My God! I was wrong two times! The first two times in my whole entire life I've ever been wrong! What's happening?
Thanks to Ted Bringer and Dosho Port for pointing out a couple more times the word "mindfulness" or something like it occurs in Dogen's writing. The longest and most complete explanations he gives of mindfulness occur in a chapter titled SANJUSHICHI-BON BODAI BUNPO (三十七品菩提分法). This is chapter 73 of the 95 chapter Shobogenzo and appears as the first chapter of book 4 of the Nishijima/Cross English translation and the first chapter of book 10 in Nishijima's rendition of Shobogenzo in modern Japanese (現代語訳正法眼蔵, which contains Dogen's actual words as well).
Here's what some of what Dogen says:
Mindfulness as a root is a withered tree as a mass of red flesh. We call a mass of red flesh “a withered tree,” and a withered tree is mindfulness as a root. We ourselves who are groping for the mark are mindfulness. There is mindfulness that exists in moments of owning one’s body, and there is mindfulness that exists in moments of having no mind. There is conscious mindfulness, and there is mindfulness in which there is no body. The very life-root of all the people on Earth is mindfulness as a root. The very life-root of all the buddhas in the ten directions is mindfulness as a root. There can be many people in one state of mindfulness and many states of mindfulness in one person. At the same time, there are people who have mindfulness and there are people who do not have mindfulness. People do not always have mindfulness, and mindfulness is not necessarily connected with people. Even so, through the skillful maintenance of this mindfulness as a root, the virtue of perfect realization exists.
The word that gets translated as "mindfulness" in the Nishijima/Cross translation is 念. In contemporary Japanese this character is pronounced "nen" and means senses, ideas or attention. In common usage it occurs in words like 残念 (zanen) "regrettable," in which the first character refers to things generally thought of as lacking or 念入り (neniri) "careful" in which the second character means something like "add" or "enter." The word 念 is not usually translated as mindfulness in non-Buddhist contexts. "Mind," without the "-fulness," might also be a good reading for 念. Try it that way and see what it says to you. Kinda different, eh?
If you want to get real tricky, the Chinese character 念 consists of two parts. The 今 on top means "now" while the 心 on the bottom means "mind" or "heart." In Buddhist contexts in English 心 is most often translated as "mind." So whoever made up the character seems to have wanted to point out the condition of mind right now. For what that's worth, which isn't much really. Just some random kanji play for y'all. Nishijima once told me a story of visiting some Biblical scholars in Israel. He said the visit showed him "the dangers of believing in ancient texts." We get locked into battles of words that are incredibly stupid even though they sound wicked smart.
The point is that the word "mindfulness" has become such a bullshit term in current usage that it's worse than useless. It's time to strangle it and stomp it out of its misery.
Fuck mindfulness.
My friend Tonen told me a story that when she was in Japan a Zen teacher she met there said that Americans who visited his temple were always gushing to him about how mindful they were being. "Put away your video cameras," he told them, "You're just video taping yourselves being mindful!"
Reading what Dogen wrote it's clear that the word 念 was widely misunderstood even in his day among the people he spoke to. Thus he tries to twist their usual understanding of it into areas they don't expect it to go.
In any case, the same Dogen chapter also contains the line, "Do not listen to the inadequate words of Zen Masters and the like." So there!
