Dogen's Genjo Koan by Eihei Dogen

Author:Eihei Dogen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2011-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

“When the truth does not fill our body and mind, we think that we have enough.” Because you do not know the truth, you may say there is no need to practice. When you obtain truth, everything obtains truth. Everything is Buddha’s teaching. There will be no need even to listen to it, because we already know it. That is a common mistake when you do not know what truth is.

“When the truth fills our body and mind, we know that something is missing.” When truth actually fills your body, you think that something is missing. Do you understand what he means? “Something is missing” means that if you understand the actual truth, it reveals itself in the eternal present. Not only this moment, but also eternally it will continuously reveal itself through our activity. What we do just now is not enough. We have to do another activity in the next moment.

That is the true meaning of “to drop off our body and mind,” or “nothing to grasp,” or Bodhidharma’s “I don’t know.” “I don’t know” means there are many things to know. Because I don’t know, I have to know many things. That is the true meaning of truth. Truth is not some particular thing. If I say “truth,” you think it is some special mathematical theory or scientific theory. But we don’t mean such concrete, static logic by “truth.” Truth is unconditionality or eternal reality. Reality does not take any particular form. That is why we call it reality. There is no other word for that. So sometimes we say unconditionality. Because it is unconditionality it takes various conditions. If so, there should be innumerable variety in its form and color.

“When truth fills our body and mind, we know that something is missing.” When we become one with truth, we take up various activities according to the circumstances. We feel something is missing. So we will start continuous study, continuous practice, because we feel we should study more. When you think truth is some particular theory or teaching, you may think it is enough. So you don’t want to study more. But when you realize what is truth, you feel you should do it, then you will start continuous true practice.

You may think the truth is some particular thing––some concrete theory. That is exactly the same as saying the ocean is round or square. It is not square or round. There are infinite features. “It is like a palace. It is like a jewel.” For a dragon it may be like a palace. For a fish it may be like a jewel.

“It seems circular as far as our eyes can see at the time.” Dogen had a pretty hard voyage when he went across the ocean to China. He is referring to the voyage here. “As far as our eyes reach, the ocean is circular.” That is only at that time. When storms come with black, dark clouds, there is no circular ocean. We don’t know what kind of ocean we will have tomorrow.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.