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<\/a>Is Zen practice about getting out of the stinking hole of human life or about finding perfection within our shining life itself just as it is? Is the Buddha way beyond the phenomenal world (transcendent) or ensconced within it (immanent)?<\/p>\n
I see no other underlying stance that more powerfully impacts our zazen and attitude toward daily life than this one. And because our life is a projective exercise, we tend to see the Buddhadharma as we are rather than how \u201cit\u201d is.<\/p>\n
Take the third line of the Genjokoan<\/em>, for example. Here\u2019s Shohaku Okumura\u2019s translation:<\/p>\n Since the Buddha way by nature goes beyond<\/strong> abundance and deficiency, there is arising and perishing, delusion and realization, living beings and buddhas.<\/em> Other translations seem to support this. Here are a couple (I\u2019ll just quote how these translators work the words in bold in Shohaku\u2019s):<\/p>\n Tanashi: leaping clear of<\/strong> Cleary (and also my brother, Ken Port): springs forth from<\/strong> So we must rely on our own practice-verification to clarify this without relying on old dead people \u2013 we\u2019re relying on them here simply to frame the issue.<\/p>\n Do you move about between the transcendent and immanent positions? If so, what provokes this movement?<\/p>\n Is the Buddha way transcendent or immanent?<\/p>\n Is Zen practice about getting out of the stinking hole of human life or about finding perfection within our shining life itself just as it is? Is the Buddha way beyond the phenomenal world (transcendent) or ensconced within it (immanent)? I see no other underlying stance that more powerfully impacts our zazen and attitude toward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/em>Sounds like the Buddha way is transcendent \u2013 going beyond many and not-even-one.<\/p>\n
Nishijima and Cross: transcendent over<\/strong>
<\/strong>
And then there are those who see it as immanent:<\/p>\n
Kim: leaps out of<\/strong>
<\/strong>
Looking at the original in this case just exacerbates the issue. Dogen used these characters: \u8c4a\u5039\u3088\u308a\u8df3\u51fa (hoken yori choshutu suru). The phrase at issue here can be read \u201cgo beyond\u201d or<\/strong> \u201cleap out from.\u201d<\/p>\n