Hi Relative Beings,
We continue our reflections on the Relative and Absolute on pages 231-235 (pausing at "Roots and Leaves").
This week, more ways to encounter this difference-yet-identity of the relative as absolute absolute that is relative. I sometimes describe it as "two sides of the no sided coin."
Just a few things to point out this week that may be helpful:
We can easily understand that the living human hand contains each cell and atom of the hand. But, in Mahayana Buddhism, each atom contains and embodies the whole living hand too! (We usually don't see things so, but it is true). Now, expand that out to the universe, and one might understand that it is the same for all things in the universe down to the smallest atom, you too.
The description of "dark" and "light" is a bit tricky for people to get sometimes, because it is the opposite of what we might expect in English. "Light" sounds like enlightenment, and "dark" sounds bad. However, that is not so in Chinese culture and in this poem. Here, neither is bad, and both just the same. Here, "dark" is what makes all things blend into one, like how all the furniture and people vanish and merge into one when you turn off the lights in a windowless room. However, turn the light back on again, and all the separate things reappear.
For example, here is a picture of a room containing Donald Trump and 15 Pink Circus Elephants with the lights turned off:
This week's passages also say that everything in the universe has its own qualities, and they all contribute to the Great Soup Stew which is this universe, both the sweet and sour (and you too).
The part about fire, water, wind, earth is not so mysterious as Okumura Roshi makes it. In classic times, East and West, these were thought of as the building blocks of material reality, much as we might think of the Periodic Table today. You can substitute "Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen" or "Electrons, Neutron, Protons" and make about the same point, each has it own qualities and properties, and all come together to make the whole.
A corollary of all this, much appreciated by Dogen, is that there are "no separate things" from one angle but, from another angle, there are separate things (you are one, and so is every atom of your hand), and each and all shine as their own shining jewel. You are the shining precious jewel that is you and you alone (even if you could lose a few pounds and need a haircut!)
From the Genjo Koan, where the Moon represents the Wholeness of the Absolute manifesting in all the separate things, the water ... both moon and separate drops together forming "enlightenment":
Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water. Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.
Another point made is that some folks only see separation or a bunch of connected separate things. They only see the individual candles, icing, bits of flour, grains of sugar, drops of water, but don't see the Whole Cake. They don't get the radical wholeness in which all separation vanishes. However, then there is the opposite problem when some folks see this dropping away of separation into Wholeness and think that they are now "enlightened," a fully baked cake (and often run around the internet like "God's gift to Buddhakind" proclaiming themself so!) They are blinded by the moon, do not see the water. That is not enlightenment.
Rather, "enlightenment" is more about realizing that the dewdrops are the moon and the moon is the single dewdrops ... and then to figure out how to live gracefully now knowing so.
Gassho, J
SatTodayLAH
