Hi,
So full disclosure: I initially felt a little silly about this exercise. I suppose it's more about me feeling that whatever is important to me is unimportant in the grand scheme of things. And when I feel a certain way about something (myself), I belittle that something.
I didn't know what to use here. Tennis? Music? Cooking? These are all things that are important to me. But then I thought of books. Or reading specifically. But then reading didn't quite seem to fit as well as I would have liked, or at least my interpretation wasn't up to par. Writing, though...that is a good fit. It felt right and amazingly really did speak to my heart and understanding of what, I think, is being conveyed here.
Anyway, thank you for this exercise that I didn't want, but ultimately needed. Isn't that how Zen is done? Through the experience?
Eihei Dōgen, a Japanese Zen Master of long ago ... experienced reality as a great story written through time, coming to life in the thoughts and acts of all beings. It is a most special story, for it is the story that the whole of reality is writing, with nothing left out, that you and I are writing, that is writing as you and me. It is a vibrant, swirling, flowing, merging and emerging unity that Buddhists sometimes call “emptiness,” as the words and sentences of the story “empties” us of the sense of only being separate beings, and fills and reaffirms us as the whole. We, as human beings, can’t be sure when or where this story began, or whether it even has a beginning or end. But we can come to see that it is being written now in each step and breath we take, much as a story unfolds and constantly renews with every turn of its pages.
You and I are authors of this story, as is every creature great or small, the mountains and seas, every grain of sand or massive galaxy, the atoms that make up the universe and the whole universe itself. Everything in reality, no matter how old or vast, no matter how unnoticed or small, is writing this story together. And although we may feel as if we are separate authors—finite individuals on a grand stage spanning all of time and space—we are also the story itself writing through us. A universe of authors that are being written up in this story that the whole universe is writing. Picture in your mind a spectator witnessing a story so vigorous and vibrant that its countless authors seem to vanish in the swirl of motion: single writers becoming pairs, then groups, coming together and separating moment by moment, yet so merged as the overall writing that, from a distance, individual authors can no longer be seen. ...
... So united did Dōgen see that whole that, in his mind, each point holds all other points, near or far, each point miraculously fully contains the whole, and each moment of time ticks with all other moments of time, before or after. It is much like saying that every word of each author somehow embodies, depends upon, and also fully expresses every word by all the other authors on the page, past, present, or future, and fully contains the entire story too. Dōgen experienced the time of the story as the overall story that is fully held and expressed in each individual word itself, with past not only flowing into present and future, but future flowing into the present and past, as the present fully holds the past and future of the story.
... Master Dōgen spoke of practice, putting it all on the page. Where this story has come from, where it is going, is not as important as the story that is truly realized—made real—right here, in your next word and sentence. The story is always right underneath your pen, so just write, without thought of any other place.
So full disclosure: I initially felt a little silly about this exercise. I suppose it's more about me feeling that whatever is important to me is unimportant in the grand scheme of things. And when I feel a certain way about something (myself), I belittle that something.
I didn't know what to use here. Tennis? Music? Cooking? These are all things that are important to me. But then I thought of books. Or reading specifically. But then reading didn't quite seem to fit as well as I would have liked, or at least my interpretation wasn't up to par. Writing, though...that is a good fit. It felt right and amazingly really did speak to my heart and understanding of what, I think, is being conveyed here.
Anyway, thank you for this exercise that I didn't want, but ultimately needed. Isn't that how Zen is done? Through the experience?
Eihei Dōgen, a Japanese Zen Master of long ago ... experienced reality as a great story written through time, coming to life in the thoughts and acts of all beings. It is a most special story, for it is the story that the whole of reality is writing, with nothing left out, that you and I are writing, that is writing as you and me. It is a vibrant, swirling, flowing, merging and emerging unity that Buddhists sometimes call “emptiness,” as the words and sentences of the story “empties” us of the sense of only being separate beings, and fills and reaffirms us as the whole. We, as human beings, can’t be sure when or where this story began, or whether it even has a beginning or end. But we can come to see that it is being written now in each step and breath we take, much as a story unfolds and constantly renews with every turn of its pages.
You and I are authors of this story, as is every creature great or small, the mountains and seas, every grain of sand or massive galaxy, the atoms that make up the universe and the whole universe itself. Everything in reality, no matter how old or vast, no matter how unnoticed or small, is writing this story together. And although we may feel as if we are separate authors—finite individuals on a grand stage spanning all of time and space—we are also the story itself writing through us. A universe of authors that are being written up in this story that the whole universe is writing. Picture in your mind a spectator witnessing a story so vigorous and vibrant that its countless authors seem to vanish in the swirl of motion: single writers becoming pairs, then groups, coming together and separating moment by moment, yet so merged as the overall writing that, from a distance, individual authors can no longer be seen. ...
... So united did Dōgen see that whole that, in his mind, each point holds all other points, near or far, each point miraculously fully contains the whole, and each moment of time ticks with all other moments of time, before or after. It is much like saying that every word of each author somehow embodies, depends upon, and also fully expresses every word by all the other authors on the page, past, present, or future, and fully contains the entire story too. Dōgen experienced the time of the story as the overall story that is fully held and expressed in each individual word itself, with past not only flowing into present and future, but future flowing into the present and past, as the present fully holds the past and future of the story.
... Master Dōgen spoke of practice, putting it all on the page. Where this story has come from, where it is going, is not as important as the story that is truly realized—made real—right here, in your next word and sentence. The story is always right underneath your pen, so just write, without thought of any other place.
And it is beautifully written. Nice story about a universal story!
Gassho, Jundo
stlah
Lovely, Noel. You got it very well. 
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