Wild Fox Zen
Though this is so, flowers fall when we cling to them and weeds grow when we dislike them.
In this fourth sentence of the Genjokoan, Dogen moves from talking about the faces of reality to directly showing it with live words.
“If you take them to the dokusan room,” said Yasutani Roshi, “they make a wonderful koan. If you start to lecture even a little bit you’ll be chased out of the dokusan room by the master’s bell.”
Indeed, because it is so simple, it takes so long to clarify.
Yet Bokusan Roshi skillfully recaps Dogen, “…Falling and blooming arise from clinging and dislike.”
These words a practitioner takes to heart, pinning them on the inside of his/her clothing, carrying them on the pilgrimage of this life, digesting them again and again.
Our usual upside down view is that clinging and dislike arise from falling and blooming. You might dismiss these words – but in so doing, you lose your life. Or you might stop and live it immediately.
What is the truth to live that is pointed to here?
Our life is what we attend to…so close, so close.
All my life false and real, right and wrong tangled.
Playing with the moon, ridiculing the wind, listening to birds….
Many years wasted seeing the mountain covered with snow.
This winter I suddenly realize snow makes mountain.
-Dogen, translated by Kaz Tanahashi in Moon in a Dewdrop
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