If you are a big fish, you'll be a good catch, you won' escape nets of all sorts.

The thing is not to be stuck in the absolute, not to be drunk with the relative. This is the meaning of "beyond". "Beyond" does not point at a distant realisation, a shore to reach, "beyond" as here and now free from habits and expectations. Non attachment is another way to look at it. Not dwelling expresses the same truth.

This is also why Dogen's teachings are filled with mists, clouds, rivers, walking mountains, smoke, not just to convey an impression of nature and his love for practice in the deep valleys, but also to point at the real transient body of all things, free from the dual and non dual. Killing the devil and killing Buddha at once is our practice, beyond mundane and sacred.

"I have got it" is as irrelevant as " I have lost it".

This is the groundless ground on which face to face transmission can take place.


Gassho,


Taigu