DO MOTO ENZU: All Being Soaked in the Way
Don’t take what I write personally, MT, especially seeing as we have never met. To the increasing annoyance of my missus back in Aylesbury, I am still at play by the forest in France and there is only one person of cheap views around here. On this blog I am only really talking to myself, while working on a totally non-definitive, not copyrighted, no rights reserved translation of Fukan-zazen-gi, which I start again from scratch every day. You are a very welcome eavesdropper, but I am only preaching to myself. Sometimes, afraid of being ridiculed for being too intellectual, and following the mirror principle, I call myself “MT” -- Mike Too-clever-by-half.
What tends to happen when MT has become confused is that we try to clear up the confusion, and in the process of trying to clear up the confusion, we increase the confusion -- thereby almost completely losing the vigorous road of getting the body out (HOTONDO SHUSSHIN NO KATSURO O KIKETSU SU).
At the root of the confusion, as I see it, having had plenty of opportunities to observe the process in myself, are two essential elements: (1) end-gaining, (2) reliance on wrong feeling -- i.e. faulty processing of incoming information relating primarily to where I am in the gravitational field, muscle tone, where body parts are in relation to each other, et cetera.
I have said that I don’t know what HI-SHIRYO, “non-thinking,” is. That is not a rhetorical device. I really don’t. What I have understood, and what Master Dogen is clearly telling us, is that HI-SHIRYO is not a function of the grim determination of habitual MT, the end-gainer who yearns to cut the root of confusion, once and for all, for self and others. HI-SHIRYO is a function of the ease and happiness of one who enjoys modestly and simply attending to the true means-whereby.
Hence: ZETSUGAKU MU-I NO HITO O SONKI SHI
“Revere a person who is through with study and free of the intention to achieve.”
Don’t be afraid, MT, of your end-gaining tendency: Master Dogen’s instruction is simply to wake up to it. Even now, as you face the computer screen, you can probably let go of something and allow yourself to breathe a little easier. You might even find the face of grim determination spontaneously breaking into a bit of a smile.
And don’t worry about not knowing what is Gautama’s true means-whereby, as if it were something that was available to the likes of Gatauma, Nagarjuna and Dogen but not already abundantly available to you and me.
DO MOTO ENZU
DO, the truth/way, bodhi, the Buddha’s enlightenment
MOTO originally, inherently
EN circular, all around, integrally
ZU pervades
“Enlightenment originally is all round.”
We are living in the true means-whereby.
Our life from beginning to end is a treasure lived in treasure. Adhering with grim determination to the principle of end-gaining Zen, Hardcore Zen, we try to buy it by dutifully doing our sitting practice in the right posture. After a number of years like this, what once felt unfamiliar and wrong comes to feel right. Sitting in lotus ceases to be some exotic practice and becomes our own thing. After 10, 30, 50, or 70 years of having a wonderful time like this, doing our thing, we may think to our ourselves, and insinuate to others, that we have finally got the treasure itself:
“Now that I have got the treasure myself, I deeply wish to let others know about it. So I would like to publish a definitive translation of Master Dogen’s writings, and I would like to establish a Buddhist version of Al Qaeda, in order to assert that the true means-whereby is just [action which is] different from thinking.”
Or just realism. Or just balancing the autonomic nervous system. Or just Alexander’s teaching of inhibition and direction. Or just the ordinary mind. Et cetera.
But it is always not that. If the true treasure were that kind of partial treasure, something definitive, subject to copyright, subject to dogmatic assertion, we might fear somebody unfairly stealing our treasure from us when we were not around to guard it.
Meanwhile the sun is out, the birds are singing, and the brook is babbling.
Meanwhile, HOZO ONOZUKARA HIRAKU
“The jewel-treasury is opening itself.”
What tends to happen when MT has become confused is that we try to clear up the confusion, and in the process of trying to clear up the confusion, we increase the confusion -- thereby almost completely losing the vigorous road of getting the body out (HOTONDO SHUSSHIN NO KATSURO O KIKETSU SU).
At the root of the confusion, as I see it, having had plenty of opportunities to observe the process in myself, are two essential elements: (1) end-gaining, (2) reliance on wrong feeling -- i.e. faulty processing of incoming information relating primarily to where I am in the gravitational field, muscle tone, where body parts are in relation to each other, et cetera.
I have said that I don’t know what HI-SHIRYO, “non-thinking,” is. That is not a rhetorical device. I really don’t. What I have understood, and what Master Dogen is clearly telling us, is that HI-SHIRYO is not a function of the grim determination of habitual MT, the end-gainer who yearns to cut the root of confusion, once and for all, for self and others. HI-SHIRYO is a function of the ease and happiness of one who enjoys modestly and simply attending to the true means-whereby.
Hence: ZETSUGAKU MU-I NO HITO O SONKI SHI
“Revere a person who is through with study and free of the intention to achieve.”
Don’t be afraid, MT, of your end-gaining tendency: Master Dogen’s instruction is simply to wake up to it. Even now, as you face the computer screen, you can probably let go of something and allow yourself to breathe a little easier. You might even find the face of grim determination spontaneously breaking into a bit of a smile.
And don’t worry about not knowing what is Gautama’s true means-whereby, as if it were something that was available to the likes of Gatauma, Nagarjuna and Dogen but not already abundantly available to you and me.
DO MOTO ENZU
DO, the truth/way, bodhi, the Buddha’s enlightenment
MOTO originally, inherently
EN circular, all around, integrally
ZU pervades
“Enlightenment originally is all round.”
We are living in the true means-whereby.
Our life from beginning to end is a treasure lived in treasure. Adhering with grim determination to the principle of end-gaining Zen, Hardcore Zen, we try to buy it by dutifully doing our sitting practice in the right posture. After a number of years like this, what once felt unfamiliar and wrong comes to feel right. Sitting in lotus ceases to be some exotic practice and becomes our own thing. After 10, 30, 50, or 70 years of having a wonderful time like this, doing our thing, we may think to our ourselves, and insinuate to others, that we have finally got the treasure itself:
“Now that I have got the treasure myself, I deeply wish to let others know about it. So I would like to publish a definitive translation of Master Dogen’s writings, and I would like to establish a Buddhist version of Al Qaeda, in order to assert that the true means-whereby is just [action which is] different from thinking.”
Or just realism. Or just balancing the autonomic nervous system. Or just Alexander’s teaching of inhibition and direction. Or just the ordinary mind. Et cetera.
But it is always not that. If the true treasure were that kind of partial treasure, something definitive, subject to copyright, subject to dogmatic assertion, we might fear somebody unfairly stealing our treasure from us when we were not around to guard it.
Meanwhile the sun is out, the birds are singing, and the brook is babbling.
Meanwhile, HOZO ONOZUKARA HIRAKU
“The jewel-treasury is opening itself.”
posted by Mike Cross at 1:55 PM
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