Dongshan's Five Ranks by Ross Bolleter

Author:Ross Bolleter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

15. Service

For whom have you washed off your splendid makeup?

The cuckoo’s call urges you to return.

The hundred flowers have fallen, yet the call is unending,

moving deeper and still deeper into jumbled peaks.

AT THE STAGE of Service we deepen our commitment to the Way and make the sacrifices necessary to place it at the center of our lives. Here “service” and “commitment” mean not only ethical considerations but also service and commitment to essential nature. When we open our eyes in the morning and roll out of bed, feeling the cold floor with our toes, that’s service to the essential. In this regard, even our dreams serve, though they resist being pressed into service!

The Chinese term that we translate here as “service” is feng, which also carries the meanings of “holding something devoutly” or “being obedient to a teaching.” In addition to these, feng can also mean “to honor,” “to pay homage to,” “to esteem,” and “to offer.” All of these senses of feng are variously at play in this chapter.

I asked an old friend of mine who doesn’t practice Zen formally, “What should I do when I feel depressed?”

“Do something for someone else,” was his reply.

We find relief from self-preoccupation when we make efforts on behalf of others. With luck, the other person will have been helped and given a lift too. When a student asked Soen Nakagawa, “What can I do when I feel discouraged?” he famously responded, “Encourage others!” His words are a timeless spring of service and commitment, and are an inspiration for this chapter.

In Latin, attendare, from which the English word “attention” is derived, means “to lean toward,” or “to serve.” We serve others when we open an attentive silence in which they can express their joy and suffering. In order to accomplish this we need to let go of rehearsing our eager story as they tell theirs. Whatever else enlightened activity is, it surely includes this. One of the finest acknowledgments one human can give another is to say of that person, “He was there for me,” or “She was there for me.” Idealistic and self-congratulatory notions of service disappear in such moments—we simply help the child with her homework, or push the neighbor’s car when its battery is dead. Enlightenment is as enlightenment does.

For a ninth-century Chan monk or nun, service was unquestioningly vested in fulfilling one’s obligations to the Buddha and to one’s teacher. In order to be undivided in his commitment to the Buddha Way, and to secure a favorable rebirth, Dongshan would have taken up some 250 precepts and committed himself to a life of unremitting meditation. Such a lifestyle was much more rigorous than anything we could, or probably would, undertake as lay people.

In the light of the towering past, modern lay Zen practice can look like a long shot. If we do commit to practice as laypeople, chances are that for most of us it will be within the context of family, relationships, and work, where it takes ingenuity to carve out time to meditate.

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