Guidelines for Studying the Way

Ten short counsels for Zen beginners, among them that without a true teacher it is better not to study at all.

by Dōgen16 passages held

Japanese, the original language

Original title: 學道用心集
Original language: Japanese

Overview

Japan, Dōgen wrote in 1234, had never had a true teacher. Its masters had written books whose language was immature; they taught people to recite words or to long for rebirth in a paradise beyond this world, and handed out medicine without saying how to take it. Anyone who wanted the Buddha way should look for teachers in Song China, and anyone who could not find a true teacher would do better not to study at all. Dōgen was thirty-four. He had come back from China seven years earlier, and the previous year he had opened Kōshōji at Fukakusa, south of Kyoto. This is an independent treatise, not a commentary: ten short sections of advice in classical Chinese for someone starting Zen. Arouse the mind that seeks awakening, which begins in seeing that everything passes and leaves no room for fame or profit. Do not practise in order to gain something. Find a teacher who has the true teaching and a master's certification, whatever his age, and practise, because only practice leads in. The jab at rebirth in a paradise is aimed at the Pure Land teaching then winning followers in Japan; the jab at scholars who read every scripture yet never let go of fame takes in the established schools of exoteric and esoteric teaching. Notes in two sections date those sections to the spring of 1234, and the ten were probably gathered into one book later, by Dōgen or by Ejō, who became his disciple that year and copied it out in 1245. Printed editions followed from 1656; in 1749 the Sōtō scholar Menzan Zuihō issued a collated text.

Key concepts

What is the bodhi mind Dōgen asks beginners to arouse?

The bodhi mind is the resolve to seek awakening, and Dōgen's first counsel says it must come before anything else. He takes his definition from Nāgārjuna: the mind that simply sees the arising and passing away of the world is the bodhi mind. Someone who has read every scripture but not let go of fame and profit, he adds, has not yet aroused it.

What is a master's certification, and why does Dōgen insist on it?

Certification, inshō, is a recognised master's confirmation that a student has truly understood the teaching, which makes that student a link in the line of transmission. Dōgen makes it the test of a true teacher, ahead of age, seniority, learning or eloquence, because a teaching passed from person to person has no other check that the person passing it actually has it.

What does sanzen mean in the Gakudōyōjinshū?

Sanzen, literally to join in Zen, means studying the way under a teacher, through both instruction and sitting, rather than reading about it. Dōgen calls it the great matter of a whole life, not to be taken lightly or in haste. His seventh counsel says that anyone who seeks liberation through the Buddha's teaching must take this path, because the true teaching was handed down person to person.

What does Dōgen mean by accepting it directly?

His tenth counsel names two ways of settling body and mind: hearing the teaching from a teacher, and sitting in meditation. Neither may be dropped. Accepting it directly, jikige jōtō, means realising the Buddha with the very body and mind one has now, strengths and weaknesses included, without first trying to turn them into something else.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Better No Teacher Than a False One

Without a true teacher, Dōgen tells beginners, it is better not to study at all. What makes a teacher true, and what the student must bring, is the counsel's sharpest claim.

A student is like good timber and a teacher like a carpenter: fine wood stays plain without a skilled hand, while crooked wood in good hands shows wonderful work. The true teacher is known not by age or seniority but by having the true teaching and a master's certification; learning and cleverness come second. Japan's teachers, Dōgen charges, hand out good medicine without saying how to take it. The student's part is receptivity: body and mind one, taking the teaching in as water is poured from one vessel into another.

teachers
teacher-student relationship
transmission
lineage
receptivity
learning
understanding
faith

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Practice for Nothing

The seeking mind begins in seeing that everything passes, and it is spoiled the moment practice aims at a gain. How a beginner can want awakening without wanting anything from it is the knot these counsels untie.

Seeing impermanence, Dōgen writes, the sense of self does not arise and thoughts of fame and profit fall away; one practises as if putting out a fire on one's head. But practice must not aim at gain, nor can the way be grasped with a mind or without one. Realisation lies in practice as salary lies in study, and he rejects the cry for an easy practice: the ancients cut off an arm, the Buddha left a kingdom, and the beginner must trust that he already stands in the way.

practice
bodhi mind
impermanence
motivation
effort
perseverance
austerity
awakening
realization
no-self
nonattachment

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 16
distinct concepts: 47
by passages held, corpus-wide: #794

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “practice” and “transmission”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 2 concepts, joined by 1 pairing. 20 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
practice	transmission	3

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

Guidelines for Studying the Way (學道用心集) you are here JA
Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (正法眼藏)
The work by which he is chiefly known: the essays and talks of more than two decades, gathered into one book by later editors.
JA
Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen (普勸坐禪儀)
His first writing after coming home from China in 1227, and one he kept revising for at least fifteen years.
JA

— or open another of their works