Dogen Zen Belfast

Master Dogen continues Shobogenzo Bussho with his discussion of this quote ascribed to the Buddha: Wanting to know the meaning of the Buddha-nature, We should just reflect real time, causes and circumstances. When the time has come, the Buddha-nature is manifest before us.   He has previously clarified the nature of 'knowing' as more direct and inclusive than intellectual 'knowing', as knowing with our whole body-mind in 'dropping off body and mind' in zazen. Now he turns his attention to 'reflection':  ...Because it is just reflection here and now it is beyond subjective reflection and it is beyond objective reflection. It is the oneness of real time and causes and cumstances itself; it is transcendence of causes and circumstances... We drop off thoughts and senses of 'self' and 'other' in zazen and can enjoy a calm, open state of experience that is no longer defined by our habitual thinking and naming of things, our thinking that divide...

As mentioned in the last post, Master Dogen looks at the Buddhist idea of buddha-nature in this chapter - the idea that we all have potential to realise what the Buddha realised, to awaken to the nature of our reality. To do this Master Dogen discusses and engages with various quotes from Buddhist tradition, as well as a number of Zen koans about buddha-nature, but a section that I think is particularly direct and insightful is where he employs this quote that is attributed to the Buddha in the Mahaparinirvana-sutra: Wanting to know the meaning of the Buddha-nature, We should just reflect real time, causes and circumstances. When the time has come, The Buddha-nature is manifest before us. Master Dogen's commentary on this quote begins:  This “wanting to know the meaning of the Buddha-nature” does not only mean knowing. It means wanting to practice it, wanting to experience it, wanting to preach it, and wanting to forget it. Such preaching, practicing, experiencing, forgetting, misu...

I had occasion recently to transcribe a short talk about this chapter of Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, so I thought I'd have a look at it here on the blog. In Zen practice, in sitting 'dropping off body and mind' in zazen, we directly express and experience the ungraspable (or 'ineffable', as Nishijima Roshi liked to say) nature of our actions and our selves. Our action and our experience happens instantaneously, but it can't be confined or reduced to any thought or theory or name. Buddhist philosophy however needs some way to express the possibility of realising this and so it speaks in terms of 'buddha-nature'. As Nishijima Roshi indicates in his introduction to this chapter in the Nishijima/ Cross translation, Master Dogen focuses on two main conceptions of the idea of buddha-nature that he both confirms and refutes so as to contextualise them from the direct point of view of Zen practice-realisation. The first concept is that buddha-nature is a sor...

I work around people with addiction, and have had my own brushes with it in my time too and, while generalising about it is only of so much value, I think this can be said about it: The reason we take a substance or engage in a risky activity that gives us a dopamine hit is that by doing so avoids or relieves pain - it avoids some sort of suffering, and we get some relief from that suffering. In this way it stems from the same urge to end the suffering of uncertainty and separation that drove the prophets and saints into the wilderness to seek communion with God; it stems from the same urge that drove young prince Siddharta from his life of luxury in search of awakening and an end to suffering, and to eventual buddhahood; it stems from the same human urge that the Sufi masters honoured in dropping their own sense of self to find union with divine love and an end to the uncertainty, the sense of separateness, loneliness, existential boredom, self loathing, heartbreak, guilt, and all of...

    Sitting dropping off thoughts and sensations, every single thing leaps free of new and old, enlightenment and delusion.   Wishing you a happy and peaceful New Year!

When we say something like 'oneness with the Universe' we might think of it as some transcendent state, or a head-trippy multicoloured experience with stars and rainbows, but actually it's already an everyday fact that we are a part of the Universe, every part of us, even the thoughts in our head to the contrary of this fact that chop our experience up into 'me' as opposed 'that' when we mistake them for broader reality. After a while in zazen/ dropping-off-body-and-mind, when thinking calms down and our mind clarifies, we can notice times when we're sitting in an open, restful state where there is no 'me' as opposed 'that', no 'inside' as opposed 'outside'. This is us experiencing ourselves as undivided from everything else. All that separates us from this state of realisation is a thin veil of thoughts and feelings that we might habitually mistake as the self. But the real self, the selfless-self or our 'buddha-natur...