Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Study Hall - Shobogenzo

Back on track with Dogen this morning: "Grass, trees, tiles and pebbles, as well as the four great elements and the five skandhas, are all equally inseparable mind, equally marks of reality. The entire world of the ten directions, the buddha nature of thusness, is equally things abiding in their conditions.
How can there be grass, trees, and so on within the buddha nature of thusness? How can grass, trees and so on not be buddha nature? All things are neither created nor not created, but are reality. Reality is reality as it is...
When you turn the four great elements and the five skandhas and practice sincerely, you attain the way. When you turn grass, trees, tiles and walls, and practice sincerely, you attain the way. It is so because the four great elements and the five skandhas, as well as grass, trees, tiles and walls, practice together with you. They have the same nature, the same mind and life, the same body and capacity as you.
This being so, many of those who come from the assembly of buddha ancestors endeavor in the way of taking up grass and having the heart of trees. This is how it is with arousing the aspiration for enlightenment" ('Arousing the Aspiration for the Unsurpassable', 'Hotsu Mujo Shin').

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