Tag Archives: Loori

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turning in both directions

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In Yaoshan’s Nonthinking, Daido Loori Roshi teaches on the tendency of mind to take the dualistic stance to experience.  The capping verse is lovely:

When the dharma wheel turns
it always goes in both directions.
The still point is its hub, and from here,
all of our myriad activities emerge.
Rather than give solace to the body,
give solace to the mind.
When both body and mind are at peace,
all things appear as they are:
perfect, complete, lacking nothing.

He continues:

The capping verse:

When the dharma wheel turns it always goes in both directions. The still point is its hub, and from here, all of our myriad activities emerge. The turning of the dharma wheel in both directions simultaneously is the merging of the differences: good/bad, thinking/not thinking, up/down, self/other, on the mountain/in the world, monk practice/lay practice, and on and on. Our minds are dualistic and our tendency is always to look at things in terms of that dualism. In the Sandokai (the Identity of Relative and Absolute), we chant, “The absolute and the relative fit like a box and its lid… it’s like the foot before and the foot behind in walking. Within darkness there is light, but do not look for that light. Within light there is darkness, but do not try to understand that darkness.” These are concepts that are hard to understand, but that can be experienced once the mind stops moving. “When the dharma wheel turns it always goes in both directions” refers to the Fifth Rank of Master Dongshan where unity is finally attained, where absolute and relative, self and other, this and that, thinking and non-thinking, become unified.

This is nice.  There aren’t a whole lot of deep insights.  I’m just really aware of the huge weight of an uncompromising workload and my tendency to submit when there are extraordinary demands.  Yet even that is just a concept, a belief that the wheel can only turn or be stuck.  So it’s very nice when, for a moment, the life is a dharma wheel turning in both directions, when I don’t have to figure things out, when the simplest act is sufficient, when Interbeing and lovingkindness are one and the same.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

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the third thing

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I like feeling gobsmacked.  All you, dear friends, who respond to these posts, keep me well gobsmacked by your compassion and wise, wise teachings.  And then, there is a lovely lung-filling moment when that turning word appears in a book and I feel deliciously gobsmacked that I knew this and now know it again in a deeply different way.
 Continuing with Teachings of the Insentient, Loori writes,

Master Dogen addresses the secrets of the river and of all water: The river is neither strong nor weak, neither wet nor dry, neither moving nor still, neither cold nor hot, neither being nor non-being, neither delusion nor enlightenment. It is none of the dualities.  Water is H2O, composed of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, two odorless and tasteless gases.  You bring them together and you get water.  But water is not oxygen, and it is not hydrogen.  It is not a gas.  It is what D.H. Lawrence calls in one of his poems “the third thing.”  It is the same was with absolute and relative, with all the dualities.  It is not either one or the other; it is always the third thing.

Evan Thompson and Joanna Macy speak of emergent properties – the third thing that arises when things come together.  In another career incarnation, I was an archaeological chemist and in rifling through the detritus of civilization, it always amazed me that things remained recognizable despite not being what they originally were.  Talk about deep contact with the koan “What was your original face?”  The hairpin that could only be known as such because of the shape of the corrosion, the shards of glass that used to cohere as a decanter, the lengths of water-logged beams that once knew itself as a ship – these are all original faces.  All transformed intimately by trusting and letting go, becoming just what they are.

This very moment of being –
our original face –
eternally the third thing.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju