The Moon in a Drop of Water

Question: I read this in a book by Wolinsky. What if so-called trauma is ongoing for us if we unconsciously compare what we are getting now—in the world—to stillness or essence? In other words, we expect perfection of “prior to form” in the world of forms…without knowing it, we keep hurting ourselves because it doesn’t exist in our view of the formed world. Well, unless you have one foot in stillness. So, perhaps everyone around us, and ourself, is coming up short due to this unconscious comparison. One’s wife cannot match perfection of LOVE or Stillness itself. But, we hold her to this standard sometimes?

Response: In my view, yes, there is that deep kind of projective distortion coming, maybe, from the early moments of the arising of our bifurcating consciousness. The world of this and that (the old earthworm cut in two) is compared with the blissful sea of oceanic nonbeing, or some such thing. This yearning might be the source of Bodhicitta, Way Seeking Heart. Thoroughgoing practice, no part left out, is necessary to really deal with this one.

Another way that the early moments of consciousness effect us is quite the opposite – the fear of annihilation. This is an issue (FEAR!) that many practitioners dip into as their zazen deepens. The source of the fear seems to be come from those very early moments in the arising of self consciousness and the concomitant awareness of the possibility of the extinction of self consciousness. That is, self consciousness is for the first time aware of itself and aware that just as self consciousness arose, it could disappear.

As a person’s mind quiets down, fear from a very primitive moment consciousness often re-emerges. This phase of practice is very important and a time when many people find other things to do. If a person sticks with it, tames the Ox, so to speak, they will realize that the object of the fear is a shadow of the early consciousness – not something real – and need not be feared or idealized as in the question above.

I read Dogen as dealing with this issue in several places including this passage in the Genjokoan:

People’s attaining enlightenment is like the moon reflected in water. The moon does not get wet, the water isn’t broken. Though it is a vast expansive light, it rests in a little bit of water—even the whole moon, the whole sky, rests in a dewdrop on the grass, rests in even a single droplet of water.

When the moon of enlightenment illuminates the droplet of bifurcated consciousness, the moon is not tarnished, consciousness is not crushed.

Thank you for your question.