From my book, THE ZEN MASTER'S DANCE: A Guide to Understanding Dōgen and Who You Are in the Universe ...
https://wisdomexperience.org/product...masters-dance/
A modern jazz musician like saxophonist John Coltrane, by taking the basic melodies and themes of the standard score, by bending and turning them inside out, changing the beat and going to unchartered places, squeezes amazing sounds and fresh discoveries out of the wellworn original. ... Dōgen does the same in imaginatively re-expressing ancient teachings. Sometimes with Dōgen and Coltrane it is the sound, man, and the hinted implications, more than the straight meaning. People often get tangled in Dōgen’s style because they constantly look for Dōgen’s intellectual and philosophical meaning in every phrase. They shut the book in frustration or think that Dōgen was pulling the wool over people’s eyes. However, although I believe that Dōgen was often trying to impress his listeners with a “hot” set of startling phrases, I don’t think that he was ever just putting on a show. He said what he meant, and meant what he felt. Dōgen was being true to the Buddha’s sound. With Dōgen, we have to learn to feel the music more than to intellectually understand the score.
It’s not just Coltrane or jazz: Picasso and the other modern visual artists took the concrete image of a table, a human face, or a guitar and, by pulling apart the pieces and reassembling them in unexpected ways, led us to discover new insights into ordinary table-ness, face-icity, and guitar-ism.
... Some 700 or so years before these modern folks, Dōgen had the equivalent approach, taking “standard” Mahayana Buddhist teachings, fanciful but traditional Buddhist images, and “samples” of quotes from well-known stories related to his intended topics, tearing them apart, and tossing all back together again, remixing them, in order to discover and uncover new feelings, sounds, implications, visions, and Wisdom, all in what was often pretty wild imagery to start with!
To me, Master Dōgen was “blowing his Shōbōgenzō-sax”—riffing, rockin’, rollin’, ranting, and roof-raising by expressing-folding-bending-fractalizing-unfolding-straightening-teasing-releasing the “standard tunes” of the sutras and old koans. The untrained ear can’t always make heads nor tails of the complex rhythms, flying notes, wild tempos—maybe sometimes even Dōgen himself could not grab hold of the animal he was creating—but I know that he felt what he meant, and that he knew that the creature he was fashioning had life.
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SHOBOGENZO NYORAI-ZENSHIN (The Buddha Whole Body):
ONCE, ON VULTURE PEAK in Rajagraha, Shakyamuni Buddha said to Bhaishajyaraja Bodhisattva Mahasattva [Bodhisattva Medicine King]:
Bhaishajyaraja, wherever a sutra is expounded, read, chanted, copied,
or kept, a seven-treasure stupa, tall, wide, and solemn, is erected, but
do not enshrine the Buddha’s relics in it. The reason is that a stupa
embodies the Tathagata’s entire body. Make offerings of all sorts of
flowers, incense, jewels, canopies, banners, music, and chanting verses
to respect, revere, and admire the stupa. When people see this stupa,
bow, and make offerings to it, they know that they are closer to
unsurpassable, complete enlightenment.
In this way, a sutra is expounded, read, chanted, and copied. A sutra is reality. To build a seven-treasure stupa is to build reality. The stupa’s height and breadth are the scale of reality. A stupa embodies the Tathagata’s entire body means a stupa is the Tathagata’s entire body.
Thus, expounding, reading, chanting, copying, and so on, are the Tathagata’s entire body. Make offerings of all sorts of flowers, incense, jewels, canopies, banners, music, and chanting verses to respect, revere, and admire the stupa. Or, offer heavenly flowers, heavenly incense, and heavenly canopies, and so on. These are all marks of reality. Or, offer excellent flowers, excellent incense, renowned robes, and renowned garments of the human realm. These are all marks of reality.
A stupa is erected, but do not enshrine the Buddha’s relics in it: from this we know that a sutra is the relics of the Tathagata, the entire body of the Tathagata.
There is no greater merit than seeing and hearing golden words uttered by the Buddha. Hurry up and accumulate effort and virtue. When you see people bow and make offerings to the stupa, know that they are closer to unsurpassable, complete enlightenment. When you see the tower, sincerely bow and make offerings to it. Thus, all come closer to unsurpassable, complete enlightenment. Closer to is not come close to or go close to. Unsurpassable, complete enlightenment is all closer to.
Right now, when you see those who receive, chant, elucidate, and copy a sutra, you are seeing this stupa. Rejoice that all are close to unsurpassable, complete enlightenment.
This being so, a sutra is the Tathagata’s entire body. To bow to a sutra is to bow to the Tathagata’s entire body. To encounter a sutra is to encounter the Tathagata’s entire body.
A sutra is the relics of the Tathagata. So, the relics of the Tathagata are a sutra. Even if you know that a sutra is the relics of the Tathagata, if you don’t know that the relics of the Tathagata are a sutra, it is not the buddha way.
The reality of all things right now is a sutra. Human realms, deva realms, ocean, empty space, this land, and other lands are the reality of all things, a sutra, relics. Hold, chant, elucidate, and copy the relics and unfold enlightenment. This is to follow a sutra.
There are relics of ancient buddhas, present buddhas, pratyeka-buddhas, wheel-turning kings, and lions [kings of dharma], and there are relics of wooden buddhas and painted buddhas. There are also relics of humans.
Nowadays, among buddha ancestors in China, there are those who manifest relics while they are alive, and there are many who manifest relics after being cremated. Such relics are all sutras.
Shakyamuni Buddha said to the assembly, “I practiced the bodhisattva path in my past life. The long life I have achieved by this has not been exhausted. My life span will be doubled in my future life.”
The relics of eighty-four to [approximately twenty-five bushels] are no other than the Tathagata’s timeless life. How much is the life span of one who practiced the bodhisattva path in the past life beyond the boundary of the billion worlds? This is the Tathagata’s entire body, a sutra.
Prajna Kuta Bodhisattva said [in the Lotus Sutra], “I see that Shakyamuni Buddha was engaged in difficult and painful practice through innumerable eons, piling up effort, accumulating virtue, and ceaselessly pursuing the bodhisattva path. When I observe the billion worlds, there is not even a poppy seed that is not a place where this bodhisattva gave up his life for the sake of other beings. Thus, he achieved the path of enlightenment.”
From this I know that the billion worlds are a piece of his compassionate heart, a bit of his boundless realm, the Tathagata’s entire body. It is beyond whether he did or did not give up his life.
Relics are neither before nor after the Buddha, nor do they stand shoulder to shoulder with the Buddha. Being engaged in difficult and rigorous practice through innumerable eons is the Buddha’s womb and abdomen activities, the Buddha’s skin, flesh, bones, and marrow. This is spoken of as ceaselessly. He makes further effort after attaining buddhahood. He goes further and further, giving guidance to the billion worlds. This is the activity of the Tathagata’s entire body.
Presented to the assembly of the Yoshimine Temple, Yoshida County,
Echizen Province, on the fifteenth day, the second month, the second
year of the Kangen Era [1244].
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Please DIG this like a beatnik, mannnn ... 
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Sat Today
Originally Posted by Daiman
across space and time! 
