Instantly surpassing the whole world and being, in the house of the Buddha-Ancestor, a great noble being, is full lotus sitting.
Treading on the heads of strayers and demons and being, in the inner sanctum of the Buddha-Ancestor, a real human being, is full lotus sitting.
What surpasses the supremacy of the Buddha-Ancestor's supremacy is only this One Dharma.
For this reason buddha-ancestors practise this, having no other duty at all.
Know exactly: the world of sitting, and other worlds, are far removed. Clarifying this truth, buddha-ancestors intuit and affirm awakening of the mind, training, bodhi, and nirvana.
Just in the moment of sitting, investigate whether the world is vertical and whether it is horizontal.
Just in the moment of sitting, what is that sitting?
Is it a somersault? Is it a state of vigorous activity? Is it thinking? Is it not thinking? Is it doing? Is it free of doing?
Is sitting practised inside sitting? Is sitting practised inside body-mind? Is it that, through shedding such vistas as the inside of sitting and the inside of body-mind, sitting is practised?
There should be investigation of thousands and tens of thousands of points like these.
Bodily practise full lotus sitting.
Mentally practise full lotus sitting.
Practise, as body and mind dropping off, full lotus sitting.
-- Translated off the top of a demon's head, on the morning of Sunday 20th April, 2008.
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4 comments:
Thank you for your efforts.
Thanks Jordan.
My intention above all was to finish on the word "sitting" as per Master Dogen's original, in which the last character is ZA.
I would like to get away from the conception of "posture," which is static, view-bound.
The last three sentences, as I understand them, have got absolutely bugger all to do with the autonomic nervous system. And yet my efforts to get to the bottom of those three sentences has been, from beginning to end, an antithetical response to Gudo's autonomic thesis.
I have been forbidden, via an email from Gudo cc-d to his legal adviser James Cohen, from calling this (which is suspected of being "based on AT theory") a Nishijima-Cross translation.
But if you appreciate the above translation, it is not primarily me who you should thank for my efforts.
I can't call it a Nishijima-Cross translation, and I can't say that I did it by myself. So what should I call it?
While I was digging a vegetable patch this afternoon, the answer came to me -- just tell the truth, which is that it was translated off the top of a demon's head.
"There should be investigation of thousands and tens of thousands of points like these..." Yes! What an extraordinary thought. Thanks for this translation "off the top of a demon's head." I just wish I could sit full lotus: I came to sitting with bones too old to achieve that flexibility.
Thank you, Peter. I revere your wish to practise full lotus sitting. If you can't, you can't. But I revere your wish, I revere your sense of the true direction of our effort, which is towards the practise, as body and mind dropping off, of full lotus sitting.
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