Dharma Talks

The full moon--round, whole, without edges. Aloft in space, the moon is an ancient symbol of awakening. Our job is to become clear and transparent, to trust something beyond what we know. When we see that there is no moment we are not connected with all being, then we are as water fully reflecting the moon.

In conventional understanding, firewood becomes ash, and the two have a continuous relationship. We have a concept that time moves forward on a journey and thus has spatiality. But Dogen says that each thing—firewood or ash, you or me—is its own full expression in the moment. There is no separation between the time we abstract and imagine, that we control and move through, and our very being. Time is all being, and all being is time. The pine is time and the bamboo is time. W

Like a bird learns to fly, studying the self leads to freedom. In the search for permanence, continuity, and safety, we often fashion a two-dimensional, static map of the boundaries between ourselves and the world. Bit by bit, we can let go of the map, beholding the world, and letting the world behold us. See what arises in that dynamic, flowing, ungraspable space.

We humans have a special gift: the capacity to envision ourselves into the future and live there in our imagination. We do this in practice too, imagining some future enlightened state that we attain through our efforts. The trick is not to be deceived by that visioning. We must be ready to let go of our attachment to plans at a moment's notice as the myriad things come forward to meet us. Be ready to improvise, to take up a technique and let go of it at the same time. Arrive

Seido meditates on the beginning lines of the Genjo Koan. When we begin practice, it is important to recognize concepts such as buddhas and sentient beings, wisdom and delusion. However, these concepts point beyond concepts—when we see that the thing we have made with our mind has no “thingness,” no fixed boundary. When we grasp form and emptiness, we still must practice in this human life where flowers fall, weeds sprout, and the elk raid the crops in the fields.