Dharma talk with Nomon Tim Burnett: Translating the Enmei Jukko

Stream video:

In this Dharma talk Nomon Tim offered an interactive workshop in which participants worked together to translate one of our common chants in Sino-Japanese. You can download and print the worksheet he handed out and follow along at home! 

Below are some of Nomon's lecture notes as well as extensive additional notes he took for himself while preparing for this talk. Enjoy!

Translating the Enmei Jukku - Self Power & Other Power

In Japanese religion they make a distinction between systems of belief and practice that rely on self-power and other power. The Japanese words have a nice ring to them: jiriki and tariki. Jiriki is self-power and tariki is other power.

In other words where does the juice, the power, the effectiveness of the practice come from? From our own efforts or from some other power of gods or Buddhas?

Zen is usually seen as a jiriki - self power - practice. I sit down, I do zazen, my life is changed. The power is in my own effort.

And this appeals to us. It's kind of baked into American culture this idea. Self sufficiency. Self effort. Self improvement.

And yet we all well know that there's no way that can be the whole story here. You just feel that deeply in your bones. There's something else going on too. Something more mysterious. Something deeper than if I sit so many hours of zazen I'll be so much calmer and more grounded.

For one thing we feel the difference when we sit together. You can't quite explain it but there's something beyond self you feel. Maybe there's another term for us power I don't know.

But also if you look at what we actually do even if it turns out zazen really is jiriki - self powered - why do we chant and bow and have altars? That all seems more tariki - more other powered. The chants are kind of interesting but if was about the content we wouldn't be chanting them all the time we'd only be studying them. We do study them sometime but mostly we chant them. We send the sounds and the energy of those words and the spirit we put into out into the world. And maybe we already receive something back.

After chanting we always dedicate the merit. Whatever merit comes to us from chanting this we offer to suffering beings, to our ancestors, to the Buddhas, to all beings. Maybe that's saying, "It's possible that we created something with our jiriki self power but we're letting it go, giving it away - it wasn't for ourselves actually."

Looking more carefully at some of our chants actually they don't have teachings in them that we can fold into our jiriki practice, they are 100% tariki - asking for help from the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. One of our favorites is the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo. So I thought tonight we'd unpack the meaning of that chant character by character. When I did this myself I felt this wonderful increase in intimacy with the text and a real sense of joy that I can chant this and call for help.

So a bit of a celebration of the devotional side of our practice tonight. Some of us, me included!, may feel a little resistant to this sometimes. We are so conditioned to think it's all about jiriki. But maybe we also need takriki. Maybe we need it a lot more than we think. Maybe jiriki gets mixed a bit limited by our thinking and words and conceptions of who and what we are. And maybe tariki just flows right through and around all of that to heal us and help us heal the world.

So I thought we might geek out tonight and do translation together. I hope this offers you also some sense of increased connection and intimacy. Or at the least it's a kind of fun thing to puzzle out the Chinese characters and get more familiar with them.

Sometimes our personalities and habit patterns and tendencies seem to be so strong, so hard to change - impossible to change sometimes. The ways we interact. The things we like and don’t like. The illusion of identity - that this is just who I am and how I operate - is seductive. Like we’re fixed into this pattern. Or have this particular operating system. And while maybe we can add some knowledge or get more skilled at this or that in a fundamental way we can’t change.

And some of the ways we are cause us unhappiness, reactivity, constriction. Suffering. We get used to these aspects of who we think we are. We’re told to accept things so maybe we more or less do. I’m just this way. Sometimes we blame others for our suffering: she did this, they did that. Blaming others is another kind of suffering. And we don’t always notice that we’re doing it: we may think “my analysis of his problem is accurate” when actually we’re triggered by something that’s actually within us.

Buddha said that this is a bummer but we can work with it and we can be free of it, or maybe free in it is more accurate. That’s the core message of the teachings.

The process does involve stuff that make sense to us: teachings that are more or less like psychology of how it all works and how to change it. Various meditations and reflections. Some of the teachings as we saw last night are more subtle and designed to shake up our conceptual frameworks and assumptions. The idea there that it’s not just a matter of refiguring out how you are but shifting the whole idea of what it is to be a person in this world - a radical re-imagining of that you could say.

But at a deeper level Buddhism is not psychological at all. That’s because psychology - the study of the psyche - that self - doesn’t make sense in the full expression of Buddhist teaching. Buddha taught that the self is a mirage. A powerful story we’ve told ourselves over and over again that we believe to be real. The real me. It’s convincing but it’s a story.

In another essay Dogen has the famous lines: to study the way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be awake to the true nature of all things.

There is also a pretty significant east-west cultural difference it seems where in the west we emphasize the self, the individual, and the east the group, harmony, not sticking out as a separate self, is emphasized. So I’m sure that’s in there too.

Be that as it may when we come to practice we bring our self. Our exhausted self. Our anxious self. Our eager self. Our self that’s not really quite content with itself or this world. And we want self improvement.

And changes that fit under the self improvement heading do happen don’t you think? We become more stable, at least a bit more humble, more open. We’re easier to get along with. These are great improvements. But it’s only scratching the surface of the potential of the Buddha Way.

As I go along I’m more and more appreciating the practices that can’t be mapped as self-improvement. Or maybe even can’t be mapped as making sense. I think these are really essential and we might be tempted to toss them.

One of those practices is chanting texts. We did spend some time reading Dogen’s Mountains and Waters Sutra and trying to make some sense of it and that’s wonderful but our core practice with that text is chanting it. And then after we chant it we dedicate the good energy we’re generating to nature, to the true potential of our lives, to the Buddhas and ancestors (although we use different language for them in the wilderness dharma dedication so that it’s more clear that rocks and stones and birds and mountain hemlock trees are also Buddha ancestors).

Another text we’ve been chanting every day has recently opened up a little more for me is the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo and I hope if I share a little about it that will help it open up more for you. There is a reasonable English translation written beside it in our Chant Book but you don’t have time to take that in as you’re chanting. And as we’ll see translating a Chinese language text which is what this is under the covers is a very creative art where the resulting English isn’t one-to-one connected to the underlying Chinese characters. And each of those characters has a range of meanings too.

So translation is a powerful process of immersion and exploration and some head scratching especially for someone like me without an academic background in Classical Chinese but I’m pretty good with tech and there are amazing online resources now.

Ten-Line Kannon Sutra (Jikku kannon gyō 十句觀音經

The above left out Enmei 延命 which Imawa has as “keeping alive longer, prolonging life, life extension, life-support”

Character	Composition	Variants	Reading	Meaning
十	十+0	拾 拾	shí ㄕˊ	ten, tenth; complete; perfect
句	口+2	句	jù gōu ㄐㄩˋ ㄍㄡ	sentence
觀	見+18	覌       观	guān guàn ㄍㄨㄢ ㄍㄨㄢˋ kan	see, observe, view; appearance (translit char)
音	音+0		yīn yìn ㄧㄣ ㄧㄣˋ non	sound, tone, pitch, pronunciation (translit char)
經	糸+7	経     坕 经	jīng jìng ㄐㄧㄥ ㄐㄧㄥˋ	classic work; pass through (not the usual 經 (jīng / kyō) for sutra)

Titles are important especially with these kinds of texts. They often communicate something about the intent of the piece.

Enmei is a two character phrase meaning “life extending” the two characters are en for “prolong” and mei for “life”.

Ji is the number 10, and ku is line. So ten lines.

Kannon is one of the names of the bodhisattva of compassion. Guanyin is the Chinese equivalent. The Sanskrit original is Avalokitesvara. She’s often depicted in female form, smiling, maybe standing or kneeling with one leg up. She might have a vase of healing water or be making a mudra Of kindness. Sometimes she’s depicted as having 1,000 arms and each hand a different mudra or powerful object or tool. And she’s all about caring for beings. All about compassion.

The last character gyō means a classic work. Interestingly they didn’t chose kyō or sutra like Dogen did for his piece meaning these are the words of the Buddha. This might have been composed later in the Ming dynasty (17th and 18th centuries) - one source I have suggests that. So maybe by then they were like, “yeah…can’t really claim thesE are the Buddha’s words anymore.” There was a 3rd kind of wave of importing of Chinese Chan into Japanese Zen in the Ming so it might be that Dogen never heard of this text. Still it’s become a core chanting practice for us.

As a little language side note the two characters used for Kan and non don’t mean anything to do with compassion they were picked for their sounds. So when someone, even a Chinese person, is puzzling out Classical Chinese they have to really engage the text and probably have some background in the literature it’s a part of to figure out, oh those two characters are being used for to sound out a name so I need to ignore their usual meaning. The literal of those two is “see” and “sound” which actually may have some connection as Kannon sees and hears the cries of the world - possibly they have multiple “kan” and “non” sounding characters and they also picked ones that had a connected meaning. But it’s a name you’d get a little stuck if you thought the title was “10 line see sound classic”

kan ze on  觀世音

All 3 of these characters must be to transliterate the Chinese equivalent a Kanzeon - something like Guanshiyin

And here’s another name for the bodhisattva of compassion. Same kan and on but in the middle with have “ze” which is also being used for it’s sound - the underlying meaning is “world or era” which might tie in somehow but not literally. This is a transliteration meaning “she who hears the cries of the world” which is what Avalo-kitesh-vara means in Sanskrit. So Kanzeon is a fuller name in Japanese and Kannon is a kind of short hand.

I hear this first line with an exclamation point at the end. Kanzeon! Or maybe we’d say, Oh, Kanzeon! Or Dear Kanzeon. Kind of like a Christian might say Oh, Lord!

觀	見+18	覌       观	guān guàn ㄍㄨㄢ ㄍㄨㄢˋ	see, observe, view; appearance
世	一+4	丗 卋	shì ㄕˋ	generation; world; era
音	音+0		yīn yìn ㄧㄣ ㄧㄣˋ	sound, tone, pitch, pronunciation

na mu butsu  南無佛

First two must be sounds “namu” to transliterate Skt. “namas” - to pay homage to.

Na and mu are another use of sounds to transliterate Sanskrit. Namas which means to pay homage. To give reverence. “Na” actually means “south” so nothing there.

And butsu is Buddha.

We’re in the presence not just of Kanzeon but also of Buddha. I kind of hear a “we” in there.

Like so far:
Kanzeon,
We pay homage to Buddha!

Character	Composition	Variants	Reading	Meaning
南	十+7		nán nā ㄋㄢˊ ㄋㄚ	south; southern part; southward
無	火+8	无 橆	wú ㄨˊ	Not have. / Philosophical category referring to absence, non-existence, or vacuity. / Adverb expressing negation: not. / Adverb expressing questioning: or not. / Connective: regardless of. / Connective: even if. / Particle used at the beginning of a sentence, no meaning. / Do not. / Barren, uncultivated.
佛	人+5	仏	fó fú ㄈㄛˊ ㄈㄨˊ	Buddha; of Buddhism; merciful person; Buddhist image; the dead (Jap.)

yo butsu u in  與佛有因

因 = (in) cause
縁 = (en) affinity

From the Nichiren dictionary of Buddhism:

“From the viewpoint of Buddhist practice, cause represents the bodhisattva practice for attaining Buddhahood and effect represents the benefit of Buddhahood. Based on the doctrine that the ordinary person and the Buddha are essentially the same, it is taught that cause (the nine worlds, or practice) and effect (Buddhahood, or the result of practice) are non-dual and simultaneous.”

In Bodiford’s introduction to Denkoroku we find in and en as a word “innen”! So we can think of 因 (in) and cause and 縁 (en) as supporting conditions.

Denkoroku text, p.17

Most often the text refers to them as the “aforementioned episodes” (tekirai no innen 適來の因縁) or simply “episodes.” This word translates a Buddhist term (innen) that normally refers to karmic relationships of causes and conditions. In Zen texts, it frequently refers to a happening, a circumstance, a story.

With this line we start to get into stuff that there aren’t clear words for in English which always gets my attention since our consciousness is so formed by our words. If we don’t have a word for something it’s hard for us to think it or feel it.

yo is with
butsu is Buddha again
U is having, or I have

So far that’s with Buddha I have….

And “in” is the zinger here. It’s from Buddhist epistemology around how things come to be. There are multiple types of causes in the cause and effect relationships that inspire the world and us to arise. “In” is the deepest one. Called the seed cause. Without the seed cause, I think, the thing can’t appear but it also needs supporting causes. So Buddha is our seed cause. Buddha is why we are here. The awakened potential of us/this world is the source of our emergence and existence.

And there’s a since of simulteity in this kind of philosophy: it’s not that because there was a Buddha way back when now we’re here later. Buddha is here and I am here. We are here as Buddha here. A deep deep deep connection. So this line is hard to translate.
(read a few from handout). Something about roots feels appropriate to nature so how about:

Kanzeon,
We pay homage to Buddha!
Buddha is the root.

與	臼+8	与	yǔ ㄩˇ	Give. / Follow, go along with. / Comrade, ally. / Association, contact. / Oppose. / Engage [an enemy]. / Approve, consent to. / Help. / Wait. / Preposition indicating passive tense. / Preposition: to, with. / Preposition: with. / Preposition: as. / Preposition: in, on. / Connective: and, with. / Connective: with its ... / Connective: or. Sojun says “with”
			yù ㄩˋ	Participate, take part in.
			yǔ ㄩˇ	Interfere in.
			yú ㄩˊ	Auxiliary word: used at the end of a sentence to express questioning , exclamation, or a rhetorical question. / Auxiliary word: used in the middle of a sentence to express a pause.
佛	人+5	仏	fó fú ㄈㄛˊ ㄈㄨˊ	Buddha; of Buddhism; merciful person; Buddhist image; the dead (Jap.)
有	月+2		yǒu ㄧㄡˇ	Have, possess. / Store, collect. / Occupy. / Hold on to, retain. / Have in abundance. / Good harvest. / Obtain. / Only. / Be, exist. / Occur, happen. / Make. / Particle used before a noun with no meaning. / Particle used before a monosyllabic adjective with no meaning. / Particle used before a verb with no meaning. / Still, yet. / Some people. / Region. I have
			yòu ㄧㄡˋ	Help, assist. / Same as 「又(3)」 yòu ㄧㄡˋ: Moreover.
因	囗+3	囙	yīn ㄧㄣ	cause, reason; by; because (of) en - fundamental identity with? Sojun: “absolute fundamental factor…original face

yo butsu u en  與佛有縁

And here we have yo butsu u again so we know that means “with Buddha I have…”
But “en” which sounds so similar to “in” yes, means indirect cause or affinity or kind of like supporting factors.

So not only are we here because of Buddha we also are practicing to feel our deep affinity with Buddha. Buddha brought us here and how our work is to express our Buddha-ness
is one way to look at it. A literal one which Aiken chooses is “with Buddha I have affinity” but to me that feels a little separate: buddha over here, me over there. Maybe we put it in the form of an affirmation or a practice with some biology in there. Perhaps : Buddha is my living. Not quite right as that sounds like a job “your living” Maybe through Buddha I live?

Kanzeon,
We pay homage to Buddha!
Buddha is the root.
Through Buddha I live.

So we need this deep deep connection and expression through Buddha to really engage with compassion - to really meet Kanzeon.

與	臼+8	与	yǔ ㄩˇ	Give. / Follow, go along with. / Comrade, ally. / Association, contact. / Oppose. / Engage [an enemy]. / Approve, consent to. / Help. / Wait. / Preposition indicating passive tense. / Preposition: to, with. / Preposition: with. / Preposition: as. / Preposition: in, on. / Connective: and, with. / Connective: with its ... / Connective: or.
			yù ㄩˋ	Participate, take part in.
			yǔ ㄩˇ	Interfere in.
			yú ㄩˊ	Auxiliary word: used at the end of a sentence to express questioning , exclamation, or a rhetorical question. / Auxiliary word: used in the middle of a sentence to express a pause.
佛	人+5	仏	fó fú ㄈㄛˊ ㄈㄨˊ	Buddha; of Buddhism; merciful person; Buddhist image; the dead (Jap.)
有	月+2		yǒu ㄧㄡˇ	[I] Have, possess. / Store, collect. / Occupy. / Hold on to, retain. / Have in abundance. / Good harvest. / Obtain. / Only. / Be, exist. / Occur, happen. / Make. / Particle used before a noun with no meaning. / Particle used before a monosyllabic adjective with no meaning. / Particle used before a verb with no meaning. / Still, yet. / Some people. / Region.
			yòu ㄧㄡˋ	Help, assist. / Same as 「又(3)」 yòu ㄧㄡˋ: Moreover.
縁	糸+9	緣	yuán ㄩㄢˊ	hem ← huh, must new the character for the Yogocara term? in - indirect cause, something that causes something else to be

So the en/in dance is saying I am fundamentally Buddha because my practice and aspiration is the expression of Buddha, of revealing (to myself and everyone) that it’s Buddha which causes me to manifest and thus, ipso facto, I was Buddha all along.

butsu ho so en (bu po so en) 佛法僧縁

This just takes the last line and broadens it. We live not just through Buddha but through Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Bu is a shortened way to say Butsu, po is a little mysterious to me as usually the character for Dharma is pronounced ho but that’s the character, and so is sangha - the community.

Kanzeon,
We pay homage to Buddha!
Buddha is the root.
Through Buddha I live.
Though Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha I live.

佛	人+5	仏	fó fú ㄈㄛˊ ㄈㄨˊ	Buddha; of Buddhism; merciful person; Buddhist image; the dead (Jap.)
法	水+5	佱 灋	fǎ ㄈㄚˇ	Law, penal code. / Principle, system. / Standard. / Method, way of doing. / Follow, imitate. / Adhere to the rules. / The Legalist school. Dharma
僧	人+12		sēng ㄙㄥ	Buddhist priest, monk; san of Sanskrit sangha
縁	糸+9	緣	yuán ㄩㄢˊ	hem — again with the hem? Is Buddhism just reinventing this word? in - indirect cause, something that causes something else to be

Clarifying that not just Buddha as indirect cause, but Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha

jo raku ga jo  常樂我淨

And here we have how that feels. Jo, Roku, go, and Jo are four words describing nirvana. More or less enternal like very stable and balanced, joyful, and pure. The character for “me” is in there too: that’s the ga.

Kanzeon,
We pay homage to Buddha!
Buddha is the root.
Through Buddha I live.
Though Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha I live.
Stable, joyful and pure!

Character	Composition	Variants	Reading	Meaning
常	巾+8		cháng ㄔㄤˊ	common, normal, frequent, regular Sojun goes with “eternal/endless dimension” - maybe “everyday” works?
樂	木+11	樂 乐	yuè ㄩㄝˋ	Music. / Perform, play music. / Musical instrument. / The (now lost) classic of music. / Musician. / Yue, a surname.
			lè ㄌㄜˋ	Happiness. / Make happy. / Fondness for, liking of. / Happy to, willing to. / Tranquil, contented. / Music and debauchery. / Le, a surname. Fun that it’s the same character for music!
我	戈+3		wǒ ㄨㄛˇ	First-person pronoun: I. / One's own side in general. / Expresses closeness. / Egoism, self-involvement.
淨	水+8	凈	jìng ㄐㄧㄥˋ	pure, clean, unspoiled

So something like “the endless dimension (or life) is joyful and pure” when we are feeling how the 3 treasures are both our nature and the cause of our manifestation!

Sotozen.net goes with “Permanence, ease, selfhood, and purity” as the 4 aspects of nirvana.

cho nen kan ze on  朝念觀世音

朝	月+8	晁	zhāo ㄓㄠ	Morning. / Beginning.
			cháo ㄔㄠˊ	Meet in court. / Call the ministers to court. / Court, place where ministers meet with the ruler. / Visit, go to see. / Meet together, gather.
念	心+4	念	niàn ㄋㄧㄢˋ	think of, recall, study. mindful
觀	見+18	覌       观	guān guàn ㄍㄨㄢ ㄍㄨㄢˋ	see, observe, view; appearance trans: kan
世	一+4	丗 卋	shì ㄕˋ	generation; world; era trans: ze
音	音+0		yīn yìn ㄧㄣ ㄧㄣˋ	sound, tone, pitch, pronunciation trans: on

bo nen kan ze on  暮念觀世音

暮	日+11		mù ㄇㄨˋ	evening, dusk, sunset; ending
念	心+4	念	niàn ㄋㄧㄢˋ	think of, recall, study
觀	見+18	覌       观	guān guàn ㄍㄨㄢ ㄍㄨㄢˋ	see, observe, view; appearance
世	一+4	丗 卋	shì ㄕˋ	generation; world; era
音	音+0		yīn yìn ㄧㄣ ㄧㄣˋ	sound, tone, pitch, pronunciation

nen nen ju shin ki  念念從心起

念	心+4	念	niàn ㄋㄧㄢˋ	think of, recall, study mindful
念	心+4	念	niàn ㄋㄧㄢˋ	think of, recall, study mindful
從	彳+8	従 从	cóng ㄘㄨㄥˊ	Follow, accompany. / Cause to follow, make go along with. / Pursue, chase after. / Die with, bury along with the dead. / Listen to, do as required. / Eloquent. / Obedient, submissive. / Route to peaceful society, correct order. / Perform, participate in. / Blood relation through the male line. / Secondary, sub- (of official titles). / Preposition: from. / Preposition: towards. / Preposition: because of, due to. / Addition, also.
			zòng ㄗㄨㄥˋ	North-south. / Alliance of states opposed to the Qin alliance. / Straight, upright. / Indulge, allow to. / Connective: even if.
			zōng ㄗㄨㄥ	Trace, vestige.
			sǒng ㄙㄨㄥˇ	See 從容。
心	心+0	㣺 忄	xīn ㄒㄧㄣ	heart; mind, intelligence; soul. heart-mind
起	走+3		qǐ ㄑㄧˇ	rise, stand up; go up; begin. Sojun: arrived

Sojun does, “thought after thought follows heart-mind’s arrival”
I think I like, “mindfully mindful, follow the arising heart-mind”

nen nen fu ri shin  念念不離心

念	心+4	念	niàn ㄋㄧㄢˋ	think of, recall, study
念	心+4	念	niàn ㄋㄧㄢˋ	think of, recall, study
不	一+3	不	bù ㄅㄨˋ	Not have. / To not be. / Negational adverb, used before verbs, adjectives, etc. to indicate negation. / Negational adverb expressing prohibition: do not. / Negational adverb expressing rhetorical question: is not...?
			fǒu ㄈㄡˇ	Same as 「否(1.2)」 fǒu ㄈㄡˇ: Adverb used together with an affirmative word, expressing its negative or opposite. / Same as 「否(1.3)」 fǒu ㄈㄡˇ: Adverb used at the end of a question to form a yes-no question.
			fū ㄈㄨ	Sepal of a flower.
			pī ㄆㄧ	Same as 「丕(1)」 pī ㄆㄧ: Large.
			bǐ ㄅㄧˇ	Show disdain for.
離	隹+11	離 离	lí lì lǐ chī gǔ ㄌㄧˊ ㄌㄧˋ ㄌㄧˇ ㄔ ㄍㄨˇ	leave, depart; go away; separate
心	心+0	㣺 忄	xīn ㄒㄧㄣ	heart; mind, intelligence; soul

Maybe, “mindfully mindful, not leaving heart-mind” or “mindfully mindfully staying with heart mind in every moment”