Plato asked me:
Bodily lotus sitting
Mental lotus sitting
Dropping off body and mind lotus sitting
Can they happen in any of the six realms?
Is that what Master Dogen means when he says do not worry about being in the six realms as the bright pearl is there?
My response:
What Master Dogen means is that the value is there throughout the whole developmental process -- the bright pearl is there throughout the whole lotus.
According to what Gudo taught me, physical full lotus sitting is permissible, mental full lotus sitting is permissible, but body-and-mind-dropping-off sitting is valuable.
Gudo tried to impress upon me, forcibly, what he felt to be the truth of his interpretation that sitting when the parasympathetic nervous system is dominant is permissible; sitting when the sympathetic nervous system is dominant is permissible; but sitting when the autonomic nervous system is balanced is valuable.
In the original Japanese, however, Master Dogen used the same word subeshi , "should practise," in each of the three sentences:
Practise bodily full lotus sitting.
Practise mental full lotus sitting.
Practise body-and-mind-dropping-off full lotus sitting.
What Master Dogen means is do not worry about where your lotus sitting is at. The mucky root is valuable. The sun-kissed petals are valuable. The whole bloody thing is value itself. So don't worry. Just sit.
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2 comments:
'What Master Dogen means is that the value is there throughout the whole developmental process -- the bright pearl is there throughout the whole lotus.'
Does Master Dogen not mean that the bright pearl IS the whole lotus, is not throughout it but is it?
Hi MT,
Yes, when we want to express to others our own enlightenment, the expression is like that. Or, again, we might say that the one bright pearl is totally the one bright pearl, and full lotus sitting is fully full lotus sitting.
Knowing the sincerity of Plato's question, however, I wanted to respond as truly as possible, and not only on the basis of Buddhist philosophy. Just that desire to come up with a good response is the very cause of me answering wrongly.
That is how a questionner, like Plato or Socrates, can become a teacher -- by helping the answerer to see his own wrongness.
When I say "wrongness," I do not mean wrongness in the abstract. I mean, for example, not sleeping regularly and suffering pain in the stomach. Those symptoms might be delayed effects of burying grief, which is something I have tended to do.
To sit like this, self-conscious of one's own suffering, is not body and mind spontaneously dropping off. But my reading of Master Dogen's message is that to sit like this is also valuable, not because there is any value inherent in self-consciousness of suffering, but because of the value inherent in sitting itself.
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