…Dogen said,
Sounds of streams and shapes of mountains.
The sounds never stop and the shapes never cease.
Was it Su who woke
or was it mountains and streams?Billions of beings see the morning star
and all become Buddhas!
If you, who are valley and streams and looming
mountains,
can’t throw some light on the nature of ridges and riverswho can?
from the poem We wash our bowls in this water by Gary Snyder
(W)e do not suffer in the abstract; our suffering is experienced, which is to say we grieve the loss of a friend, we are anxious about our health, we are depressed about lack of gratitude, and so on. Because we can only know our suffering through experience we believe it comes from experience. However, traumatic incidents merely provide the trigger and not the cause of the suffering, the cause being the initial separation from ourselves and the longing to return to wholeness.
The Butterfly’s Dream: In search of the roots of Zen by Albert Low
108zenbooks 