Shobogenzo Bussho: Meeting the Buddha in Buddha-Time.

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Master Dogen continues Shobogenzo Bussho with his discussion of this quote ascribed 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 has previously clarified the nature of 'knowing' as more direct and inclusive than intellectual 'knowing', as knowing with our whole body-mind in 'dropping off body and mind' in zazen. Now he turns his attention to 'reflection': 


...Because it is just reflection here and now it is beyond subjective reflection and it is beyond objective reflection. It is the oneness of real time and causes and cumstances itself; it is transcendence of causes and circumstances...


We drop off thoughts and senses of 'self' and 'other' in zazen and can enjoy a calm, open state of experience that is no longer defined by our habitual thinking and naming of things, our thinking that divides up our experience into this and that. At the same time, we drop thought of past and future and so experience time and things directly as an all-inclusive present time. We use whatever is going on in our thoughts and our surroundings to experience letting go of them, so we are both reliant upon them and free of them at the same time.

 

...it is the Buddha-nature itself—the Buddha-nature rid of its own substance...


Such reflecting is to manifest buddha-nature, that is completely free of and unhindered by any thought or sense of 'buddha-nature' - we're just really doing it here and now, so it's not an abstract thought or value.

 

...it is Buddha as Buddha himself; and it is the natural function as the natural function itself. 


Sitting or acting in this way, having dropped off self and thoughts of past, future and present, is to be in the exact same stateless-state as the Buddha at the exact same timeless-time as the Buddha practices it. We meet the Buddha at this present presence-time, the only time that ever happens and that has ever happened (now!), and as this person, the only person that we can ever really meet.

This all might sound a bit 'cosmic', and we might expect that it would come to us with an almighty enlightened 'bang', but actually when we look into it we can see that it is a fact of our normal, natural everyday reality and so is not something strange or unusual coming from 'beyond'.

More on this section of Shobogenzo Bussho later.

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