Genjokoan 7: Blue Birds, the Moon, Unitarians and the Self

Just back from a Sunday visit to the White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church (“let’s do something different”) and a talk by Rev. Dr. Kendyl Gibbons, “A Failure to Attribute.” The central issue the Rev. Dr. addressed in her well-informed-and-thought-through talk was the fear that nonatheists have about the moral backbone of atheists – “If you don’t believe in God to set the rules and reward or punish you, are you safe to be around?”

Atheists, by the way, are the fastest growing religious group in America. Surprisingly, atheists rank behind Muslims, gays and lesbians in terms of who most Americans would rather have marry their child.

Buddhists, although I consider us agnostics (a minor quibble), face the same issue. Historically, Buddhists might answer the above with one word – karma – but many modern Buddhists don’t believe in karma (at least in the concrete, simple way often presented in the Sutta Pitika), so the issue is pertinent.

And the Rev. Dr.’s answer brings us to the Genjokoan.

“The attribution of consciousness,” the ability not only to appreciate one’s self as a conscious agent but also attributing the same consciousness to others, leads to important moral development, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The enormity of this achievement by our species cannot be understated. Other species have it too, it seems to me, my dog doesn’t bite off my arm, for example, when he has his chaws locked around it, perhaps because he knows somehow that I’m family and not a meal. Maybe humans just talk about it more.

Anyway, the enormity and thrill of self-consciousness makes it difficult to move on. The medicine becomes the disease.

For the independent, moral, attributing-consciounsess self, cold and heat still come. “How can we avoid them?”

“Why not go to where thre is no cold or heat?” asked Dongshan.

“How is it where there is no cold or heat?” asked the monk.

“When it’s cold, it kills you with cold; when it’s hot, it kills you with heat,” answered Dongshan (Cleary translation from Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record).

Or from the Genjokoan:

See forms with the whole body-mind, hear sounds with the whole body-mind – intimate knowing! It is not like reflections in a mirror or the moon in water. When one side is illuminated, the other side is dark.

When the whole body-mind is heat or cold or blue bird or cheer-cheer it is completely this. It isn’t like attributing a self, it isn’t like subject and object, or the reflection of the moon in the water. It isn’t “like” anything. When cold comes, it kills separation completely and the whole body-mind is just cold. Heat is completely obscured. When heat comes, it kills separation completely and the whole body-mind is just cold. Cold is completely obscured.

And that brings me to the next passage for our Genjokoan study:

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self.

What is meant by “self?” Usually it is understood as our modern self construction – the psychological self with a certain history, preferences, feelings, and longings. The self that attributes consciousness to other beings. But Dogen was a medieval fellow, way back before Freud, Jung, Pearls and Maslow. Dogen’s “self” as I’m using the word here, was probably much more of a community-based self, like most people prior to the modern era.

So although the practice instruction is that the awakening way is to study the self, it probably does not refer to the modern self construction. This sentence is probably the most well-known Dogen line and I suggest that it is mis-known. The usual interpretation supports our obsession with our self-attributing consciousness.

Or as my high school humanities teacher, known to all as “Gus,” once said to a fundamentalist Christian in my class who said she deferred all choices, no matter how small to God, “I don’t think God cares whether you have blue cheese or ranch salad dressing.”

The self that prefers (or defers to the really big self, the guy in the sky) blue cheese or ranch is not what is studied in the Buddha Way.

The self in “study the self” is “…not the self as ego,” says Sen’ne (practice period participants see p. 10 in the commentary).

Question for Reflection (practice period participants please post reflections here on or before Thursday, 5/7):

What is the self in to study the Buddha Way is to study the self? Investigate through the body in the practice itself.