Faits divers

I was distracted, when I signed in, by Trevor's latest post, and experienced just the tiniest twinge of envy that Peguin didn't ask me to give a plug to the manga life of the Dalai Lama - but that wasn't what I was going to write about, as I just cracked open a new book myself: I blew most of my wages on the two-volume Shobogenzo translation that has just come out (actually, I think I remember Trevor plugging this a couple of months ago, but anyway), and started leafing through it this morning after koan class. There was a nice feeling for me of recognising many of the names involved in the project, which is hardly surprising since Zen Center has been helping to support Kaz Tanahashi with this work for many years; I felt grateful that I have been able to study with some of these people over the years here. The book is so vast I am a little intimidated about getting stuck in, and today I stopped on the first page of the Editor's Introduction: "If we were to summarize Dogen's teaching in one word, it might be 'non-separation'". So there you go, I've just saved you $150....
When I was at Tassajara I did try to work my way through the Nishijima and Cross translation during study hall, but a combination of ongoing deep tiredness, the density of the text and my own lack of understanding made it heavy going, and I gave up after a volume and a half without feeling like I had penetrated anything...
None of which is what I was actually thinking I was going to write about, but since we are dwelling in the non-separate, amongst the myriad things going on in the ino's world: I felt very tired after the one-day sitting, but my legs are feeling strong, which is nice, and for those who don't live in the Bay Area, there has been an accelerated passage in the space of less than a week from a very warm Indian summer to the season of mists and mellow what-nots, via a spell of rain which almost entirely coincided with my bike ride on Sunday, which means we have the heating on in the building now, and hopefully you won't hear me complaining about sweating in my robes for a little while.