Tag Archives: Dogen

being a time being: dogen, katagiri & the flight of vultures

by

timebeing1The sight of five vultures waiting at the end of the driveway can be a good thing. What is the good and what thing they point to is, of course, unknowable in the immediate. And yet. That single view is enough to send me wandering on time travels to worlds of worry, regret and wondering what if.

Vultures waiting are a powerful icon for time lost, frittered away. The body/mind unbinding with nothing left but the shell of a vessel poorly treated and meagerly used. I stepped out of the car quietly not wanting to set them on flight; that would have truly signalled the end. So I watched them as they watched something off in the northeast field, unmoving yet intimately related.

Dogen¹ writes exquisitely of time as inseparable from being, time-being or more succinctly being-which-is-time. Uji. It takes a moment to drop into what that feels like because the cascade of moments seems external, impenetrable and inexorably outside our control. Our perception insists that time moves relentlessly and mercilessly as we are dragged along in its wake. No wonder I quail at the sight of an icon of endings.

Katagari² describes “The Pivot of Nothingness” as this present moment – which doesn’t exist because past is vanishing and future has yet to unfold leaving a void, a turning point, a pivot into the next unfolding. For ease of communication, we tend to position ourselves through language. “Here I am.” But the terminology fractures when we drop into the “here” “I” and “am.” Each is a construction of something from the past and a reaching into the future.

In this “here” is a train station into which pulls all manner of locomotives taking me “there.” The room where this or that happened which lead to that or the other not happening. The city where choices ended and others failed to manifest. The bus, the subway where I choose this direction and not that, where one meeting lead to another but a different route missed the intersection of time and another being.

In this “I” are a hundred thousand variations that appear to be a seamless evolution from a past point and into a hopeful future. The aspiring astronaut, the acolyte of science, the lost and wandering characters who make up this play of fools. Examined closely, the appearance of an unbroken tapestry is so heart-rendingly false. More a wildly designed quilt with each patch having emerged from an unknowable confluence of causes, conditions and other beings-of-time.

As I “am” is not enough. There is always something taunting from the future that was planted by a promise from the past. Always something that is insufficient, undeveloped and wantonly wasting time. This am-ness is a counterpoint to what philosopher Evan Thompson³ calls “selfing.” It is an accreted stuckness that takes a wake up slam of vast proportions to dislodge it from the delusion of permanence.

timebeing2And the vultures took flight.

In this pivot of nothingness which contains all that is necessary and sufficient is what Dogen says is the complete moment. Like the firewood and ash¹, it “fully includes before and after and is independent of before and after.” To paraphrase, we cannot call here the beginning of there, I the end of you, or am the end of was.

When you are right on the pivot of nothingness, free from the pictures created by your consciousness, you see time from a universal perspective. There is no gap where you feel separate from time, because your life is the whole dynamic world of time, and all sentient beings are the content of your life. Katagiri, p.78

____________________________

¹Tanahashi, Kazuaki (ed), The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, Vol 1. Shambhala 2010

²Katagari, Dainin (Edited by Andrea Martin), Each moment is the universe: Zen and the way of being time. Shambhala 2008

³Thompson, Evan, Mind in Life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2010

painting the rice cake

by

Dogen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye edited by Kaz Tanahashi: The Moon (tsuki)

The pronunciation means “moon”; the ideograph can mean “entire” (tsu) and “function” (ki) (Glossary, p 1071).  Dogen points out our tendency to get caught in absolutes and to be blind to the 10, 000 dharmas (the moon) contained in the smallest drop of dew.  And we do love our assumptions about how things should be: full moon, half-moon, moon rising, moon setting.

He writes of Nagarjuna who was teaching to an assembly and challenged that “even if (he spoke) of buddha nature, no one (could) see it.”  Nagarjuna responded that in order to see buddha nature, we have to let go of our pride.  He “manifested a body of complete freedom in the shape of a full moon” but no one in the assembly understood what was happening; an understandable reaction when we’re caught in our own translation code of the world.  One among the crowd, Kanadeva, explained that “the samadhi of no-form has taken the shape of a full moon.  Buddha nature is vast, empty, and clear.”

That moon of buddha nature cannot be capture in a single circle.  It cannot be contained in the lines of the brush.  

Know that when you paint the manifestation of a full moon, do it on a dharma seat.

Otherwise it will have no shape of moon, of the moon’s full being or thusness.  Otherwise, “you are not embodying the expression and painting the expounding of dharma, but merely creating a piece of painted rice cake.”

It is only by letting go of our preconceptions of something is, letting go of our pride, that we can truly paint – manifest – reality.

Never paint what cannot be painted.  Paint straightforwardly what needs to be painted.

the teaching of whole-hearted sitting

by

Dogen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye edited by Kaz Tanahashi: teaching styles

“Wind” can refer to teaching styles and Dogen describes his own journey in search of a teacher.  

After the aspiration for enlightenment arose, I began to search for dharma, visiting teachers at various places in our country….  Later I went to Great Song China, visited masters on both sides of the Zhe River, and heard the teachings of the Five Schools.  Finally, I became a student of Zen Master Rujing of Taibai Peak and completed my life’s quest of the great matter.

It’s no easy journey, this finding of a teacher who can rouse the fires or stoke the coals of an aspiration for enlightenment.  We get caught up – student and teacher alike – in our craving not just for the teachings but for what the teachings will bring us.  We may wish that “the wind of the ancient sages be heard,” but we may wish for the sound to arise from our small heart.

There may be true students who are not concerned with fame and gain who allow their aspiration for enlightenment to guide them and earnestly desire to practice the buddha way.  They may be misguided by incapable teachers and obstructed from the correct understanding; intoxicated in confusion, they may sink into the realm of delusion for a long time.  How can they nourish the correct seed of prajna and encounter the time of attaining the way?

It’s a good question for our time of tangled lineages and multiplicity of sketchy teachers.  Dogen advises:

From the first time you meet a master, without depending on incense offering, bowing, chanting buddha names, repentance, or reading scriptures, just wholeheartedly sit, and thus drop away body and mind.

I would add that in the search of a teacher we take care of who we think is a master.  There is a difference between someone who is a master of befriending her own delusions and one who is  a master of befriending ours.

the buddha nature of falling skies

by

Dogen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye edited by Kaz Tanahashi: Treeness

Zahozhou was asked by a monk, “Does the cypress tree have buddha nature?”

Zhazhou answered, “It does.”

The monk said, “When does it become buddha?”

Zhazhou said, “When the sky falls to the ground.”

The monk said, “When does that happen?”

Zhazhou said: “When the cypress tree becomes buddha.”

This gives me a new appreciation of feeling like the sky is falling.  And since I  know the sky falls constantly, it must mean there is buddha nature constantly manifesting even in my fear-drenched world.  However, I don’t think that’s the real connection between the sky falling and the cypress tree becoming a buddha.

The resolution is in synchronous nature of Zhaozhou’s words: “When the sky falls to the ground” and “When the cypress tree become buddha.”