{"id":765,"date":"2009-10-14T10:19:56","date_gmt":"2009-10-14T10:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/treeleafzen\/2009\/10\/turn-around-the-light-to-shine.html"},"modified":"2009-10-14T10:19:56","modified_gmt":"2009-10-14T10:19:56","slug":"turn-around-the-light-to-shine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/treeleafzen\/2009\/10\/turn-around-the-light-to-shine.html","title":{"rendered":"Turn around the light to shine within …"},"content":{"rendered":"

( Dogen’s Instructions for the Cook – XIV)<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

In another great early work, Fukanzazengi<\/i>, Dogen writes …<\/p>\n

Put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward<\/b>. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will manifest. <\/font>
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This classic line harken’s back to an image of Zazen by the eighth Zen ancestor in China, Sekito Kisen (8th century), in his Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage<\/i> …

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Turn around the light to shine within, then just return.<\/b>
The vast inconceivable source can’t be faced or turned away from.<\/i><\/div>\n

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Dogen scholar and Soto Priest, Taigen Dan Leighton, offers this perspective …<\/p>\n
[Sekito writes], “Turn around the light to shine within,then just return. . . . Let go of hundreds of years and relaxcompletely. Open your hands and walk, innocent.” According to [Sekito],the fundamental orientation of turning within, also later described byHongzhi and Dogen, is simply in order to return to the world, and toour original quality. Letting go of conditioning while steeped incompletely relaxed awareness, one is able to act effectively, innocentofgrasping and attachments. So the context of this just sitting suggestedby [Sekito] is the possibility of aware and responsive presence that issimple, open-hearted, and straightforward.
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