Gassho all, I'm working my way through 'Instructions for the Cook' by Dogen. I have been usually reading every paragraph or section at least twice, and I've felt fairly decent about my comprehension so far... but when I got to this part, I felt very much that I'm missing something. It seems to be hiding an analogy or metaphor in there somewhere, especially the last sentence. Am I over-thinking it? How does attentiveness enable us to do better than our predecessors?
"With resolve and sincerity, one should aim to exceed the ancients in purity and surpass the former worthies in attentiveness. The way to put that aspiration into practice in one's own person is, for example, to take the same three coins that one's predecessors spent to make a soup of the crudest greens and use them to now to make a soup of the finest cream. This is difficult to do. Why is that? Because present and past are completely different, like the distance between heaven and earth. How could we ever be able to equal their stature? Nevertheless, when we work attentively, therein lies the principle that makes it possible to surpass our predecessors."
Gassho
Kodo Tobiishi sat today, lent a hand
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