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For my sweet 16th birthday, my oldest sister (I\u2019ve got five) gave me Alan Watts\u2019 <\/span><\/span>Way of Zen<\/span><\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span>I devoured it and then immediately put it on my bookshelf for about five years and had a freaky kind of feeling whenever I\u2019d see it there. The message I received was that Zen was about destroying the self and it scared the hell out of me.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Now in the 100 days practice session we\u2019re investigating and practicing this part of the Genjokoan:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
In terms of the flow of the text, this metaphor follows Dogen\u2019s presentation of firewood and ash (see earlier posts \u2013 <\/span><\/span>click here<\/span><\/span><\/a>). What\u2019s the connection?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Firewood and ash, as one person said during the last webinar, is like the Halloween of Zen because it calls for such radical one-doing moment by moment. Die sitting, die standing.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
As we dip our toes into the actual practice of firewood and ash, the push back often comes from a fear of annihilation that ranges from <\/span><\/span><\/span>barely conscious to painfully obvious<\/span><\/span><\/span>. I discussed this same fear, by the way, in <\/span><\/span>Keep Me In Your Heart Awhile<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>, \u201cBow is Like a Rock in Your Heart\u201d as an underlying barrier that creates resistance to letting go of ourselves and completely bowing (and <\/span><\/span>in the act<\/span><\/span><\/i> of many of the forms of Soto Zen). <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
It also appears in zazen or what Katagiri Roshi calls \u201cthe kinetic art of zazen.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Kinetic art?<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span>Merriam Webster has this for kinetic: \u201c\u2026of or relating to the motion of material bodies and the forces and energy associated therewith.\u201d For more on kinetic art, <\/span><\/span>click here<\/span><\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Just-one-doing zazen (aka, nonthinking) is full participation, nothing left out. It\u2019s like holding a sparkler and swinging your arm around as fast as you can. The individual sparkler isn\u2019t destroyed when it participates in creating the optical illusion of the circle any more than the moment when it creates the optical illusion of just being one sparkler at rest. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Dogen seems to be offering some solace for fear of annihilation from fully participating in this one great life by encouraging us to clearly and accurately understand how the whole works. The moon doesn\u2019t get wet. The water isn\u2019t broken. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Enlightenment does not destroy the person as the moon does not shatter the water. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Significantly, Dogen also addresses this issue in <\/span><\/span>Zazenshin (<\/span><\/span><\/i>the needle point of zazen<\/span><\/span>)<\/span><\/span><\/i>:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n