Today's Talk will reflect on a portion of Master Dogen's 'Shobogenzo-Jukai' as we commence our Jukai and Ango Season for this year.
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In the Western Heavens and the Eastern Lands, wherever the transmission has passed between Buddhist patriarchs, at the beginning of entering the Dharma there is inevitably the receiving of the precepts. Without receiving the precepts we are never the disciples of the buddhas and never the descendants of the ancestral masters—because they have seen “departing from excess and guarding against wrong” as “practicing [za]zen and inquiring into the truth.” The words “the precepts are foremost” already are the right Dharma-eye treasury itself. To “realize buddha and become a patriarch” inevitably is to receive and maintain the right Dharma-eye treasury; therefore, ancestral masters who receive the authentic transmission of the right Dharma-eye treasury inevitably receive and maintain the Buddhist precepts. There cannot be a Buddhist patriarch who does not receive and maintain the Buddhist precepts. Some receive and maintain them under the Tathāgata, which in every instance is to have received the lifeblood. The Buddhist precepts now authentically transmitted from buddha to buddha and from patriarch to patriarch were exactly transmitted only by the ancestral patriarch of Sūgaku [Master Bodhidharma] and, transmitted five times in China, they reached the founding patriarch of Sōkei [Master Hui-Neng].The authentic transmissions from Seigen, Nangaku, and so on have been conveyed to the present day, but there are unreliable old veterans and the like who do not know it at all. They are most pitiful.
That “we should receive the bodhisattva precepts; this is the beginning of entering the Dharma” is just what practitioners should know. The observance in which “we should receive the bodhisattva precepts” is authentically transmitted, in every case, by those who have long learned in practice in the inner sanctum of the Buddhist patriarchs; it is not accomplished by negligent and lazy people. In that observance, in every case, we burn incense and perform prostrations before the patriarch master, and ask “to receive the bodhisattva precepts.” Once granted permission, we bathe and purify ourselves, and put on new and clean clothes. Or we may wash [existing] clothes, then scatter flowers, burn incense, perform prostrations and show reverence, and then put them on. Widely we perform prostrations to the statues and images, perform prostrations to the Three Treasures, and perform prostrations to venerable patriarchs; we get rid of miscellaneous hindrances; and [thus] we are able to make body and mind pure. Those observances have long been authentically transmitted in the inner sanctum of the Buddhist patriarchs. After that, at the practice place, the presiding ācārya duly instructs the receiver to do prostrations, to kneel upright, and, with palms together, to speak these words:
“I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha."
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No.1: To seek as you can, in this body and life, to avoid doing harm
No.2: To seek as you can, in this body and life, to live in a healthful and helping way, doing good
No.3: To seek as you can, in this body and life, to live for the benefit of all Sentient Beings
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Originally Posted by Meitou
