In very poetic language below, using many Buddhist images, Master Dogen is expressing a taste of the deep inter-connection of all the world and all beings.
Well, recently someone in our Sangha wrote of a similar taste, but expressed in modern, ordinary language. Don’t let the “daily life” packaging, and references to “e-mail” “the tv” “applesause” and the “kitchen floor” make it seem less. I find each expressing something that is not two … (Thank you, K) …
So, as I’m sitting here typing this message, trying to concentrate onwhat I’m feeling and to translate that feeling into words, I, mycomputer, my office, my feelings, my mind working, and the words I hearin my head are all a part of something whole which would not be wholewithout any of those things. And, when I get an email from work withsome task for me to complete, and that email distracts me, andirritation arises, and the sound of my kids watching TV too loud andbanging around upstairs distracts me, and irritation arises, the chimeof that arriving email, my kids, the sound of the TV, the sound of thebanging, my own mind which constructs distraction and irritation, allare a part of something whole which would not be whole without any ofthose things. And that something whole would be whole with or withoutany of those things, and it will still be whole one millisecond laterwhen conditions have changed. And while all of those things areinterdependent, as the irritation is dependent on the distraction whichis dependent on the sound of the arriving email which is dependent onthe person who sent the email etc etc, yet these things are all a partof something whole which includes everything, indeed IS everything?
AsI was standing in my kitchen eating a bowl of cinnamon applesaucestaring at the counter and the barstools and the tile floor, thinking”How is this barstool me?”, a dropping of thinking and a widening ofawareness led to a view of that single moment where me standing therein my kitchen eating a bowl of cinnamon applesauce staring at thecounter and the barstools and the tile floor was one completeunhindered whole that contained all elements, and my conception of “me”was just another barstool, so to speak, and the reality was thetotality of everything at once, outside of time or place or frame ofreference.
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When one displays the buddhamudra with one's whole body and mind, sitting upright in this samadhi even fora short time, everything in the entire dharma world becomes buddha mudra, andall space in the universe completely becomes enlightenment.Therefore, itenables buddha-tathagatas to increase the dharma joy of their own originalgrounds and renew the adornment of the way of awakening. Simultaneously, allliving beings of the dharma world in the ten directions and six realms becomeclear and pure in body and mind, realize great emancipation, and their ownoriginal face appears. At that time, all things together awaken to supremeenlightenment and utilize the buddha-body, immediately go beyond the culminationof awakening, and sit upright under the kingly bodhi tree. At the same time,they turn the incomparable, great dharma wheel and begin expressing ultimateand unfabricated profound prajna.
From:Talk on the Wholehearted Practice of the Way -Kosho Uchiyama (with Shohaku Okumura, Taigen Daniel Leighton)
(remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells;
a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended)
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