When the Opposites Arise, the Buddha Mind is Lost

2020 brought many changes for all of us. We experienced unwelcome curtailments on our freedoms such as lockdown and tiered restrictions on travel and meeting others, and on how we conducted ourselves such as in shopping and mask wearing. We experienced significant changes in working patterns, such as furlough, or loss of employment or transfer to home working, or coping with COVID-safe workplace routines. We may have experienced illness and perhaps also loss in our family, social or work circles, as well as economic and other challenges. Even the changes were themselves changeable, with quickly changing regulations and guidelines announced via frequent press conferences.

Some words from the 12th century Japanese Zen Master Dogen provide a lens through which we can review our responses to these stressors, “When the opposites arise, the buddha-mind is lost”. This quotation is familiar to many of you, not least because over 30 years ago John Crook posted a little card with these words on the wall at Maenllwyd, and it is still there. But do we really get it, and how do we respond to the implications of it? 

The quotation is excerpted from Fukanzazengi, Dogen’s Rules for Meditation, in this instance as translated by the late Rev Master Jiyu Kennet and used for recitation in ceremonies at Shasta Abbey and Throssel Hole Abbey: 

When the Opposites Arise, the Buddha Mind is Lost. 

However much you may be proud of your understanding, however much you may be enlightened, whatever your attainment of wisdom and supernatural power, your finding of the way to mind illumination, your power to touch heaven and to enter into enlightenment, when the opposites arise you have almost lost the way to salvation.¹ 

When we look at such a text we are drawn into interpreting it, for example wondering what is meant by “the opposites”. Which pair of opposites are referred to here, or does it include any or all opposing thoughts or situations? Does it refer only to actual opposites, such as black and white or left and right, or is it broader than that including mere differences such as blue and green or West and North? 

Very likely, like me, you are not a scholar of Asian languages and you cannot read such texts in the original languages so must rely on translations by others. We risk misunderstanding what is meant if the translator’s choice of English word is not a good match for the intention of the original author, or if we happen to hear a different meaning or nuance of that English word than was intended by the translator. For this reason it is usually worth seeking out alternative translations as these can give you a synthesised view of how different translators understand the original text. 

In the case of well-known text such as this an Internet search will quickly find you several alternative translations, by both well-known and respected scholars and practitioners and perhaps also by lesser-known (potentially but not necessarily less reliable) translators. Translators who are themselves experienced practitioners often seem to have a more intuitive understanding of the subtle meaning and intention of foreign language texts than someone who is primarily a language scholar. For variations on “When the opposites arise…” I found such as: “If the slightest dualistic thinking arises…”; “If the least like or dislike arises…”; “once the slightest like or dislike arises…”; “if a trace of disagreement arises…”; “If adverse or favourable conditions arise to even a small degree…”; “If you follow one thing while you resist the other…”.

Here we see “the opposites” referred to as indicating dualistic thoughts, or to opposed responses such as like/dislike, adverse/favourable, agree/disagree. Similarly we find alternatives to “the buddha mind is lost…” indicating the mind falling into confusion or being lost in confusion instead of living from the clarity, equanimity and peace of a buddha. 

Is that your experience, that when dualistic or opposed feelings or thoughts arise then your mind becomes lost and confused? Very likely so: once such opposing views arise in the mind we readily get drawn into an internal argument with ourselves, and no longer have full contact with our environment because we become preoccupied with this internal battle. Like or dislike arise, and we focus on finding a way to increase or at least hold on to whatever it is we like, or to dispel or improve whatever it is we do not like. Similarly, in the case of the arising of “this is right” or “this is wrong”, or of just about any other view with which our mind can engage, we become engaged in this particular tension and drama within our minds. It is not even necessary for these arisings to arise in paired form. As soon as one arises we tend to add its opposite: if “I like this” arises then we instinctively add “I like this better than that, or “I don’t like that” or “I don’t like that this may not persist”. 

Look into your own mind and witness these processes in yourself. It will not take long before some arising of a mental phenomenon such as a thought or a feeling or an attitude takes charge of your mind, influencing the stories that you tell yourself and drawing you away from the rest of your present moment experience. When the mind is in a coarse and unstable state it might be some time before you notice that you have been drawn away. As you train in meditative concentration you catch these wanderings sooner, but still they occur. As you improve your meditational skills you begin to catch the impulse to wander earlier in its arising, perhaps even before the wandering begins, and it becomes easier to remain present and not get drawn into an oppositional mode of thinking. As you develop further the impulses to oppositional dualistic thinking may still occur, but you treat them the same way as any other arising phenomenon such as the sound of the wind or a glimpse of a bird or a memory of an event: they are noticed as part of the scenery of the moment, but they do not trigger a flood of secondary thoughts which take over your mind. The opposites no longer arise, and the mind is no longer becoming lost, confused. 

Reflect on your 2020 experience from this perspective. Those extra stresses last year were all fertile opportunities for the opposites to arise. When a restriction is imposed or experienced then the wish for freedom arises. When our routine suffers an enforced change then a wish for “return to normal” arises. 

For many people, significant arenas affected by the COVID pandemic have been their living situations and their relationships. Some have been separated from loved ones, family and friends, unable to visit them or receive visits due to regulations or due to being extra vulnerable. Many have been pushed into living more closely than usual with others, due to home working, non-working, restrictions on opportunities to go out, or due to school/university closures leading to home-schooling and home studying for university students. These situations have not necessarily been easy. Visiting restrictions and isolation may have triggered loneliness, and perhaps guilt at failing to support others. Enforced closer living may have triggered irritation, anger and disputes. Our usually unconscious ways of managing our interactions with others have been off-limits, or otherwise obstructed by pandemic circumstances, and we felt frustrated, lost, confused. 

An example of, “When the opposites arise, the buddha mind is lost” might be, “When others arise, the self arises”. When something disrupts our usual ways of interacting with others, thoughts of other people arise in our minds and become more prominent in our awareness, because other people have become a “problem to be solved”, a relationship for which the usual manner of relating is no longer available and we don’t know what to do. As the “problem” of other people arises in our mind, our self-concern, our “self”, arises and asserts its discomfort. We wish for things to be otherwise, perhaps wishing for a change back to how things were, or at least for a change to something better than the current enforced and unsatisfactory situation. 

It too often happens, sadly, that someone experiencing adversity is told tritely, “It’s all good practice” or “It’s a good opportunity for practice”. Stated too glibly this can be cruel and unhelpful – the recipient of the remark may not be in a good place and may not be able to make use of this “advice”, at least not yet. But, as described above, it is true that adversity can bring to our awareness what has been unconscious up until 

now, and this can be very useful. This is why John Crook used to say, “Chan isn’t supposed to be comfortable!” Similarly, he said that it is often helpful if the imposed and fixed structure of a retreat creates some discomfort – the self arises, wanting things to be otherwise, and then the phenomenon of self can be investigated more readily. 

Our perceptions of other people, and our relationships to them, and our management of those relationships, often have a largely unconscious habitual element. We may be unaware of this because these habits generally operate smoothly and without challenge when our social structure is relatively stable. The recently enforced changes in social interactions may be unwelcome and indeed painful, but these have created an opportunity to apply our practice as our prior assumptions and unconscious actions may have become conscious in our current awareness due to their being obstructed as change happened around us. 

How did we respond to those challenges which 2020 brought to us? Our instinct might have been to try to fix things. If something was not as we were used to or as we might have wanted it to be then we tried to make it so, tried to put things back to how they “should” be. We may have adopted workarounds. To adapt to lack of contact we likely increased online and telephone interaction as a replacement for in-person interaction. To adapt to increased crowding of shared spaces such as homes occupied by homeworkers we may have retreated to private spaces such as bedrooms, or taken extra outside exercise. 

Fixes and workarounds may be valid responses but these operate in the dualistic realm and we must heed Dogen’s warning about becoming drawn into the opposites, “when the opposites arise you have almost lost the way to salvation”. As practitioners we have an alternative approach to explore. During our lifetimes we have developed many habitual tendencies (Sanskrit: samskaras, the fourth of the five skandhas). These operate largely unconsciously, triggered by our impressions of the situations in which we find ourselves. An important part of practice is to discover and release inappropriate and unhelpful conditioning. This is part of our cultivation of the second of the seven factors of enlightenment, to investigate the conditioned nature of our responses.

Conditioned automatic reactivity has been useful to us as it can facilitate rapid responses when dealing with the many events of a busy life. Unfortunately, our habitual tendencies were learned and embedded in past circumstances which are often only crudely relevant to current circumstances and may even be inappropriate or harmful. As adversity such as a pandemic obstructs and thereby highlights our habitual responses we are given an opportunity to choose to do something other than reflexively follow unconscious habits. Perhaps we can step out of “autopilot” and into a more aware life in which we respond to the actual circumstances of this moment, instead of continuing to live from tired old habitual responses in a present moment which is only in part like the past situations in which that habit was established.

This is the path of practice. Becoming aware of the operations of our mind and its habits, why would we continue to respond in ways which are now seen to be unhelpful or harmful. Instead of seeking fixes and workarounds to enable continuation of our ingrained ways of being, we take the opportunity to free ourselves and we evolve and mature our responses so that they fit the actual present circumstances which are now more clearly perceived.

2020 imposed modifications on your interactions with others, giving rise to loneliness, resentment, irritation, grief and more (and perhaps in some cases the contrary, relief at being granted an excuse to reduce contact). Did you automatically and perhaps unconsciously scramble to try to maintain or regain the past situation, using fixes and workarounds. Or did the disruptions to your usual habitual responses lead to a new understanding of your reactions to other people and your relationship to them, and perhaps a conscious (albeit enforced) prioritisation of some relationships over others. Perhaps there were relationships that you had rather taken for granted, allowing them to drift, and you were prompted to acknowledge their significance to you and/or the other and respond accordingly. Maybe you recognised that some other relationships had been maintained for too long, perhaps from a tired sense of duty or in order to protect your pride or neediness, and letting them go might be better for both you and for the other.

When the opposites arise, the buddha mind is lost. When our way of being in the world is threatened we become anxious or resentful and our instinct is to focus on this issue and try to preserve or restore our familiar situation. But it does not have to be that way. External change can create an opportunity for appropriate internal attitudinal change and corresponding external behavioural change.

When others arise, the self arises. When our relationships and interactions with others are jolted into our awareness by a change in circumstances, our self tends to assert itself and its desire for return to the status quo ante. Whether you just go with that habitual urge, making the best of it through fixes and workarounds, or whether you take the opportunity to respond creatively from this moment, is a choice to be made. You have surely experienced such challenges during 2020 – how did you respond? How will you respond to the challenges yet to arise in 2021? 

Notes 

1. https://www.shastaabbey.org/pdf/rules4md.pdf