Another seemingly plain or mysterious piece written TODAY by Dogen:
A white heron
Hiding itself
In the snowy field,
where even the winter grass
Cannot be seen
It echoes this verse from our ancestor Tozan in the Hokkyo Zanmai, The Jewel Mirror Samadhi :
Like a silver bowl filled with snow
like a heron hidden in the moonlight
These two poems are pointing at Raihai, "devotion-merging action", "prostrating onself to", Raihai is the essence of the ceremony, a ceremony beyond ceremonies. A ritual beyond rituals. We don't bow at something, rather bowing for bowing, the bowing disappears, concealed in the brightness of the Moon, the radiant nature of this whole reality.
Sitting, we do not sit to manifest Buddha, we sit and we vanish into Buddha manifesting beyond our grasp or control.
This practice leaves no traces behind, no footprints in the snow or blablabla on a forum.
The self merges with the self, forgotten in this where everything is contained, beyond emptiness (snow) and manifestation (winter grass), beyond sitting practice ( snow) and original face. Here the ideas about me and others, relevance or irrelevance, likes and dislikes don't apply.
The heron-snowy-field is one glowing flight where this and that are cast away, where form and formless are dropped, form and emptiness, body and mind, shinjindatsuraku, not bothering about being bothered or not bothered.
Forget the heron in the field of practice, and be-snowy-heron-field-you-me-others.
The way we cook our life here.
gassho
Taigu
