then does nothing have Buddha-nature?
Gassho,
Steven
Gassho,
Steven
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What is Buddha-nature?
Gassho, John -
Hmmm. Maybe start by dropping such little words as "every thing" "no thing" "this thing" "that thing" and "thing".
Maybe even drop "Buddha-nature", all to find each and all and none and you and me and every as Buddha-nature.
Have a look over here, then go sit ...
I thought, before opening the thread, that you were going to ask the old question "If everything has Buddha Nature already, why bother to Practice?" That is the question which is said to have sent Dogen on his search to China. The story goes that Dogen, who was originally a monk in the Tendai School of Buddhism, was so puzzled in his youth by the traditional Tendai Buddhist teaching that we are all "originally Buddha from the get go" that Dogen wondered why, then, the need to Practice. He went to China in search of an answer to that question.
The answer he found is what we discuss here all the time: Although we are already "Buddha", one needs both to realize that fact (understand it in and as one's bones) and to realize that fact (make it real through our practice, bring it to life in all of life by how we behave, free of Greed, Anger and Ignorance).
Gassho, JALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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Hi Steven,
Everything, and nothing, are the same. Not two, but one.
_/\_Shinjin datsuraku, datsuraku shinjin..Body-mind drop off, mind-body drop off..Comment
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Still think it is puzzling, Jundo. What is missing? When deluded be fully deluded, when enlightened be fully enlightened. Genjokoan life as it is. Fully there.
Drop everything? Everything? Pretty attached to sitting and practice you know. Feel bad if I don't sit everyday at least once but something is missing. What is missing?
Gassho
EnkyoMuComment
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Missing is not missing. Missing is full of life.
Drop everything, thus filled with everything.
Gassho, JALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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Give everything away so nothing to want remains? Like that? Stop searching so nothing is lost?
Reading that book "Zen Questions" I came across a passage from Dogen that struck me deeply and is on my mind a lot:
When Dharma does NOT fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient.
When Dharma DOES fill your whole body and mind, you understand something is missing."
I don't understand this. Seems that missing something is just fine and maybe even a good sign? Formulating what is missing however is SO very difficult. It is a wordless thing. When sitting shikantaza sure, there is nothing lacking and nothing to drop. In a way I think I maybe caught a glimpse of that wholeness at times. But OFF the cushion, there sure is something missing. Maybe because there is too much searching going on?
Here is the problem: I have been so cocky on this forum in the past. Having an answer to everything. Since of late I am losing my taste for all of that. A question that won't let itself be asked or formulated, has nestled itself in my practice. Decided to drop all of that and start with the right questions but if I can't formulate it how can I answer it? I suppose this missing should be accepted and done fully too. If you don't have anything, you have nothing to loose either. Is that what you mean by "missing is not missing"? It is very difficult.
Gassho
EnkyoMuComment
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The way I look at it is that the only way something can be missing is when we compare experience against some conceptual idea of how things are. Experience on its own has nothing missing (what is the sound of one hand clapping?). Missed a sit - no problem, you have just missed a sit. If the mind starts to come up with ideas that the day would not be complete without a sit or a good Buddhist would have sat, suddenly there is comparison and missing.
For me, if you feel something is missing it is good to feel that as it is part of experience. Then drop it.
Regarding the Dogen passage, it strikes me deeply too but I would be lying if I said 'I get it'. Something missing? Maybe ;-)
Gassho
AndyComment
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Dropping being cocky is a very good place to start from. Understanding how foolish we are is the very core of practice. Do you think guys like a Dogen, Ryokan, Sawaki did think they were great? They could see through the field of their delusion, once you sit on Buddha s seat, you see the culprit right in the face ( something is missing) as long as you sit in the culprit s sit , you are drunk with Buddhas and ancestors ( it is already sufficient ).
Dogen goes about this in a Genjokoan.
In many other important bits of Shobogenzo.
Far from the mountain, you see it. It is like an object within your reach. Once on the mountain, it vanishes, all is but clouds, mists. Something is missing.
Our path is to cut through on the spot. Neither mountain nor pile of shit.
As you sit with the mountain, this only remains and you don't give a f... about being awake or not, being Buddha or not.
All the games and expectations drop like a castle made of cards, the water goes through the bucket.
You cannot make it. Trying to make it is like adding another card.
Kicking the castle like a child having a tandrum does not work.
Nothing works.
That's how "it" works.
Gassho
TaiguComment
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Part of the problem is the way people imagine Buddha to be like: a kind is superman with instant knowledge, visions and freedom.
Buddha is absolutely not for your eyes to see or your ears to hear.
You would not notice it.
That's Buddha s true faceless face.
It lives in the here- beyond-with- without self and others.
Gassho
T.Comment
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Hi Enkyo,
Oh, I feel that you have hit on precisely the appropriate Dogen Zenji quote from the Genjo Koan, but in your interpretation you are missing Dogen's point on "missing". I believe this Teaching is one of Master Dogen's expressions of vibrant Enlightenment worth the whole price of a ticket to his Teachings. Here is how I express the point:
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In our Practice, we may enter in Zazen some timeless moments where all is Peaceful, Boundless, Pure, Complete, Never Missing, Nothing to Lack ... the Boundless Sky without a Cloud to be seen. The small "self" and the "subject-object" split might be fully evaporated. One might feel, "Eureka! Such is Enlightenment!" One might try to stay such and never "come back".
But such is only 80%
For Master Dogen's brilliant vision is that this organic, unpredictable, vibrant, often confusing, frustrating, sometimes clean and sometimes dirty, often beautiful but often so ugly world, frequently lacking and painful .... -- IS ALSO, NO LESS PRECISELY -- ... the Peaceful, Boundless, Pure, Complete, Never Missing, Nothing to Lack when correctly perceived as such. Thus, when truly Enlightenment fills one's body and mind ... one realizes that the incomplete is complete in&as its very incompleteness, that "something lacking" has nothing lacking whether lacking or not ... that there is a certain Beauty which embodies both the human eye's judging of "beautiful" and of "ugly" ... that imperfect things are Perfectly-Just-Imperfect-As-They-PerfectlyImperfectly-Are (ATTENTION: Such is not to be confused with "actually complete though appearing incomplete" or "ultimately perfect though appearing imperfect", which is not the point here).
Maybe an example I just read from Master Hsu Yun, the great Chinese Rinzai Chan Hua'tou Teacher, will give a feeling for this:
The mind, life, this world is something like a room with light shining through a window, revealing all kinds of dust particles floating and swirling through the air. The dust represents all the dirt and schmutz of life ... the confusion, greed and anger, the whole catastrophe of life, sickness and health and birth and death, a mind cluttered like an old dusty attic. Often this mind-life-world is clogged with so much dust we may choke! Sometimes we can't see or breath for all the choking dust of thoughts! (This represent suffering sentient beings before Buddhist Practice).
The clear, open light between the dust ... free of all that ... represents the wide open Dharmakhaya, free of all that mess. Pure Crystal Light. So, we might feel that the purpose of Zen Practice is to so thoroughly clean the room that not a speck of mental dust remains, down to surgical sterility ... leaving only the wide boundless light shining, the open air totally open.
Well, no ... that is so sterile that such is robbed of life.
True Enlightenment is finally to see that the clear open light AND the dance of twirling dust particles are One beyond One. Be at home in the real life room where dust is kicked up because that is what happens when life is lived. Light and Dust are not one, not two. Do not seek some barren "white room" where all is too pure. Of course, one should keep the dust reasonably down to a healthy level (please don't live in a mental pig sty), and avoid the truly toxic dust of greed, anger, jealousy and all the rest. Do not live as a prisoner trapped in unhealthy air pollution! The pure and impure is Thoroughly Pure, yet we seek to keep the impure thoughts in healthy check so to realize such.
But, in true Enlightenment one encounters that each swirling grain of dust holds Buddha, is Buddha, Countless Buddhas.
Something like that.
Savor the often unpredictable, frequently ambiguous, quite often unsatisfying, filled with delusion, feeling sometimes like "somethings missing", sometimes messy "Whole Catastrophe" of Samsara as Nirvana (even as we try to keep the truly toxic poisons of greed, anger and delusion to a minimum).
As Dogen also writes in the Genjo ...
Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings.
Gassho, J
PS -What Taigu wrote above is So Lovely!
Last edited by Jundo; 10-06-2013, 11:24 AM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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I don't know anything about Buddha nature, really.
It's a concept that flows all over round us.
So now I sit.
Gassho,
KyoninHondō Kyōnin
奔道 協忍Comment
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Thank you both Jundo and Taigu for your explanations and for demonstrating why you are the teachers and we are students. It is good to know that those moments of clarity during Zazen are not the whole story although they can seem to be what we are aiming at.
This thread has been very helpful.
Gassho
AndyComment
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