Shobogenzo Bussho 'Buddha-Nature': On Reflection.

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, misunderstanding, not misunderstanding, and so on, are all the causes and circumstances of real time.

 

Master Dogen seems keen to explain the nature of this 'knowing' of buddha-nature. 'Knowing' might suggest just intellectual understanding, but he indicates that this knowing is much more direct and inclusive - in zazen we drop thinking when we realise we're doing it, both thoughts of understanding and thoughts of misunderstanding, of feeling all enlightened and feeling dumb as a stick, we forget the thinking self and experience things not as ideas or abstract values, but directly in the 'real time' of the present.

So, even to realise directly that we're sitting there dropping off the thought 'I just don't get this buddha-nature malarkey!' is the full measure of buddha-nature at that time. It's not an idea we 'get' intellectually.

To reflect the causes and circumstances of real time is to reflect using the causes and circumstances of real time; it is mutual reflection through a whisk, a staff, and so on.

In sitting dropping off thoughts and feelings in zazen in this way we drop off the sense of 'me' as opposed 'other stuff', or 'inside' as opposed 'outside', so real things in our environment, like whisks or staffs, become a direct expression of our practice and experience - we make them direct and real, and they make us direct and real. In this way what is experienced through zazen is totally inclusive and not divided up with our habitual mode of thinking and naming things as separate.

On the basis of “imperfect wisdom,” “faultless wisdom,” or the wisdom of “original awakening,” “fresh awakening,” “free awakening,” “right awakening,” and so on, [the causes and circumstances of real time] can never be reflected. 

 

The certain types of 'wisdoms' and 'awakenings' that Master Dogen lists suggest an idealistic or intellectual understanding, whereas what he is keen to indicate is our actual experience here and now, that is always here and now and not some imagined destination or future goal. We can only realise buddha-nature here and now in our everyday lives, at the only moment we are ever alive to act and experience things.

Just reflecting is not connected with the subject that reflects or the object of reflection and it should not be equated with right reflection, wrong reflection, and the like: it is just reflection here and now.

 

When we've dropped off thoughts and senses of 'self' as opposed 'other' or 'right' as opposed 'wrong' in zazen and are sitting in a calm open state, we can experience that we're not defined by, nor hindered by, that sort of feeling and ideation. Therefore we can realise and actualise this unhindered nature, buddha-nature, at any moment here and now by dropping off thoughts and feelings and experiencing directly, along with all other things, that we are not defined by nor confined to the thoughts and feelings that we may have habitually come to identify with as our self.

More on this section of Shobogenzo Bussho later.