Dogen in the Matrix
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“Flowers will fall even though we love them; weeds grow even though we dislike them. Conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice-enlightenment is delusion. All things coming and carrying out practice-enlightenment through the self is realization. Those who greatly realize delusion are buddhas. Those who are greatly deluded in realization are living beings. Furthermore, there are those who attain realization beyond realization and those who are deluded within delusion.”
This is the 4th stanza of Genjokoan and in it Dogen is talking about the self in relation to everything else. He points out in his cryptic way that the two are not separate…well maybe both separate and not separate. Let’s face it, understanding Genjokoan is a bit like Neo trying to understand The Matrix for the first time.
Okumura says it this way in three quotes I will mention (stanza four takes up 1.5 chapters in the book), “According to Dogen, delusion and enlightenment lie only within the relationship between self and others. Delusion is not some fixed thing within our minds that, if eliminated, will be replaced by enlightenment” (something of a bummer for those still looking for the big E as some kind of mystical pants crapping event.
also…“We cannot prevent our minds from creating our world as it does, but it is possible to realize that the world of our creation does not reflect true reality”. I would personally change this to ‘does not reflect all of reality’. Reality is so much bigger than we know so far but we make our mental stories up about it and then decide our realizations are concrete facts. Personally I think when we do make the death transition, we are all going to find out that NONE of the stories were correct and were only fairy tales made up about what we thought we saw while looking through a window covered by greasy dirt.
and finally “…we are deluded within realization, and in practice we realize, or awaken to, the reality that we are deluded; we are therefore not deceived by our delusion.”
All of these things were resonating with me last post as I looked back over something TNH had written in The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching. Life often feels messy but there is an organic sense to it all even if it is just beyond our grasp. Maia Duerr of The Jizo Chronicles recently posted a quote from the late Robert Aitkin that I think sums it up really well and is one of my all time favorite Zen quotes:
“Our practice is not to clear up the mystery. It is to make the mystery clear.”
~Robert Aitken Roshi
Realizing Genjokoan part 1
During the past few months, I have slowly been digesting my first reading of Shohaku Okumura’s translation and comentary on Dogen’s Genjokoan called Realizing Genjokoan. Since Okumura refers often to his teacher Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, I also decided to digest his popular work Opening the Hand of Thought as well to help me better understand Okumura’s thought process. I also participated in a book study on Opening the Hand of Thought that came along about the same time I started reading the book.
I had the idea that I would like to review Realzing Genjokoan as a rolling review, processing the pieces of Genjokoan (there are 13 stanzas in this translation) as they were dealt with in the book chapters but I was concerned that if I did that before I read the whole book first I would miss the bigger picture.
As I have begun going back thru Realizing Genjokoan I see now that my approach, while seemingly thought out and rationalized in my head was my own version of being a “fish that would swim…only after investigating the entire ocean”. Studying Okumura’s translation and commentary and reading Uchiyama’s work have been fruitful and clarifying, but they have also been me trying to understand the ocean before diving in. Or, in my own words, I ain’t gonna understand the pig til I roll in the shit.
So Okumura starts off by looking translating the word Genjokoan. He does this thru looking at the precise choices Dogen used to craft his expression of the word. The kanji he picked were not everyday usage and were meant to transmit a message. I don’t know kanji so I have no intention of trying to represent them here. I will just put out the translation as best I can. Okumura’s translation choices are very detailed (particularly in the understanding of koan) so I will only be presenting the essentials.
Gen – to show up
Jo – to become together they present the idea of manifestation or “to appear and become”
Koan – “reality, emptiness, includes both unity and difference”
The rest of the chapter deals with how the balance and understanding of individuality and universality become a way of life in what we call Zen (soto style) today. It is error to focus on only one part. Both must be engaged, relative and absolute must be engaged, and in the engagement, find a robust way of living.
Okumura’s final translation for Genjokoan is “to answer the question from true reality through the practice of our everyday activity.”
So the hook for me in this is that the experience of myself as an intersection between the material world and the universal/non dual world has been something I have felt in my bones for a long time. It is what has driven me to be a spiritual seeker since I was a teenager. It has developed and matured in me over many years and it was only 4 years ago that I learned about Buddhism and found out that people have been writing about my feeling for a few thousand years…imagine my surprise!
