| Dosho Port

Bower, bowed too

Their nature, no nature

This body, other bodies, not two

Plunge into the inexhaustible realm

Live the life of vow

That’s the bowing gatha. This version might be Reb Anderson’s translation that I memorized years ago. Or it could be Roshi’s.

Living true nature is expressed in the bow.

This comes to mind today because Richard (thanks!) brought “In Search of True Self” by Joshua Knobe (NY Times) to my attention. It looks at this fundamental issue in Zen practice from the perspective of modern science.

“True nature” is key in Zen and how we take it up reflects our tendency to maul the dharma and bring it into our preconceptions rather than open our hearts to what the dharma is. We maul “true nature” when we make into a thing.

Knobe points out that in our culture there are two basic make-it-into-something perspectives. What is true nature?

If we look to the philosophical tradition, we find a relatively straightforward answer to this question. This answer, endorsed by numerous different philosophers in different ways, says that what is most distinctive and essential to a human being is the capacity for rational reflection.

For most people, though, it is just the opposite:

The true self … lies precisely in our suppressed urges and unacknowledged emotions, while our ability to reflect is just a hindrance that gets in the way of this true self’s expression. To find a moment when a person’s true self comes out, they think, one needs to look at the times when people are so drunk or overcome by passion that they are unable to suppress what is deep within them.

Knobe and his colleagues did some research on this question. Their tentative conclusion is this:

People’s ordinary understanding of the true self appears to involve a kind of value judgment, a judgment about what sorts of lives are really worth living.

That suggests that what is usually considered “true” nature, is indeed conditional, not the essential self, and what might be called the false self.

What is true nature?

This room is so hot and stuffy now that I can’t think about this anymore.