My dear reader, forgive me for what is most likely a projection. I am loath to admit it but often when poetry begins some prose piece that I am to read, I do little more than skim it. I have never even read through all of the poems that begin Nietzsche’s The Gay Science. Please do not gasp too loudly—I know I’m a terrible human being. So, please do not be like me. Please read these selections (and ideally the…
“When the water is deep, the boat rides high. When there is much mud, the Buddha is large.” —Dōgen, “The Indestructible Nature in Deep Muddy Water” in the Eihei Kōroku “Know thyself” is the fairly famous injunction inscribed overhead at Apollo’s temple at Delphi. The meaning of this may be less obvious than it seems, but regardless of how it was intended, we can read it in different ways depending on what we understand by “knowing” and what we…
It seems to me that my life, like surely many people’s lives, resembles the trajectory of modernism to postmodernism (to post-postmodernism?). That is, like many people, when I was a child everything was imbued with a robust intrinsic identity and meaning, both of which could be definitively and determinedly known. One of the most obvious examples of this was the faith in the near omniscience of my parents, and once in school and out of the house, in that of…
Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of sentience,… Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer. (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus,…
In “Continuous Practice, Part I,” Dōgen writes: In the continuous practice of the way of buddha ancestors, do not be concerned about whether you are a great or a modest hermit, whether you are brilliant or dull. Just forsake name and gain forever and don’t be bound by myriad conditions. Do not waste the passing time. Brush off the fire on top of your head. Do not wait for great enlightenment, as great enlightenment is the tea and rice of…
I have suffered death since 3— Grandmother’s open casket— casting a shadow on everything since I have suffered the death of insects—some drowned, some squashed many on their backs refusing to go gently I have suffered the death of animals, some by my hand— both accidental and with tear-shuddering compassion— some on the vet’s table some on the bathroom floor all struggling, gasping: suffering. I have suffered the dying of family, never death itself, that moment. The hospital bed. The…
There is a special class of knowledge or wisdom that we might call insight or realization. This comes in a variety of forms and degrees. For example, someone tells you how scary it is to be in the water when someone spots a shark. You’ve been afraid before, you’ve been in the ocean before, so you think you have a pretty good idea of what that must be like. But you don’t really realize what it’s like until you’ve been…
Meditation, particularly in the tradition of Dōgen, is the paradigm for single-pointed activity. Whether you follow your breath or “just sit,” openly aware of the present moment in its entirety, Dōgen makes clear that you are not to judge whatever arises as good or bad. And when thoughts, images, desires, etc., arise, you let them go and return to the “object” of meditation. In so doing you are contributing to the re-habituation of your mind, getting “better” at letting go…
Satori (enlightenment?) on the cushion in all of its ineffability is said to be single-pointed; a dissolution of the self and all selves. But such dissolution could not be the way of lived enlightenment practice off the cushion. For otherwise in your attempt to be compassionate activity in the world, you would be no better off than the perverse skeptic who refuses to avoid the pitfall because he’s convinced his senses cannot be trusted. Nevertheless, off the cushion, there is…
In Dōgen’s “Genjō-Kōan” fascicle of the Shōbōgenzō, he writes: When you see forms or hear sounds fully engaging body-and-mind, you intuit dharmas intimately. Unlike things and their reflections in the mirror, and unlike the moon and its reflection in the water, when one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. I would venture to say that part of the value of Dōgen’s writing, like that of many good poems and prose, is that it is open to multiple readings…