by Richard
I’m reading Dogen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, and Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter With Things at the same time. They are both challenging to read, and with nearly 2500 pages between them it’s taking a while.
Dogen founded the Soto school in the 13th century. His writings contain abstract and paradoxical language, but a chapter that has stayed with me is called Mountains and Waters Sutra. The words may have one or many meanings. “Mountains” could mean: meditation, a Zen master, or just mountains. “Water” could mean: meditation, suchness, or just water.
Iain McGilchrist is a neuroscientist, and his book about the left and right hemispheres of the brain has been discussed by our teacher Geoff Dawson. In reading it, I’ve noticed many concepts similar to those in our practice. I’m especially fascinated how differently the left and right sides interpret our world, which is fundamental to the way in which we see everything. And so in trying to make sense of Dogen’s words, there might be many ways.
One approach is analytical: attempting to pin down and isolate a specific meaning, which of course, is never complete. That might have been the way when I made comparisons in concepts between the two books, an example of which is included below.
Another approach is non-analytical: just reading the flow of words and getting a sense of the depth in them. That may have been the way when connecting with the writing, with a feeling of nature and beauty in the words.
Mountains and Waters Sutra
Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, Dogen (Tanahashi, 2010)
Mountains and waters right now actualize the ancient buddha expression. Each, abiding in its condition, unfolds its full potential.
“The green mountains are always walking” …because green mountains walk, they are permanent. Although they walk more swiftly than the wind, someone in the mountains does not notice or understand it. “In the mountains” means the blossoming of the entire world.
People outside the mountains do not notice or understand the mountains’ walking. Those without eyes to see mountains cannot notice, understand, see, or hear this reality. If you doubt mountains’ walking, you do not know your own walking; it is not that you do not walk, but that you do not know or understand your own walking. Since you do know your own walking, you should fully know the green mountains walking…
When you take up one view, you see mountains flowing, and when you take up another view, mountains are not flowing. One time mountains are flowing, another time they are not flowing. If you do not fully understand this, you do not understand the true dharma wheel of the Tathagata.
Things are Secondary to Processes
The Matter with Things, Ian McGilchrist
In what sense are they things? A thing suggests permanence, and separation from what surrounds it. But that is all a matter of the timescale you happen to adopt. Entities that change fast we see as processes; entities that change slowly we see as objects. By any cosmic scale, the mountain that erupts, flows, sediments, then erodes has only boundaries of convenience and permanence for a short while: as does, much more obviously, the statue, the poem or the person. It is really true that everything flows.
Commentary on Dogen
Norman Fischer
One of Dogen’s chief purposes is to show you that the conventional, ordinary, taken-for-granted way of thinking and looking at the world is actually the cause of your being bound and suffering and confused. So rather than saying that to you in the conventional way, he demonstrates it. His language is the undoing of language. That’s what makes it hard to understand on a conventional level. When you do have the experience of going along with him in unmaking language and exposing your conceptualization, it is soaring, wonderful and inspiring. It can be great poetry.