The Self as Medium (Carter)

 

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 the family into which we are born. Aristotle might say our medium is the polis, the state or society. I wonder if Dogen might say that our medium is the body-mind, our ability to think, feel, sense, judge, intuit, imagine, wonder, reflect, remember, plan, design; a self, the medium of self-inquiry about our experience as a self. 

 

My body is limited or bounded by skin, but my mind is limitless, if I can snap or blink myself out of limiting patterns of behavior that reduce me to automatic daily functions, going through the motions, enduring the undesirable, making it through the day, wasting time, consumed by disappointment or revenge, subject to the buffeting winds of change, waiting for the right time, or any of the other myriad excuses to avoid being fully human, of living fully, right now at the present moment. Here, now.

 

Dogen suggests we humans see with a metacognition requiring that we first slow down to become fully aware instead of functioning unconsciously. His poetic narratives challenge us to recreate reality, to defamiliarize ourselves and shake us up, so that we might actively rediscover the vast scale of the human capacity to imagine. If I stop and notice, I can then smell and fall into the center of the plum blossom, feel the wind moving me as a tall bamboo, see with the eyeballs of Gautama, becoming Georgia looking outside my window from the darkness to the expansiveness of the New Mexico landscape yearning to be painted.

 

You can go further, Dogen said. Further is not necessarily distance or time. It is realized within the immediacy of the present moment, which if penetrated thoroughly, allows me to leap beyond the conventional world of cyclic existence to the vast inside-outside of me, the unconfined realm of receptive samadhi (On The Endeavor of the Way, p. 3), by sitting upright, here, now. 

 

All at once, spring. The first day of the year is auspicious. Myriad things are all new… One spring causes myriad things to be all new and causes all things to be on the first day of the year. (Plum Blossoms, p. 586) The present moment opens up to other moments, connects experience there to here and relationships to relationships. Our humanity stretches everywhere. The present moment is constituted by all previous experiences, and because immeasurable, inexhaustible past, present, and future are entirely new, this newness drops away newness. Into just this.

 

Blogpost 5/23/21                                                                                                                                                 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Into the Mystic (Allen)

Image
  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...
Read more

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