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<\/a><\/p>\nAbove I\u2019m moving in the water with two of my favorite people \u2013 my son and my brother. Three Ports in a lake.<\/span><\/p>\n Somehow that might be connected to the Genjokoan<\/span><\/span> theme of the week:<\/span><\/p>\n If a person riding in a boat watches the coast, the person mistakenly sees the coast as moving. If the person watches the boat, then the person notices that the boat is moving. Similarly, when we conceive our body and mind in a confused way and grasp all things with discriminating mind, we mistakenly think that the self-nature of our own mind is permanent. When we intimately practice and return right here, it is clear that all things have no self.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Dogen returns us to the illusion of the normal way humans perceive the world \u2013 upside down or inside out. That\u2019s why we have the logo for Wild Fox Zen that we do (see the right sidebar or this post from a while back \u2013 click here<\/span><\/a>). Look at it one way, it\u2019s a fox, look at it another and it\u2019s what? Same lines and such a subtle turn of perception is required to see it differently.<\/span><\/p>\n The logo is just like the perceptual illusion of the person in the boat seeing the coast move. The normal way of seeing the world is to see ourselves as constant experiencing a fleeting world. In order for perception to shift, we must study the boat itself rather than distract ourselves with the scenery.<\/p>\n Earlier in the Genjokoan<\/span><\/span>, Dogen implores us to study this self, the subject in our internal drama. It is this fascinating study that points to the social message of dharma<\/a> practice. <\/span><\/p>\n What about the social message? Well, the way that our society has taught us to be is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and might just go all the way there. But maybe we\u2019re close enough to collapse now so that we will realize more fully that there is another way to find fulfillment \u2013 through intimately coursing the way together. <\/p><\/span><\/div>\n Thich Nhat Han used to say that we needed to discover how the path of peace is really more interesting than the path of war. There have been several times in history when societies turned on a dime and made spiritual practice the central organizing principle. Tibet in about the 11th Century, for example (granted, it\u2019s been a while \u2026 still \u2026).<\/p>\n Dharma practice undertaken with diligence, unfolds such a path.<\/p>\n It\u2019s just like the last episode of <\/p><\/span>Star Trek: Next Generation,<\/span><\/span>\u201d All Good Things\u2026\u201d. The last conversation between Q (<\/span>click here if you are unfamiliar with Q<\/span><\/a>) and Captain Picard.\n