Good morning!
With this rain most snow has melted away. A phone call from Japan last night
informed me of a darkening smog storm there which most likely came from China.
This morning we had the second anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake,
which took place on 3/11 (the exact time is actually several hours later).
Twenty thousand people were dead or lost. Still more than 310,000 people are
refugees with more than 160,000 evacuees from the nuclear disaster.
They are homeless, jobless, hopeless, and lifeless, and yet the present government
wants to promote nuclear plants and probably nuclear bombs.
When these triple tragedies of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster came,
there was no distinction of young or old, men or women, or anything whatsoever.
Suddenly they were swallowed up in these disasters. We have threefold disasters
and sufferings, individual, social, and ecological which are all multiplied now.
Why do we have these disasters and sufferings? These could have been eliminated
or at least ameliorated, except perhaps for the nuclear ones.
We forgot the previous earthquakes and tsunamis, and built towns, cities, and nuclear
plants on seashores and even on active seismic faults.
We believe in civilization, states, success, self, etc., thus making more materialism,
militarism, money-ism, and me-ism stronger and more severe.
Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, said, “If lies are big enough and repeated,
people believe in them.” The bigger the lie, the easier they are believed.
So people believe in civilization, convenience, contrivances, control, conceit,
etc, resulting in irreparable disasters and sufferings.
We are soon going to have the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war arising from the 9/11
disaster, resulting in worse situations with no one taking responsibility.
Actually no one can take responsibility for deaths and devastations once done, just as
no ash can revert to firewood, and firewood to flowering trees.
We have been talking about Dogen’s Genjōkōan, Realizing Universal Truth, and now
we are going to touch the last portion of it:
When a fish goes in the water it goes, but never exhausts the
limit of the water. When a bird flies in the sky it flies, but never
exhausts the limit of sky. However from time immemorial,
neither fish nor birds have ever been separated from water or
sky. Only when the need is great, is the use great; when demand
is small, the use is small. In this way on every occasion no limit
is inexhausted, and in each place no end is unreached.
If however, a bird departs from the sky, it immediately dies; and
if a fish departs from the water, it immediately dies. We ought to
know that the water is life and the sky is life. The bird is life; the
fish is life. Life ought to be the bird; life ought to be the fish. We
must step further onward. Thus is cultivation, verification, life
and living.
In spite of this, if there should be any birds or fish which try to
go in the sky or the water, only after their having exhaustively
known the limits of the sky or the water, they could attain
neither the path nor the place. If one attains this place (truth),
this very action (here and now) accordingly realizes (genjō)
the universal truth (koan). If one attains this path (way), this
very action accordingly is ‘realization of the universal truth.’
This path and this place are neither great nor small; neither self
nor the other; neither existing from before nor (suddenly)
appearing now, and therefore, this is as it is. In the very way as
(this) is, if one cultivates and verifies in the buddha way, when
one attains dharma, one masters one dharma; when one comes
across one action, one cultivates one action. Herein pervades
the place (truth); and herein penetrates the path, and therefore
the limit of knowing is indistinct. This is because the knowing
itself simultaneously comes into being and coextensively goes
with the culminating pursuit of the buddha dharma.
Never seek to make the attainment known to one’s own self and
to the discriminative mind. Even though the culminating
verification instantly realizes in the present form (genjō), but
close-existence is not necessarily realized in the apparent form
(genjō). Why should the realization (kenjō or genjō) necessarily
take the apparent form?
When Zen master Hotetsu at Mt. Mayoku was using his fan, a
monk came and asked, “The wind-nature is ever-abiding and
nowhere-unpervaded. Why should the master further need to
use the fan?” The master said, “You only know that the wind-
nature is ever-abiding, but have not yet realized the truth of its
nowhere-unpervadedness.” The monk asked, “What is the truth
of nowhere-unpervadedness? At this the master only used his
fan. The monk bowed.
Thus is the verifying proof of the buddha-dharma; thus is the
living path of the right transmission. To say that one ought not
to use a fan because of ever-abidedness and that one can hear
the wind without using a fan is due to knowing neither ever-
abidedness nor wind-nature. Because the wind-nature is ever-
abiding, the wind (way) of the buddha family realizes the gold
of the great earth and ripens the essence of sweet milk of the
long rivers.
So, even if we don’t know the limit of the awakened way, we must start to live.
We know by coming to the awakened way, not by waiting for it to come to us.
By the way, I saw a clip of the movie “We Live.” The hero was bombarded by
consume, buy, believe, and terrifying skulls on people’s faces, etc.
Thus we become consumed by goods and enslaved by matters, monies, militarism,
me’s – self-consumed and self-deceased (gari-gari-mōja, 我利我利亡者).
In our self pursuit, we are enslaved, and lose our life, thus we die. So we need to live
free and fully, right here and now with the wholly wholesome way.
Then we will find more and more – more truth, goodness, and beauty; holy harmony,
health, and happiness – not small, selfish, sinful separateness.
So if we have the buddha-nature ever-abiding and nowhere-unpervaded, we must
witness it – we must sit constantly. Then only can we witness it.
Like birds and fish we can fly free and full, and swim serene and safe. So the wind
nature is the Buddha-nature, which we witness with our own activation.
Otherwise we transmigrate through the realms of hell beings, hungry ghosts, fighting
devils, animals, humans, and celestial beings, not realizing buddha-nature.
We must actually use the fan, the essential free full functioning, sensing the subtle
soothing of stormless karmas and the coolness of clear crystal cosmos.
So sit and serve this wind of no wind, nirvana, and sam-bodhi, holy healthy awakening,
with limitless life, liberation, light, love, and learning ever onward!
3/10/13
