Shobogenzo Shoaku-Makusa 8: Balancing History.

Master Dogen continues his discussion of 'doing good' emphasising that 'good', in the Buddhist sense, is something much more direct and fundamental than ideas or theories of doing good...

Doing right is good doing, but it is not something that can be fathomed intellectually. Good doing in the present is a vigorous eye, but it is beyond intellectual consideration.

Master Dogen uses the term 'a vigorous eye' to represent the view we gain in practice, in 'dropping off body and mind', or our life experienced without it being chopped up by our thinking 'good' and 'bad', 'this' and 'that', 'me' and 'other' etc. All our actions are fundamentally like this, they aren't abstract thoughts or feelings.

[Vigorous eyes] are not realized for the purpose of considering the Dharma intellectually. Consideration by vigorous eyes is never the same as consideration by other things. 

Learning in zazen is therefore different from learning things intellectually. It's a very direct practice and experience, not filtered or interpreted by our usual thinking and discerning activity.

The many kinds of right are beyond existence and nonexistence, matter and the immaterial, and so on; they are just nothing other than good doing. Wherever they are realized and whenever they are realized, they are, without exception, good doing. This good doing inevitably includes the realization of the many kinds of right. The realization of good doing is the Universe itself, but it is beyond arising and vanishing, and it is beyond causes and conditions. Entering, staying, leaving, and other [concrete examples of] good doing are also like this.

Our real actions and the activity of the universe, our whole life, happen instantaneously and are not confined by any notion of time or self, materiality or spirit... it happens regardless of what we think of it or call it. This is the basis of the 'good' Master Dogen is indicating.

At the place where we are already performing, as good doing, a single right among the many kinds of right, the entire Dharma, the Whole Body, the Real Land, and so on, are all enacted as good doing. The cause-and-effect of this right, similarly, is the Universe as the realization of good doing.

As mentioned previously, we can align ourselves through practicing zazen with this unconditioned 'good', which is the ungraspable nature of our existence.

It is not that causes are before and effects are after. Rather, causes perfectly satisfy themselves and effects perfectly satisfy themselves; when causes are in balance the Dharma is in balance and when effects are in balance the Dharma is in balance. Awaited by causes, effects are felt, but it is not a matter of before and after; for the truth is present that the [moment] before and the [moment] after are balanced.

It may seem strange, but when we drop all notion of remembering a past or imagining a future, as opposed 'now', then the linear sense of time, that is our conventional way of understanding time, ceases to happen. There is just a present, that we aren't separated from by thinking time to be something outside of us. 

From this instantaneous point of view, there is no 'before' and 'after', just things as they are in a point of balance, that is us.