I put Dogen's audiobook back on while walking, and wanted to post these highlights:
Dogen's use of what he called "intimate language," like the words and turning phrases of the buddha ancestors who came before him, is rooted in the nondual experience of realization. It is intended to help students yield the grip of linear, discriminative thinking and turn the mind toward an understanding of things as they truly are. Creative and virtuosic in this regard, he may be Zen's greatest precontemporary postmodern deconstructionist elucidator of the way.
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The ability to leap beyond dualistic thinking during zazen is fundamental to Dogen Zen. It is due to the wholehearted, all-inclusive nature of the activity, but we should look at this carefully to be sure we discern his meaning. As taught by Dogen, meditation does not lead to enlightenment. In fact, there is no distance of any kind between meditation and enlightenment. There is not even a seperation between one's aspiration to realize the self and that very realization. According to Dogen, from the very first moment of establishing the meditation posture, no bridge is necessary; practice is full realization, and full realization is practice. As he says, "Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment, and nirvana, there is not a moment's gap."
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Dogen wrote: "Know that fundamentally you do not lack unsurpassed enlightenment; you are replete with it continuously. But you may not realize it and may be in the habit of arousing discriminatory views and regarding them as real.
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For those who do practice zazen, or who might like to establish a meditation practice, Dogen offers encouragement and guidance. In addition to the instructions he provides in "Rules for Zazen," in the fascicile "King of Samadhis," in Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, he writes, "Like the sun illuminating and refreshing the world, this sitting removes obscurities from the mind and lightens the body so that exhaustion is set aside."
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Dogen: "Pure practice of mind is a gate of realizing dharma; it keeps the mind from the three types of poison [greed, aggression, and ignorance of oneness]. Compassion is a gate of realizing dharma; it encompasses wholesome roots in all realms of birth. Mindfulness of giving is a gate of realizing dharma; it makes you free from wanting a reward. Right skillful means is a gate of realizing dharma; it embodies right action.
"Intimacy" then, means non-dual. It is another word for original wholeness. To clarify the point so that there is no confusion: the fact of oneness does not imply that we do not have personal lives, each with individual attributes. Oneness does not deny individuality in any form; it makes it possible. Without the nondual functioning of oneness, nothing could exist.
Lastly,
There is the singlefold prajna: unsurpassable, complete enlightenment, actualized at this very moment. There is the manifestation of the threefold prajna: the past, present, and future. There is the sixfold [great element] prajna: earth, water, fire, air, space, and consciousness. And there is the fourfold [bodily posture] prajna: walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, common in daily activities.
Submitted July 11, 2017 at 10:06PM by Dillon123 http://ift.tt/2ufkUCN
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