Harry.<\/span><\/p>\nHarry and all who didn\u2019t listen to the above warning,<\/p>\n
First off, rather than concern yourself with second enlightenment, I encourage you to focus on first enlightenment! Nevertheless, I looked up \u201csecond enlightenment\u201d with a link Harry provided to Nishijima Roshi\u2019s blog and found this:<\/p>\n
By reading Shobogenzo I recognize clearly that in the case of Master Dogen he insists that to practice Zazen itself is just enlightenment.<\/span><\/p>\nBut at the same time in \u201cKeisei-sanshiki\u201d (9), Master Dogen describes another kind of enlightenments on Master Kyogen Chikan and Master Reiun Shigon.<\/span><\/p>\nTherefore I recognize the two kinds of enlightenment to exist, and so I indicate the practice of zazen as the first enlightenment, and the latter one as the second enlightenment.<\/span><\/p>\nThe second enlightenment is the perfect understanding the whole Buddhist philosophical System completely.<\/span><\/p>\nNow, Nishijima Roshi is a venerable old priest whom I deeply appreciate for his translation of Shobogenzo<\/span>, however, I respectfully disagree.<\/p>\nFirst, the notion that Dogen conflated practice and enlightenment only goes back to Menzan in the 18th century who reformulated Soto Zen to kick out koan elements and impose his idea of the oneness of practice and enlightenment \u2013 apparently to distinguish Soto from Rinzai and Obaku Zen so that Soto might survive.<\/p>\n
And although \u201cBendowa\u201d might be read with Dogen conflating practice and enlightenment, Shobogenzo<\/span> in its entirety need not be read in that way at all. Dogen plays with many relationships between practice and enlightenment. That practice and enlightenment are not separate as people commonly believe does not mean that they\u2019re one as people commonly believe.<\/p>\nThis issue \u2013 the relationship between practice and enlightenment \u2013 is important for actual practice and that\u2019s why I\u2019m wandering into tall weeds here. If you believe in the mystical union of zazen and enlightenment, you aren\u2019t really sitting or enlightened \u2013 just a dead horse confirming a theory. Your zazen might even become a fetish based on magical thinking.<\/p>\n
My study and practice with Katagiri Roshi and since has convinced me that Dogen wasn\u2019t a big theory guy. Dogen was a jazz man. He just wholeheartedly blew his horn, using and then going beyond the confines of any theoretical box. And it is in that sense that practice and enlightenment are one.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Hee-Jin Kim, in his book<\/a> (click that and you\u2019ll get a Google Book except but unfortunately not the part I\u2019m dealing with below) about Dogen and meditation, finds the language Katagiri Roshi was always groping for. In Keep Me In Your Heart A While<\/span> I paraphrase it like this (you gotta take your time with this or it\u2019ll seem like jibberish):
<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>The oneness of practice-enlightenment is not a merger in mystical union;
nor complementary sides of the same reality;
nor are they in the relationship of periphery and center;
nor like the surface and core; not a transformation of one into the other;
not like seed and fruit;
not like cause and effect;
not thinking and not- thinking;
not worldly and ultimate truth;
not antecedent and consequence;
not means and end;
and not nullification or denial of the differences between the two.
The oneness of practice and enlightenment is not \u201ceverything is Buddha, everything is practice.\u201d It is not \u201coriginal enlightenment\u201d as it is usually understood with the concomitant denial of the importance of karma, lack of concern for other\u2019s welfare, and enlightenment. <\/span><\/p>\nIf practice and enlightenment are in none of the above relationships, how are they related? Like two foci in intimate conversation in actual practice.<\/p>\n
Second, about enlightenment, experientially, it is described by Dogen as the 10,000 things advancing to confirm the self. Several hundred years earlier, Dongshan described it as \u201cYou are not it<\/span>, but in truth it<\/span> is you.\u201d<\/p>\nCertainly there are moments of synthesis in practice when the Buddha\u2019s teaching comes together and the matrix of mind and heart lights up. And that\u2019s what those moments are \u2013 not enlightenment.<\/p>\n
As for a perfect understanding of the complete Buddhist philosophical system \u2013 which one? There are a whole bunch of Buddhist philosophical systems, designed for various times and places and people. There are numerous points of apparent contradiction.<\/p>\n
Anyway, Kyogen and Reiun don\u2019t describe their experiences in that way \u2013 check it out in Kaz Tanahahi\u2019s Enlighenment Unfolds<\/span>, p. 59.<\/p>\nBut if you have a theory about Dogen\u2019s zazen and enlightenment that doesn\u2019t fit with all the enlightenment stories Dogen relates and praises, then you might want to come up with a stretch theory to make sense out of that contradiction. It looks to me like a dog with three heads \u2013 you have to keep adding heads to cover the incongruencies in your theory.<\/p>\n
And that seems like more than enough for one post. I\u2019ll come back sometime to Harry\u2019s questions about inquiry.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/tbn0.google.com\/images?q=tbn:RYL4mTTMblbmgM:biorust.com\/tutorials\/blender-snowman\/etape3.png\")
<\/a><\/p><\/td>\n![](\"https:\/\/tbn0.google.com\/images?q=tbn:VxswzvbQsashrM:www.tms.org\/pubs\/journals\/JOM\/0212\/fluffy.gif\")
<\/a><\/p><\/td>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/4330911338438640912-5328378836801559242?l=wildfoxzen.blogspot.com\")
<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"