Old Dog’s Birthday

“Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free”
– L. Cohen

Today is Shakyamuni’s Birthday. And it’s our birthday too.

In Zen circles, the birth story of the Buddha includes the little oh-so precocious One stepping out of his mother’s side (to spare her the pain of vaginal birth), pointing one hand to the earth, one to the heaven and saying, “In the heavens above and beneath the heavens, I alone am honored.”

This “I alone” sticks in the craw of many Zen students and his unqualified confidence does too. The tyke is surely stepping into the world as a sovereign, boldly going where no One has gone before. It’s a challenge to the view that we should make ourselves really small.

Here’s a little Dogen for ya from Ten Directions that refers to this story:

“One hand pointing to the heavens” is heaven; “one hand pointing to the earth” is the earth. Although they are such, “in the heavens above and beneath the heavens, I alone am honored.” This is all the worlds of the ten directions as “the entire body of [a practitioner].”

The hand is heaven, the hand is earth, the ten direction universe springs from this very body. As such, “I alone” means there’s nothing apart and apart there’s nothing.

In order to celebrate Shakyamuni’s birthday, let’s all practice and manifest this together endlessly.

Happy Birthday one and all.