Dogen said that the path of all buddhas and ancestors is prior to the myriad things. That being so, it cannot be understood or explained by conventional means.
When we hear ‘path’ or ‘way’, we might imagine a path made up of the sutras, the words, the heads, the hearts, the hands of the ancestors.
And because there is such a path, here or somewhere, we can walk it.
Creation myths often take unpicturable chaos, which is then ordered into a pictured world.
It’s as if we can’t see the swirling of time without the picture of a clock. Or the surge of the ocean without a picture of it, first. But isn’t this picture world a loop? Isn’t the picture not a door, but a wall?
This life is not a million pictures. Our practice is not stepping onto this pictured path.
But rather, stepping from the hundred foot pole. Not falling
the words, the heads, the hearts, the hands.