Raoulfrkannon
The Force is Strong With This One
Hi everyone, I've been rereading the 4th essay from Dogen’s Shobogenzo recently, and would like to share it with you, as it has contributed greatly (in fact, the whole book has) to my own knowledge and understanding. The Shobogenzo is a pretty large collection of essays by Eihei Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen Buddhism, ranging from philosophy to organisational matters. The 4th essay is an exposition of one of my favourite expressions (in fact it’s in my forum signature) from that particular tradition: “The whole universe in all ten directions is just the one bright pearl.”
I have some interpretations of it based on how we in this community may understand the world through the work in knowledge and understanding being done here. I would like to share these interpretations with you, and get some back and forth going on it. So far, I have only written down some comments on the first few paragraphs, and I became a little concerned it might not in the end be to the tastes of those on this research forum! Reason being, that, empathetically, and also I will admit simply having fun, I ended up emulating the zen-style of the original text. Thus, at points it may come across as deliberately obfuscating.
Now, I haven’t been around here long enough to ask you to trust me I’m not trying to be, so instead I’ll just offer this: consider penetrating the less clear parts as a way to actually discover for yourself instead of simply being told something: there are things that cannot just be told, there is a great deal to be learned that cannot be contained in sentences, but has to be experienced. This does not not discount the possibility of learning through sentences though (i.e., not simply learning what the sentence says but learning something else from contending with it), much like we learn through matter (which also is not the thing itself that we must learn). On the other hand though, I am sharing this simply for the possibility it might help people in some way understand something or other, so if you do have a question about what I meant, then please ask and I’ll try and parse it out better. I am of course very interested in any of your own reflections, not only on what I have to say, but also on the original essay.
So here’s the plan, I’ll share the first bits of what I’ve written so far, and if it doesn’t work so well then no harm done, I’ll just continue without an eye to posting it all here. Essentially, I’m just enjoying myself writing these comments, and there’s a possibility others might benefit from them, so here they are.
A few notes:
- You can read the whole essay here (thezensite: The Complete Shobogenzo), though there are different translations. It’s quite short. If you’re interested please go off and read it, don’t wait around for me!
- I will, though, be providing the entire thing through quotes, as the comments go along.
- Capitalisations of phrases indicate a particular way of expressing the absolute One. In the first quote only, I've popped an asterisk on the end to make it clear, so you can get used to it.
- At least in the beginning, Dogen is commenting on a story, so my comments will be comments on comments, aah!
Without further ado...
On ‘The One Bright Pearl’
“Without Its being hooked”: A hook is a kind of claw, and to hooking there is a kind of clawing at, a reaching and a desiring. At the very least, there is, with hooking, a baiting, a tempting, a catching, and a killing. This is the case both literally and figuratively. This hooking is similar also to grasping. To grasping there is gripping and holding, and not giving. This is also the case literally as well as figuratively, when we grasp with the understanding. By attempting to hook the Golden Fish, the Truth, you will bring up a corpse. You will not hook the Truth, and likewise you will never grasp It. This is because the truth is the river as well as the fish, and also the movement of both. That is to say, it is the space of the being, the being, and also the becoming. Try and grasp the River, and what you hold onto will not be It.
This being so, yet how many of us, all the time, are in a way clawing at the truth, trying to hook it, catch it, grasp it? Perhaps we should make sure that, in our moving to learn and grow, we are free from this attitude, that there is no seeking to grasp or to hold [on to], or to keep on to or to get at anything [for ourselves].
The Truth, as the One, is ultimately inseparable, it cannot be separated into Truth and Oneself, into Concept, Conceptualised, and Conceiver. If there is a Seeker and a Sought, if there is an Experience and the Experienced, there is not One. It must be another way, it must be found beyond finding, because by trying to find it we thereby affirm we do not already have it, that is, it is beyond being found. But, as the absolute, it is is always already “ours”, as we are It.
Another Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, said: “Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened persons, only enlightened activity.” What this means is that, if you picture the truth as 1. something that 2. you will one day 3. know, as you know other myriad things in this manifested world, then you may even find it, but it will not be It, it will be a dead fish, or at least a silver one, but never the Golden Fish that Shibi found - or rather, that found Shibi. Really, they found each other, in a manner unmarked by any finding at all.
Put simply: Reality is not “Reality” - it is free from all grasping with what we know as thought, free from all hooking with concepts. This is because our thoughts are not yet the thoughts that comprise the true reality, but imitations, shadows of the shadows we perceive. In an ironic twist, the very things we hold against the physical, our thoughts, are in a sense still on the same side as physicality. The thoughts of higher densities are not the same stuff as our thoughts, our propositions, statements, analyses, etc.. Relatively speaking, our thoughts are still very physical. Our thoughts are as limited as scientific instruments, and the Whole is outside their scope. Our thoughts are predicated on predication, which rends apart that which is predicated from what it is predicated of being.
I’m sorry I can’t remember where, but I think Nietzsche said, “That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts,” and also “There is always a kind of violence putting something into words.” This violence is the violence of the fishing hooks of concepts. If you can free yourself of all your own hooks, and shake off those of others that you have been caught in, only then will it be possible for the Golden Fish, which is just Yourself, to, without you anticipating it, leap into your boat also. This is not a recommendation to keep silent, but a recommendation to listen to the silent centre which is circumscribed by words in speaking, the silence that comes to be known through the speaking, the Source.
"Awakening to the ceaseless fluctuations of the floating world" is a Buddhist way of speaking about the moment one comes to understand in one’s being that the Seen world we occupy in 3rd density is quite unreal, while if anything can be said to truly be real, it is the Unseen. How so? Well, we can look at this excerpt from Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum on animal perception, provided by Laura in The Wave Chapter 6:
Is this passage not describing how what we think of as time is just the way for a lower dimensional to experience the higher dimension? When seeing 2-dimensionally, a 3rd dimensional property can only be seen as a 2-dimensional property changing through “time.”
But then, is not also the crumbling of a house over the years as perceived by a human being, just the same kind of thing as this changing of the house the horse perceives as it walks around it, only transposed up a dimension? The horse does not perceive the single house bearing angles which we perceive, it perceives some shaped thing at one time, and another shaped thing the next. We can see that those two different things are actually one thing the horse never quite sees - the house. And yet, though we see one thing where the horse sees two, we still do see two things ourselves: the house and its ruin, years later. But... is this not only the same illusion the horse suffers, to see two when there is one, only of a higher order?
This is the meaning of the “fluctuating world” in the text: all worldly fluctuations in time, not just the ones Ouspensky describes for animals, even the ones to us, such as decay, even being born and dying, are like those he describes for the animal. That is, they are just a way to perceive what from a higher dimensional perspective are constant properties. Our perception of a seed and a tree being different things is just like the horse’s perception of a house being two different things (from some one thing which bears what we are able to know as simply different angles), one changing into the other, neither of them what we see as a house. Our perceiving the movement of the clouds through the sky is just like Ouspensky's animal perceiving oscillations of the circle when looking at a sphere. From a higher level of awareness, there are no such fluctuations.
Here we are already laying the groundwork for understanding the phrase of the essay, “the whole universe is just the one bright pearl.” If you wish to start thinking in 4th and 5th, as the C’s suggested, you could try playing around shifting and wiggling your consciousness until you can start seeing the full cup of water and the empty cup after you poured it into another cup, as all the one thing, and your seeing the water go from one cup to another, making a change through time, was actually you just “walking around” some other thing which wasn’t actually changing at all, just like the horse walking around the house. Or when you watch the clouds move across the sky, imagine there is simply one thing rotating, and you are seeing different facets of it.
In this way, we can say as a preparation for the pearl phrase: the whole of the universe is just the one bright diamond. Because, it is all already complete, it is just that on our level of awareness, to see different facets of the diamond, we perceive two of its facets as two different things, instead of seeing them as the one diamond. The old analogy of waves being just the sea is pertinent here - all life and death is life and death of waves on the sea, it is only the appearances that come and go, one wave and the next, but the water is constant. Another route to understanding this is through the seasons. The coming and going of the cherry blossoms in Spring: the petals of one year die and never return. Except every year, they are always the same cherry blossoms. This is the cyclical nature of time. Time is just the rotation of the Diamond. It is this way so that, even though we cannot see the diamond all at once, due to our limited awareness, we can still learn it: every facet of the diamond is like a part of the elephant in the story of the blind men. We only have 2 hands, so we can’t touch every part at the same time, so we have to walk around it, or it has to walk around us, for us to get the whole picture. Furthermore, when we learn more of the diamond/elephant, we can touch more of it, we gain more “hands.” This is the purpose of time: that, while we have limited awareness, limited hands to touch the elephant, it allows us to still touch each part of the elephant, one at a time. When we learn more of the elephant thanks to this, then eventually we will learn to other ways of knowing it, until we no longer need to walk around it, no longer need time.
Another aspect is: when we make conscious choices which result in a certain change, into a certain future, we are actually just walking, 4-dimensionally. We can watch the snail in the garden go left or right, and if he goes left, he sees a leaf. If he goes right, he never sees the leaf. To the snail, the leaf never happened. To us, it was always there. This must be what it’s like to watch us from a higher density. When the C’s talk about probabilities of various futures happening, they’re just looking at the garden terrain, and seeing how likely it is we’ll walk into the leaf or not, thus making the leaf “real,” because until it comes within our horizon it’s just a “possibility.”
Back to the current paragraph from the essay: these fluctuations are named as “ceaseless fluctuations of the floating world.” They are ceaseless because, as long as you experience time, there is time for you to experience. They are of the floating world because this world we are in is a floating one. Why floating? Well, where is it situated? In space? Where is the whole of space situated? Where are the worlds of our dreams situated? They are just floating, look around you and see it floating. Look around you and see the ceaseless floating fluctuations, but know that it is still, eternity.
How many of us has, does, and will have deep realisations “upon stubbing our toe on a rock”? Sometimes the toe is even our whole body, sometimes its just the face. And sometimes the rock is a friend of ours, and sometimes the rock is a book or even a single sentence. Sometimes, the toe and the rock really are just a toe and rock, like it was for Shibi! It’s all just learning.
This being so, we should take care to notice each time we learn from stubbing our toe on a rock, that the stubbing is indeed the learning, while at the same time what we learn is beyond both the toe and the rock.
Also, we should not to be afraid of stubbing our toes!
And yet, understanding this, nor should we necessarily then go out to find a rock to stub our toe on! This is because, if Shibi had been looking for rocks to stub his toe on, i.e. anticipating, instead of simply going out to find a master, then there wouldn’t have been this Stubbing His Toe On A Rock, which is his successfully Finding A Master anyway! The master, the teacher, being all of existence, which he found with his toe.
In fact, thanks to a small fortuity of grammar, this phrase, “Finding a master” (which is the same as Finding (Knowing) Thyself, because the Master is not only the All of the Existence, but also the Self) we can hearken to the constancy, to how the beginning, the middle, and the end, are all the same One. How? Because we can read the phrase ‘finding a master’ both as 1. ‘being in the process of finding a master, not yet having found him’, and 2. ‘finally finding the master, having found him’, in the same sentence. Shibi’s “finding a master” was for a time his walking, and for a time his stubbing his toe on a rock, it was for a time his being born, and for a time his dying, and all along it will have just been his finding a master, him finding himself.
So, in the end, we do not really need to worry about finding a master, our self, at all, because ultimately our finding ourselves (the process) is just our finding ourselves (the completion), and vice versa. It is just that, for a time, we just experience “finding a master.” And, in time, we will certainly find him (ourselves - the One).
There is a time of stubbing our toes on rocks. During this time of stubbing toes on rocks, we might even need to, like Shibi, “go out to find a master.” But this is just learning in experience, discovery, which is why we enter the world, why we enter time, because learning is changing, becoming, even if it is just us becoming who we always already are, this must happen in “time.” We might say that we enter the world to enact this finding a master, we enter the world to stub our toes on its rocks. We might also say that the whole earth is a rock that the One Mind stubs Its toe on. All of us are just the toes of Its One Body. The One stubs Each One of us on the earth, on matter, in time. Its stubs Its infinite toes, us, through our stubbing our ten little toes in time. Our stubbing our little toes is Its stubbing Its big toes. Fractal toes.
This fractality is not limited to toes, because if you zoom into the toe, you will come out at the rock, and if you zoom into the rock, you will find yourself at the toe again. Why? Shibi says “This body has no independent existence.” This is because: the rock is just earth, and the toe also is just earth. How could the toe stub itself on the rock, if they were not both an earthly matter? Furthermore, how can a toe stub itself on a rock while remaining separate from it, while remaining separate also from the time itself of the stubbing? They could not. This is to say: How can separation appear if there is not unity? If we penetrate this, we can see how really there is no toe, or rock, nor even the time of stubbing. No two or three things, just one. Another way to put this is: our learning, this stubbing our toe on a rock, whatever the toe or the rock may be, is just like a mirror polishing itself with itself. You reading these words on the screen right this moment, in which nothing is missing, (is there anything at all missing from existence right now?) is also just a mirror polishing itself with itself. The toe is dependent on the rock, and the rock is dependent on the toe. Likewise with ‘Heaven’ and ‘Earth’.
This should reassure us also, because all this occurring of many things through time is after all only for the time being. Stubbing your toe on a rock occurs for the time that you are stubbing your toe on a rock. And once you no longer need to stub your toe on a rock, you no longer need the time to do it either. We are here because we need to stub our toe on a rock over and over until we organise the information packet, until we realise Stubbing Our Toe on a Rock. Then we can move on, but eventually we will realise the movement was just because of our limited awareness, and that all is already complete, inevitably. Once we have stubbed all our toes on all the rocks, then we will naturally grow out of the time of stubbing also.
What is it that Shibi says when he stubs his toe on a rock here? Where is the pain coming from? Can we say that the pain is coming from the mind? The pain is also coming from the toe. The pain is also coming from the rock. How else could there be pain in the toe, how else could there be pain in the mind? There are no trees without seeds, and there is no complete without the incomplete and completing. But, when it comes to the absolute, inevitably it always already is complete, so the completing is just a perspective, our perspective.
We are with these indications perhaps approaching the one bright pearl, but there is still a ways to go yet.
Seppou asking Shibi, “Is this Shibi the Austere Monk?” is his answer to the question, “So where is the pain coming from?”
He answers the question with a question because he seeks to bring the questioning to a head, and then cut it off. People might think that to end questioning you have to answer the question. But really, all answers lead to more questions. You will never find the final answer. Seppou uses questioning to put an end to questioning and answering, which arise together. Seppou does not answer “Where from?” with a “where”, and Shibi does not answer “Is this?” with a “Yes it is,” or a “No it isn’t.”
What does he say instead? That he has never dared to deceive anyone that he is Shibi. And yet we are taking Him as such right now. Why is this? Because we are in the process of finding a master, It appears as Him, as a master. Because we are asking a question, It gives us an answer. Because It arise as our toes, It arises as a rock also. Remember that this It is the One Mind. It is us who deceive ourselves of the existence of a Shibi other than ourselves. There is no Shibi besides ourselves. Nevertheless Shibi appears besides ourselves. When two people are beside each other, make no mistake, they are only beside themselves. If we say that we are all One, that when there appears an Other besides us, that we are only ever beside ourselves, then Festus might agree in another sense that we are beside ourselves, but that much learning doth make us mad, but that is only because he has not learned yet. Are you able to see that there is no second person? No second thing at all, no toe or rock?
And so, “Where is the pain coming from?” Is it the mind? And yet, that is to make of the mind a thing, which is not where the pain is coming from, that is just another thing in a endless list. Things and their causes are just like questions and their answers, never-ending. If we say the pain comes from the mind, then we must ask where does the mind come from. That is what we really mean, but That can never be known, because it is itself the source of knowing and the known.
So, instead, Seppou’s response whips right around the hook of the question, like it was just air and not a hook (which kills, like lower human reason, what it touches), without even parrying it, straight to the heart. If the question “Where is the pain coming from?” is truly seeking the source, then it can never hit its target, because it is that very mind which thrusts forth the question, the hook, and it will be the same mind which parries it. The mind will never be struck that way. So, instead, Seppou turns the blade around. Seppou kills Shibi without pain by pointing at the painless, with the painless, that is to say, with his Mind. For where the pain comes from is ultimately without that pain, is the painless (mu 無 - without). This is how you strike the mind. This is how you use words, how you use questioning to get to the heart. It is like striking a bell to make a hidden one resonate, this using of words to go beyond their limits. It is the same use that the ethereal itself puts to the physical.
When questioning and answering is like this, it is named in the essay: “expressing the Matter thus”. The ‘Matter’ means the Great Matter, which is the Great Work of realisation. Shibi expresses it fully when he says he has never deceived anyone that he is Shibi, because, though the One ultimately is not Shibi, being unlimited, it also is ultimately not not-Shibi either, being unlimited. If he said simply “There is no Shibi,” like Zennists go around saying “I have realised no-self”, Seppou would just slap him in the face.
For as long as those who need to perceive It as Shibi, they will perceive Him as such, but that is just their own deception. It is never deceived nor is it deceiving. This means you also are never truly deceived. It is just that for the time that you have toes, you also have rocks, for the time you have questions, you also have answers, for the time you have a separate self, there are other separate selves besides, such as Shibi. If the seed is to grow into a tree, it cannot perceive how it is already the tree, otherwise it would not bother growing.
And we’ll end there with a quote from the transcripts which I feel is relevant to the preceding comments:
So, if this inspires any of your own dieas, and if you guys are interested in more, then let me know and I’ll update the thread as I go through the essay, since we've only done four paragraphs so far!
I have some interpretations of it based on how we in this community may understand the world through the work in knowledge and understanding being done here. I would like to share these interpretations with you, and get some back and forth going on it. So far, I have only written down some comments on the first few paragraphs, and I became a little concerned it might not in the end be to the tastes of those on this research forum! Reason being, that, empathetically, and also I will admit simply having fun, I ended up emulating the zen-style of the original text. Thus, at points it may come across as deliberately obfuscating.
Now, I haven’t been around here long enough to ask you to trust me I’m not trying to be, so instead I’ll just offer this: consider penetrating the less clear parts as a way to actually discover for yourself instead of simply being told something: there are things that cannot just be told, there is a great deal to be learned that cannot be contained in sentences, but has to be experienced. This does not not discount the possibility of learning through sentences though (i.e., not simply learning what the sentence says but learning something else from contending with it), much like we learn through matter (which also is not the thing itself that we must learn). On the other hand though, I am sharing this simply for the possibility it might help people in some way understand something or other, so if you do have a question about what I meant, then please ask and I’ll try and parse it out better. I am of course very interested in any of your own reflections, not only on what I have to say, but also on the original essay.
So here’s the plan, I’ll share the first bits of what I’ve written so far, and if it doesn’t work so well then no harm done, I’ll just continue without an eye to posting it all here. Essentially, I’m just enjoying myself writing these comments, and there’s a possibility others might benefit from them, so here they are.
A few notes:
- You can read the whole essay here (thezensite: The Complete Shobogenzo), though there are different translations. It’s quite short. If you’re interested please go off and read it, don’t wait around for me!
- I will, though, be providing the entire thing through quotes, as the comments go along.
- Capitalisations of phrases indicate a particular way of expressing the absolute One. In the first quote only, I've popped an asterisk on the end to make it clear, so you can get used to it.
- At least in the beginning, Dogen is commenting on a story, so my comments will be comments on comments, aah!
Without further ado...
On ‘The One Bright Pearl’
“Without Its being hooked”: A hook is a kind of claw, and to hooking there is a kind of clawing at, a reaching and a desiring. At the very least, there is, with hooking, a baiting, a tempting, a catching, and a killing. This is the case both literally and figuratively. This hooking is similar also to grasping. To grasping there is gripping and holding, and not giving. This is also the case literally as well as figuratively, when we grasp with the understanding. By attempting to hook the Golden Fish, the Truth, you will bring up a corpse. You will not hook the Truth, and likewise you will never grasp It. This is because the truth is the river as well as the fish, and also the movement of both. That is to say, it is the space of the being, the being, and also the becoming. Try and grasp the River, and what you hold onto will not be It.
This being so, yet how many of us, all the time, are in a way clawing at the truth, trying to hook it, catch it, grasp it? Perhaps we should make sure that, in our moving to learn and grow, we are free from this attitude, that there is no seeking to grasp or to hold [on to], or to keep on to or to get at anything [for ourselves].
The Truth, as the One, is ultimately inseparable, it cannot be separated into Truth and Oneself, into Concept, Conceptualised, and Conceiver. If there is a Seeker and a Sought, if there is an Experience and the Experienced, there is not One. It must be another way, it must be found beyond finding, because by trying to find it we thereby affirm we do not already have it, that is, it is beyond being found. But, as the absolute, it is is always already “ours”, as we are It.
Another Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, said: “Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened persons, only enlightened activity.” What this means is that, if you picture the truth as 1. something that 2. you will one day 3. know, as you know other myriad things in this manifested world, then you may even find it, but it will not be It, it will be a dead fish, or at least a silver one, but never the Golden Fish that Shibi found - or rather, that found Shibi. Really, they found each other, in a manner unmarked by any finding at all.
Put simply: Reality is not “Reality” - it is free from all grasping with what we know as thought, free from all hooking with concepts. This is because our thoughts are not yet the thoughts that comprise the true reality, but imitations, shadows of the shadows we perceive. In an ironic twist, the very things we hold against the physical, our thoughts, are in a sense still on the same side as physicality. The thoughts of higher densities are not the same stuff as our thoughts, our propositions, statements, analyses, etc.. Relatively speaking, our thoughts are still very physical. Our thoughts are as limited as scientific instruments, and the Whole is outside their scope. Our thoughts are predicated on predication, which rends apart that which is predicated from what it is predicated of being.
I’m sorry I can’t remember where, but I think Nietzsche said, “That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts,” and also “There is always a kind of violence putting something into words.” This violence is the violence of the fishing hooks of concepts. If you can free yourself of all your own hooks, and shake off those of others that you have been caught in, only then will it be possible for the Golden Fish, which is just Yourself, to, without you anticipating it, leap into your boat also. This is not a recommendation to keep silent, but a recommendation to listen to the silent centre which is circumscribed by words in speaking, the silence that comes to be known through the speaking, the Source.
"Awakening to the ceaseless fluctuations of the floating world" is a Buddhist way of speaking about the moment one comes to understand in one’s being that the Seen world we occupy in 3rd density is quite unreal, while if anything can be said to truly be real, it is the Unseen. How so? Well, we can look at this excerpt from Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum on animal perception, provided by Laura in The Wave Chapter 6:
Is this passage not describing how what we think of as time is just the way for a lower dimensional to experience the higher dimension? When seeing 2-dimensionally, a 3rd dimensional property can only be seen as a 2-dimensional property changing through “time.”
But then, is not also the crumbling of a house over the years as perceived by a human being, just the same kind of thing as this changing of the house the horse perceives as it walks around it, only transposed up a dimension? The horse does not perceive the single house bearing angles which we perceive, it perceives some shaped thing at one time, and another shaped thing the next. We can see that those two different things are actually one thing the horse never quite sees - the house. And yet, though we see one thing where the horse sees two, we still do see two things ourselves: the house and its ruin, years later. But... is this not only the same illusion the horse suffers, to see two when there is one, only of a higher order?
This is the meaning of the “fluctuating world” in the text: all worldly fluctuations in time, not just the ones Ouspensky describes for animals, even the ones to us, such as decay, even being born and dying, are like those he describes for the animal. That is, they are just a way to perceive what from a higher dimensional perspective are constant properties. Our perception of a seed and a tree being different things is just like the horse’s perception of a house being two different things (from some one thing which bears what we are able to know as simply different angles), one changing into the other, neither of them what we see as a house. Our perceiving the movement of the clouds through the sky is just like Ouspensky's animal perceiving oscillations of the circle when looking at a sphere. From a higher level of awareness, there are no such fluctuations.
Here we are already laying the groundwork for understanding the phrase of the essay, “the whole universe is just the one bright pearl.” If you wish to start thinking in 4th and 5th, as the C’s suggested, you could try playing around shifting and wiggling your consciousness until you can start seeing the full cup of water and the empty cup after you poured it into another cup, as all the one thing, and your seeing the water go from one cup to another, making a change through time, was actually you just “walking around” some other thing which wasn’t actually changing at all, just like the horse walking around the house. Or when you watch the clouds move across the sky, imagine there is simply one thing rotating, and you are seeing different facets of it.
In this way, we can say as a preparation for the pearl phrase: the whole of the universe is just the one bright diamond. Because, it is all already complete, it is just that on our level of awareness, to see different facets of the diamond, we perceive two of its facets as two different things, instead of seeing them as the one diamond. The old analogy of waves being just the sea is pertinent here - all life and death is life and death of waves on the sea, it is only the appearances that come and go, one wave and the next, but the water is constant. Another route to understanding this is through the seasons. The coming and going of the cherry blossoms in Spring: the petals of one year die and never return. Except every year, they are always the same cherry blossoms. This is the cyclical nature of time. Time is just the rotation of the Diamond. It is this way so that, even though we cannot see the diamond all at once, due to our limited awareness, we can still learn it: every facet of the diamond is like a part of the elephant in the story of the blind men. We only have 2 hands, so we can’t touch every part at the same time, so we have to walk around it, or it has to walk around us, for us to get the whole picture. Furthermore, when we learn more of the diamond/elephant, we can touch more of it, we gain more “hands.” This is the purpose of time: that, while we have limited awareness, limited hands to touch the elephant, it allows us to still touch each part of the elephant, one at a time. When we learn more of the elephant thanks to this, then eventually we will learn to other ways of knowing it, until we no longer need to walk around it, no longer need time.
Another aspect is: when we make conscious choices which result in a certain change, into a certain future, we are actually just walking, 4-dimensionally. We can watch the snail in the garden go left or right, and if he goes left, he sees a leaf. If he goes right, he never sees the leaf. To the snail, the leaf never happened. To us, it was always there. This must be what it’s like to watch us from a higher density. When the C’s talk about probabilities of various futures happening, they’re just looking at the garden terrain, and seeing how likely it is we’ll walk into the leaf or not, thus making the leaf “real,” because until it comes within our horizon it’s just a “possibility.”
Back to the current paragraph from the essay: these fluctuations are named as “ceaseless fluctuations of the floating world.” They are ceaseless because, as long as you experience time, there is time for you to experience. They are of the floating world because this world we are in is a floating one. Why floating? Well, where is it situated? In space? Where is the whole of space situated? Where are the worlds of our dreams situated? They are just floating, look around you and see it floating. Look around you and see the ceaseless floating fluctuations, but know that it is still, eternity.
How many of us has, does, and will have deep realisations “upon stubbing our toe on a rock”? Sometimes the toe is even our whole body, sometimes its just the face. And sometimes the rock is a friend of ours, and sometimes the rock is a book or even a single sentence. Sometimes, the toe and the rock really are just a toe and rock, like it was for Shibi! It’s all just learning.
This being so, we should take care to notice each time we learn from stubbing our toe on a rock, that the stubbing is indeed the learning, while at the same time what we learn is beyond both the toe and the rock.
Also, we should not to be afraid of stubbing our toes!
And yet, understanding this, nor should we necessarily then go out to find a rock to stub our toe on! This is because, if Shibi had been looking for rocks to stub his toe on, i.e. anticipating, instead of simply going out to find a master, then there wouldn’t have been this Stubbing His Toe On A Rock, which is his successfully Finding A Master anyway! The master, the teacher, being all of existence, which he found with his toe.
In fact, thanks to a small fortuity of grammar, this phrase, “Finding a master” (which is the same as Finding (Knowing) Thyself, because the Master is not only the All of the Existence, but also the Self) we can hearken to the constancy, to how the beginning, the middle, and the end, are all the same One. How? Because we can read the phrase ‘finding a master’ both as 1. ‘being in the process of finding a master, not yet having found him’, and 2. ‘finally finding the master, having found him’, in the same sentence. Shibi’s “finding a master” was for a time his walking, and for a time his stubbing his toe on a rock, it was for a time his being born, and for a time his dying, and all along it will have just been his finding a master, him finding himself.
So, in the end, we do not really need to worry about finding a master, our self, at all, because ultimately our finding ourselves (the process) is just our finding ourselves (the completion), and vice versa. It is just that, for a time, we just experience “finding a master.” And, in time, we will certainly find him (ourselves - the One).
There is a time of stubbing our toes on rocks. During this time of stubbing toes on rocks, we might even need to, like Shibi, “go out to find a master.” But this is just learning in experience, discovery, which is why we enter the world, why we enter time, because learning is changing, becoming, even if it is just us becoming who we always already are, this must happen in “time.” We might say that we enter the world to enact this finding a master, we enter the world to stub our toes on its rocks. We might also say that the whole earth is a rock that the One Mind stubs Its toe on. All of us are just the toes of Its One Body. The One stubs Each One of us on the earth, on matter, in time. Its stubs Its infinite toes, us, through our stubbing our ten little toes in time. Our stubbing our little toes is Its stubbing Its big toes. Fractal toes.
This fractality is not limited to toes, because if you zoom into the toe, you will come out at the rock, and if you zoom into the rock, you will find yourself at the toe again. Why? Shibi says “This body has no independent existence.” This is because: the rock is just earth, and the toe also is just earth. How could the toe stub itself on the rock, if they were not both an earthly matter? Furthermore, how can a toe stub itself on a rock while remaining separate from it, while remaining separate also from the time itself of the stubbing? They could not. This is to say: How can separation appear if there is not unity? If we penetrate this, we can see how really there is no toe, or rock, nor even the time of stubbing. No two or three things, just one. Another way to put this is: our learning, this stubbing our toe on a rock, whatever the toe or the rock may be, is just like a mirror polishing itself with itself. You reading these words on the screen right this moment, in which nothing is missing, (is there anything at all missing from existence right now?) is also just a mirror polishing itself with itself. The toe is dependent on the rock, and the rock is dependent on the toe. Likewise with ‘Heaven’ and ‘Earth’.
This should reassure us also, because all this occurring of many things through time is after all only for the time being. Stubbing your toe on a rock occurs for the time that you are stubbing your toe on a rock. And once you no longer need to stub your toe on a rock, you no longer need the time to do it either. We are here because we need to stub our toe on a rock over and over until we organise the information packet, until we realise Stubbing Our Toe on a Rock. Then we can move on, but eventually we will realise the movement was just because of our limited awareness, and that all is already complete, inevitably. Once we have stubbed all our toes on all the rocks, then we will naturally grow out of the time of stubbing also.
What is it that Shibi says when he stubs his toe on a rock here? Where is the pain coming from? Can we say that the pain is coming from the mind? The pain is also coming from the toe. The pain is also coming from the rock. How else could there be pain in the toe, how else could there be pain in the mind? There are no trees without seeds, and there is no complete without the incomplete and completing. But, when it comes to the absolute, inevitably it always already is complete, so the completing is just a perspective, our perspective.
We are with these indications perhaps approaching the one bright pearl, but there is still a ways to go yet.
Seppou asking Shibi, “Is this Shibi the Austere Monk?” is his answer to the question, “So where is the pain coming from?”
He answers the question with a question because he seeks to bring the questioning to a head, and then cut it off. People might think that to end questioning you have to answer the question. But really, all answers lead to more questions. You will never find the final answer. Seppou uses questioning to put an end to questioning and answering, which arise together. Seppou does not answer “Where from?” with a “where”, and Shibi does not answer “Is this?” with a “Yes it is,” or a “No it isn’t.”
What does he say instead? That he has never dared to deceive anyone that he is Shibi. And yet we are taking Him as such right now. Why is this? Because we are in the process of finding a master, It appears as Him, as a master. Because we are asking a question, It gives us an answer. Because It arise as our toes, It arises as a rock also. Remember that this It is the One Mind. It is us who deceive ourselves of the existence of a Shibi other than ourselves. There is no Shibi besides ourselves. Nevertheless Shibi appears besides ourselves. When two people are beside each other, make no mistake, they are only beside themselves. If we say that we are all One, that when there appears an Other besides us, that we are only ever beside ourselves, then Festus might agree in another sense that we are beside ourselves, but that much learning doth make us mad, but that is only because he has not learned yet. Are you able to see that there is no second person? No second thing at all, no toe or rock?
And so, “Where is the pain coming from?” Is it the mind? And yet, that is to make of the mind a thing, which is not where the pain is coming from, that is just another thing in a endless list. Things and their causes are just like questions and their answers, never-ending. If we say the pain comes from the mind, then we must ask where does the mind come from. That is what we really mean, but That can never be known, because it is itself the source of knowing and the known.
So, instead, Seppou’s response whips right around the hook of the question, like it was just air and not a hook (which kills, like lower human reason, what it touches), without even parrying it, straight to the heart. If the question “Where is the pain coming from?” is truly seeking the source, then it can never hit its target, because it is that very mind which thrusts forth the question, the hook, and it will be the same mind which parries it. The mind will never be struck that way. So, instead, Seppou turns the blade around. Seppou kills Shibi without pain by pointing at the painless, with the painless, that is to say, with his Mind. For where the pain comes from is ultimately without that pain, is the painless (mu 無 - without). This is how you strike the mind. This is how you use words, how you use questioning to get to the heart. It is like striking a bell to make a hidden one resonate, this using of words to go beyond their limits. It is the same use that the ethereal itself puts to the physical.
When questioning and answering is like this, it is named in the essay: “expressing the Matter thus”. The ‘Matter’ means the Great Matter, which is the Great Work of realisation. Shibi expresses it fully when he says he has never deceived anyone that he is Shibi, because, though the One ultimately is not Shibi, being unlimited, it also is ultimately not not-Shibi either, being unlimited. If he said simply “There is no Shibi,” like Zennists go around saying “I have realised no-self”, Seppou would just slap him in the face.
For as long as those who need to perceive It as Shibi, they will perceive Him as such, but that is just their own deception. It is never deceived nor is it deceiving. This means you also are never truly deceived. It is just that for the time that you have toes, you also have rocks, for the time you have questions, you also have answers, for the time you have a separate self, there are other separate selves besides, such as Shibi. If the seed is to grow into a tree, it cannot perceive how it is already the tree, otherwise it would not bother growing.
And we’ll end there with a quote from the transcripts which I feel is relevant to the preceding comments:
So, if this inspires any of your own dieas, and if you guys are interested in more, then let me know and I’ll update the thread as I go through the essay, since we've only done four paragraphs so far!
The whole universe is a giant, complex arrangement of teachings. in Shingon Buddhism (not Zen) there is even the idea that the whole universe is the body, the literal body, but also the body of teachings, of Vairocana Buddha (i.e., the Cosmic Mind), and Kukai the founder of that sect has an essay on understanding the universe kind of like a text made from Vairocana's body. The word dharma means both phenomena and teaching, which encapsulates how the manyness of the universe are just lessons for the soul.
