Encouraging Words from Dogen

Encouraging Words from Dogen

Realization in practice like this is just “mind here and now is buddha” picking itself up and authentically transmitting itself to “mind here and now is buddha.” Authentically transmitted like this, it has arrived at the present day. “The mind that has been authentically transmitted” means one mind as all dharmas, and all dharmas as one mind.

Shobogenzo, Soku-shin-ze-butsu, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross

Let us quietly consider whether our own present life, and the miscellaneous real dharmas that are coexisting with this life, are part of life or not part of life. . . . There is nothing, not a single moment nor a single dharma, that is not part of life. There is nothing, not a single matter nor a single state of mind, that is not part of life.

…
So life is what I am making it, and I am what life is making me. While I am sailing in the boat, my body and mind and circumstances and self are all essential parts of the boat; and the whole earth and the whole of space are all essential parts of the boat. What has been described like this is that life is the self, and the self is life.

Shobogenzo, Zenki, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross

Peace,

Ted