Good morning!
We have now the full moon high in the sky. Did you see it? You saw it. Great! Did you join the moon viewing party? You didn’t. Sorry for that. But, that was also good!
“A poem made in the evening of the 15th of August in the year 1253 of his entering nirvana (August 28th), by Dogen:
Even in an autumn when
I’d expect to see it again,
I could not have slept
with the moon of tonight.”
This is the last poem he made, seeing the full moon for a whole night. August in the old lunar calendar falls in September in the today’s solar calendar. So, just as we saw the full moon, he saw it expecting his near death.
Kuryo and Meiku offered us a moon viewing party last night. So, I visited them a little late and enjoyed the bright full moon with some of our members and their neighbors, et al. It was getting a little chilly, so we had bonfire.
The bonfire reminded me of the hare that was sent to the moon. It offered itself to a hungry old man, throwing itself into a fire, as it could not find food in the forest like its other bosom friends, the fox and the monkey.
Meiku said he made the hare in the moon. Maybe he drank it with others to go into the moon. The full moon is compared to the Buddha mind, bright and beautiful, clear and calm, reflecting light and illuminating the world.
We have been reading Dogen’s Kokyo (古鏡: Archaic Mirror) in our Dharma Study class, and we just read Xuefen’s description of monkeys carrying mirrors on their backs. All – humans, animals, plants – carry archaic mirrors.
Because the mirrors are on our backs, we cannot look into them. How can we look into them? When we sit upright, our backbones become straight and strengthened, assimilated into sila (usually translated as morality).
When we sit upright, we don’t kill, steal, lie, etc. We return and remain in pure peace and prognosis. We become peace, truth in samâdhi (usually translated as concentration). It is not focusing, but consummating – harmoniously integrating body, mind, and world in one in peace and truth.
When we sit still and serene in samâdhi, we become truth and peace, like cypress trees, so to speak. All stiffness and stress – coagulations – disintegrate, falling away and melting into purity as into the great peaceful ocean.
Then, we witness the truth in prognosis, penetrating into the original nature. This great round mirror is like the full moon, clear and calm, reflecting the dharma dhâtu (realm, lit. root) and illuminating the karma world.
When we settle in this root, we see the unified one world – one piece of all, going and coming, up and down, birth and death, beyond transmigration in samsara and suffering. We settle in nirvana, unconditioned peace.
Equanimity (upekkhâ), like in the equinox now, literally means throwing away, discarding all stiffness and stress and melting into limitless light, life, liberation, and love like a great ocean, beyond bubbles and foams.
So, this sitting is really learning the triple learning of sila, samâdhi, and prajñâ (morality, concentration, prognosis). We settle in the Buddha nature, original nature, like a white heron in a snowfield, as in Dogen’s poem:
No winter grass being seen,
A white heron in snowfield
Hides itself in
Its own form.
“Own form” means the original form, original nature. Becoming one with the whole world, white and pure like a crystal ball. Xuansha asked Xuefen, who said that he had an archaic mirror reflecting reality, what happens when a clear mirror comes. Xuefen said all disappear. Xuansha asked Xuefeng to ask him the same question. Xuansha said, “It is broken into a hundred pieces.”
Xuansha said that the entire world in ten directions is a ball of clear crystal. When the mirror is broken into thousands and millions of pieces, there is no ego bubble, but just the calm clear eco ocean.
It is shining with all beings, reflecting each other and penetrating through all like the Indra-net, into a piece of clear crystal. The full moon is always beyond clouds and behind the changing phases of new, crescent, half, and full moons.
Even if we don’t see beyond clouds and fogs, it has always been reflecting the light source and illuminating the whole world for billions of years. It is universal and eternal, but also here and now, broken into pieces: egoless eco.
Through our practice we can realize eternal universal truth, peace, goodness, and beauty here and now. Let us enjoy the full moon, which is always there and here to see and share with all in practice. Only practice makes it possible.
9/30/12
