The one about Delusion and Enlightenment

You ever heard the one about delusion and enlightenment not being separate? That the solution is in the problem, the medicine is in the poison, that you can only make peace with an enemy, etc, etc. I think I've heard it about 100 times. It's the old lotus in muddy water one.

But reading about enlightenment in Hee-Jin Kim's commentary, it landed a little differently, with some freshness.

This is from Ch. 1 A Shattered Mirror, A Fallen Flower. The book is Dogen On Meditation and Thinking: A Reflection On His View of Zen.

So he says:

Before I move to another closely related aspect of the subject matter under investigation, let me state, as a reminder, that what I have been concerned with in this chapter is the nature and dynamics of realization in Dogen's Zen, with special emphasis on delusion in the nonduality of delusion and enlightenment. It is fair to say that, in Zen religion and scholarship, enlightenment has more often than not overshadowed delusion despite Zen's insistence on their nonduality. This lopsided view has unwittingly led to the aggrandizement and indulgence of enlightenment in one way or another.

I quote that to say that I'm still carrying some idea that enlightenment is something separate from my moments of suffering, or moments of delusion. Like, whatever it is- it ain't this, this thing that's happening that I don't like, or this thing I'm saying or doing that I don't like. And I think Dogen is saying it's not separate from enlightenment, that it might even be essential to enlightenment. Is he saying it is enlightenment? That's a question for you guys cus' I don't know.

What landed differently was a Dogen quote I've heard a few times.

The one who falls because of the ground rises always because of the very ground

As a dude who falls down a lot, this resonated. I physically fall down quite a bit, tripping over stumps hidden in a sloping redwood forest, or catching my toe while running down hill and totally eating it. And of course there's the "Falling down" I do in speech, and in mind. And hardly ever while the wind is knocked out of me do I remember the words "By this humiliation I shall be enlightened."

So I don't know. What do you think?

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Submitted October 30, 2018 at 10:42PM by Gocloudrunwater https://ift.tt/2yKhrwC