Genjokoan 9: Life and Death Realised.



Master Dogen turns suddenly from clarifying the nature of Buddhist practice to discussing causality, and life and death:


Firewood becomes ash; it can never go back to being firewood. Nevertheless, we should not take the view that ash is its future and firewood is its past. Remember, firewood abides in the place of firewood in the Dharma. It has a past and it has a future. Although it has a past and a future, the past and the future are cut off. Ash exists in the place of ash in the Dharma. It has a past and it has a future. The firewood, after becoming ash, does not again become firewood.


A person who has practiced realisation is not the same person afterwards. Things are just what they are in the present moment - in Buddhist action/practice a person is not defined by their remembered past or an imagined future. Past and future are dropped off and we can act free of them. We do however have a real past and future (not one based on ideas, remembering, or imagining a future), but they are 'cut off' from the present moment of practice which is the only moment we can ever directly realise... they are not what we imagine of the future or remember of the past.


Similarly, human beings, after death, do not live again. At the same time, it is an established custom in the Buddha-Dharma not to say that life turns into death. This is why we speak of 'no appearance'. And it is the Buddha’s preaching established in [the turning of] the Dharma-wheel that death does not turn into life. This is why we speak of 'no disappearance'. Life is an instantaneous situation, and death is also an instantaneous situation. It is the same, for example, with winter and spring. We do not think that winter becomes spring, and we do not say that spring becomes summer.


Human beings don't come back to life after death. The Buddhist view is that there is no self to continue nor come back. Everything we identify as our personality or being, when we look at it in practice, is in a constant state of coming and going - so that 'self' was never born in the first place - life therefore does not become death nor death life on the basis of a self.

Life and death do really happen as real instances though, but being real happenings they too are 'cut off' from our thinking or imagining about them.

We can only learn about and experience life and death directly and experientially in the present moment.

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