Soto Zen and Morality

     As I observed before morality in Mahayana Buddhism is based upon the bodhisattva ideal. This ideal is a concern for others usually called compassion. This morality is seen as the foundation of all Buddhist practice. In traditional Buddhism this is accomplished by training the mind from falling into selfishness and reframing from deeds and words that will cause harm to others. .
    We see this part of the training of morality in Soto Zen as we Chant the “Shigu Seigan” (Fourfold Great Vow) at almost every gathering. We vow “to liberate sentient beings, however innumerable” and to eliminate our own mental afflictions. We chant the Heart Sutra and call upon the “great compassionate Boddhisattva” Avalokitesvara.
   Writers like D.T. Suzuki seem believe that this great compassion is accomplished in Zen by the realization of emptiness and the intuitive wisdom obtained in Zazen: That the realization of your true nature, your “Buddha Nature” would provide it without any other effort. It should be noted that D.T. Suzuki never once wrote about Dogen or his Shobogenzo.
    Passed down from Dogen himself, Soto Zen practitioners take sixteen vows or precepts based upon this morality of compassion.

The Three Refuges
I take refuge in the Buddha;
I take refuge in the Dharma;
I take refuge in the Sangha.

(In these first three we are making a volitional vow to stop taking refuge in sex, booze and the love of money etc. etc.)

The Three Pure Precepts
Cease from evil;
Do only good;
Do good for others.

(In these three precepts we have the basis of all our aspirations and hope to be moral creatures)

The next ten are:
Do not kill.
Do not steal.
Do not covet.
Do not say that which is untrue.
Do not sell the wine of delusion.
Do not speak against others.
Do not be proud of yourself and devalue others.
Do not be mean in giving either Dharma or wealth.
Do not be angry.
Do not defame the Three Treasures.

       In his writing “Jukai” (Receiving the Precepts) in the Shobogenzo Dogen says:
“Unless we accept the Precepts, we are not yet a disciple of the Buddha’s, nor are we an offspring of our Ancestral Masters, because they have considered one’s departing from error and resisting wrong to be synonymous with practicing meditation and inquiring of the Way. The words, “They have made the Precepts foremost,” are already precisely what the Treasure House of the Eye of the True Teaching is. Realizing Buddhahood and becoming an Ancestor have Invariably been based on receiving and preserving the Transmission of the Treasure House of the Eye of the True Teaching.
      Ancestral Masters who have authentically transmitted the Treasure House of the Eye of the True Teaching have invariably received and preserved the Buddha’s Precepts. There cannot be an Ancestor of the Buddha who has not received and preserved the Precepts. There are those who received and preserved them in compliance with the Tathagata, and there are those who received and preserved them in compliance with a disciple of the Buddha, all of whom received the bloodline thereby.”
      When Dogen started the Temple he named Eiheiji there was a group of monks from the then discredited Bodhidharma School or Daruma Shu he invited to join him there. The Daruma Shu had been driven out of the Buddhist community in Japan because they ascribed to a kind of Buddhist Antinomianism. They believed they were under no obligation to obey the laws of ethics or morality given forth by the Buddha. They held that since they had Buddha nature anything they did was true to that nature. They taught that the Buddha’s teaching “All evil reframe from doing, All Good reverently perform” actually meant that all evil has been refrained from and therefore all activities are Buddhism.”
       When they came to Eiheiji Dogen attempted to teach them and correct this thinking among these new members of his temple. But a group of these Darmu Shu led by a monk named Genmyo insisted on his belief that Zen Morals meant he could do no wrong and that he was bound by no morality.
        Dogen expelled Genmyo and his followers from Eiheiji and had the mediation platform Genmyo used ripped out of the monk’s hall and burned.
       Throughout the Shobogenzo Dogen is constantly saying, “investigate that!” at the end of a phrase.
I am going to make the suggestion that perhaps if you sat out of compassion for others and not to gain something for yourself your motivation to practice, your will to proceed, might improve. That Soto Zen has a long established history and tradition of having morality at its base.


“Investigate That!”