On the Nature of True Practice

Text

A student challenged Gikai: 'Those who oppose you say you have departed from Dōgen's teaching. What do you say?' Gikai replied: 'Dōgen's teaching is zazen. Have I stopped sitting? Have I told you to stop? Whatever else I have done, I have not removed a single cushion from this hall. Go sit. The dispute will settle itself.' Later he added: 'Practice that cannot hold the complexity of a living community is not yet fully matured. A hermit's purity is pure, but it does not plant the rice that feeds the province.'

license: public_domain

Attribution

• Speaker
  Tettsū Gikai

Lineage: Sōtō

By Tettsū Gikai

• On the Original Face and Ritual Observancesermon

Sources

• contentSōtō Zen in Medieval Japan

  William M. Bodiford

  Cf. Bodiford, Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan, pp. 62–81; Dumoulin, Vol. 2, pp. 78–80

  Gikai's Dharma Hall Discourses: On the Nature of True Practice