Good evening!
This morning Scott and I worked in our garden clearing creeping Charlies, etc. covering and choking other plants, and the garden became pretty clean and clear.
Weeding is the major work in samu, doing duty. Eventually it reaches and reveals the original unconditioned state, nirvana. Dogen’s poem titled prostration reads:
No winter-grass being seen,
A white heron in snowfield
Hides itself
In its own form.
Snowfield is the original form, white, light itself of the sun or the full moon, illuminating and illustrating all colors depending on objects – free, full function.
Samu (work, lit. doing duty) is the other wing or wheel of a bird or a chariot, dynamic free, full function working with stable sitting, wholly wholesome world.
We must sit and see nirvana, only where we can be authentically awakened. Then only we can function free and full. Dogen said that only buddhas know the true self.
5/16/12
