Good morning!
We have a beautiful autumn Sunday morning with crisp cool blue sky and
brilliant sunlight. We have a quite calm and clear world, especially after our
sittings and service with beautiful flowers around us inside and out.
I posted Dogen’s Doei 42 on our blog yesterday, with my comment that he actually
verbalized the Bodhisattva Vow often and refreshed in his heart continuously as in
the last line (Free others before me, Ji-mi-tokudo sendo-ta, 自未得度先度他).
Either rising or lying,
Staying in my grass hut,
What I say is:
“Free others before me.”
Someone asked if freeing oneself from illusion is the starting point of freeing others –
otherwise one becomes annoying to others, just preaching, projecting – or the
aspiration so important like starting climbing a mountain that one may start first.
Truly Dogen was confident of his freedom, dropping off of body-mind, like snakes or
cicadas freeing from their skins to grow or fly, which was certified by his teacher
Juchin. Dogen continued the practice of freeing himself and others from karmas.
I posted also Tibetan thankas depicting human samsara suffering through the Six
Paths and the twelvefold Dependent Origination as the becoming-wheel or life-
wheel with the triple poisons as pig, cock, and snake in the center as the core source.
The holder and beholder of such samsara suffering is Yama, King of the Nether
World and Judge of Karmas, at the gate from this world to the other. If we are not
freed from karmas, we must suffer in samsara throughout the Six Paths constantly.
Our karmas are our own kāraṇas (causes) of samsara suffering. So, we ourselves
must stop them, no others can stop or save us from them. So all the buddhas know
that they must free others by their own efforts in practice and perfection.
We have our own karmas intertwined with the shared karmas with others. That is
why bodhisattvas vow to free all from this shore (mundane realm, loka,世間) and
ferry all over to the other shore (supra-mundane realm, uttara-loka,出世間).
10/13/13
