In Zen there’s a basic assertion that among many other things we human beings (and the whole blessed rest of things from atoms to galaxies and all in between) have two faces, kind of like the god of January and of gates, the divine Janus. One face, aspect, dimension is how we are who and what we are, you and me as discrete and real and precious, and, oh yes, passing. And, then, at the very, very same time, we also have another face, facet, dimension where each and every blessed thing (including you and me) are joined, so closely, so closely that we can say we are one.
The project in Zen is to see now the separate, now the one, now the separate arising from the one, now the one manifesting within each separate, etc, etc. It’s a rather lovely, well, often lovely dance of the real. Alan Watts the popular spiritual writer from my childhood referred to this process as the universe playing peekaboo with itself. A big part of the spiritual enterprise is getting into the flow, seeing the separate, seeing the one, and then figuring out how to live within this dynamic way things are.
Out of this, let me offer as an assertion and an invitation, a koan. It comes from a twelfth century collection called the Biyanlu, most commonly translated as the Blue Cliff Record. Case sixty-one. The relevant part for our purposes goes:
“Fengxue gave instruction, saying ‘If one raises a speck of dust, the nation prospers. If one does not raise a speck of dust, the nation perishes.’” The koan goes on a little, but I’ll stop with this. It’s more than enough. Fengxue Yanshao was born at the end of the ninth century, and became one of the great Zen masters of his era. And stories of his teaching or encounters with him are the stuff of quite a few classical koan. And this is a pretty good example of why.
One of the shadows of the Zen Buddhist way is an inclination to play down the phenomenal world. Words like dream and illusion are sometimes used. There is a bit too often a sort of spiritual dualism, a hint that if one does not renounce the world, one isn’t really on the way. Great Zen masters say and suggest and hint this. And they are not only missing the boat, they are guiding people away from reality. In fact on this path we are invited to encounter the world as the nation, as the republic of hope, as the place where we live, give birth to children, raise families, work, love, fight, do all those things that are our lives.
It is lovely.
It is good.
This place right here.
It happens as we appreciate the individual, the separate, how we are unique, and precious, and, oh yes, passing. This is the Zen way.
But, and: this is the background that we can never forget. Or, only forget at our peril. And this is the lesson that is proclaimed in this case. At the very same time we exult in the individual, we need to know this world births with a thought, a speck of dust, the first sense of separate, not unlike Eve’s taste of that forbidden fruit. Which, indeed, made she and her mate like gods.
And this knowing is a two-edged sword.
The thing that keeps us within our separate identity from spiraling ever out, ever farther away from each other is that moment before the nation arises, before we saw our separation, before we took that taste of the forbidden fruit of our knowledge of self and other, of high and low, of good and ill. It is as important.
One. Two. Not one. Not two.
We need to notice at the very same time our common root, the deep truth that we are all born out of each other, and how in the final analysis, it and we are all one. We pick this up, we notice this, and we discover perspective and possibility, and the work of our days and lives becomes a way of joy.
Dancing through this world.
With this world.
As this world.
One thing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0?fs=1
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In