Shobogenzo Bussho: Even Our Doubt Can Be 'It'.

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Master Dogen continues his discussion of this saying attributed to the Buddha:


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.


He says:


People in many ages from the ancient past to the present have thought that the words “when the time has come…” are about waiting for a time in the future when the Buddha-nature might be manifest before us. [They think that,] continuing their practice with this attitude, they will naturally meet the time when the Buddha-nature is manifest before them. They say that, because the time has not come, even if they visit a teacher and ask for Dharma, and even if they pursue the truth and make effort, [the Buddha-nature] is not manifest before them. Taking such a view they vainly return to the world of crimson dust and vacantly stare at the Milky Way. People like this may be a variety of naturalistic non-Buddhists. The words “Wanting to know the meaning of the Buddha-nature” mean, for example, “Really knowing the meaning of the Buddha-nature just here and now.” “Should just reflect real time, causes and circumstances” means “Know causes and circumstances as real time, just here and now!” If you want to know this Buddha-nature, remember, causes and circumstances as real time are just it. “When the time has come” means “The time has come already! What could there be to doubt?”

 

Master Dogen emphasises that the essence of 'knowing' buddha-nature is our own practice right here-and-now, that invariably happens within, and using, whatever the circstances of our lives are at this time. There is no other time in which to do the practice of 'dropping off body and mind', the future is just a thought in our heads. 'Buddha-nature' that we will realise in some perfect moment of enlightenment in future is just a fantasy we are imagining... waiting, praying, hoping for a better time to be realised is not it. Sitting or acting dropping off our notions so as to allow real things to become real things here-and-now is 'it'.


Even if there is a time of doubt, I leave it as it is—it is the Buddha-nature returning to me.


Even at a time when we despair or seriously doubt our ability to understand our lives we can just leave that despair or doubt alone and see it as it really is, without loading any thinking or personal narrative onto it, as a raw sensation of the gut or of the rest of the body. Then it isn't 'bad' at all, because we aren't thinking it 'bad'. At such real-time it's another thing coming and going and affirming reality. This is a great aspect of Master Dogen's teaching - he offers this unconquerable view in the face of even our confusion and suffering.


Remember, “the time having come” describes not spending any time in vain through the twelve hours: “when it has come” is like saying “it has come already.” And because the time has come, “Buddha-nature” does not arrive. Thus, now that the time has come, this is just the manifestation before us of the Buddha-nature, whose truth, in other words, is self-evident. In summary, there has never been any time which was not time having come, nor any Buddha-nature which was not the Buddha-nature manifesting itself before us.


Buddha-nature as indicated here is not an abstract concept or value ("Buddha-nature") nor some mystical spiritual essence, but a real, visceral dynamic state of conduct. When in 'dropping off body and mind' we allign our body-mind with the present moment we manifest buddha-nature as all the things we experience and that, mutually, experience us. 


This has been a layperson's reading of just a part of this large, subtle and essential chapter of Dogen Zenji's Shobogenzo. Master Dogen wanted us to understand Buddhist ideas and philosophy from the essential perspective of direct practice, on the basis of our own practice of it in sitting-Zen, and I offer these readings in that spirit.

On the off-chance that this effort has been a bit of use to anyone else I should say:

We dedicate the merit of this practice to all beings. May they be happy. May they be well. May they be free.

May we realise and actualise buddha-nature together with all living beings and all things.

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