Genjokoan 6: Studying the Limitless Self.


To learn the Buddha’s truth is to learn ourselves. To learn ourselves is to forget ourselves. To forget ourselves is to be experienced by the myriad dharmas. To be experienced by the myriad dharmas is to let our own body-and-mind, and the body-and-mind of the external world, fall away. There is a state in which the traces of realization are forgotten; and it manifests the traces of forgotten realization for a long, long time.


Master Dogen continues Genjokoan with some more very direct statements regarding Buddhist practice-realisation.

Here he turns the reader's attention to the area of self, and its centrality to Zen practice.

On hearing Buddhist ideas like buddha-nature or the Zen koan 'show me your original face before your mother and father were born' we might think that our true self, our true nature, is something hidden and difficult to access in ourselves. Actually, the realised self in Buddhism is very directly realised and manifest, and it's not hidden at all.

The ancient Buddhist theory of 'dependent origination' (in Pali 'pattica-samuppada') explains this well. Dependent origination is quite a complex 12-fold theory of how things come into being, but it has traditionally been summed up in this verse:


When this is, that is.

This arising, that arises.

When this is not, that is not.

This ceasing, that ceases.


Practically speaking, when we drop off the thin veil of thought in zazen we drop off our tendency to separate our existence into 'this' and 'that', 'inside' and 'outside', 'self' and 'other'.

The nature of self that arises with, and as, all things is easily demonstrated. If we look at any object in our sight, like a cup or a wall or a radiator, and don't think about it - just seeing it directly as it is - we would have to admit that it's a part of our experience right now. That experience is part of our life, so that object must be part of us, and all objects we encounter must be part of us/ our experience/ our life. 'All dharmas' or 'the 10,000 things' or 'the myriad dharmas' are translations of traditional terms that Master Dogen employs to indicate the great diversity of things which make up the realised self.

Thus the Buddhist idea of self is that it arises with everything we experience from moment to moment. It's no great mystery, although to experience it directly takes the practice of 'dropping off body and mind', and this practice can be deepened and clarified in our experience for a long time on an ongoing basis.

More on this important section next time.


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