Something Missing

[Kokuu]

In Shōbōgenzō Genjōkoan, Dōgen says the following:

“When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you may assume that it is already sufficient. When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing.” (Kazuaki Tanahashi translation)

I must admit this confuses me a little (okay, more than a little). I imagine that most of us have had experiences in zazen when (as Dōgen expresses it) body and mind drop away (shinjin datsuraku) and there is an immediacy of experience in which there is no separation between us and experience. Things just are as they are and experience arises and falls away until a sense of self reaffirms itself.

When I have experienced this state, it doesn’t feel like there is anything missing, so what does he mean by “you understand that something is missing”?

Reflecting on this, I have come up with a few answers but none of them feel sufficient (perhaps 3 comes the closest). These are:

1. Even when body and mind have dropped away, suffering remains in the world and we feel this both as the suffering of others and our own nagging sense of the unsatisfactory nature of life (dukkha).

2. Our view of the world can only be partial and subjective. Even if we feel experience deeply and directly, there are missing elements of the experience. However, although this may be theoretically the case, there are times when experience feels whole and all-encompassing. Are we missing the experience of others which we can never grasp? I can never experience how the world feels to Jundo or Jika just as they can never know how I see the world.

3. In the bodhisattva vows we vow to attain the way that is unattainable. Is the way always incomplete and moving? Whenever we think we have got it, we haven’t. The moment we say “this is it!” life has moved on. It is a constantly moving target and what is missing is some kind of solidity or firm ground to rest on.

Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts on this I would be grateful to hear them. This is not meant as a theoretical analysis of Dōgen but rather comparing what he says with how I and others experience zazen. Do you have this experience of something missing?

Gassho
Kokuu
#sattoday

[Myosha]

"When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you may assume that it is already sufficient. When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing."

_______________

Hello,

Can't wrap my tongue around it. So, IMHO, in zazen a "dropped" body-mind cannot be filled with ANYTHING (i.e. sufficient).
Whereas conscious body-mind can be filled with dharma truth yet be insufficient (something missing - i.e. dropped body-mind)

Well, that's my story and am sticking with it.^^


Gassho
Myosha
sat today

[Jundo]

Hi Kokuu,

I believe all of what is say is on the right trail, but it is very intellectual.

My interpretation is a bit simpler.

In sitting, there is realization of completeness, so wholly whole, there is no separation nor lack, not anything in need of adding or taking away or cure or repair.

Nonetheless, in life, we must live as human beings in a world of broken pieces and muddy holes, this and that, separation, gain and lack, sickness and health, and much in need of repair.

If you think that "Enlightenment" is only experiencing the first, you are sadly mistaken.

If you only live lost in the second, you are sadly lost in ignorance.

When the Dharma is truly embodied ... this "something is missing" is precisely this "already sufficient", one beyond one, not two. Sickness and health need no cure, thus take your medicine ... there is nothing in need of repair, so grab a hammer because there is so much broken to fix. Holes just whole, and pieces of peace. No sentient beings in need of saving from the first, so let us get down to the work of saving them.

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Kokuu]

Thank you, Jundo. That is greatly helpful and far more direct.

Myosha, I think you got it more than I did.

Gassho
Kokuu
#sattoday

[Mp]

When the Dharma is truly embodied ... this "something is missing" is precisely this "already sufficient", one beyond one, not two. Sickness and health need no cure, thus take your medicine ... there is nothing in need of repair, so grab a hammer because there is so much broken to fix. Holes just whole, and pieces of peace. No sentient beings in need of saving from the first, so let us get down to the work of saving them.

Thank you Kokuu, great question ... and thank you Jundo for your response. Perfectly imperfect and yet imperfectly perfect! =)

Gassho
Shingen

s@today

[Jishin]

In Shōbōgenzō Genjōkoan, Dōgen says the following:

“When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you may assume that it is already sufficient. When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing.

What he means is what is not said. What he really means is this:

"When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you may assume that it is already sufficient. When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. When dharma fills you whole body and mind, you may not assume it is already sufficient. When dharma does not fill your body and mind, you don't understand that nothing is missing."

Therefore, just sit, be whole, chop wood, fetch water --- for the benefit of others.

My 2 cents.

Gassho, Jishin, ST

[Kyonin]

“When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you may assume that it is already sufficient. When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing.”

Hi Kokuu,

I could be totally wrong as usual, but I understand that when we sit everything is complete, what is. Perfect and unified.

But when we live and study the dharma, there is no way in this life that we can know it all. The dharma is gigantic and it writes new chapters and sutras itself, all the time.

Something is missing in the sense we need an eternity to realize it.

But then again, when we sit we become eternal.

Kyonin
#SatToday

[Byokan]

Hi Kokuu,

interesting question! I'm no Dogen scholar, but I'll throw a few noodles at the wall and see if any of them stick...

When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you may assume that it is already sufficient.

Hm. Well, when we don’t apprehend the true state of reality, we may think that our lived experience tells us what reality is. But this is delusion. Our insights and feelings and sense experiences -- that is, the self’s understanding -- of reality, of wholeness, can only describe and reflect reality from the limited perspective of self, of body, of mind. And we cannot perceive what we cannot perceive, so we assume it is everything; we assume that we have seen, felt, experienced or understood the Wholeness of dharma. But our understanding as beings with a separate self, with a distinct body, with a singular mind, will always be incomplete: a shadow of the dharma, a shard of mirror reflecting only a sliver of the whole.

When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing.

When dharma fills your body and mind, there is Wholeness abiding. This will never be ‘accomplished’ by the thinking mind nor even the compassionate heart. They deal with the subjective. When dharma fills your body and mind, there is no body and mind. There is just this. Some thing is missing, yes. All things are missing because there is no separation into this and that. Wholeness is beyond completeness.

Here’s something funny: Dharma fills your body and mind already, but it is your body and mind that make it so hard to perceive!

Let's not confuse understanding the dharma for dharma itself. If you are able to come to an intellectual understanding, or have some insight, or even have a deep experience of it in kensho, that’s great. But that is the map to the treasure, not the treasure itself. What’s most important, I think, is to embody the dharma, to let the dharma express itself as you. You can have all the understanding in the world, conceptually, but if you do not embody and express it with your life, it’s for nothing. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly. Embodying the dharma is living in harmony with the flow of life as it is, responding appropriately, acting in accordance with whatever comes forward. Chop wood, carry water, fix what you can, find your way through the hard times, lessen suffering, save all beings. Savor life. Feel joy. Find gratitude. Be peace. Pry that heart open and let it love. Use your body and mind and this precious human lifetime as well as you can. Maintain the precepts. Live by vow. Check your compass again and again and re-orient when you find yourself wandering in circles or tumbling off the mountainside. And... have a little faith. When we do these things we allow the dharma to fill our body and mind. And understanding will come.

Maybe.

Gassho
Byōkan
sat today

[Geika]

Perhaps when you know of and think of dharma, the thought of dharma separates "you" from dharma: "you" need to get "there". When not thinking of dharma, dharma is always arising.

Gassho, sat today

[Kaishin]

I've always had a more pedestrian understanding of this passage. To me, he's basically saying that greater awareness reveals our limited understanding. Conversely, limited awareness makes us think we understand everything.

Immediately following this passage is an example that I think clarifies this:

For example, when you sail out in a boat to the middle of the ocean where no land is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular, and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square; its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this.

Dogen, Zen Master. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen's <i>Shobo Genzo</i> (Kindle Locations 2411-2414). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.

[RichardH]

Please take with a spoon of salt.

Ever-tipping, ever-unfolding, ever-blooming. So beautiful and aching. Tying loose ends forever.


Daizan
Gassho
Sat today
.

[Jundo]

Lovely expressions.

Dogen was a daring Dharma poet, and wild word-wiz. I think that the folks here are on the right track, all sensing what Dogen was on about. Ah, liberated amid the wild unpredictability and unknowable twisty turny mysteries of life.

Maybe even Dogen could not express it more clearly, but somehow felt this.

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Jinyo]

Hi Kokuu,

good question - makes me realise that a lot of Dogen goes over my head.

I can only come at this intuitively but when I sit and feel a sense of peace (beyond all the messy and usual fragmentation of a lived life) I am more acutely aware that most of the time something is indeed missing. I think we can only recognise the dharma (I think Nishijima expresses it as 'the realized law of the Universe) by living right at the centre of that fragmentation.
We kinda need that messy binary opposition to recognise anything at all

I find Dogen pretty obscure but I like that he says 'Realization is the state of ambiguity' (Nishijima's translation - others may differ?) That hits a mark for me experientially.



Willow

sat today

[Risho]

I've always had a more pedestrian understanding of this passage. To me, he's basically saying that greater awareness reveals our limited understanding. Conversely, limited awareness makes us think we understand everything.

Immediately following this passage is an example that I think clarifies this:


Dogen, Zen Master. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen's <i>Shobo Genzo</i> (Kindle Locations 2411-2414). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.

Yes! That's what I thought too -- it's really interesting seeing these different perspectives here.

Gassho,

Risho

[Zenmei]

I find Dogen pretty obscure but I like that he says 'Realization is the state of ambiguity' (Nishijima's translation - others may differ?) That hits a mark for me experientially.

That particular phrasing hit me, too, so I looked it up to see where it came from. It's from the Nishijima/Cross translation of Genjokoan. I've read the Tanahashi/Aitken translation, and I know I didn't get that out of it, so I went looking for other versions. Turns out there are a bunch available online:

This site has 8 of them:

http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Dogen_Teachings/GenjoKoan8.htm

The Nishijima/Cross version is online here:

http://www.wordtrade.com/religion/buddhism/shobogenzo.htm

I think that's 9 different translations.

So, anyway, thank you for sharing that quote, I love it.

Gassho, Dudley
#sat