Shobogenzo Shoji: The Reality of Our Life and Death.

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'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 come and go, we see clearly that we are not the 'self' implied by how we may generally accept our thoughts and feelings to be 'me'. We are not the memories of our life in the past, we are not the fearful imaginings of our death in the future. All thoughts and feelings can't touch or stick in the open here-and-now that is zazen... who is there then that will die?  What is death then? What is life?

The 'self' that we assume was born and will die can actually be seen directly to be coming and going all the time.

So, I'll be taking a look at this short but essential chapter of Master Dogen's Shobogenzo for the next few posts.

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