2025-11-12 Sutra Book 1 - Robe Chant
We start each evening of practice with the mysterious sounding robe chant so I thought I'd share a bit about it tonight.
I've heard Sōtō Zen spoken of as "the cult of cloth." And I sit here, someone ordained into this, in quite a pile of cloth. Keeps me warm and can be a challenge to wear. Kind of elegant when I have myself put together okay.
The important layer of cloth is this brown layer here called the okesa. "Kesa" a Japanese version of the Sanskrit kashaya and the o- in front means "great." All ordained clergy wear a version of this in all schools of Buddhism. There are different colors and styles. Usually draped over one shoulder and leaving the other shoulder bare which is a symbol of respect and vulnerability. When you walk around something, like a stupa or a Buddha, you go around clockwise with your uncovered shoulder towards the sacred object. In many traditions the right shoulder is actually bare but it gets cold in China and Japan so we have a robe beneath it so my right shoulder is symbolically bare not literally.
Here's Dōgen our 12th century Japanese founder on the power of the okesa:
Shobogenzo Complete - Tanahashi + Levitt - Indexed, p.212
A kashaya has been called the garment of emancipation. The hindrances of actions and defilements, and the effects of unwholesome action are all removed by it. If a dragon obtains a small piece of kashaya, it can be cured of febrile diseases. If an ox touches a kashaya with one of its horns, its past wrongdoings disappear. When buddhas attain the way, they always wear a kashaya. Know that its power is unsurpassable and most venerable.
Given the power of the okesa it makes sense there's a little ritual for putting it on.
Rather than me or Chris just going off and doing that ritual privately we all do it together.
And we also have people who are not ordained priests but do a kind of lay ordination as part of the process of committing to live by the precepts and keep up their practice as lay people - that was our big ritual last Sunday. So they wear a smaller version of the okesa called rakusu. So you might notice a few more of those among us tonight compared to last week.
A neat part of all of that is we hand sew these garments which is a meditation all of it's own.
We use the same ritual for putting on the rakusu as the okesa. It's put on our heads while chanting that verse and then we put it on.
This ritual of putting the robe on your head and chanting a verse was something that Dōgen was deeply moved by in his time training in China as a young name. He wrote about it with great passion years later:
Shobogenzo Complete - Tanahashi + Levitt - Indexed, p.232
Once, when I was in Song China, practicing on a long sitting platform, I observed the monks around me. At the beginning of zazen in the morning, they would hold up their kashayas, place them on their heads, and chant a verse quietly with palms together:
Great is the robe of liberation,
the robe beyond form, the field of benefaction!
I wear the Tathagata’s teaching
to awaken countless beings.
This was the first time I had seen the kashaya held up in this way, and I rejoiced, tears wetting the collar of my robe. Although I had read this verse of veneration for the kashaya in the Agama Sutra, I had not known the procedure. Now, I saw it with my own eyes. In my joy I also felt sorry that there had been no master to teach this to me and no good friend to recommend it in Japan. How sad that so much time had been wasted! But I also rejoiced in my wholesome past actions [that caused me to experience this].
If I had stayed in my land, how could I have sat side by side with the monks who had received and were wearing the buddha robe? My sadness and joy brought endless tears.
Then, I made a vow to myself: However unsuited I may be, I will become an authentic holder of the buddha dharma, receiving authentic transmission of the true dharma, and with compassion show the buddha ancestors’ authentically transmitted dharma robes to those in my land. I rejoice that the vow I made at that time has not been in vain, and that there have been many bodhisattvas, lay and ordained, who have received the kashaya in Japan. Those who maintain the kashaya should always venerate it day and night. This brings forth most excellent merit. To see or hear one line of the kashaya verse is not limited to seeing and hearing it as if we were trees and rocks, but pervades the nine realms of sentient beings.
The verse itself is four lines of 5 Chinese characters each, pronounced in the "old fashioned" version of the Japanese pronunciation of each character. So it's not modern Japanese we're chanting when we chant the "Japanese" chants, and it would sound like gibberish to a Japanese speaker who hasn't studied that particular text. They even put little tiny phonetic helper characters along with the Chinese Kanji characters to show how it's pronounced. This is true of most of the Zen verses and traditional texts. The canonical language of Zen is written Chinese.
- Title: 搭袈裟偈 (takkesage)
- Line 1: 大哉解脱服 (Dai sai ge da puku)
- Line 2: 無相福田衣 (Mu so fuku den e)
- Line 3: 披奉如来教 (Hi bu nyorai kyo)
- Line 4: 広度諸衆生 (Ko do sho shu jo)
There's a story in an essay by the wonderful Zen writing teacher Natalie Goldberg that made me cringe when I read it. She's in Japan hanging out with some English speaking friends who are curious about her Zen practice. And she pipes up with, hey! I know a little Japanese! And starts chanting the robe chant. They just look at it her puzzled. So just FYI in case you ever go to Japan: you haven't actually learned any understandable Japanese by memorizing our "Japanese" chants.
So we're actually in the same boat as a Japanese person just pronouncing these sounds and having faith they mean something. A Japanese person would have a bit of an edge as they'd recognize the shapes of some of the Chinese characters but the sounds we're chanting wouldn't line up with what they'd expect so it must be a bit confusing for them. But some of the meaning could shine through that way.
We have a translation in English just after. I don't think in traditional training monasteries they have the modern Japanese right after so it might actually be easier to understand this stuff here than in Japan in some ways!
In this case the 2nd line of the translation does turn out to be a little...creative. It's an early one. Most other centers have since updated it a bit but our lineage family stays with this. After a while the words of a verse or chant do get into your bones and it'd hard to change them.
This layer that's kind of in between Chinese and Japanese gets called Sino-Japanese for short. Sino meaning "China" in Latin.
The first line is the 5 characters
大哉解脱服 (Dai sai ge da puku)
Dai is great, you hear that one all the time - dai this and dai that.
Sai is a modifier like an exclamation mark.
So Dai sai is "how great!"
The two characters ge-da form the word for liberation. Literally the character ge means to "unravel" and da means "to undress" so that's a fun underlying meaning. We wear the robe of liberation to help us take off our old self-centered garb. Wearing the robe makes us naked in a way.
And puku is "clothing" generally so, robe is fair enough this line is clearly
"how great the clothing that liberates us". meaning the okesa robe.
\[chanting] Great robe of liberation...
The second line is and here's where our particular English translation gets a little creative.
無相福田衣 (Mu so fuku den e)
mu 無 is the classic word for negation. Maybe you've heard of the koan about the Dog and Buddha nature. Does a dog have Buddha nature? The teacher answers "not!" which sounds like "mu" in Sino-Japanese. Mu is a very neat character: it's drawn line a fence to keep you out. No entry! Not in here!
so 相 is the Japanese way of expressing a term from Buddhist psychology, nimitta in Sanskrit, that means "apperance". So we the robe has no fixed appearance. It's empty of any particular form.
The next two characters fuku-den mean a virtuous field. Fuku is good fortune or virtue - goodness and den is a farmer's field. Usually it refers to a rice paddy.
The last character "e" is another character for clothing so for sure this whole line is about the okesa robe too.
So our fluid-appearance robe is a field of virtue.
This is pretty far from the English "field far beyond form and emptiness" - form and emptiness are specific Buddhist terms with particular characters which just aren't there.
Another translation of this line, you'll hear it at Great Vow monastery, is closer to the meaning of the characters:
\[chanting] A formless field of benefaction
Think what you will of the word "benefaction" - not a word I've ever used myself.
Then the 3rd line is pretty straightforward:
披奉如来教 (Hi bu nyorai kyo)
According to my dictionaries the character 披 hi means "wearing" in Chinese and the Japanese also use it for "opening". So opening up - unfolding - the okesa which is a big folded up thing - and wearing the robe.
The second character 奉 bu means humble, thankful, respectful.
Hi bu: gratefully to unfolding and wearing the robe.
Then the next two 如来 nyorai is a respectful term for Buddha. Literally the characters mean going, coming - the Buddha is one who comes and goes with utter freedom. Manifesting and releasing. Never stuck - always flowing in a certain way. It's a translation of the Sanskrit term Tathaghata - one who comes and goes.
And 教 kyo is the word for sutras, for teachings.
So our:
[chanting] Wearing the Tathagatha teachings
is fine but it doesn't call out the thankfulness and respectfulness of "bu".
Here Great Vow has
[chanting] Wrapping ourselves in Buddha's teachings
The two versions so far:
Great robe of liberation Field far beyond form and emptiness Wearing the Tathagata's teachings
or
How great the robe of liberation, A formless field of benefaction! Wrapping ourselves in Buddha’s teaching
The last line is:
広度諸衆生 (Ko do sho shu jo)
Ko do : ko is broad or spacious and do is occurences so something like "everywhere they occur..."
And then the 3rd character sho adds more emphasis it means many or all. "Everywhere they all occur"
And what occurs everywhere? shu jo appear everywhere - living beings. Jo is the word for life and shu is yet another character that means a "crowd" on it's own. So yet again many beings are being talked about.
So this line is a very thorough invitation to include absolutely all beings everywhere without exception.
And I guess the whole phrase, and the context it's in, implies "saving" or "liberating" those beings. As the verb for "save" or "liberate" isn't actually there. Here we hit the limit of my looking up Chinese characters in online dictionaries without really understanding much about Chinese or Japanese as languages.
And we land with our two complete translation options:
Great robe of liberation Field far beyond form and emptiness Wearing the Tathagata's teachings Saving all beings
or
How great the robe of liberation, A formless field of benefaction! Wrapping ourselves in Buddha’s teaching, We free all living beings.
Where does this leave you if you don't wear an okesa or rakusu?
Well I always say that every one of these teachings and the process of chanting, reading, studying and talking about them has three major areas of meaning.
The first is straight up intellectual and that's included: what is this and where did it come from? What's the history of it, which cultures created it, how has it been used and treasured through the ages. It came down to us here in Bellingham, Washington, somehow.
The second is devotional - there's a trust, or even faith, piece here - whether you wear a robe you can see made of fabric or if your robes isn't so visible - and remember Muso Fukuden-e the teaching says it's a robe with no fixed appearance - can you invite yourself to feel into this. Do you feel how Buddha's robe wraps around you as you chant, as you sit, and you stand, as you live your life? Or maybe different language helps: can you feel how love wraps around you. Maybe it's God's love even. Or spirit. Or the way we're held and completely accepted by Mother Earth. As we chant the robe chant at the start of practice can you invite and allow this possibility?
And the third area of meaning is the practical - the way of practice. Of course devotion and practice are completely interpenetrated. Just chant, just listen, just appreciate the mindful pause we are co-creating with all of our heart-minds concentrated on the same sounds, as our voices create beautiful soundwaves in the air that reverberate in our heads and hearts. We sit down together and we start together as one voice, as one body. Chanting the robe chant no matter what you robe looks like, if it can be seen at all, is a deep invitation for sangha to arise. You can feel it.
And can we live that way always. Couldn't everything we do, in some way, be the same as chanting the robe chant? Invoking our intentions. Showing up with full presence.
I'll close with a bit more Dōgen enthusiasm for the okesa robe here. He's quoting the Buddha from an obscure Mahayana teaching:
Shobogenzo Complete - SZTP, p.1924
Bhiksu Janaprabha,, you should listen well, To the ten benefits of the robe, the great field of merit. Worldly clothing increases the stain of desire, But the dharma garment of the Tathagata is not like that. The dharma garment prevents embarrassment in the world, And, with conscience and shame perfected, yields a field of merit. Freed from the cold and heat and poisonous snakes, The mind of the way is firm and gains the ultimate. Displaying the renunciant, free from desires, It cuts away the five views and promotes right practice.'*' Gazing upon and bowing to the kasaya, the jeweled banner, Those who venerate it are blessed with birth with King Brahma.
