you, right where you are. What is the use of going off here and there to practice?

And yet, if there is the slightest discrepancy, you are as remote as heaven from earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. Suppose you gain pride of understanding and wallow in enlightenment, full of the wisdom that glimpses the utmost ground, attaining the Way and clarifying the Mind, arousing an aspiration to escalade the very sky. You are making the initial, partial excursions about the frontiers, but are still somewhat deficient in the vital path of total emancipation.

Even considering the Buddha, although he was possessed of inborn knowledge, the impact left by his six years of upright sitting remains noticeable. As for Bodhidharma's transmission of the mind-seal, the fame of his nine years of facing a wall is celebrated still. Since this was the case with the ancient sages, how can we today dispense with wholehearted practice?

Therefore, put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing sayings and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest. If you want to attain suchness, diligently practice suchness without delay.

For sanzen, a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately. Discard all involvements and take respite from concerns. Do not think good or bad. Do not adjudicate right and wrong. Cease all the movements of the conscious mind, the gauging of all thoughts and views. Have no designs on becoming a Buddha. How could it be limited to sitting or lying down?

At the site of your regular sitting, spread out a thick mat and place a cushion above it. Sit either in the full-lotus or half-lotus position. In the full-lotus position, first place your right foot on your left thigh, then your left foot on your right thigh. In the half-lotus, simply place your left foot against your right thigh. Wear your clothes and belt loose and arranged neatly. Then place your right hand on you left leg and your left palm (facing upward) on your right palm, thump-tips touching. Thus sit upright with posture straight, neither inclining to left or to the right, neither leaning forward or backward. Align your ears with your shoulders and your nose with your navel. Place your tongue against the front roof of your mouth, with teeth and lips both shut. Always keep your eyes gently open and breathe softly though your nose.

Once you have adjusted your posture, take a breath and exhale fully, rock your body right and left, and settle into a steady, immobile sitting position. Think of what does not think. How do you think of what does not think? Nonthinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen. The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of peace and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like a dragon gaining the water, like a tiger settling into the mountains. For you must know that just there (in zazen) the true Dharma is manifesting itself and that from the first dullness and distraction are struck aside.

When you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. Do not rise suddenly or abruptly. In surveying the past, we find that transcendence of both mundane and sacred, and dying while either sitting or standing, have all depended entirely on the power of zazen.

In addition, energetically turning the crucial function to teach with a finger, a banner, a needle, or a mallet, and the effecting of realization with the aid of a whisk, a fist, a staff, or a shout cannot be fully understood by discriminative thinking. Indeed, it cannot be fully known by the practicing or realizing of supernatural powers either. It must be majestic deportment beyond sounds and forms - is it not a guiding standard prior to knowledge and perceptions?

This being the case, intelligence or lack of it does not matter; between the dull and the sharp-witted there is no distinction. If you concentrate your effort single-mindedly, that in itself is wholeheartedly engaging the Way. Practice-realization is naturally undefiled. Proceeding forward is after all a matter of everydayness.

In general, in this world and others, both in India and China, all equally hold the Buddha-seal, exclusively enacting the character of this school. They simply are devoted to sitting, totally covered in resolute immobility. Although it is said that there are ten thousand distinctions and a thousand variations, it is solely in zazen that we fully engage the Way. Why leave behind the seat that exists in your home and make futile trips to the dusty realms of other lands? If you make one misstep you stumble past what is directly in front of you.

You have gained the pivotal opportunity of human form. Do not spend your time in vain. You are maintaining the essential workings of the Buddha Way. Who would take wasteful delight in the spark from the flintstone? Besides, form and substance are like the dew on the grass, destiny like the dart of lightning - emptied in an instant, vanished in a flash.

Please, honored followers of Zen, long accustomed to groping for the elephant, do not be suspicious of the true dragon. Devote your energies to a way that directly indicates reality. Revere the person who is beyond seeking attainment and is free from effort. Accord with the enlightenment of the buddhas; succeed to the legitimate lineage of the ancestors samadhi. Continuously perform as such and you will be such a person. Your treasure-store will open of itself and you will joyfully use it at will.

Self-fulfillment Samadhi (Jijuyu Samadhi)

For all ancestors and buddhas who have been dwelling in and maintaining buddha-dharma, practicing upright sitting in Self-fulfillment Samadhi is the true path for opening up enlightenment. Both in India and China, those who have attained enlightenment have followed this way. This is because each teacher and each disciple has been intimately and correctly transmitting this subtle method and receiving and maintaining its true spirit.

For all ancestors and buddhas who have been dwelling in and maintaining buddha-dharma, practicing upright sitting in Self-fulfillment Samadhi is the true path for opening up enlightenment. Both in India and China, those who have attained enlightenment have followed this way. This is because each teacher and each disciple has been intimately and correctly transmitting this subtle method and receiving and maintaining its true spirit.

According to the unmistakenly handed down tradition, the straightforward buddha-dharma that has been simply transmitted is supreme among the supreme. From the time you begin practicing with a teacher, the practices of incense burning, bowing, reciting Buddha's name, and reading sutras are not at all essential; just sit, dropping off body and mind. When one displays the buddha seal with one's whole body and mind, sitting upright in this samadhi even for a short time, everything in the entire dharma world becomes buddha seal, and all space in the universe completely becomes enlightenment. Therefore, it enables buddha-tathagatas to increase the dharma joy of their own original grounds and renew the adornment of the way of awakening. Simultaneously, all living beings of the dharma world in the ten directions and six realms become clear and pure in body and mind, realize great emancipation, and their own original face appears. At that time, all things together awaken to supreme enlightenment and utilize buddha-body, immediately go beyond the culmination of awakening, and sit upright under the bodhi tree. At the same time, they turn the incomparable, great dharma wheel and begin expressing ultimate and unfabricated profound prajna.

There is a path through which the unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment of all things returns to the person in zazen, and the person and the enlightenment of all things intimately and imperceptibly assist each other. Therefore, this zazen person without fail drops off body and mind, cuts away previous tainted views and thoughts, awakens genuine buddha-dharma, universally helps the buddha work in each place, as numerous as atoms, where buddha-tathagatas teach and practice, and widely influences practitioners who are going beyond buddha, thereby vigorously exalting the dharma that goes beyond buddha. At this time, because earth, grasses and trees, fences and walls, tiles and pebbles, all things in the dharma realm in ten directions, carry out buddha work, therefore everyone receives the benefit of wind and water movement caused by this functioning, and all are imperceptibly helped by the wondrous and incomprehensible influence of buddha to actualize the enlightenment at hand.

Since those who receive and use this water and fire extend the buddha influence of original enlightenment, all who live and talk with these people also share and universally unfold the boundless buddha virtue and they circulate the inexhaustible, ceaseless, incomprehensible, and immeasurable buddha dharma within and without the whole dharma world. However, these mutual influences do not mix into the perceptions of this person sitting, because they take place within stillness without any fabrication, and they are enlightenment itself. If practice and enlightenment were separate as people commonly believe, it would be possible for them to perceive each other. But that which is associated with perceptions cannot be the standard of enlightenment because deluded human sentiment cannot reach the standard of enlightenment.

Moreover, although both mind and object appear and disappear within stillness, because this takes place in the realm of self-receiving and self-fulfilling without moving a speck of dust or destroying a single form, extensive buddha work and profound, subtle buddha influence are carried out. The grass, trees, and earth affected by this functioning radiate great brilliance together and endlessly expound the deep, wondrous dharma. Grasses and trees, fences and walls demonstrate and exalt it for the sake of living beings, both ordinary and sage; and in turn, living beings, both ordinary and sage, express and unfold it for the sake of grasses and trees, fences and walls. The realm of self-awakening and awakening others is fundamentally endowed with the quality of enlightenment with nothing lacking, and allows the standard of enlightenment to be actualized ceaselessly.

Therefore, even if only one person sits for a short time, because this zazen is one with all existence and completely permeates all time, it performs everlasting buddha guidance within the inexhaustible dharma world in the past, present and future. Zazen is equally the same practice and the same enlightenment for both the person sitting and for all dharmas. The melodious sound continues to resonate as it echoes, not only during sitting practice, but before and after striking emptiness, which continues endlessly before and after the fall of the hammer. Not only that but all things are endowed with original practice within the original face, which is impossible to measure.

You should know that even if all the buddhas in the ten directions, as numerous as the sands of the Ganges River, together engage the full power of their buddha wisdom, they could never reach the limit, or measure or comprehend the virtue of one person's zazen.