See Soh's reply below.
Geovani's Post
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Geovani Geo
This is quite 'advaitic' from Dogen, right? I see no problem with it.
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Geovani Geo
When thoughts that there is something perceived and a perceiver,
Lure my mind away and distract,
I don’t close my senses gateways to meditate without them
But plunge straight into their essential point.
They’re like clouds in the sky; there’s this shimmer where they fly.
Thoughts that rise, for me sheer delight!
When kleshas get me going, and their heat has got me burning,
I try no antidote to set them right.
Like an alchemistic potion turning metal into gold,
What lies in kleshas power to bestow
Is bliss without contagion, completely undefiled.
Kleshas coming up, sheer delight!
When I’m plagued by god-like forces or demonic interference,
I do not drive them out with rites and spells.
The thing to chase away is egoistic thinking,
Built up on the idea of a self.
This will turn the ranks of maras into your own special forces.
When obstacles arise, sheer delight!
When samsara with its anguish has me writhing in its torments,
Instead of wallowing in misery,
I take the greater burden down the greater path to travel
And let compassion set me up
To take upon myself the sufferings of others.
When karmic consequences bloom, delight!
When my body has succumbed to the attacks of painful illness,
I do not count on medical relief,
But take that very illness as a path and by its power
Remove the obscurations blocking me,
And use it to encourage the qualities worthwhile.
When illness rears its head, sheer delight!
When it's time to leave this body, this illusionary tangle,
Don’t cause yourself anxiety and grief.
The thing that you should train in and clear up for yourself is
There’s no such thing as dying to be done.
Its just clear light, the mother, and child clear light uniting,
When mind forsakes the body, sheer delight!
When the whole things just not working, everything’s lined up against you,
Don’t try to find some way to change it all.
Here the point to make in your practice is reverse the way you see it.
Don’t try to make it stop or to improve.
Adverse conditions happen; when they do it's so delightful.
They make a little song of sheer delight!
~ Gyalwa Götsangpa
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Soh Wei Yu
John Tan 2011 partial excerpt from https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../realization...
1. The myriad things advance and confirm the self
Zazen is “mustering the whole body-mind (the whole of existence-time, inclusive of “A” and “not-A”) to look at forms and listen to sounds,” which is described by Dogen as “direct experience.” This “direct experience” is not only hearing, seeing, etc.; it is the arising of an ‘I’.” As in Shobogenzo, Genjokoan, “The myriad things advance and confirm the self.”
The whole article would be beautiful without the above texts quoted in bold. This emphasis is no difference from the need to find ground in the ‘here and now’. There is another article posted by you in the blog Genjo Koan: Actualizing the Fundamental Point that in my opinion provides a more accurate translation:
To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.
….
….
To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.
If “the myriad things advance and confirm the self”, then practitioners will be leaving trace. This also reminds me of my conversation with Gozen (a Soto Zen teacher) in dharmaoverground:
24. RE: The mind and the watcher
Apr 7 2009, 5:46 PM EDT | Post edited: Apr 7 2009, 5:57 PM EDT
"I AM: Paradoxically, one feels at the same time that one is both essentially untouched by all phenomena and yet intimately at one with them. As the Upanishad says "Thou are That."
1.a. Body and Mind as Constructs: Another way to look at this is to observe that all compound things -- including one's own body and mind -- are **objects to awareness.** That is to say, from the "fundamental" point of view of primordial awareness, or True Self, even body and mind are **not self.**"
Ha Gozen, I re-read the post and saw **not self**, I supposed u r referring to anatta then I have to disagree...🙂. However I agree with what that u said from the Vedanta (True Self) standpoint. But going into it can make it appears unnecessary complex.
As a summary, I see anatta as understanding the **transience** as Awareness by realizing that there is no observer apart from the observed. Effectively it is referring to the experience of in seeing, only scenery, no seer. In hearing, only sound, no hearer. The experience is quite similar to “Thou are That” except that there is no sinking back to a Source as it is deemed unnecessary. Full comfort is found in resting completely as the transience without even the slightest need to refer back to a source. For the source has always been the manifestation due to its emptiness nature.
All along there is no dust alighting on the Mirror; the dust has always been the Mirror. We fail to recognize the dust as the Mirror when we are attached to a particular speck of dust and call it the ”Mirror”; When a particular speck of dust becomes special, then all other pristine happening that are self-mirroring suddenly appears dusty.
Anything further, we will have to take it private again. 🙂
source : Emptiness as Viewless View and Embracing the Transience
Therefore to see that all dusts are primordially pure from before beginning is the whole purpose of maturing the insight of anatta. The following text succinctly expresses this insight:
...According to Dogen, this “oceanic-body” does not contain the myriad forms, nor is it made up of myriad forms – it is the myriad forms themselves. The same instruction is provided at the beginning of Shobogenzo, Gabyo (pictured rice-cakes) where, he asserts that, “as all Buddhas are enlightenment” (sho, or honsho), so too, “all dharmas are enlightenment” which he says does not mean they are simply “one” nature or mind.
Anything falling short of this realization cannot be said to be Buddhist's enlightenment and it is also what your Taiwanese teacher Chen wanted you to be clear when he spoke of the "equality of dharma" as having an initial glimpse of anatta will not result in practitioners seeing that phenomena are themselves primordially pure.
Realization, Experience and Right View and my comments on "A" is "not-A", "not A" is "A"
AWAKENINGTOREALITY.COM
Realization, Experience and Right View and my comments on "A" is "not-A", "not A" is "A"
Realization, Experience and Right View and my comments on "A" is "not-A", "not A" is "A"
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Soh Wei Yu
In any case Dogen's insights are very much based on anatman, dependent origination and emptiness. Not Advaitic substantialist nondualism. For example:
“For Dōgen, Buddha-nature or Busshō (佛性) is the nature of reality and all Being. In the Shōbōgenzō, Dōgen writes that “whole-being (Existence itself) is the Buddha-nature” and that even inanimate things (grass, trees, etc.) are an expression of Buddha-nature. He rejected any view that saw Buddha-nature as a permanent, substantial inner self or ground. Dōgen held that Buddha-nature was “vast emptiness”, “the world of becoming” and that “impermanence is in itself Buddha-nature”.[23] According to Dōgen:
Therefore, the very impermanency of grass and tree, thicket and forest is the Buddha nature. The very impermanency of men and things, body and mind, is the Buddha nature. Nature and lands, mountains and rivers, are impermanent because they are the Buddha nature. Supreme and complete enlightenment, because it is impermanent, is the Buddha nature.[24]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dōgen#Buddha-nature“
—-
http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=H6A674nlkVEC&pg=PA21...
From Bendowa, by Zen Master Dogen
Question Ten:
Some have said: Do not concern yourself about birth-and-death. There is a way to promptly rid yourself of birth-and-death. It is by grasping the reason for the eternal immutability of the 'mind-nature.' The gist of it is this: although once the body is born it proceeds inevitably to death, the mind-nature never perishes. Once you can realize that the mind-nature, which does not transmigrate in birth-and-death, exists in your own body, you make it your fundamental nature. Hence the body, being only a temporary form, dies here and is reborn there without end, yet the mind is immutable, unchanging throughout past, present, and future. To know this is to be free from birth-and-death. By realizing this truth, you put a final end to the transmigratory cycle in which you have been turning. When your body dies, you enter the ocean of the original nature. When you return to your origin in this ocean, you become endowed with the wondrous virtue of the Buddha-patriarchs. But even if you are able to grasp this in your present life, because your present physical existence embodies erroneous karma from prior lives, you are not the same as the sages.
"Those who fail to grasp this truth are destined to turn forever in the cycle of birth-and-death. What is necessary, then, is simply to know without delay the meaning of the mind-nature's immutability. What can you expect to gain from idling your entire life away in purposeless sitting?"
What do you think of this statement? Is it essentially in accord with the Way of the Buddhas and patriarchs?
Answer 10:
You have just expounded the view of the Senika heresy. It is certainly not the Buddha Dharma.
According to this heresy, there is in the body a spiritual intelligence. As occasions arise this intelligence readily discriminates likes and dislikes and pros and cons, feels pain and irritation, and experiences suffering and pleasure - it is all owing to this spiritual intelligence. But when the body perishes, this spiritual intelligence separates from the body and is reborn in another place. While it seems to perish here, it has life elsewhere, and thus is immutable and imperishable. Such is the standpoint of the Senika heresy.
But to learn this view and try to pass it off as the Buddha Dharma is more foolish than clutching a piece of broken roof tile supposing it to be a golden jewel. Nothing could compare with such a foolish, lamentable delusion. Hui-chung of the T'ang dynasty warned strongly against it. Is it not senseless to take this false view - that the mind abides and the form perishes - and equate it to the wondrous Dharma of the Buddhas; to think, while thus creating the fundamental cause of birth-and-death, that you are freed from birth-and-death? How deplorable! Just know it for a false, non-Buddhist view, and do not lend a ear to it.
I am compelled by the nature of the matter, and more by a sense of compassion, to try to deliver you from this false view. You must know that the Buddha Dharma preaches as a matter of course that body and mind are one and the same, that the essence and the form are not two. This is understood both in India and in China, so there can be no doubt about it. Need I add that the Buddhist doctrine of immutability teaches that all things are immutable, without any differentiation between body and mind. The Buddhist teaching of mutability states that all things are mutable, without any differentiation between essence and form. In view of this, how can anyone state that the body perishes and the mind abides? It would be contrary to the true Dharma.
Beyond this, you must also come to fully realize that birth-and-death is in and of itself nirvana. Buddhism never speaks of nirvana apart from birth-and-death. Indeed, when someone thinks that the mind, apart from the body, is immutable, not only does he mistake it for Buddha-wisdom, which is free from birth-and-death, but the very mind that makes such a discrimination is not immutable, is in fact even then turning in birth-and-death. A hopeless situation, is it not?
You should ponder this deeply: since the Buddha Dharma has always maintained the oneness of body and mind, why, if the body is born and perishes, would the mind alone, separated from the body, not be born and die as well? If at one time body and mind were one, and at another time not one, the preaching of the Buddha would be empty and untrue. Moreover, in thinking that birth-and-death is something we should turn from, you make the mistake of rejecting the Buddha Dharma itself. You must guard against such thinking.
Understand that what Buddhists call the Buddhist doctrine of the mind-nature, the great and universal aspect encompassing all phenomena, embraces the entire universe, without differentiating between essence and form, or concerning itself with birth or death. There is nothing - enlightenment and nirvana included - that is not the mind-nature. All dharmas, the "myriad forms dense and close" of the universe - are alike in being this one Mind. All are included without exception. All those dharmas, which serves as "gates" or entrances to the Way, are the same as one Mind. For a Buddhist to preach that there is no disparity between these dharma-gates indicates that he understands the mind-nature.
In this one Dharma [one Mind], how could there be any differentiate between body and mind, any separation of birth-and-death and nirvana? We are all originally children of the Buddha, we should not listen to madmen who spout non-Buddhist views.
Dōgen - Wikipedia
EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
Dōgen - Wikipedia
Dōgen - Wikipedia
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Soh Wei Yu
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John Tan said in 2007 about Dogen, “Dogen is a great Zen master that has penetrated deeply into a very deep level of anatman.”, “Read about Dogen… he is truly a great Zen master… ...[Dogen is] one of the very few Zen Masters that truly knows.”, “Whenever we read the most basic teachings of Buddha, it is most profound. Don't ever say we understand it. Especially when it comes to Dependent Origination, which is the most profound truth in Buddhism*. Never say that we understand it or have experienced it. Even after a few years of experience in non-duality, we can't understand it. The one great Zen master that came closest to it is Dogen, that sees temporality as buddha nature, that see transients as living truth of dharma and the full manifestation of buddha nature.”
"When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine many things with a confused mind, you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent. But when you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that there is nothing that has unchanging self.
- Dogen"
“Mind as mountains, rivers, and the earth is nothing other than mountains, rivers, and the earth. There are no additional waves or surf, no wind or smoke. Mind as the sun, the moon, and the stars is nothing other than the sun, the moon, and the stars.”
- Dogen
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