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Saturday, June 9, 2007

unity and movement

We cannot examine anything without form, yet the paradox is that form kills movement. This understanding is directly related to the understanding from quantum physics that nothing can ever be observed without being affected by the Observer. We might consider the experience of life itself as being something like a liquid, which is warm and constantly in motion, yet which freezes and becomes solid in every instance of its contact with consciousness. In this way, consciousness never experiences life in its warm, liquid, natural state, where everything is eternally in relationship and constantly changing, but only experiences it as a crystallized object.

I believe that the Zen parable about Baso relates to this question. His teacher came to him one day in his hut after he had been practicing intensive Zazen meditation for 10 years.
"What have you been up to?" he asked.
"I am sitting Zazen," replied Baso.
"Why are you sitting Zazen?" asked the teacher.
"In order to attain Buddhahood," replied Baso.
The teacher picked up a tile and began to polish it with his robe.
"Why are you polishing that tile?" asked Baso.
"In order to make a mirror," replied the teacher.
"How can you polish a tile to make a mirror?" asked Baso.
"How can you attain Buddhahood by sitting Zazen?" replied the teacher.

Dogen has some very interesting things to say about this parable in his Shobogenzo. I will not recapitulate them here; you can go read them for yourself in his chapter on the eternal mirror, should you wish to.

What I would like to focus on today is that the action of polishing is a circular movement. The action of sitting is static.

This is not to dismiss tiles, or mirrors, or sitting. We simply wish to point to the circular movement of the polishing, which is about a relationship between the observer and the observed. The observer and his interaction with what is observed are in movement- the tile is "being polished." Dogen actually points us to the polishing as being a central question in this parable.

When things spring from the participation in relationship itself, they are quite different when they arise from an expectation of a future result. Polishing may make tiles into to mirrors, and sitting Zazen may turn men into Buddhas. The potential for everything is there. It is the participation in the activity that is essential.

The Enneagram points to an inner movement of energy that passes from point to point within a human being. Understanding it intellectually or trying to come up with complex formulations about its meaning are all valid activities, up to a point--but this is not a point to get stuck on. One has to take the next step, which is to discover the living meaning of this diagram in the movement of self within the self. The inner nature of what the diagram depicts must be uncovered and understood. The diagram is about relationship and movement, not about analysis and structure.

The analysis and the structure are all there, just as tiles and the mirrors are there. But the point does not lie within knowing that there are tiles or knowing that there are mirrors, or knowing that tiles can become mirrors. The point lies within knowing that we participate -- we polish the tile. In this inner participation, in discovering the inner movement, we discover a new unity that may offer us the opportunity for a warm bath of understanding, instead of being locked in our usual frozen state of knowing.

Dogen's expounding of the eternal mirror in the Shobogenzo is a challenging and complex rendering of what I believe to be an essentially cosmological question. He is attempting to help us penetrate to the root of reality and discover where it arises.

I completed the chapter this morning after working on it for about a week. This complex set of ideas left me with the impression that consciousness itself is a mirror, that there is a reciprocity between the inner and the outer, that everything that arises is reflected by the experience of being, and the experience of being gives rise to everything. We live in a universe of mirrors reflecting mirrors.

Of course this is a distinctly philosophical conundrum. It's eminently cool stuff, but we could think about it all day and all night for the rest of your life, and not really get it.

What interests me more directly at this point is the study of that inner flow of energy which the Enneagram invites us to. That study can lead us to an experience of movement and unity, which is encompassed within each breath, if we seek it.

May your trees bear fruit, and your wells yield water.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Reading sutras

Those of you who follow this blog will know that I frequently discuss the following two things:

First of all, that all of our work essentially consists of taking in impressions through the body, and that developing a new and deeper connection with the body is vital to this work. This was a central tenet of Gurdjieff’s teaching, and perhaps the most vital information contained in it. If one encounters the Gurdjieff work and manages to understand – I mean, to truly understand – only the single fact that all impressions are food, this one understanding comprises almost everything one needs to know in order to truly work. If one understands this-- when I use the word understanding, I refer to an understanding that cannot be born within the intellect, and cannot be achieved through analysis-- everything else will eventually follow.

Secondly, that we can find everything we need to know and understand about the nature of life and consciousness within the study and experience of nature itself.

In Dogen’s Shobogenzo, there is a chapter entitled “Kankin,” or, reading sutras. Sutras, for those of you not versed in the language of Buddhism, are texts which contain teachings.

Dogen well understood that the temptation in Buddhism is to attempt to understand it through the reading, analysis, and recitation of sutras. This type of intellectualism is endemic in most intelligent spiritual works.

However, Dogen was a master of what we would call the Gurdjieff work. He well understood that the taking in of impressions was the essential heart of our work.

All the quotes that follow are taken from page 226 of the 1994 translation of the Shobogenzo by Nishijima and Cross, published by Dogen Sangha press.

In the very beginning of this chapter, Dogen says the following:

“At this time the reality of hearing sutras, retaining sutras, receiving sutras, preaching sutras, and so on exists in the ears, eyes, tongue, nose, and organs of body and mind, and in the places where we go, hear, and speak.”

And there you have it. The practice of working with sutras is the practice of taking in impressions, achieved through the connection of the body and the mind.

Immediately afterwards, he says the following: “The sort who because they seek fame, preach non-Buddhist doctrines, cannot practice the Buddhist sutras.”

Seeking fame by preaching non-Buddhist doctrines is, I believe, an allegorical reference to becoming trapped in the intellect. The translators of this text mention in the footnotes at the source of this quotation from a sutra has not been located. It may be that this particular reference was an original from Dogen himself.

The next line says, “The reason is that the sutras are transmitted and retained on trees and rocks, are spread through fields and through villages, are expounded by lands of dust, and are lectured by space.”

Here, Dogen is specifically telling us that all of the sutras that we need to learn from, all of the teachings we seek to understand, exist within and arise through nature itself. The teaching lies within everything,--it lies within every fragment of everything-- because, as I have pointed out in the essay on the Enneagram, the nature of the universe is fractal, that is, every level contains a complete replica of all the levels within itself. If you download the essay, you will see a visual diagram that depicts the nature of this fractal relationship.

Everything is connected to everything else. In a real sense, if one truly and fully understands one thing, everything can be understood.

That of course, would be a very big thing. As tiny creatures, we just do our best to understand one part of one thing.

May your trees bear fruit and your wells yield water.