Saturday, July 14, 2012

Study Hall - Shobogenzo

On my to-do list before the retreat started was to re-read Uji, since time is the subject of the retreat. I thought that this would be hindered by the Tour de France, but the internet outage on Friday morning, following the previous night's power cut, meant I had the opportunity to sit down uninterrupted after breakfast. This section seemed to sum it up for me this time around:

"Although the views of an ordinary person and the causes and conditions of those views are what the ordinary person sees, they are not necessarily the ordinary person's reality. The reality merely manifests itself for the time being as an ordinary person. Because you think your time or your time being is not reality, you believe that the sixteen-foot golden body is not you.
However your attempts to escape from being the sixteen-foot golden body are nothing but bits and pieces of the time being. Those who have not yet confirmed this should look into it deeply" - Uji, The Time Being.

2 comments:

Myomon said...

What Dogen said. Thank you Shundo for continuing to put these thoughts and quotes out there.

Shundo said...

Nobody says it like Dogen, it's true.