This is what Eihei Dōgen's "Genjokoan" expresses through me in just this moment. For a deeper dive, check out Realizing Genjokoan, by Shohaku Okumura, an explication to which I am indebted. You can also read Okumura's translation of "Genjokoan" on page 41 here.
Actualizing Fundamental Reality
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| Photo by Sandra Raponi |
The Heart Sutra counters with the "absolute truth" that there is no separate "thinghood" to be found, so there is ultimately "no suffering" to be conquered. Nothing exists separately with fixed essence. All things are impermanent and dependently arisen. Thus, the Heart Sutra teaches that "there is nothing to attain." We can "give up" our dualistic goals and let go of all dualistic notions. The teaching of emptiness is medicine to counter absolutism, wherein we mentally project fixed essences into things. If we become attached to our conceptions of things, then when things change (as they inevitably do because they have no fixed essences), we suffer more.
But we can also get addicted to the medicine, to the teaching of emptiness, and this becomes another burden for us. When we cross the river, we do not bring the raft with us. We need to go beyond affirmation and negation to see life exactly as it is. In other words, even the "no" of the Heart Sutra is dualistic if functioning in opposition to something outside itself. If we become attached to "no," we become nihilistic, actively denying the existence of forms. We might become attached to samadhi states of "oneness." Either way, we are not functioning freely, and we are ironically trapped in a dualistic view that sees duality in opposition to nonduality.
Because the Heart Sutra's initial statement (that emptiness is form and form is emptiness) appears dualistic -- as if form is something other than form, or as if form needs to be negated -- Dōgen writes in his own rendition of the Heart Sutra that "form is form and emptiness is emptiness," erasing a dualistic, intellectual comparison of form to something other than form.
The Heart Sutra also collapses dualistic intellectual comparisons of duality and nonduality by stating that "form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form." The addition of the word, "exactly," means that there is no duality at all. Emptiness is not a separate thing, contradiction, or idea but is exactly things as they are. There is actually no dichotomy between what is solid or real and what is empty or insubstantial. This is not to suggest a middle way between two poles. The poles themselves vanish and we are left with life just as it is. Dōgen emphasizes this leaping clear of all dualities, particularly distinct notions of emptiness and form and their associations with oneness and multiplicity, absolutism and negation.
Leap clear of the many and the one. Beyond yes and no, beyond affirmation and negation, and beyond duality and nonduality, cherry blossoms in the garden and dandelions in the yard.
When we aim in any direction at all, we are lost in delusion. To be deluded is to get lost in our conceptual maps and lose touch with things as they are. This is an opportunity to awaken to delusions as delusions.
As we sit still, shut up, and pay attention, the ten thousand things express themselves as our practice. Practice and realization are not two.
When we see thoughts as thoughts, we wake up. When we attach to ideas about enlightenment, we fall out of alignment with the way things actually are. To get caught in ideas about enlightenment is delusion. Still, don't even get stuck in judgments about delusion, and don't aim for enlightenment as medicine for delusions. That's delusion within delusion. Let go of all compass points. Throw everything into the fire of practice.
The thought, "I am enlightened," is just a thought. There is nobody to attain enlightenment. Still, Buddha actualizes Buddha through our practice regardless of what we think. Waves do not obstruct the ocean.
Be embodied. Stay awake to the sensations of this body, which inherently include the myriad dharmas. The crow's caw is not outside ourselves. It penetrates the entire universe; it penetrates this body-and-mind.
Sometimes we see particular waves and lose sight of the ocean. When we see only our concepts, the ocean appears two dimensional. Sometimes we see the vastness and depth of the ocean and do not see particular waves. And sometimes we see through the waves into the vastness. When we open beyond concepts to the aliveness of the moment, suchness appears as infinite depth and detail. There is no fixed view that we can or should preserve. Sometimes life appears this way, sometimes that way. Awakening does not depend on the particular content of our mind.
Look deeply into the self and see that there is no separate, fixed self. The self is literally made of non-self elements, just like an eye. The eye is made of water and other non-eye elements. The eye also does not function independently but depends on the objects it sees, the light that enters the retina, and the brain that creates images. The eye cannot function without the existence of all beings. Vision is a dependent arising. Similarly, we do not exist alone or independently. We are the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the culturally inherited languages we speak. More broadly, students are the teacher's life. The child is the parent's life. All beings reside in our hearts and make up our lives. We are relation itself.
Body-and-mind and the bodies-and-minds of others drop away when we realize the suchness of body-and-mind. There is openness at the center of everything. Thoroughly examining this body-and-mind is shikantaza.
Impermanence is life. This is the place of non-abiding. Wake up into the dream.
We express the dream by sitting, standing, walking, and lying down, by washing dishes, eating when we are hungry, and laughing and crying.
When we seek the truth, we get lost in conceptual maps. What we seek is already here.
All things only move relative to each other. The boat moves relative to the shore, and the shore moves relative to the boat. Things exist relationally, and there is no center. The absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth. Still, we often project selfhood into things.
Enduring selfhood and fixed essences are mirages. There is only change. We therefore lose everything and everyone we love. Firewood becomes ash.
Though it has no fixed essence, nonetheless, firewood is exactly firewood. The firewood exists because there was a tree, and it also has the potential to become ash. The present moment therefore includes the fruit of the past and seed of the future. All time is included in this moment. Still, the present moment is completely independent.
In the narrative sense, each moment is a consequence of endless causes and conditions that precede it, and each moment gives rise to future moments through cause and effect. This recognition of cause-effect allows us make decisions that alleviate suffering for all beings. And, the past and future can be found no place but here. The firewood that became ash no longer exists.
Life is paradoxical. It may seem like contradictions are mutually exclusive, but that is a shallow understanding of life-and-death.
Dōgen contradicts traditional Buddhist notions of reincarnation. Birth is exactly birth, and death is exactly death. Birth is a distinct moment of time. Death is a distinct moment of time. There is no consistent, enduring entity that is born and that later dies. There is no consistent, enduring entity that dies and that is later reborn.
Each phenomenon is a provisional dharma position, exactly thus. When there is fire, there is only burning. When the fire is gone, there is only ash. We tell stories to connect past and future, but there is only one moment. Where could anything go? Still, by the time we finish saying the word "now," it has vanished. As such, this moment is ungraspable.
Birds sing early in the spring. Leaves rot in the garden. Hunger is simply hunger. Being full is simply being full. Hunger is not being full, and being full is not hunger. Our practice actualizes what is, here and now. When it is time to live, just live. When it is time to die, just die. What is?
Everything is dependently originated, like the moon in the water. The reflection of the moon is not separate from the water. The moon is not the first cause. The water is not the first cause. Each depends on the other to create the moon's reflection. The two are thoroughly integrated. Thus they are not one, not two, both one and two.
The moon is also a dependent arising. The moon reflects the sun's light. This goes on endlessly. Nothing exists with its own separate essence; everything is born of endless causes and conditions and exists as interwoven relations.
The watery moon is soaked through to its bone-white eye, and the water is thoroughly penetrated by moonlight. Nonetheless, each phenomenon also exists individually, just like you and me. As Shunryu Suzuki said, "Our life is not only plural but singular. Each one of us is both dependent and independent" (Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind). Though we are completely interwoven, dependent arisings, we also exist as autonomous beings. Suzuki calls this "independency." We try to pin down reality in either-or thinking, but reality does not comply.
Though we are finite beings, we are also inseparable from boundless reality. The moonlight shines through all the dewdrops in the grass. Look into your own heart-mind. What do you see?
Enlightenment is not a "thing." Nor is there any separate self to be enlightened. There is just this boundless moment unfolding as practice.
Delusion is inherently without substance and cannot hinder the functioning of the universe. Duality is no hindrance to nonduality. Though we have different names, separate, fixed selfhood is a mirage. Enlightenment permeates the entire universe no matter what we believe. It does not depend on the content of our minds. Life is always exactly thus, whether we experience it as "delusion" or "enlightenment."
Each person is boundless. Each dharma is infinitely deep. We find the entire universe in a cup of tea. The tea leaves contain sunlight, earth, and air, and the water contains rivers, lakes, and oceans. Yet it is also still just a cup of tea. "Everything in itself is boundlessness; boundlessness is all things" (James Ford's translation of the Heart Sutra). Reality manifests the vastness of awareness.
When the dharma has not yet fully penetrated body and mind, one thinks, one is already filled with it. When we rely too much on thoughts, we keep turning toward these conceptual maps for answers. We take senses of self as real and interpret our thoughts as referring to absolute reality. We think we have it all figured out, but we cannot hear the wind in the pines.
When the dharma completely pervades us, we see that there is nothing we can hold onto, that there are no fixed essences anywhere. The more we open our heart-mind, the more we realize that we cannot fathom what is. We are limited in what we can comprehend. We do not attain omniscience. We are human beings. The incomprehensible Dharma is inexhaustible.
Though the universe is infinitely vast and infinitely small, we live in particular contexts and are born out of specific causes and conditions. Sometimes our practice is vast and seems to include the sounds of the world. Sometimes our practice is small and is focused on just this breath. Our practice is to investigate this moment completely, regardless of its content. Even in just this breath, we find worlds without end.
We are all dependent arisings, dependent on our environments to survive. Our function and place depend on our relationships. We cannot and do not exist alone. Without the water, the fish cannot swim, and without the sky, the bird cannot fly. The fish's fins are the entire ocean, and the bird's wings are the entire sky. Each step we take spins the globe and moves mountains.
The bird and fish exist relationally. The fish's life is the ocean. The bird's life is the sky. But it is also the case that the ocean's life is the fish, and the sky's life is the bird. A teacher's life is her students, and the students' life is their teacher. Our senses constitute reality, and reality constitutes our senses. All beings are mutually and relationally conditioned. Though each being exists individually, all beings have no separate existence. Practice-enlightenment is life itself, manifesting as practice-enlightenment.
Though we cannot know the entire universe and only realize the sensory-world as it is constituted in our practice, still we can investigate the great matter endlessly, and our life is boundless.
We do not need to know everything to begin practicing Zen. Our practice is realizing this particular place and our particular activity, actualizing fundamental reality. This sensory-world is enlightenment. Eighty percent is one hundred percent. One percent is exactly one hundred percent. And yet, this practice is never finished.
Vigorously investigate what is. The ten thousand things manifest as you. Still, we do not possess what is. It cannot be possessed. The past cannot become the present. Ash cannot become firewood. We cannot capture the spring breeze in a bottle.
Practice-enlightenment is not merely arising now. It is also vanishing, becoming, and non-arising. Have you ever lived outside this present moment? Accordingly, when walking, just walk.
Reality is like the taste of water in your mouth. It includes and is beyond conceptions. We actualize reality by devoting ourselves entirely to what we are doing here and now. For us there is no other place.
Boundaries fall away. The earth and the foot together give rise to walking. Mastery of the Buddha Dharma does not depend upon intellectual comprehension. Life awakens to life through our practice.
We can only know our consciousness till now. Therefore, even this very moment is unknowable by our discriminating minds. Use language freely and open to things as they are. But getting stuck in views is like closing our fist in a bottle and getting trapped. As Okumura says, "open the hand of thought" and enlightenment is actualized by all beings.
We can't see our own eyeballs, and there is no mirror anywhere. Even when we have ideas about enlightenment or attain special states of consciousness, we cannot hold onto them. We cannot hold onto anything. Everything goes its own way.
Zen Master Bao-che was practicing zazen. A monk asked, "Why do we need to practice to realize Buddha nature if everything already is Buddha nature?"
Bao-che answered, "It is possible to be deluded. If Buddha nature is just an idea for you, you have not realized the Way."
The monk asked, "If I do not understand it, tell me, in what way does enlightenment permeate all beings throughout space and time?" Bao-che just continued to practice.
Did the monk understand?
Practice-realization is the transmission of the Buddha Dharma. When we practice, enlightenment is already present. If we think we understand and therefore do not need to practice, we lose our way.
Though the timeless wind is unknowable, it is utterly reliable. Waving the fan actualizes the timeless wind. The timeless wind carries golden flowers across the sky and brings forth the fragrance of spring.