Good evening!
We have the full moon high in the sky, clear, calm, cool, and content. The perfectly round moon expresses complete contentment, nothing deficient, nothing superfluous, and just shines forth brilliantly.
At this time 758 years ago, Dogen was looking at this moon and made this poem, just thirteen days before his passing away.
Even in the autumn, when
I’d expect to see it again,
I could not have slept
With the moon of tonight.
He was looking at this brilliant full moon. Since he saw impermanence in his mother’s cremation smoke and, hearing a monk’s question, “what for, ultimately?” he had always been looking at the ultimate objective, striving in zazen, and stopping reading scriptures.
His dying poem is:
Illuminating the First Heaven for fifty four years,
(I), suddenly springing up, break through
the Great Thousand (Worlds).
Iih!
Entire body, seeking nothing, falls into
The Yellow Spring (Nadir) alive.
In this sitting is complete contentment and a clear, calm, and cool world, neither deficient nor superfluous, in peace, truth, and holiness. He described his experience of seeing the picture of a round circle on the zafu (cushion). When we sit in zazen, we become the full moon, becoming one with the whole dharma world in unconditioned peace and unsurpassed awakening, good always for all.
9/13/11
