In the next paragraph of Shobogenzo chapter 72, The Samadhi That Is King of Samadhis, Master Dogen quotes a sutra in which the Buddha talks of "sitting at ease, not leaning or moving."
I would really like to know what the Buddha had in mind when he spoke the words that were translated into Chinese as the two characters ANZA.
I don't mean know only intellectually. No fucking way did I only want to know intellectually. Really wanting to know, totally, I came back from Japan to England in 1994 to investigate as deeply as I could the discoveries that FM Alexander made about how to find ease in sitting.
Politically, in view of Gudo's pre-existing prejudices, that made me vulnerable to the intervention of the Luetchfords, who duly intervened and poisoned the Nishijima-Cross translation partnerhship.
So what? So, I had better redouble, as a matter of life and death, my desire to understand what the Buddha really meant when he spoke the words translated into Chinese as ANZA.
AN means ease, comfort, stability. The pictograph is of a woman under a roof. ZA means sitting.
Really wanting to know what the Buddha meant, sometimes I recite aloud the following traditional gatha called KAI-KYO-GE, or Verse for Opening a Sutra.
The gatha doesn't neessarily have to be recited by angels accompanied by the sound of celestial bells.
Sometimes, because of really wishing to understand, a demon can be heard singing this verse as it goes into combat.
MUJO-JINSHIN-MIMYO-HO
The supreme, deep, and subtle method
HYAKU-SEN-MAN-KO-NAN-SOGU
In a million aeons is hard to meet.
GA-KON-KENMON-TOKU-JUJI
Now that I have found out about it, and have a chance of making it my own,
GAN-GE-NYORAI-SHINJITSU-GI
I want to know what [the hell] the Buddha really meant.
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