Literal Plum Blossoms

 







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Film Recommendation (Anderson)

Image
“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...
Read more

Concluding Thoughts (Herreid)

Image
"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'...
Read more

Turning Words and Words that Turn- Chapin

Image
  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 ...
Read more