Shakyamuni Buddha is reported to have awakened to the Way as he looked upon the morning star (The Denkoroku: The Record of the Transmission of Light, By Master Keizan Zenji). After he had lived in the palace secluded from the hardships of the world during his childhood, it is said that he finally left the gates of the palace one day and found in the streets of the city illness, suffering and death. At that moment, he became obsessed with uncovering the remedy for this condition which was later generated as the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.
Master Dogen
In modern Zen Buddhist Monasteries today, including the Shasta Abbey Zen Buddhist Monastery which was home to the late Abbess Rev. Jiyu Kennett, the writings of another in the lineage of ancestors also bears great study. The Shobogenzo-zuimonki and Moon in a Dewdrop were written by the Fifty First Ancestor, the Great Reverend Master Eihei Dogen and are considered of equal importance in the studies of a Zen Buddhist monk or priest as the The Denkoroku: The Record of the Transmission of Light.
Abbess Rev. Jiyu Kennett was a great scholar on the work of Master Dogen and her teachings have been preserved in recorded form for future generations. But it was the Fifty First Ancestor, Koun Ejo, who we owe the recording of Master Dogen’s lengthier teachings and dialogues with Koun Ejo in the Shobogenzo-zuimonki.
Zen Aphorisms and Master Dogen
It is in Moon in a Dewdrop where the shorter teachings of the Master Dogen are recorded as Zen Aphorisms, concise statements which hold within them volumes of truth. This similarity between Moon in a Dewdrop and The Denkoroku: The Record of the Tranmission of Light cannot go unnoticed. Because it is in the short exchange between Master and Disciple, past and future ancestors, that these Zen Aphorisms come to life and bear meaning.
Saint Setcho Chikan, The Forty Ninth Ancestor
“One day, when Sokaku was head of Tendo Monastery, he entered the meditation hall to lecture and said, ‘The World-Honored One had a hidden expression and Makakoshyo shared IT openly, heart to heart.’ Upon hearing this, Chikan immediately awoke to its deeper significance; as he sat there among the others, tears flowed down his cheeks. Involuntarily he blurted out, ‘Why have we not heard this before?’ When Sokaku had finished his lecture he summoned Chikan and asked him, ‘Why were you weeping in the Dharma Hall?’ Chikan replied, ‘The World-Honoured One had a hidden expression and Makakshyo shared IT openly, heart to heart.’ Gokaku gave his approval of this, saying, ‘You must be the one that Ungo Doyo Prophesied would appear.’” Denkoroku: The Record of the Transmission of Light.
Setcho Chikan’s name means ‘The Mirror of Wisdom’ and was born into the Go clan in Choshu.
“Were you to call IT an unseen Body,
indestructible as a diamond,
How immaculate, vast and radiant
Would such a Body be!”
Keizan Zenji summarizes the teaching of Setcho Chikan
Sources: The Denkoroku: The Record of the Transmission of Light – Keizan Zenji, Shasta Abbey Buddhist Monastery
 |
