Non-duality from the Zen and God Thread

[Jundo]

Re: Non-duality from the Zen and God Thread

I've been rereading Genjokoan again and I've been struck several times by the way Dogen re(visions) the Heart Sutra: it's almost as though he's tipping his hat at the Theravada tradition a little. Without going into too much detail, when the Heart Sutra says, "form is emptiness, emptiness nothing but form" we all know that Dogen famously writes "Form is nothing but form, emptiness nothing but emptiness." He does this in order to kind of kill the language of duality occurring in The Heart Sutra. What's more interesting to me is this: whereas the Heart Sutra focuses on the idea of emptiness heavily, saying essentially that the five aggregates, because there are empty, don't exist: "no form, no sensation, no perception, no formation, no consciousness," it's almost as though Dogen wants to save us from a mistaken understanding when he refers to the five aggregates as instances of Prajna Paramita: "The twelve sense fields are instances of Prajna Paramita Also there are eighteen instances of prajna: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind " etc..." In any case, this is striking to me because while the Heart Sutra focuses on emptiness, Dogen basically is suggesting that just because the five aggregates are empty doesn't mean that they don't express reality; doesn't mean that we don't still live through them; doesn't mean that we can just discard them; doesn't mean that they are the hurdles to enlightenment; in fact, what I think Dogen is getting at is that these aggregates are expressions of impermanence and no-self, which is reality.

Hi Alan,

Kind of a technical Buddhist philosophical point, but I don't get the feeling that Dogen was particularly referring to merely the 5 Aggregates in a strict Theravadan sense as ultimately not empty. What one sees here and throughout his writings is the feeling that all Dharmas, all things of life and the world (and that includes the Aggregates) are so thoroughly empty-beyond&right-through&through-empty that they wonderfully spin around into being as Real as Real can be ... there but not there but there again, each a sacred precious jewel in its own way.

Dogen's vision was very wide ... boundless in fact, and right down to seeing the jewel in every atom.

Gassho, Jundo

[alan.r]

Re: Non-duality from the Zen and God Thread

Hi Alan,

Kind of a technical Buddhist philosophical point, but I don't get the feeling that Dogen was particularly referring to merely the 5 Aggregates in a strict Theravadan sense as ultimately not empty. What one sees here and throughout his writings is the feeling that all Dharmas, all things of life and the world (and that includes the Aggregates) are so thoroughly empty-beyond&righ-through&through-empty that they wonderfully spin around into being as Real as Real can be ... there but not there but there again, each a sacred precious jewel in its own way.

Dogen's vision was very wide ... boundless in fact, and right down to seeing the jewel in every atom.

Gassho, Jundo

Hi Pontus. Thanks for the kind words.

Hi Jundo. Yes, I can definitely see now how Dogen isn't necessarily referring to Theravada, since he certainly isn't referring only to the Five Aggregates and his scope is much wider in the passage. Perhaps, more to the point, it is me "reading" Dogen a particular way, and when I hear or see five aggregates, which is so important in Theravada, it's difficult to think of anything else (clearly a conceptual attachment of mine!). Thank you for that clarification.

In any case, I didn't mean to imply that he doesn't see the aggregates (or anything else) as ultimately not empty. Rather: all things expressions of impermanence and no-self. All things so-empty-they-are-real-as-real-can-be. (I'm tempted to put in quote from a Terrence Malick movie here, the last (I think) line of The Thin Red Line: "All things shining.").

Thank you, Jundo.

Gassho,
Alan