Books

"In this moment, who is it that is observing what? Who is it sitting on a cushion, hearing the sounds, seeing the colors of light and darkness on the floor? Who is hearing the wind outside the window? Who is it? And what if there were just the observing? What if there was no perceivable observer? What if it were just the seeing, the hearing, the smelling, the feeling and the tasting? What if all of these things were going on and yet nobody was home? In other words, if we look at what I just wrote about “going along with what is” and take it even farther, as Master Dogen is inviting us to do, what if we were to say that instead of going along with what is, what if we were what is, whatever it is happens to be? What if, instead of saying that we are just observing this universe, we were to experience that we were just this universe? Not observing something on the outside, but being all things without the illusion of an inside or an outside. The sound of footsteps. A cool breeze across our neck. A sneeze. As the great Irish poet W. B. Yeats once wrote, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” The dancer is the dance! As we saw earlier, Dogen calls fully manifesting ultimate reality “genjokoan,” which is none other than our daily, ordinary deportment, rolling up the curtain or getting down from a platform, making a cup of tea or answering the telephone. This is all the manifestation of ultimate reality. We do it everyday."

"If our enlightenment is solely aimed at alleviating our own suffering, we paradoxically risk perpetuating suffering both in ourselves and in others. True liberation is inextricably linked to the emancipation of all beings, and despite our own awakening, we are not truly enlightened until everyone else is also enlightened. Therefore, we naturally serve and assist others in realizing their true nature."