Master Dogen lived in a grim age, filled with war and widespread poverty, illness, personal loss and countless other hardships. Despite all that, Dogen wrote in most lyrical terms of some underlying beauty and benevolence, wholeness and harmony which somehow fills the universe when our hearts are able to perceive. All things and moments, great and small, are Buddha, each a Buddha. He wrote, for example, in Shobogenzo-Hotsu Mujo Shin:
In the great way of buddha dharma, there are thousands of sutras in one particle, there are countless buddhas in one particle. Both a blade of grass and a tree are the body and mind. Because myriad things are beyond birth, the one mind is beyond birth. Because all things are reality, one particle is reality. Thus, the one mind is all things. All things are the one mind, the entire body. ... Grass, trees, tiles, and pebbles, as well as the four great elements and the five skandhas [which make up us human beings], are all equally inseparable mind, equally marks of reality. The entire world of the ten directions [everywhere], the buddha nature of thusness, is equally things abiding in their conditions. How can there be grass, trees, and so on within the buddha nature of thusness? How can grass, trees, and so on not be buddha nature? All things are neither created nor not created, but are reality. Reality is reality as it is. (Tanahashi)
Even so, can we assert, as did Dogen, that the universe is yet "beautiful" and "good" beneath it all?
That the world is a cruel, cruel place seems so obvious, given that so many cruel things occur. Those other religions speak of a "benevolent God," but how could that be so when the world that "He" purportedly made is sometimes filled with such tragedy? When I was young, I came to the conclusion that the universe was neutral at best, simply going about its Big Bang business, cold and uncaring about our small concerns. Our broken hearts and cries are nothing more than collateral damage as the cosmos does its thing, not feeling our sadness, unable to hear those cries.
But is that truly the only way to see things?
My heart changed many years ago. Now, for me, this Buddhist Practice opens up a sense that this universe, all of reality, is "Beautiful" and "Good" (big "B" and big "G") ... IF (big "IF") we are discerning and subtle about just what that means. The key lies in our ability to see through and beyond this world of division and conflict, coming and going, birth and death to our other face ... our shared Face (big "F") ... that is beyond all division, beyond all separate pieces and players, thus no two players to conflict. The unbroken Face is present everywhere, both before, during and after the apparent "comings" and "goings," just like the sea which is vast and present though small waves rise and fall upon its surface. The waves are just the waters all along, thus never truly "come" nor "go." So it is for those we love and lose, and our own lives too. They do not go, we do not go, for their longed for face is our own face and all others' faces, our smiles and tears are theirs, all this True Face. There is some wonder and mystery to how we came to be born here, all together, in the middle of time and space, when it seemingly did not have to happen. I sense a Face that is unborn born as all our little faces, seeing with all our eyes, a sea divided for a timeless time as each of us.
There is an overriding Beauty, Goodness, Wholeness and Harmony to the universe, known in its wonders and its creativity, which is beyond all the small happenings -- yet is precisely who we are. It is so hidden and hard to see in this world of division much of the time, but it is so.
This is the "great way," the "buddhas" and "sutras" in every particle, the "mind" that is "beyond birth," "Buddha nature," the "reality as it is" of which Dogen speaks above.
But there is something more: For, since our hands and hearts are the universe, the love and hate, peace or violence, selfishness and generosity in our own hearts and done with our hands manifests beauty and ugliness, etc., in the universe. In other words, when we bring love and peace to the universe, or act with violence and hate, we flavor what the universe becomes. The world is like a canvas where we can paint images of beauty or ugliness by our combined efforts as the community of beings. Dogen thus saw it is as our human duty to act with the graceful dignity and ethics of a Buddha. In his day, he was helpless to end the war, to feed the hungry, to cure the plagues so rampant outside his monastery's walls. Today, we have more power, and need not live behind walls. In modern times, let us work to end the war, feed the hungry, comfort the lonely, cure the disease in the wider one community. In Hotsu Mujo Shin, Dogen spoke of the sacrifice of laypeople in their making offerings to feed monks ...
Know that [laypeople] offering food and drink, clothes, bedding, medicine, monk’s huts, fields, and forests to the three treasures is no other than offering the flesh, skin, bones, and marrow of themselves, their spouses, or their children. By doing so, they are already in the meritorious ocean of the three treasures. They are in one community. As they are in one community, they are with the three treasures. The virtue of the three treasures is actualized in the skin, flesh, bones, and marrow of their spouses and children. This is diligent endeavor of the way. ...
Gassho, J
stlah
sorry to run long
)
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