The Humming Cloud, 48th Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Atlas):  This second Trump administration, which began on The Open Book, the 20th Day of Childwinter, begins its second 100 days today. During the first 100, Trump inflicted chaos on the international economy by imposing and retracting and reimposing a series of punitive tariffs on countries around the world with his characteristic scattershot impulsiveness. He issued an executive order directing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to expedite permitting for new fossil-fuel projects, which will weaken water-quality protections across the country. A nationwide enforcement apparatus has emerged to purge millions of immigrants, whether or not they have any criminal history, regardless of whether they have an official legal status or protection, or even if they have a permanent resident green card. He is using the pretext of antisemitism to wage a campaign whose real purpose is to defund, demoralize, and diminish higher education in the U.S. By gutting USAID, he has imperiled the very existence of the humanitarian and development industries. His biggest campaign donor and his DOGE shock troops have laid off hundreds of thousands of public employees. The whole regime has developed a malevolent interest in destroying the EU and threatened to annex Greenland. 

Uniting these various cruelties, scandals, and idiocies is a general sense of impunity among the ruling class - some people can commit crimes, and others cannot. Some people can be harmed while others will be protected. The unifying principle of Trumpism is the abdication of adulthood’s defining obligation to take responsibility for oneself and others. 

 

The Scarlet Delight, 47th Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Helios): Today, as every news show, pundit, and talk-show host will tell you, is the 100th day of Trump's second presidency. Lest we forget that he once posted a picture of himself to social media wearing a crown on his head and the words "Long live the king," we here at WDW still bow to no king. Let's go over Agent Orange's "accomplishment" of the past 100 days:  

He spent roughly a third of that time in office playing golf on one or another of his tacky private courses. By visiting his own for-profit businesses, Trump directs government spending to follow him there and profits off the trips. 

He replaced a four-star general as Secretary of Defense with an inexperienced, alcoholic, black-out drunk Fox & Friends weekend host who's repeatedly used unsecure communication apps to discuss battle plans and military secrets. He fired the African-American four-star general who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calling him a DEI hire, and replaced him with a white, largely unknown, retired three-star general. The first female commander of the U.S. Navy was fired as well for the same spurious reason.

He claimed that Ukraine had somehow started the war with the invading Russian army and falsely called Zelensky an unelected “dictator” who took money from the U.S. to go to war with Russia. He demanded half of Ukraine's mineral wealth in exchange for providing military support. He spread a lie that U.S.AID had shipped $100M of condoms to Hamas and suggested the U.S. should take over the Gaza strip and "own it," displacing all of the native Palestinians to create some sort of Middle East Malibu. He hinted at taking over Greenland and Panama using military force and suggested Canada should become the 51st state, causing Canada to elect a Liberal Party prime minister who had been expected to lose but campaigned on a platform of opposing Trump.  

He imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China and then lifted the tariffs on our North American neighbors after they repeated pledges that they had already made, then re-imposed stiff tariffs on every nation of earth, including uninhabited Antarctic islands, and then lifted those but not entirely while also  doubling and tripling tariffs on China and then giving car makers a loophole, and at this point no one can follow anything with regard to tariffs but everyone knows we'll be paying more for everything.

He's let his top campaign donor run wild on cutting personnel across government agencies, often with little to no idea what the furloughed workers actually do. For example, after firing the workers in charge of U.S. nuclear-weapon safety, he realized that those workers were actually kind of important but didn't know how to call them back. The very same thing happened after he fired Agriculture workers who were combatting the avian flu. 

He renamed Denali and the Gulf of Mexico and then threw a hissy fit when the AP didn't adopt his new names. 

He blamed the L.A. wildfire crisis on some imaginary "giant faucet" in northern California and then ordered 2.2 billion gallons of water dumped from the state's reservoirs onto Central Valley farmland that didn't need it and where it won't benefit firefighters at all (but will cause problems this summer when droughts begin). 

He accidentally had an immigrant legally here in the U.S. kidnapped and transported to a third-world black-ops hellhole, defied Supreme Court orders that he should make efforts to bring him back and has said there's nothing that can be doen about it and he intends to leave the victim of his administrative error there to suffer.  

He's named a vaccine denier to head HHS, a Russian asset now directs National Intelligence, and a conspiracy theorist is the new FBI chief. 

He pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of the convicted January 6 rioters, including the most violent felons who pled guilty to attacking and, in some cases, killing police officers. 

He withdrew the U.S. from both the Paris climate-change treaty and the World Health Organization.

He's trying to end the constitutional birthright citizenship of those born on American soil. 

After a tragic air accident, he blamed the incident on "DEI," even as he admitted he had no evidence but just "common sense." 

Finally, there's his "greatest hit," the continued Big Lie that the free and fair 2020 election was somehow "rigged" against him, despite the absence of a shred of evidence and multiple lost court cases.

This is unsustainable and can't go on for another four years. We need regime change and we need it now.

 

The Taught Lists, 46th Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Electra): Bing Ding Tongzi was the Chinese god of fire. The name of the deity came from the phrase used to denote the boy responsible for lighting the monastery's lanterns in the evening.  So the Chinese term Bing Ding Tongzi was been translated as the "god of fire" or "fire boy" or "boy of fire."

One day, Chan Master Fayan asked his student, Bao'en, "From where did you come here?"

Bao'en said, "From Master Quinfeng."

Fayan asked, "What does Quinfeng teach?"  

Bao'en said, "Once, when I asked 'What is this student's true self?,' Quinfeng answered 'Bing Ding comes looking for fire'."  

Fayan told him that was an excellent answer, but added that Bao'en probably didn't understand it.

Bao'en said "Oh, I understood it alright. Bing Ding is fire, and fire looking for fire is like the self looking for the self." 

Fayan said, "Oh, I knew you didn't understand it."

When Bao'en asked how Fayan understood it, Fayan told him to ask him the question, so Bao'en asked, "What is this student's true self?" 

Fayan said, "Bing Ding comes looking for fire."

At these words, Bao'en was greatly enlightened.

If you understand this story, then, well, you don't. You're like Bao'en hearing the words from Quinfeng. You're lost in intellectualization, in ideation. 

Zen Master Dogen liked this story and in the year 1231 included it in Bendowa, the first charter of his Shobogenzo (yes, I'm still on the first chapter of Tanahashi's translation of Shobogenzo; only 95 more chapters left to go). Five years later, Dogen read a version of this story to his assembly at Koshoji Temple, and said, "Previously, the fire boy came seeking fire. Afterwards again the fire boy came seeking fire. Previously, why was he not enlightened but flowed down the path if intellection? Afterwards, why was he greatly enlightened and cast away the old nest? Do you want to understand?"  

After a pause, Dogen said, "The fire boy comes seeking fire. How much do the pillars and lanterns care about the brightness? The fire is covered with cold ashes and while searching we don't see it. Lighting it and blowing it out again gives birth to practice."    

Another time, Dogen said, "The fire boy comes seeking fire. With complete dedication, do not stop when you have only seen the smoke."

The Ariven Power, 45th Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Deneb): Nothing cool ever happens in my white-ass, affluent portion of the City of Atlanta. Not at least until today, when Flux Atlanta presented Bent Frequency and friends performing Braiding Time, Memory and Water, a site-specific performance by Sue Schroeder with conceptual artist Jonathan Keats and composer Felipe Perez Santiago in my neighborhood park. The cast of forward-thinking percussionists and dancers performed at various locations along the Beltline Trail in Northwest Atlanta.

Pics or it didn't happen:

     

And of course a video:

The things one sees (and hears) out on one's alternating-day walks. 

 

Day of Vestiges, 44th of Spring, 525 M.E. (Castor): I'm not going to let the passing of Pope Francis go by without comment. He died last Monday, and his funeral was held at the Vatican today among church dignitaries and heads of state.

I'm obviously not a Catholic and there's much of the church's dogma that I find destructive and hurtful, but as popes go, Francis seemed to be a pretty good one. He practiced what he preached, notably humility, and is famous for washing the feet of the homeless and foregoing a lot of the finery and foppery associated with past popes. He was buried in a common graveyard away from the Vatican. He was critical of Trump's deportations and treatment of refugees Famously, regarding gays, he said, "Who am I to judge?"

On the other hand, he categorically rejected the ordination of women as priests. I mean, the pope is still catholic.

Anyway, rest in peace, Francis. Impermanence is swift.

 

Cardhouse of the Awaited, 43rd Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): An American identified as the son of a deputy director of the CIA was killed in eastern Ukraine last year while fighting under contract for the Russian military, according to The Guardian and based on an investigation by independent Russian media.

According to the obituary published by his family, he died on April 4, 2024 in “Eastern Europe,” although his family had been informed by the Russian government that he had died within the borders of Ukraine. 

He had been active in gender equality and environmental protest circles, and joined Rainbow Family, a leftwing environmental protest group. In 2023, he traveled to Turkey to assist in the recovery following an earthquake that killed more than 56,000 people. 

While in Turkey, he become increasingly angry at the US for its support of Israel and the war in Gaza and began expressing a desire to go to Russia. “He was usually watching videos about Palestine and was so angry at America,” an acquaintance said. “He started thinking about going to Russia. He wanted to war with the USA. But I think he was very influenced by the conspiracy theory videos.”

This is a sad story about misguided idealism, radicalization, and the corrosive effects of social media and conspiracy theories. It's understandable how one can be angry at the US over Palestine, but its bewildering how one goes from there to killing Ukrainians. 

I'm withholding the names here out of sympathy for his family, friends, and survivors, but they can easily be found online in mainstream news outlets.    

 

Day of the High Road, 42nd of Spring, 525 M.E. (Atlas): In Volume 7, Chapter 490 of his expansive Eihei Koroku, Zen Master Eihei Dogen discusses the koan of Nanyue's first meeting with Huineng and provides his own rhetorical answers to Huineng's questions if he (Dogen) were Nanyue.  Dogen's statements provide an insight to his understanding of the meaning of the conversation. 

At the very beginning, when Huineng asks "Where are you from?," instead of saying "From Mt. Song," Dogen claims he would have said, "For a long time I have yearned for the atmosphere of the master's virtue. Arriving here to humbly make prostrations, I cannot bear how how deeply moved I feel."

When Huineng asks, "What is it that thus comes?," the question that stumped Nanyue for eight years, Dogen says he would simply have bowed and said, "This morning in late spring it is fairly warm, and I humbly wish the venerable master ten thousands joys in your activities."

Dogen's answers are not dodging the question as much as avoiding the trap of identifying with a specific ego-self separate from the rest of the universe. He does use the first-person singular in his answers, but only as needed to describe phenomena, e.g., yearning and humility. He is answering as an interconnected part of the universe, not a separate and specific ego-self with its own particular and unique history.

If asked to explain the meaning of Nanyue's eventual answer after eight years of contemplation, "To say it's a thing misses the mark," Dogen claims he would say, "Even though the reeds are young and green, these spring days the sunlight remains later, and I would like to build a grass hut."

As for Huineng's statement that "Just this that is undefiled is what is upheld and sustained by all the buddhas. You are thus. I also am thus," Dogen explains, "A blue lotus blossom opens toward the sun."  

 

Day of the Field, 41st of Spring, 525 M.E. (Helios): I got caught in a pouring rain today while out for my alternating day walk. Although it was cloudy outside, I took my chances as the weather app on my phone didn't forecast any showers.  As Murphy's Law would have it, the rain started at the point on my route where I was about furthest from my house, and as I walked home it picked up in intensity and became a full-blown thunderstorm, complete with lightning, hail, and gusty winds. By the time I finally got home, I was thoroughly soaked to the bone, but I had still managed to walk almost five miles. 

I'd like to say the rain washed away all my impurities and defilements, but it made the sweaty salt on my forehead sting my eyes and the first thing I did when I got home was take a long shower, as if getting even wetter was the solution to getting soaked by the rain. 

In Buddhism, "defilement" refers to the hindrances that obstruct our spiritual progress and ultimately leads to suffering. These are often identified as the "three poisons" consisting of greed, hatred, and delusion. Delusion, then, can be a defilement. More on that in a moment. First, though, a story.

Master Nanyue, 1177 to 1244 M.E. (677-744 A.D.), was the senior student of the Sixty Chinese Patriarch, Huineng. Nanyue first entered a monastery at age 15 and eventually came to study under a teacher on Mt. Song. Later, he met and studied under Huineng, and when they first met, Huineng asked him, "Where did you come from?"

Nanyue said, "From Mt. Song."

Huineng then asked, "What is it that thus comes?" and Nanyue couldn't answer.

After eight years of practice under Huineng, Nanyue informed his teacher, "I have an understanding."

Huineng said, "What is it?"

Nanyue said, "To say it's a thing misses the mark."

Huineng then asked, "Then can it be made evident or not?"

Nanyue replied, "I don't say it can't be made evident, but it can't be defiled."

Huineng approved this answer, saying "Just this that is undefiled is what is upheld and sustained by all the buddhas. You are thus. I also am thus."

This story does not appear in most of the collections of koans (i.e., the Blue Cliff Record, the Gateless Gate, the Book of Serenity, etc.), but I've read that it does appear in something called the Wudeng Huiyuan (A Compendium of the Five Lamps) compiled by Chan master Puji. Puji was a Chinese contemporary of Japanese Zen Master Dogen, who also recorded the story as Case 101 in his collection of three hundred koans. It is also included several times in his Eihei Koroku. However, Dogen's version contains one significant difference: instead of asking, "Then can it be made evident or not?," Dogen has it that: 

Huineng asked, "Does it depend upon practice and enlightenment?"

Nanyue answered, "It's not that there is no practice and enlightenment. It's just that they cannot be defiled."

Huineng said, "Just this nondefilement is what buddhas have maintained and transmitted. You are like this. I am like this. Ancestors in India were like this."   

Questions of translation and literalism aside, not to mention who knows exactly what words were spoken in China 1,300 years ago, it seems that these are two very different conversations. The "it" in Huineng's question in the first version seems to be referring to the one which thus comes, that is, to Nanyue himself. Huineng is asking Nanyue who or what are you, implicitly at the deepest and most profound level, and it takes Nanyue eight years to admit that any answer misses the mark. Nothing can be defined, pinned down, or separated from the whole rest of the universe due to the interconnectedness of all things. Separateness is a delusion, a defilement. Nanyue's existence is empirically evident, but any answer to Huineng's "what is it that thus comes?" would defile the true interconnectedness of existence. I think.

But in Dogen's version of the story, Huineng doesn't ask if it can it be made evident but instead, asks does "it," presumably Nanyue's existence, depend upon practice and enlightenment? That seems to me to be a very different question.

Dogen refers to this koan/conversation in the first chapter, Bendowa, of his Shobogenzo. In the Nishijima translation, he says, "Have you not heard the words of the ancestral master who said, 'It is not that there is no practice-and-experience, but it cannot be tainted.” The story comes up again in Chapter Seven, Senjō, when Dogen says, “It is not that there is no practice and experience, but the state can never be tainted.”

As I reported a couple days ago, I've received a copy of the new (2012) translation of Shobogenzo by Kazuaki Tanahashi. In his translation of Bendowa, Dogen writes, "An ancient ancestor once said, 'It is not that there is no practice and no realization, it is just that they cannot be divided'."

To Dogen, practice and enlightenment were one and the same thing. Practice isn't the path to enlightenment and enlightenment isn't the fruit of practice, they are one and the same. The theme of Bendowa (On the Endeavor of the Way [Tanahashi], or A Talk About Pursuing the Truth [Nishijima]) was the primacy of meditation practice in Zen Buddhism, and throughout his life and in his teachings, Dogen emphasized that practice and enlightenment were one. The use of the word "divided" instead of "defiled" in Nanyue's answer emphasizes the intimate relation between practice and enlightenment. 

If you replace the "defiled" with "divided" in Puji's Wudeng Huiyuan version of the story, it works just as well. 

You still with me? You following me so far? Good, because there's one more instance to consider. Nanyue's story appears in Shobogenzo again in Chapter 7, Sanjo (Washing). Here, very explicitly, Huineng asks "Do you (not "it") depend on practice-realization?," but even Tanahashi's translation has Nanyue answering, "It is not that there is no practice-realization. It is just that it should not be defiled." Tanahashi uses the word "defiled," not "divided" like in Bendowa.

Among the lessons I take from all this is, yes, practice and enlightenment are one, and also, to identify the self as separate from the rest of the universe is a delusion. But I'll add that since to divide is a delusion, and delusion is one of the three defilements, the word for "divide" can also be translated as "defile." I guess I could have just said that right at the beginning without going through all the rest of this, but such is my dharma study and my reading of my new Shobogenzo translation.

And of course, now that I'm back home and my wet clothes are in the dryer, the rain has stopped and it's actually sunny outside right now.

Day of the Frontier, 40th of Spring, 525 M.E. (Electra): Timers. For those of us practicing sitting meditation at home, the selection of an appropriate timer is important.

The obvious solution is to put a clock somewhere in your field of view, but that usually just results in counting down the minutes. You're not practicing nonthinking, you're just passing time while warming cushions.

If you have a stopwatch or a timer function on a digital wristwatch, that should work fine - set it to the desired number of minutes and just sit, nonthinking, and wait for the alarm to ping. I've owned many digital watches over the years but don't currently have one at the moment, so that option doesn't work for me just now.    

However, nearly everyone has a timer/clock function on their phone and it's easy to set the number of desired minutes, set it down without watching the seconds and minutes pass, and practice nonthinking until the alarm goes off. That works fine if you're sitting for only one session, but if you go for longer periods and want to sit for multiple sessions with brief walking breaks at timed intervals in between, you have to constantly set and reset the timer. The problem is that when playing around with the phone, it's tempting to check for any new email that may have arrived, or to peruse any phone calls you might have missed, or peek at Facebook or Reddit or whatever social media you prefer. These activities tend to generate cascades of thoughts and make it difficult to get back to the state of nonthinking. You're basically engaging with your phone, interrupted by some longish periods of inattention to your distractions.

Finally, you can select musical tracks of the length for which you want to sit. But sitting listening to music, although not without merit, isn't meditation. I can sit and derive great satisfaction listening to 30-minute tracks by Miles or Coltrane, or Godspeed or Terry Riley for that matter, but that's something separate and apart from zazen. But I have found a way to use music as my meditation timer.

Here's what I do: the good folks at Other People have put out an album called Caves, a "compendium of silences" made up of eight timers for everyday use. Artists were asked to make "caves" for a length of silence of their choosing. Each track starts with a short bit of music that soon fades to 5 minutes, 10 minutes, as much as 25 minutes of silence, and then returns for a short coda. The silent caves are intended to be used as timers for cooking, meditation, running, walking, sleeping or anything you want.  

I have little interest in sitting for only five or ten minutes, though, and only one track, by the new age/ambient musician Laraaji, is 25 minutes in length. I've been using the Laraaji track since last August, though, to time my alternate day sitting, setting my computer to play his track (Twenty Five Minute Cave) three consecutive times. The opening part gives me sufficient time to light a stick of incense and settle in for the first period of meditation, and on the next two plays it gives me enough time to get up, stretch my legs, and walk once around the room before settling back in for the next "cave" period.

However, as useful and wonderful as the Laraaji track is, listening to the same piece of music over and over three times every other day for nine months gets a little old. So recently, I used some audio editing software and extended the silences on all the "caves" to 25 minutes. Some are more conducive to meditation than others, but in addition to Laraaji, two others work great - one by Will Epstein (Fifteen Minute Cave) and another by Ana Quiroga (Ten Minute Cave) - when expanded to 25 minutes.

If that advise doesn't work for you for some reason, or you simply insist on sitting to music while meditating, there are some longer ambient tracks that aren't as bad as other music for meditation. Obviously, much of Brain Eno's ambient records tend not to distract too much when meditating. Chamber Lightness from 2018's Music for Installations is exactly 25 minutes long and serves as a fairly good meditation timer, and if you're feeling adventurous you can go for 39:45 with the next track, I Dormienti. You might also consider his Neroli (Thinking Music Part IV), Thursday Afternoon, or Reflection, each of which clocks in at about an hour. 

My track of choice is World Rhythm by Annea Lockwood, a 46-minute composition consisting entirely of nature sounds artfully spliced together by the composer. Bird sounds give way to waterfalls to duck calls to gentle thunder without calling undo attention to themselves. It's like being teleported in meditation from a forest to a beach to a swamp and beyond. Also recommended are Lear or any other of Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening recordings, or some (but not all) of Elaine Radrigue's Occam Ocean and Occam River recordings. Generally, any music that doesn't call too much attention to itself and doesn't include lyrics are candidates, and it's up to each listener to decide what works or not for them.

 

The Listening Path, 39th Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Deneb): Between our chattering mind and our recognition of our chattering mind, a clearing opens. If we sit still and quiet our mind, we can observe the clearing. We can try to abide in that clearing, but as soon as we do, the chattering mind follows and the clearing vanishes.

Actually, it doesn't so much vanish as simply just reappear elsewhere. And when we go there, poof!, it's gone again.

As we observe the chattering mind, we become aware of a not-as-noisy, but still not-completely-silent mind that's observing the chattering mind. As we look at that quieter mind, we lose track of the chattering mind but once again we've become the observer. I wonder as this process repeats itself if it's a constant cycle of observer and the observer switching roles back and forth? The observer watching the observed, and then the observed watching the observer, repeated over and over? 

Or is it additive? The observer watching the observed, then another observer watching the first observer, and then a third observer, a fourth, a fifth, and so on infinitely?

You can lose your mind wondering these things but, in a manner, losing your mind may be the point of it all.

Zazenshin, translated by Nishijima (1996) as The Needle of Zen, was translated by Tanahashi (2012) as The Point of Zen.

The Whispering Legions, 38th Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Castor): Yaoshan Weiyan (1251-1334 Common Era of my New Revised Universal Solar Calendar, or 731-834 A.D. of your Christian Nationalist calendar) was a Chinese Chan master from what is now Shanxi Province in northern China. He was a student of Master Shitou Xiquan.

One day, as Yaoshan was sitting in meditation, Shitou asked him, "What are you doing here?"

Yaoshan said, "I'm doing nothing."

Shitou replied, "Then you're just sitting leisurely."

Yaoshan said, "If I were sitting leisurely, then I'd be doing something."

 Shitou then asked, "What is it, then, that you're not doing?"

Yaoshan said, "A thousand sages don't know." 

Apparently, Yaoshan couldn't sit in peace without someone coming along and interrupting him. Another story tells of another time when Yaoshan was sitting and a monk asked him, "What do you think about when you sit in meditation?"

Yaoshan said, "I think not-thinking."

The monk asked, "How do you think not-thinking?"

Yaoshan said, "Nonthinking." 

This latter story appears to be one of Japanese Zen Master Dogen's favorites, as he references it numerous times. It's included in his collection of three-hundred koans and in his Eihei Koroku, a collection of sermons and talks. It comes up frequently in his Shobogenzo and there's even a fascicle (Zazenshin) in that book dedicated to it. Dogen pointed out that thinking is linear and sequential - a separation from reality and an abstraction rather than reality itself. On the other hand, not thinking is suppressive  - it cuts away thoughts the moment they arise, making the mind dead and unresponsive.

Nonthinking has no such edges, Dogen posits. It is the boundless mind that neither holds onto nor lets go of thoughts. It is the manifestation of mind in which the dualism of self and other, thinking and not thinking, dissolves. This, Dogen maintained, is the "right thought" of the Buddha.

Yes, as you can probably tell, I've been reading my new translation of Shobogenzo and cross-referencing it with my other Zen texts. After some reading today, I sat down for my alternating-day meditation. For some practical advise on how to approach nonthinking, just sit and attempt to neither engage in your thoughts nor suppress your thoughts. Just observe them as they arise and allow them to fall away on their own. Observe the quiet spaces between thoughts. When you notice you're caught up in some narrative or another, don't beat yourself up over it but just gently detach and observe the narrative and observe yourself noticing the narrative. Observe the space between the narrative and your realization of the narrative. Just sit and watch. Nonthinking.     

Day of the Overseer, 37th of Spring, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): In Gudo Nishijima and Chodo Cross' 1994 translation of Zen Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, the opening of Genjo-Koan (The Realized Universe) reads:  

When all dharmas are [seen as] the Buddha-Dharma, then there is delusion and realization, there is practice, there is life and there is death, there are buddhas and there are ordinary beings. When the myriad dharmas are each not of the self, there is no delusion and no realization, no buddhas and no ordinary beings, no life and no death. The Buddha's truth is originally transcendent over abundance and scarcity, and so there is life and death, there is delusion and realization, there are beings and buddhas. And though it is like this, it is only that flowers, while loved, fall; and weeds while hated, flourish.

Over the years, I've both struggled to understand these words while simultaneously taking many different meanings from them. The mystery deepened for me in 2003 at a Zen meditation retreat in upstate New York's Zen Mountain Monastery. I had dokusan (one-on-one conversation) with the late Zen teacher John Daido Loori, and I confided in him that for reasons not apparent to me, it seemed like my Zen practice was losing its intensity and vigor. In response, he asked me if I was familiar with the opening words of Genjo-Koan above, and I confirmed that I was.

"In the first sentence," Daido said, "Dogen mentions 'practice,' but he doesn't bring up practice again in the next three sentences. Why is that?"

When I told him I didn't know, never really noticed that before, he advised me to spend some time thinking about it. If you don't know, Daido had transmission to teach in both the Soto and Rinzai traditions, and while Soto students like myself didn't do koan practice, Daido gave me a koan anyway but one from the heart of the Soto tradition.  

When I got back home, my Zen teacher and dharma brothers and sisters in Atlanta all agreed that Daido's was a very good question, but didn't have a quick answer for me (or wouldn't give me a quick and easy answer). Even though I don't consider myself a Zen Buddhist anymore, I've been working on that koan for the past 23 years and still think about it now.

Today, my copy of Kazuaki Tanahashi's 2012 translation of Dogen's Shobogenzo (Shambala Publications, Inc.) arrived. Upon unpacking it, my first action was to offer the box as a new plaything and sleeping spot for my cat. My second action was to read its translation of Genjo-Koan, the title of which Tanshashi translates not as "The Realized Universe," but as "Actualizing the Fundamental Point":

As all things are buddha dharma, there is delusion, realization, practice, birth [life] and death, buddhas and sentient beings. As myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death. The buddha way, in essence, is leaping clear of abundance and lack; thus there is birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas. Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.

Although still enigmatic, this language is much clearer to me, although "practice" still shows up only in the first sentence and not again later. 

(Spoiler alert): My unenlightened understanding of the answer to Daido's question is the first sentence, which starts with all things (or "the myriad things" or "dharmas") being examined from a subjective point of view, so they can be identified as this or that, or as Dogen catalogs them, "delusion, realization, practice, life and death, buddhas and sentient beings." But when looked at from an absolute or enlightened point of view, things no longer have an individual identity and then there's no this or that. But to Dogen, practice was enlightenment, so he doesn't say there's no practice in the absolute as that would be like saying "there's no practice in practice." The third sentence is from a transcendental point of view, rising above dualities like scarcity and abundance, which is likewise an enlightened understanding so again practice is not mentioned. And the paragraph closes with a fourth and final sentence which is from a practical point of view. In other words, when we resolve that the myriad dharmas both exist and don't exist, we can see the world as it actually is, with its weeds and flowers and our preferences and dislikes.

Can't wait to read the other 1,200 pages of this book.