Gettin' back to the Genjo ...
We will spend a couple of weeks just on the last about four pages of Chapter 3 (the section called "Genjokoan) to let all the insights of Chapter 3 settle a bit, and to let folks catch up.
In these last few pages, Okumura Roshi brings the insights on "Emptiness" which we have been discussing back to the first three sentences of the Genjo, which present three simultaneously true ways to experience reality. I have to say that I completely agree with Okumura Roshi on his conclusions and interpretations of Dogen, but I sometimes might explain it a bit differently. (Maybe it is like two bakers who bake the exact same cake with the same ingredients, but I would stir the batter a little differently). Okumura Roshi's way of expression sometimes seems a bit complicated to me. In my book on "How to Read Dogen" that will be published next year by Wisdom Co., I explained these lines as follows, my way of cake stirring. Maybe my words just complicate things more.
Does this chapter start to come together for you? Are you getting a handle on how these three sentence/perspectives come together?
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Dogen begins by offering a first perspective on the world, in which there are apparently weak and inadequate humans (us) who are beings coming and going in life between our birth and death, and in contrast to that, some state of idealized perfection above us and distant. A gap appears between our imperfect lives and the idealized and distant state of perfection that we picture in mind, the state of a “Buddha,” which appears so far from the state of imperfection and sorrow where we seem to live.
In Buddhism, we often struggle and strive to practice hard, during the time between our birth and death (and perhaps, say many traditional Buddhists, in lives to come as well) to climb some ladder in our minds to get from our present fallen state to the heights of perfection and freedom of a Buddha. Thus, Dogen begins:
When the world is seen as separate things in Buddhist teachings, there is human delusion and there is distant enlightenment to achieve, there is Buddhist practice to move us from one to the other, there is birth and there is death, and there are Buddhas and sentient beings apart.
But one can encounter the world another way too, without making judgments of near or far, flawed or flawless, perfect or imperfect, high or low, and without applying mental categories and thoughts of separation and individual things. Buddhas and sentient beings are then experienced as not apart, not separate. Enlightenment is never hidden to clear eyes, even in this superficially confused world, once we learn to see. One even can drop away ideas of coming and going, birth and death, and instead experience an ongoing continuity and wholeness somehow beyond time, beyond birth and death. What happens then? [This is the "puree" of Emptiness, in which all drops away into Wholeness:] Thus:
When the myriad things are realized as each without an individual self, there is no delusion and no enlightenment in separation, no Buddhas and no sentient beings, no birth and no death.
Yet we don't stop there. We can experience this life and world in both of the foregoing ways at once. The result is a bit tricky to get one’s head around, but it is very wise. It is like saying that, although Buddhas and ordinary sentient beings in their ignorance are not apart right here and now, if ordinary beings continue to think and act ignorantly they will not realize such truth. We have to think (and non-think, putting aside divisive and judgmental thoughts) and act more like Buddhas, freeing ourselves from excess desires, anger, and divided thinking in order to make the presence of Buddha appear to our eyes and in our hearts. Even when we don’t think and act like it, the fact is that we are still Buddha nonetheless, although our ignorance and poor behavior will keep that truth hidden from us and cause suffering. This is Dogen’s path of “practice-enlightenment,” in which we practice acting as a Buddha now in order to realize that Buddha has been here all along.
We also learn to see through all the divisions and seeming imperfections of the world, even as they appear to continue to exist in the world as divided, imperfect things. For example, we see many flaws in life and society, yet we also learn to drop all judgments about what is flawed or flawless. Instead, all things become just what they are without our mental criticism, each a kind of shining jewel in its own way, even those things that we usually resist or find abhorrent. However, the uglier and more abhorrent something in life is, such as harm done to children or serious character flaws in ourself, the more deeply buried and hard to see is that shining light. Thus, although this world and all things may shine within (and so, from that perspective, they do so without need of polishing), we still have to keep polishing in our practice to bring out that shine. So, we keep working to fix the problems in our life and this world. In one sense there are no problems to fix, yet in another sense there are many, some very ugly, and we need to keep on our toes. This is a world of flaws, yet not. This is a world of strife, yet not.
We can even come, through our Zazen, to experience that face of the world that somehow continues on beyond all the apparent coming and going of things, and then this is a world of birth and death, yet not. There is an overriding Peace and Wholeness that embraces this world in both times of war and times of peace. There is something that keeps on churning away through all the apparent birth and death on the surface, like a sea that continues flowing on and on even as waves appear to rise and fall temporarily on its face. Beyond some simple ideas of one versus many, there is an unbroken Wholeness that sweeps in all the superficially individual things of the universe (including you and me), and that sweeps away birth and death even in a world of birth and death. There is a Beauty that shines as/in/and beyond all this planet's beauty and ugliness. All such ways of seeing—me and you, birth and death, beauty and ugliness as well as something transcendent—become true at once, as one. Thus:
In the Buddha Way, one must leap clear and right through both the view of abundance and the view of lack; and so there are again birth and death, delusion and enlightenment, sentient beings and Buddhas.
All the separate things, delusion and enlightenment, ordinary sentient beings and Buddhas, are apart yet not apart, the same yet not at all as they were before.
Gassho, J
STLah
