We will pick up where we dropped off ... from "Dropping Off Body and Mind."

I think that what Okamura Roshi and Dogen's Teacher are talking about is not so hard to understand when we remember the completeness of Just Sitting with nothing to attain, all desires wrapped up and satisfied just to be sitting without wanting to be doing something else. Usually our self wants and desires, judges and demands. But in Zazen, all judgments and demands are put aside. All we want and desire is to be sitting this sitting. The body and mind are satisfied. Hopefully, the body is in a comfortable and balanced posture where we can "pay it no nevermind" (or, if we have some health issue, we can meet it with great equanimity). Denied its usually role of judging and complaining, the "self" is put out of a job for awhile.

The result is that "Body and Mind drop from mind."

There is also a wholeness and clarity in sitting such way, where the desires, frustrations, anger, dullness, distraction and doubt can be dropped away in the wholeness and ease of Just Sitting.

Oh, there will be times that we are tired or distracted, frustrated or upset too ... and that is okay as well. Funny as it may seem, Zazen is so "complete" that we don't even demand to have some particular psychological experience from it each time. As I sometimes say, some days are clear ... some are cloudy, or even rainy ... but the sun is always shining, and the sky is clear, seen or unseen.

As to the last lines he discussed about "a trace of realization that cannot be grasped," let me present a few alternative translations by other translators ...

No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly (Tanahashi)

[Then] we can forget the [mental] trace of realization, and show the [real] signs of forgotten realization continually, moment by moment. (Nishijima-Cross)

All trace of enlightenment disappears, and this traceless enlightenment continues on without end.(Waddell & Abe)


I take it to mean something like that this illumination and enlightenment becomes so natural and part of one, that one does not even need to notice.

Anyway, please post any impressions of this section.

Gassho, J

STLah