Genjokoan 10: When There is Nothing To Do

The first water lily leaves are showing themselves on Bald Eagle Lake. The leaves are imbued with oil so much so that they rise out of the water while being an expression of the water itself. Once while canoeing on a still, still backwater of the Mississippi, I set a full can of water on a one such leaf and it hardly bobbed at all.

Speaking of bobbing, we’re working through a passage from Dogen’s Genjokoan, accompanied by Dogen’s challenging call to practice our insights (which requires confidence and honoring what’s true ala the 10th precept: I take up the Way of not abusing the great truth of the Triple Treasure). Spiritual experiences not manifested in daily life are simply head trips. Daily life without spiritual insight is bone dry and so we human’s (especially of the American variety) stuff up our lives with meaningless things.

To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self, and body and mind of others, drop off. There is a trace of realization that cannot be grasped. We endlessly keep expressing the ungraspable trace of realization.

We’ve been remembering about forgetting the passage (along with the whole works) above – kinda funny really. Zen is one bad joke after another moving rather quickly, intimately, continually loosing.

So why stop with just some little losses? Why not go all the way? Drop the subject and object drops off too. This is Great Death. And Great Life – a trace that cannot be grasped (or controlled, or contrived, or forced). Nor is it at all apart from these.

Someone might say, “Are you kidding? What kind of lame trace cannot be grasped?”

One American lay woman, for example, upon seeing mu, came to sanzen with a zafu in hand and threw it at her Japanese-Zen-priest teacher saying something like, “All of that for this?”

Likewise, Kyogo and Sen’ne limp through this in their commentaries, ducking and weaving with “There is nothing particular to be discussed here.”

The heart of their nothing-particular-discussion is this:

There is no time that “realization” is “not grasped.” This is why it says “trace of realization that is not graspable” is “being expressed endlessly.”

And “…since [it] has no boundary, ‘endlessly keep expressing.’”

Reflection and comment (practice participants please post here): A 20th Century Japanese lay teacher (whose name I forget) expressed it like this: “When there is nothing to do, what do you do?”

If there is no time that realization is not grasped, if it is being expressed endlessly so that there is truly nothing to add, no seam, nothing left out, then what do you do?

Please don’t get cute with something like “Then I do nothing.” Take this seriously and playfully and practice correctly and you’ll find yourself in a corner where you cannot move an inch. Then what do you do?

I’ve been enjoying the comments, by the way. Thank you for your practice!