Dogen Zen Belfast

'Shoji' means 'life and death' but, in the Buddhist sense, it also suggests samsara, the realm of constant birth and death and rebirth that foundational Buddhism saw as being the cyclical existence of suffering from which it sought to provide escape. Many Zen teachers have expressed the centrality in Zen practice of 'the great matter of life and death', and in this short, pithy chapter of Shobogenzo Master Dogen addresses the theme quite directly. Generally speaking, Zen Buddhism doesn't claim to know exactly what happens to us at death nor after death. Rather, in keeping with Buddhist doctrines with regards to 'no-self' (anatman) it radically reframes the question of our death by indicating directly that there is no self born in the first place that can die... In Zen this is not a doctrinal truth or belief but a direct mind-body seeing into the nature of our existence: In zazen, when we 'drop body and mind' allowing thoughts and feeling to c...

  Master Dogen has been exploring the image of prajna, direct intuitive knowledge of our reality, as space: This refers to the practice of zazen as we can experience it ourselves when we sit down and allow all thoughts of 'inside' as opposed 'outside', 'self' as opposed 'other' to drop away. Our thinking clarifies and clears and we are in an open, unhindered state not chopped up and dominated by our usual thinking activities. The chapter continues with this short verse about it from Master Dogen's own teacher, Master Tendo Nyojo, where he likens himself in practicing zazen to a wind chime:   My late Master, the eternal Buddha, says:    Whole body like a mouth, hanging in space; Not asking if the wind is east, west, south, or north, For all others equally, it chatters prajna:  Chin Ten Ton Ryan Chin Ten Ton.      This is the chattering of prajna [transmitted] by Buddhist patriarchs from rightful successor to rightful successor. It is prajna as the ...