Natural Universe & Ecology week 6 Dōgen Buddhist perspectives

 Samadhi - the state of oneness of subject and object - meditational consciousness which is also enlightened consciousness.  In Chinese Buddhism, enlightenment and the process of meditation are not separate, one doesn’t meditate in order to attain enlightenment (bodhi) – rather this is a sudden feature of meditation.

 "Everthing, including ourselves, is already a Buddha right from the beginning, and consequently what we call "awakening" or "enlightenment" can really only be a process of proving to ourselves this fact." (Cook, 1989, pp ).  “[T]he transformed world of other persons, animals, plants, soil, stone and so forth which is revealed in enlightenment." (Cook, 1989, p.14) This world, like the self is part of the dropping away of all prior experience that leads to enlightenment.

 Dōgen opposes traditional Buddhist teaching which restricts Buddha nature to sentient beings. Also, he rejects the teaching that Buddha nature can be possessed as this sets up a dualism between Buddha nature and possessor. He says “everything is really a sentient being and this entire-being… is Buddha nature, or Buddha.” (Cook, 1989, p.20)  “Thus, all things are Buddha and, what is more, possess intrinsic value, perfection and beauty. This is so whether they are humans, dogs, trees, mosquitoes, or stones.” (Cook, 1989, p.21)

 Is there a self? Do you possess the same self as you did yesterday? Teleporting example.  Is anything permanent?  So what would be doing the possessing?

Dōgen’s rejection of dualism  There is no “absolute reality” and a lesser reality manifested in objects as this could lead to pantheism/animism that assumes Buddha lies beyond independent beings and enters into the world in different forms.  “There is no Buddha apart from interdependent, empty beings.” Nothing takes us “beyond the dog and the “sparrow”. (Cook, 1989, p.23)  There is nothing beyond the world of appearance.

 Interdependence = lack of independence= emptiness. Interdependence implies lack and ultimately emptiness.  Negation of the negation. “We may say that the individual results from the self-negation of absolute nothingness… Thus, the world, as absolute nothingness or emptiness or interdependence eternally and incessantly crystallizes in the form of bird, person, flower, stone and cloud.” (Cook, 1989, p.25)

 Empty is empty: Dōgen’s “painting of a rice cake” upends commonsense about the reality of the one and the representation of the other. (Cook, 1989, p.26)  The moon in the lake is as real as the moon in the sky or the mind.  Enlightenment is not about “saving one’s own skin” but a means of releasing natural compassion that has been ‘dammed up’. Close parallel with Naess’ selfhood. (Cook, 1989, p.43)

 Empty is empty: Dōgen’s “painting of a rice cake” upends commonsense about the reality of the one and the representation of the other. (Cook, 1989, p.26)  The moon in the lake is as real as the moon in the sky or the mind.  Enlightenment is not about “saving one’s own skin” but a means of releasing natural compassion that has been ‘dammed up’. Close parallel with Naess’ selfhood. (Cook, 1989, p.43)

 Empty is empty: Dōgen’s “painting of a rice cake” upends commonsense about the reality of the one and the representation of the other. (Cook, 1989, p.26)  The moon in the lake is as real as the moon in the sky or the mind.  Enlightenment is not about “saving one’s own skin” but a means of releasing natural compassion that has been ‘dammed up’. Close parallel with Naess’ selfhood. (Cook, 1989, p.43)

 In a discussion on the self, Cook refers to Dōgen’s statement that things advancing towards and making the self is enlightenment.  Here he refers to ‘prereflective’ experience, and, like Naess, speaks of the ‘experience’ of the “very young baby who still does not discriminate between itself, and say its crib and who does not know that its experience belongs to a class of things called “cribs”.” By contrast, Cook favoured the ‘postrefeclective’ which does not entail a literal forgetting of abstractions (as in, say, advanced dementia) but the capacity to be here, now. (Cook, 1989, p.52)

 The analogy of the fish and the bird. Everything is the ultimate reality in which the living creature is the same reality. Each being expresses the ultimate reality perfectly. Zenki is the dynamic functioning of the essential nature of ultimate reality in each and every thing. (Cook, 1989, pp.58-9)  Video Video

Dōgen (1989) 'Genjo Koan Manifesting Absolute Reality', in Cook, F. (Ed.) Sounds of Valley Streams: Enlightenment in Dōgen's Zen. Translations of Nine Essays from Shobogenzo, Albany: State University of New York Press  p.65 First three lines represent a dialectic which begins and ends with the real, now, but in the second case, it the form of a negation of the negation.  p.66 Opening lines represent something like the dogmatic method. Things realise the self, rather than the other way around.