UnMind 56. Actualizing the Fundamental Point Duet 2: Genjokoan II

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Is enlightenment
dewdrops reflecting the moon —
or is it your mind?

Following upon Master Dogen’s stunning simile of firewood and ash, and his pointed comments on birth and death, we turn to his famous “moon in a dewdrop” stanzas on enlightenment itself:

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water: the moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon, and the entire sky, are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.
Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water.
You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky.
The depth of the drop is the height of the moon.
Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.

Whether we are living in apocalyptic, or merely interesting, times, the promise of enlightenment still beckons. Like the moon on the water, nothing changes. Except everything, including the relative size and scale of the moon and the puddle, or the dewdrop. Like Indra’s net, the knots collect the drops of water, which all reflect each other, like the cosmos viewed from any vantage point. Somehow the same though different, as Master Kisen reminds us; entirely harmonic. Nothing changes, no new division of the new you and the old you. Insight only reveals the preexistent truth. You cannot hinder this revelation, no matter how rabid your monkey-mind. If not in this lifetime, then in a future one (again, not reincarnation) this is your destiny. The meaning and culmination of life is to wake up fully, to our original and innate Buddha-nature. If any doubt arises, just repeat “the depth of the drop is the height of the moon” as your mantra. The duration of the reflection in time is analogous to the dimension in space, as well as to our lifetime. Remember, Dogen only lived to be 53 years of age. Realizing the limitlessness of the moonlight takes no time at all.

When Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient.
When Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing.
For example, when you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean, where no land is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular, and does not look any other way.
But the ocean is neither round nor square; its features are infinite in variety.
It is like a palace. It is like a jewel.
It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time.

Back to the beginner’s mind. Initially, we imagine that we are already “wandering about in the world of enlightenment” as one translation of Fukanzazengi describes it, but we have “almost lost the absolute Way, which is beyond enlightenment itself.” Testifying as one who has been there and done that, the great master asserts that when Dharma does fill you completely, something is obviously missing in this picture. Matsuoka Roshi said that “People go through life with something missing. They come to Zen to find it.” Just because it is missing, however, you do not necessarily know what it is. You only know that it is missing, for sure. You might think of it as “the rest of the story.” Okumura Roshi speaks of this as our “incompleteness.”

Master Dogen conjures a lovely vision to help us picture this subtle reality, again derived from his direct experience, perhaps from his sailing to China, a hazardous journey in those times. The way the ocean looks from six feet off the surface is different than it looks to a fish, who lives there, or from 30,000 feet overhead. Then he goes on to make the obvious, seemingly unnecessary point:

All things are like this.

In other words, our perception and reconstruction of our world as we know it, is necessarily limited. We can see only what we can see, hear only what we can hear, and feel only what we can feel, think only what we can think. But then he introduces the idea of the “eye of practice”:

Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions,
you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach.
In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety: whole worlds are there.
It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet; or in a drop of water.

The “dusty world” is everyday samsara, the “world beyond conditions” we assume to be the formless of the “three realms” traditional to Buddhism. In any case, “you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach.”

In 1987 I traveled to Japan, and incidentally underwent acupuncture with an aged medical sage, long white beard and all. He performed a cursory physical examination, and then proceeded to list, in Japanese, all the various conditions and potential health issues that I might have, with startling accuracy and comprehensiveness. This was by virtue of his eye of practice. He had seen so many thousands of individuals over his career that he could see things no one else, not similarly trained, could see.

Dogen is encouraging us to go beyond the appearance, or form, of things to their true nature, where we find “whole worlds.” This is a much more prosaic statement in the age of electron microscopes, than it was in his time. He arrived at this insight by virtue of his own eye of practice, refined through the intensity of his training in zazen. But this is not something to be found in exotic places; it is directly beneath our feet. Then, with the poet’s precision of language, he returns us to — wait for it — “or in a drop of water.” Which provides a neat segue to his next analogy:

A fish swims in the ocean, and no matter how far it swims, there is no end to the water.
A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies, there is no end to the air.
However, the fish and the bird have never left their elements; when their activity is large, their field is large; when their need is small, their field is small.
Thus, each of them totally covers its full range, and each of them totally experiences its realm.
If the bird leaves the air, it will die at once. If the fish leaves the water, it will die at once.
Know that the water is life, and air is life; the bird is life and the fish is life.
Life must be the bird, and life must be the fish.

Back to the ocean — for a fish who lives there, it is like an endless palace, as is the sky for a bird. They are in their respective elements. What is our element, as human beings? If we leave it, will we die? Not only the sentient beings, the bird and the fish, are life. Life also manifests as the very water and air we drink and breathe. Must life be us, as it must be the bird, and the fish?

It is possible to illustrate this with more analogies:
Practice-enlightenment and people are like this.

Dogen makes explicit exactly what he is doing — illustrating the difficult to comprehend via analogy. We look forward to hearing how we and practice-enlightenment can be similarly analogized.

Now if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it, this bird, or this fish, will not find its way or its place.
When you find your place where you are practice occurs — actualizing the fundamental point.
When you find your way at this moment practice occurs — actualizing the fundamental point.
For the place, the way, is neither large nor small, neither yours nor others’.
The place, the way, has not carried over from the past, and it is not merely arising now.
Accordingly, in the practice-enlightenment of the Buddha way, meeting one thing is mastering it; doing one practice is practicing completely.
Here is the place; here the way unfolds.

Firstly, like the bird or the fish, if we are unwilling to explore our element, we cannot hope to find our way, or our place. If and when we do, “practice occurs,” actualizing the fundamental point. We might elaborate, saying that practice is something that occurs naturally. It is not something that we do, or indeed, that we can do. “Place” — where you are; and “way” — at this moment; are placeholders, no pun, for spacetime. Your zero axis runs from the crown of your head down through your spinal cord. Mine runs through mine. Your world is yours, and mine is mine. As Matsuoka Roshi would say, “My enlightenment is mine, and yours is yours. I can’t get yours, and your can’t get mine.” It doesn’t belong to anyone, and is not subject to linear time. Thus, whatever is in front of your face, is it. Meeting it is mastering it. This is the one practice, which is complete. Here and now is the unfolding of the Great Way. But then, as is often the case with Dogen, there comes a big “but”:

The boundary of realization is not distinct, for the realization comes forth simultaneously
with the mastery of Buddha-dharma.
Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge, and is grasped by your consciousness.
Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent.
Its appearance is beyond your knowledge.

So stop looking for it. That is, stop looking for something special to change. What already is, is all the special there is. Like a wet bar of soap, or like our concept of the momentary passing of time, it cannot be grasped. However, it is actualized immediately, but not as the result of something we do. We do not master Buddha-dharma; it masters us. But the resulting realization is simultaneous with that mastery. That the “inconceivable may not be apparent” has to be an all-time, world-class belaboring of the obvious. If inconceivable, how could it be apparent? To illustrate this existential catch-22, Dogen again turns to analogy, but one offered by another old buddha:

Zen master Baoche of Mt. Mayu was fanning himself.
A monk approached and said: “Master, the nature of wind is permanent, and there is no place it does not reach. Why, then, do you fan yourself?”
“Although you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent,” Baoche replied, “you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere.”
“What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?” asked the monk again.
The master just kept fanning himself.
The monk bowed deeply.

Master Dogen exhibits a near-encyclopedic retention of these incidents, quoting them often in his extensive record (Eihei Koroku), spontaneous live teachings documented by his Dharma heirs. The “wind” here probably should be taken as both the literal winds of the atmosphere, but also the fundamental element of movement, which manifests both inside and outside the body, as well as in social and other dimensions, the natural and the universal. Thus the wind is present, whether or not there is any literal wind, and the monk is implying that fanning is, or should be, unnecessary. Mazu’s reply, that he does not get the “reaching everywhere” part, is illustrated by continuing to fan himself. This is the nondual, nonseparation of our activities with natural and universal forces.

The actualization of the Buddha-dharma, the vital path of its correct transmission, is like this.
If you say that you do not need to fan yourself, because the nature of wind is permanent, and you can have wind without fanning, you will understand neither permanence, nor the nature of wind.
The nature of wind is permanent; because of that, the wind of the Buddha’s house
brings forth the gold of the earth, and makes fragrant the cream of the long river.

Buddhadharma, as a force in the world, penetrates all four spheres of existence: the personal, the social, the natural, and the universal. The permanence of the wind seems to contradict the doctrine of impermanence, but impermanence is not a doctrine. Nor is it separable from permanence. The nature of the wind being permanent is analogous to the teaching of dukkha as change. Because there is never any absence of change, change is a permanent attribute of impermanence. No need to tie yourself up in knots over this. We are beset by all kinds of “winds” — as movement, or change, itself. Just as there is no movement without stillness, and vice-versa, the wind of Buddhism blows no one ill. It turns the dross of the natural earth to gold, the symbol of enlightenment, not material goods, as wealth. And makes even the Milky Way a source of fragrant, affirming cream, the nourishment of universal ambrosia.