January 19
DOGEN KIGEN
He lived in the 13th century. He was from Japan, and he went to China where he was initiated into Buddhism by a Chinese master. He returned to his native land and wrote a work called Shobogenzo which has been called a masterpiece of Zen Buddhism. His name was Dogen Kigen. (X) Buddhism trains its sages in monasteries. So Dogen Kigen decided to found one himself. It attracted many aspirants, both men and women.
The ultimate goal of spiritual exercises is to become aware of a Reality that is not apparent in the course of ordinary living. This awareness-acquisition is called awakening. (X) How is this to be achieved? Various processes have been prescribed. Different techniques of yoga and meditation are meant for this. One of these is called shikon taza: sitting only. The idea is, rather than be engaged in all kinds of rituals and ceremonies, one must do nothing but meditate. There must be but one mode, as awakening involves awareness of Oneness.
Another method in this system is known as shinjin datsuraku. It means, literally, giving up of body-mind. This is to convey a physical and metaphysical emptiness whose experience will result in the awakening. In this state there is no awareness of the self. Everything one does is integrated with happenings in the world at large.
All this is part of Zen Buddhism which is not a religion but a mode by which life is said to be experienced in its deeper fullness. Our everyday experiences are filled with dualities, with contradictions and complementarities, dichotomies and dilemmas. These can be philosophically intriguing, metaphysically confusing, and practically frustrating. Zazen is a technique by which one sees, recognizes, and experiences unity behind and beneath all the conflicts and diversity. In that state of understanding, one is freed of all anxieties and stresses that make life difficult to cope with. And when the awakening occurs, say the masters, there is perfect peace: this is the state of what is known as samádhi in the Hindu world. It is indeed the ultimate goal of spiritual seekers.
To those unfamiliar with the framework of meditation and mysticism, all this may sound arcane, if not absurd. But it is good to remember that when one begins to reflect on the meaning and nature of this fleeting flicker called consciousness, all sorts of puzzles arise. There has always been a search for an understanding of who we really are in this vast and long lasting Cosmos, how and why we came to be, not just as complex molecules subject to biochemistry and neurophysiology, but as experiencing entities, cast on earth for a few fast-moving years, and then disappearing for eternity. This search has led many seekers to apprehend a level of Reality that is beyond the spatio-temporal and the material-energetic. Many cultures and civilizations have been built on such findings, and they still hold sway on the human psyche. The sacraments of religions to celebrate birth and before, and to commemorate death and beyond may not be mere fantasies of a less illumined world. They could well be echoes of a distant past of the human race when the sheer primitiveness of our ancestors enabled them to become aware of aspects of the experienced world that, to us, are as dim and opaque as our quantum field theory and double helix would have been to them.
So, as Dogen Kigen, the greatest Japanese master of Zen, told his disciples, “If you keep your fists closed, you will obtain only a few grains of sand. But if you open your hands, you will obtain all the sand in the desert.”
Spurts of Thought 