Abiding Together in Cold and Snow

Cold and snow everywhere in the northern half the continent. I’m off work and relieved that I don’t have the morning commute as more than a dozen accidents have the metro on lock down.

A reporter is coming out to interview me later – if he can get through the traffic, I suppose. When my son heard about the local newspaper’s interest in me he said, “Is it because you’re so weird?”

Ah, children are such a blessing.

My brother is also coming over for some translation work which you may hear about here down the road.

But before all that gets rolling, I’ve got some Dogen-related thoughts and memories for you.

I first encountered Dogen in the Minneapolis Public Library in mid 1977 while browsing the “Buddhism” section’s one-dozen books. I pulled Zen Master Dogen off the shelf, opened it randomly and read, “Our bodies are like dew on the grass, and our lives like a flash of lightning, vanishing in a moment.”

“Damn … this guy knows something,” I thought.

Shortly thereafter I met Katagiri Roshi and spent thirteen years with him studying Dogen in every practice period, every sesshin, every period of zazen. When I was paying attention, that is.

In a recent post on the Monkey Mind blog, Bloggisattva James Ford criticized my sole focus on Dogen in his loving, gentle way. Click here if you’re interested.

As I commented then, Katagiri told me of an argument he once had with Maezumi when they were both young priests at the LA Soto temple in the early 1960’s. Maezumi criticized Katagiri for relying too much on Dogen, for talking about him too much. Katagiri’s response was something like, “Well, anyway, Dogen–zenji say….” Katagiri even quoted Dogen in justifying his over-reliance on Dogen. Roshi found this very funny, leaning his head back laughing at himself after he told this story.

For me, Dogen just says it so well and there’s so much of what he had to say that’s available now that for studying Zen it is hard to surpass. Dogen also challenges many contemporary notions about Zen including my own notions about Zen so that I continue to study his work on an almost daily basis. It is a practice of entangling “my” understanding with his. And “his” and Katagiri are entangled there as well so it is a way of continuing to study with my old teacher.

How about a little sample?

Here’s a poem from Dogen’s Extensive Record, #350

Please cherish your skin, flesh, bones, and marrow.
Knowing each other,
Intimate friends grow even more intimate.
When someone asks the meaning of coming from the west,
[Bodhidharma] faces the wall for nine years,
abiding at Shaolin.

What a tender poem about cherishing the body and the “other!” Dogen is well known for his “casting off body and mind” but here it is “cherish.” And the translators’ note explains that in the third line, the word used for “intimate friends” is literally, “…knowing the sounds.” It comes from a story from the Chinese classics. “A great musician had a friend who deeply appreciated his music. When the friend died he broke the strings of his instrument and did not play any more.”

Knowing the sounds together, so together that without the other, the old tune just isn’t possible. Tender, tender.

What about this business of the meaning of coming from the west? This is coded Zen. Bodhidharma was a thoroughly realized very old sage, knowing well that all is calm, all is bright just as it is, and yet he went to China anyway. Why?

Why do anything? Why do what you’re doing right now? This question cuts to the intimate heart of a Zen student’s moment and so caps this poem about intimacy.

This morning if someone where to ask me “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the west?”

I’d say, “Abiding together in cold and snow.”

Peace out,

Dosho