There is Nothing that isn't Natural

Sunday, July 21, 2013:

The Meaning of…

However, human beings have many different ways of realizing enlightenment. Some realize the meaning of life from birth and are detached in every stage of their life—beginning, middle, and end. Others achieve detachment by mastering the true meaning of study—that is, "self-study," the study of one's own skin, flesh, bones, and marrow. Some others learn as a Buddha; they do not possess understanding from birth or from self-study but gain it by transcending the world of opposites. Still others gain self-knowledge without resorting to masters, sutras or other means; their true nature manifests itself. Different types of people have different means of realization, and everyone possesses the ability to understand true function and meaning of their own nature.

Delivered to the monks

January 20, 1243 by Dogen

Excerpted from Shobogenzo Volume 1

-translated by Kosen Nishiyama and John Steven 1975

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If I am truthful I have to admit that I have no idea what enlightenment is. I sit and listen. My body knows but I don’t. I pretend to have all the answers but I am only guessing at it… making a wild stab in the dark. I don’t have the surety of a true believer… a true believer in anything. In fact, I usually avoid true believers because, for the most part, true believers have quit the inquiry… the wonder of it all. So I look inside. I look outside. I look and see that the world is a very confusing place when I get stuck in the proposition that it is supposed to make sense. This, to me, is the function and meaning of my own nature. The thing that makes me human, or a dog, or a cat, and not a rock, is that I have eyes and ears… nerve endings everywhere… connected to the wonder of the cosmos. Immersed in the wonder of it I can actually know that there is no outside or inside. The air I breath… exhale and inhale…consumed and converted in my lungs… coursed through my veins by a blood pump made up of everything I ingest and shat out to fertilize the rest… all connected… all one with the star-dust of creation… an eternal dance with a pulse not unlike my own. There is nothing that isn’t natural. Even man-made structures like cities have the pulse of traffic going in and out from sunrise to sunset.  Even God isn’t up there or out there but in and out... up and down... and of everything. I see this in times of bliss and forget it otherwise but I watch my language when I speak in spiritual terms because the Heart of Compassion is there in the midst of it beating away on the drum of life… so, I will live it during this back-beat we call this interval of life between birth and death… the breath inhaling and exhaling.

   Now I can relax... here I can rest.

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