Painted Rice Cakes

"The real way circulates everywhere; how could it require practice or enlightenment? The essential teaching is fully available; how could effort be necessary? Furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust; why take steps to polish it? Nothing is separate from this very place; why journey away? And yet, if you miss the mark even by a strand of hair, you are as distant as heaven from earth. If the slightest discrimination occurs, you will be lost in confusion. You could be proud of your understanding and have abundant realization, or acquire outstanding wisdom and attain the way by clarifying the mind. Still, if you are wandering about in your head, you may miss the vital path of letting your body leap (907)." The first paragraph of this passage articulates so well the fundamental questions that we have been discussing in regards to Buddhism. It is paradoxical, that the simplest things are the most challenging, that one must re-learn how to coexist with time, and with one'...

“Know that a painted rice cake is your face after your parents were born, your face before your parents were born.” “Painting of a Rice Cake”, 445 “In essence, all things in the entire world are linked with one another as moments. Because all moments are the time being, they are your time being.” “The Time Being”, 106 Last Friday, after our final class of the semester, I did something I hadn’t done in months—watch a movie. Indulging, somewhat arbitrarily, an inborn pull towards science fiction, I put on Arrival (2016), and, by the film’s final moments, I had become convinced of several subtle and surprising connections to Dōgen . For those who have already seen it and are skeptical, I’m willing to concede the possibility that whatever resemblances may exist, they are apparent only to a Dōgen -steeped brain such as my own, and that the discrepancies—even major ones—are much more pronounced than the similarities. But for just that reason, I want to recommend it to anyone else who ha...

  Abiquiu, New Mexico Georgia O’Keeffe’s Studio   A fish swims in the ocean, and no matter how far it swims, there is no end to the water. A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies, there is no end to the air. However, the fish and the bird have never left their elements… Know that water is life and air is life. The bird is life and the fish is life. Life must be the bird and life must be the fish. You can go further. There is practice-enlightenment, which encompasses limited and unlimited life.”  Actualizing the Fundamental Point, p. 32   What is our element? Our medium? That which is life for us, we humans? We walk upon the earth, breathe air, are composed largely of water, and can have fiery emotions, as hot blood courses through our veins. But, we are more than our bodily functions, and we are more than our limbic systems that react to stimuli, the wild fox within us. As we said in class, Mencius might say our medium is relationship, starting with t...

  Toward the end of his life, in the little cottage behind his Lafayette, California house, Bob Birnbaum breathed heavily in his black leather easy chair, his tired eyes closed, as I counted the ways that he had appeared to me during our Wednesday at 4 p.m. blast-offs: Therapist, teacher, surrogate dad, mentor, spiritual master, fellow traveler, bodhisattva, friend, wise leader, beloved, will-bender, pilot. Those are the ones I remember. It was a long list. He shook his head violently at “teacher.” In fact, he scorned all but two – “friend” and “fellow traveler.” When I finished he repeated out loud and nodded vigorously, “That one. Fellow traveler.” Bob (whom I never knew as Swami Prem Amitabh) was raised in the Bronx tenements and projects of the 30s and 40s, so as a Jewish red diaper baby he was applauding the subversive Communist-inspired etymology tucked into the term “fellow traveler.”   We were in on the same spiritual secret cabal, Bob and I! Seven years together, an...

This post grew out of what started as a comment on Mr. Allen's post of Plum Blossom photos (the second time I've started a comment on a post of Mr. Allen's that keeps growing until I realize it might need to be its own post!) The detail of this image... the broad petals of declarative pink. The blossoms look somehow both plump (perhaps because the petals are short and wide, plus the density of many layers of petals) and yet paper-soft and delicate. The dark center is like a navel. A tightly puckered kiss. A warm yellow-brown iris around a pupil. And the spindly-thin, white arms (a feature that I'm sure has an official botanical name) remind me of an insect's cilia.  I have spent a few summers in Vermont at a Master's program where the 200 or so students live in these modest barns and houses about 20 miles outside Middlebury. The campus is very remote, surrounded by obscenely verdant hills and broad meadows, trickling streams. Skys that turn urgent in an instant,...

  Here is one last joust at trying to approach language through Dōgen. I am going to play with words a bit here: on the one hand, we have the idea of ‘turning words’, and on the other, ‘words that turn’. It seems that they are intimately connected, but their function, at least for me here, is different, where they highlight different processes of language and words in human life.  Let’s first address ‘turn’ and ‘turning’. In both cases, we are dealing with a verb, that is an action, so it is something that ones does, is doing or has done. It seems important to notice the spatial sense of this term, where turning seems to require that someone is some-‘where’, and that they are oriented towards something or things, and therefore also, not oriented towards others. Orientation is necessarily a process of both concealment and revelation, and it is in the process of turning (or being turned) that one becomes re-oriented, perhaps  ad infinitum . In other words, despite the ...

"Because the signs of time’s coming and going are obvious, people do not doubt it. Although they do not doubt it, they do not understand it.” The obvious signs of time's coming and going are manifest in all things, for we perceive these signs in the changes exhibited by other beings: a man's hair grows gray and thin, the crabapple tree swells rosy with spring, an infant begins to babble and then to speak. This reminds me of an understanding I reached while reading Zhuangzi regarding the Chinese character tian, which is often translated as "Heaven" or "the heavens." But, tian does not indicate a distinction between the natural and the divine. In fact, it can be translated simply as "sky." Tian evokes a sense of pondering that which is indisputable (we do not question the sky’s existence), yet enigmatic and elevated above man. There seems to be something similar happening here with respect to our not doubting and yet not understanding time. Not ...

Mr. Huerta's comment toward the end of class that Dogen invites us to be at home struck a chord and pulled many things in tonight's reading to the foreground in me. There are many words used to describe the body in this reading: marrow, bones, joints, face, smile, eye, eyebrow. Where can I be at home if not in my own body?   "Rujing said:                    The original face is beyond birth and death.                    Spring in plum blossoms enters into a painting." (p 588) The original face here seems NOT my own physical body. The lengthy discussion in class around the eyeball definitely left me with a deeper understanding of the metaphorical eye of perception. There is a balance in this reading of the physical, or concrete, with the metaphorical, or abstract.  As Dogen wrestles with his own grief at the death of his teacher, the beauty of the plum blossom takes on ...

(Sorry, not plum blossoms, but I haven’t taken any pictures of plum blossoms! If the “udumbara blossom and blue lotus blossoms are also one or two branches of the old plum tree’s blossoms” (582), then perhaps these unidentified blossoms can suffice.) In reading “Plum Blossoms,” I was prompted to take a look back at “Tenzo Kyōkun.” In both “Plum Blossoms” and “Tenzo Kyōkun,” offerings are an essential theme. The activities of the tenzo are paralleled in the activities of the plum tree: both bring forth offerings, and in so doing they engage in the practice of enlightenment. In contrast to my superficial impression of Buddhism following my original reading of the Pāli canon, the Way-seeking mind is not inherently anti-relational. Instead, making offerings is key in one’s journey to enlightenment. In his various encounters with different tenzo in “Tenzo Kyōkun” and his descriptions of his master Rujing in “Plum Blossoms,” Dōgen has clearly been turned by his fellow practitioners, and he h...

 

  “If walking had stopped, the buddha ancestors would not have appeared. If walking ends, the buddha dharma cannot reach the present. Walking forward does not cease; walking backward does not cease. Walking backward does not obstruct walking forward. This is called the mountains’ flow and the flowing mountains (pg 155, Dogen).” I can’t help thinking here that this description of “walking” can be used to understand more fully how time provides the basis for transmission of buddha dharma, or as it is described here, the appearance of the buddha ancestors. Walking, in this fascicle, “Mountains and Water Sutra,” describes a momentum or forward movement that resembles, at least to me, the procession of time (perhaps as something that is also walking) and that this procession is what makes possible a trajectory towards a full understanding of the buddha ancestors. While I am not entirely clear on the difference between the buddha ancestors appearing, and the possibility of enlightenment...

  Regarding the old man’s words  I was reborn as a wild fox for five hundred lifetimes , what does it mean to be reborn as a wild fox?  -------   Out of the corner of my eye I see him enter the courtyard through the open gate, as I sit in repose, meditating on the koan I am to discuss with the Master this evening. It is cold and breezy, but I am beyond the elements now, noticing and yet unaffected, beyond the movements of the world of cause and effect, and close to ocean of original enlightenment. There is no fear of the wild fox. There is no wild fox.   And yet…he looks at me intently and moves forward, closer, silently, curiously. He stops about ten feet from me and stares. Our eyes lock. He has red hair along the length of his body and tail and a white beard, not unlike the aged monks in our monastery along the ridge of the Baizhang mountain. This one cannot possibly know cause and effect, because he does not have the mind to question wherefore he comes, why ...

  (PC: Yifei) In mid April, I once again visited two friends in the San Cristobal mountains north of Taos.  They live in a lovely octagon belonging to a Buddhist neighbour, amidst pines and junipers and off the grid.  One evening, sitting on the wooden floor after dinner, we played a word game as the room slowly dimmed. One person is to come up with one word in mind, and the others shall make guesses of what the word is by asking questions.  All this person can answer is a yes or no.  The rules are simple enough.   There was one word that took us most time to figure out.  The interrogation went roughly like this: "Is it a noun?" -"Yes." "Is it something you can grab by hand?" -"No." "Is it something you can see?" -"Yes." "Is it an emotion?" -"No." "Do you like it?" -"Yes." "Do you have it?" -"Yes." "Does Diodio (our dog, the one sitting on the deck in the picture...