Genjokoan 12: Birds and Fishes.

 

Other qualities of the ocean are inexhaustibly many: [to fishes] it is like a palace and [to gods] it is like a string of pearls. But as far as our eyes can see, it just seems to be round. As it is for [the ocean], so it is for the myriad dharmas. In dust and out of the frame, [the myriad dharmas] encompass numerous situations, but we see and understand only as far as our eyes of learning in practice are able to reach.

Master Dogen continues to discuss the view of a vast, round ocean - a vision of wholeness or one-ness. Somewhat unusually in Zen philosophy, Master Dogen often emphasises the multiplicity of things and experience, as opposed a homogenous philosophical view of 'oneness' or 'emptiness', the Buddhist idea of shunyata.

He indicates that the expressions of reality present in each single thing are vast and that our view of this is limited by the extent of our realising them in practice-experience - so our views of the vastness of reality will differ as views of the ocean of either fishes or gods will differ.

If we wish to hear how the myriad dharmas naturally are, we should remember that besides their appearance of squareness or roundness, the qualities of the oceans and qualities of the mountains are numerous and endless; and that there are worlds in the four directions. Not only the periphery is like this: remember, the immediate present, and a single drop [of water] are also like this. 

This limitlessness of real things is not some remote state that comes in from remote, 'spiritual' practice - it's the real situation of things as they are in our life here and now.

 

When fish move through water, however they move, there is no end to the water. When birds fly through the sky, however they fly, there is no end to the sky. At the same time, fish and birds have never, since antiquity, left the water or the sky. Simply, when activity is great, usage is great, and when necessity is small, usage is small. Acting in this state, none fails to realize its limitations at every moment, and none fails to somersault freely at every place; but if a bird leaves the sky it will die at once, and if a fish leaves the water it will die at once. So we can understand that water is life and can understand that sky is life. Birds are life, and fish are life.

Everybody is different, even in the Dharma, we all have different abilities and ranges and propensities -- but all that is an expression of reality. Our lives, as they are unfolding now in their numberless, individual ways, are reality expressed and manifesting, however seemingly perfect or imperfect. In zazen we can accept our selves directly as reality unfolding and manifesting as it is.

Only by fully engaging with and realising the multifarious, messy details of our own limited life can we 'somersault freely' right in the midst of it all.