practice and realization are one

ninh binh, vietnam, august 2023

An idea dear to Zen Master Dogen that he speaks with emphasis about as an essential part of his expounding of the dharma is : shushō-ittō. In Japanese, shu means practice, and shō means realization or verification. And ittō means equality or oneness. Translated into English, that would mean practice and realization are one.

They are not two separate and distinct phenomena. This view turns the traditional Buddhist approach of a linear path, the sequential model, the step by step approach, where one progresses through different phases of practice to arrive at a finishing line called realization or enlightenment, on its head.

The unity or oneness of practice and awakening implies that practice is no longer instrumentalized. Practice is no longer viewed as a means to reach some goal, enlightenment, in the future. The entire goal-oriented approach is relinquished, the sense that this is where I'm right now, point A, but where I really want to be is over there, somewhere along the way, point B, in the future. What Dogen is saying does not negate the existence of point B, what he questions is the part of getting there. He is simply denying the idea that they are spacially and temporally distanced.

Each moment of practice, if it is undertaken with a sincerety and wholeheated attitude, is also a moment of awakening. Practice and enlightenment are ever intimate, which is why zazen is not a practice that aims at enlightenment but is rather enlightenment put into practice or, enligthened practice.

Each moment of practice awakens us to intimacy with what is always present, right here, right now. To what is present here and now there is no path, there is no goal, no getting there, there is just this moment of awakening and because this is the realization of emptiness, there is nothing this moment does not reveal, does not contain.

In Bendowa (Negotiating the Way), Dogen writes: “In buddha-dharma, practice and enlightenment are one and the same. Because it is the practice of enlightenment, a beginner's wholehearted practice of the Way is exactly the totality of original englightenemt. For this reason, in conveying the essential attitude for practice, it is said not to wait for enlightenment outside of practice. Since it is already the enlightenment of practice, enlightenment is endless, practice is beginningless.”