Tag: Expression

When we practice we release the self and we release the world from the grip of our certainty.

In the ‘Mountains and Waters Sutra‘, Master Dogen says the following:

In seeing water there are beings who see it as a jewelled necklace, some see water as miraculous flowers. Hungry ghosts see water as raging flames, or as pus and blood. Dragons and fish see it as a palace, or a tower, or as the seven treasures, or the great jewel. Others see it as woods and walls, or as the dharma nature of immaculate liberation, or as the true human body, or as the physical form and mental nature. Humans see these as water. In these different ways of seeing are the conditions under which water is killed or given life.

Although Dogen is a great master, the statement is incomplete.

Even if he had said that each window through which all creatures who have ever lived or who ever will live see the world, if all these uncountable windows were taken and each smashed into a million, billion pieces and a tiny precious fragment was taken from each to form a great window, through which a great light would  illuminate the practitioner completely, the statement would still be deficient.

How so? Because from the perspective of the water, or the mountain, or the tree, or whatever, all the views of these infinite number of beings are not made standing on the passive body of the water, the tree, the mountain, the person, but rather, all these views, all these beings, are the expression of the water the tree, the mountain, the person, and the expression of this moment.

Our practice does not start from a position of lack. We do not need to complete or perfect anything. We are not on a journey. We are not spiritual warriors.

Rather, we are like a child filled with wonder. We are like an old person, on the point of death, grateful to have lived, picturing the deep interweaving of all things, picturing – eyeless – the great miracle.

This great miracle is always present, like a mother. Sometimes she embraces me, and sometimes she lets me be. But whenever I drop the weight of my head, she lifts me up.

The dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham said dance is the fleeting moment of feeling totally alive.

But you feeling totally alive is the small miracle. Experiencing the great fabric of all things as totally alive is the great miracle.

Allowing all this experience to flood through you: like light, undiminished by love, or by hate, or by comparison or by analysis. The great miracle is like a vast clear river which leaves no residue. Great, because although manifested fleetingly, even so the world will not fall into nothingness.

Zazen is the Dharma Gate of ease and joy.

It is not effortful. We entrust our body and mind to zazen and let everything be.

Whether the mind is turbulent or peaceful we hold it like the earth under the ocean holds the weight of the water, maintaining it so it will not seep into nothingness. We hold it like we would hold a sleeping baby’s head, whatever the baby is dreaming.

If you listen carefully when the bell is rung you hear two noises.

The first, very brief, is a dull sound, the striker hitting the bell.

The second is the bell’s full expression.

If we thought the striking required to continue until it matched our idea of perfection, the expression of the bell would never be realised.

We need to understand perfection is a chimera.

Because all expression is a miracle.

“A teacher and his student were standing by the shore. In the distance was a boat. The teacher said to the student ‘forgetting about your mind for the moment, point to the boat’. The student pointed to the boat. The teacher then said ‘forgetting about the boat for the moment, point to your mind’. The student pointed to the boat again”

In dualism, we imagine the mind comes first, occupying an unspecified space, within which the world then appears. But truly, mind and world are the same illumination. But it is not the great illumination.

Dogen said that when we see water, fish see shimmering palaces. Demons see blood. Gods see strings of pearls. But the eyes seeing ‘water’ are without limit, and so the powers of expression of ‘water’ are without limit. This is the great illumination. Likewise, ‘mountains’. Likewise, ‘thinking’.

“A special transmission outside the scriptures
No reliance on words or letters”

“Words and letters” means spoken and written language. What does “no reliance” mean? It doesn’t mean that language is anathema to authentic practice.

There is no reliance on language because everything – including language – is ceaseless expression and ceaseless activity; so everything, language as much as birdsong, is proclaiming the Dharma.

The problem arises when we appropriate this expression and activity to the self. If we can keep dropping off the self, then the wholeness of everything, the aliveness of everything, which otherwise is just an ideal, is expressed. Not in some future life, some ideal life, but now.

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.

The 93 generations since the Buddha, are like a real person walking through time. All the individual positions are unbalanced, all the individual teachers are unbalanced, and in their imbalance, they are fully expressing themselves.

Because this is so, the whole is a dynamic balance. That being so, we should not be like our teacher, we should be like our selves; balancing our teacher with our fully expressed imbalance.

And so, forward. And so, backward.