Genjokoan 5: Whole Mind-Body Perceptions.

 


When we use the whole body-and-mind to look at forms, and when we use the whole body-and-mind to listen to sounds, even though we are sensing them directly, it is not like a mirror’s reflection of an image, and not like water and the moon. While we are experiencing one side, we are blind to the other side.


Master Dogen continues on a series of very direct statements about the nature of Buddhist practice-realisation.

In sitting zazen, when our habitual 'this'-as-opposed-'that' thinking activity quietens down and our mind and body settle into balanced unison, we experience a state where what we generally experience and designate as inside of ourselves (thoughts and feelings) and what we generally consider outside of ourselves (perceptions of objects, sights and sounds) flow together free of our thoughts and designations/names for things. Our perceptions are no longer one-sided, like looking at an image or a reflection, because we're not mentally conceiving an observer self who is witnessing and perceiving 'exterior' stuff thereby separating the self from that stuff. 

This sounds a bit esoteric and grand maybe, but it actually happens quite soon in zazen when thought calms down a bit. And it's an innate quality of us when we drop the thin veil of thought, not something very mystical nor remote. Practitioners come to identify with this state more with practice, and some people may have a sudden realisation of it, which is what might be termed a 'kensho' in Rinzai Zen Buddhism.

All this has implications for what constitutes the self in Buddhism. When we stop our usual ideation in 'dropping off body and mind' then the self opens and expands, and we experience 'it' differently and very directly. Master Dogen addresses this in the next very pithy and direct section of Genjokoan.

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