Wisdom is seeking wisdom: Dogen's contemplative path
For the 13th Century Zen master, reason only gets in the way
The Book:
The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master
Translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt
Shambhala Publications
2013
The Talk:
I do not know enough about Dogen’s context of 13th Century Japan. Were his ideas controversial? Revolutionary? Popular? Extreme? They are certainly different than the thinking going on in the Christian and Islamic world at the time.
Compare the following passage with anything you might find in Thomas Aquinas (a near-contemporary):
“To follow ancient examples means to allow the eye of the ancestral school to see directly and to allow the ear beyond time to hear with humility. It is to gouge out the vast open sky and settle your body into it, to pierce through the skull of the world and just sit. You open the fist and you stay with the nostril. You dye the white cloud within the blue sky, stir up autumn water, and wash the bright moon.”
Although there were occult and mystical practices in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, it’s clear we are somewhere quite different here.
In the West at the time, the general view was that reason was a kind of mountain one could ascend toward the divine. Mystical experiences beyond contemplative reason could take you higher still. But reason was the primary path toward God, i.e. ultimate reality, the true source and aim of all things.
In contrast, Dogen’s view is a short cut to revelation. Reason is no path at all. The intellect needs to be interrupted, not followed. More often than not, words simply get in the way.
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In addition, a major theme of Dogen’s Zen philosophy is that what we seek, we already have. As Levitt writes in the introduction, “There is no distance of any kind between meditation and enlightenment.”
I was reminded several times of Julian of Norwich’s mystical theology, which would appear about a century later, in which she describes God as close to us as our clothes. According to Julian, everything good is God—that is, the good things we experience every day are a direct experience of God. And everything we do is already prayer, regardless of our knowing it or not. Praying, then, is a practice of aligning ourselves with the reality that already is.
Similarly, Levitt writes, “We do not sit in order to become enlightened; we sit as an expression of enlightenment.”
Elsewhere Dogen writes that enlightenment is the rice and tea of everyday practice.
Even the aspiration to know the ultimate reality of the universe is itself an expression of that ultimate reality. Julian would likely say something similar: That the slightest desire for God come from, is, and moves toward God himself.
Dogen writes, “Wisdom is seeking wisdom.”
Dogen and Julian also come to a similar view on compassion. Julian’s mystical vision shows Christ as a mother—giving, loving, and forgiving as an idealized mother does. Dogen exhorts his (male) monks to show compassion to each other like a grandmother.
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The similarities are easy to spot. But it’s also worth noting the differences. As best as I understand it, the Buddhist vision is of a world in which a flower contains a mountain, in which a mountain flows like water, in which a moment contains thousands of years, and a thatched hut is home to a billion worlds.
Julian also has a few places of infinitude, but they are not the same. For Julian, the crucified Jesus is the focal point. For Dogen, it is this present moment, this present thusness. For Julian, the end is endless Love. For Dogen, it is serene unity with nature, the universe, or all past-and-future (yes future) Buddha ancestors.
Both express the virtue of compassion, though the rationales for it diverge. Julian’s love flows from the character of God, a kind of everlasting fount of warmth. The Buddhist conception is a bit more cool. Compassion comes from the recognition of sameness. There is no difference between me and my neighbor, therefore, an act of compassion toward another is an act of compassion toward myself. (This seems to oddly suggest an impossibility of altruism! Though perhaps it doesn’t really matter in the end?)
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One of my favorite lines from the book was this: “Just as cages and snares are limitless, emancipation from them is limitless.”
I stand in awe of many public intellectuals who hold forth so confidently on various matters. I have always been swarmed by doubts, questions, unknowns, and uncertainties. “But what if I’m wrong?” So often in life I have felt I knew something, only to find my knowledge dissolve in an instant. Human life, as I see it, is shrouded in illusion, shadow, and cloud. We only find our way through brief moments of light. It’s easy to despair.
But maybe Dogen is right. Although the cages of ideas and snares of opinion are limitless, perhaps the emancipation from them is also limitless. We break out of our bad thinking, again and again. Our ability to leave illusions behind is our saving grace. And the journey goes on and on.