What did Master Dogen mean by "a gap"?
“If there is a thousandth or a hundredth of a gap, heaven and earth are far apart.”
This suggests that heaven and earth are originally not separate, but there is something about we tottering bipeds that causes a gap to open, in which case, even if the gap is very slight, we experience heaven and earth as being far apart.
Nishijima Roshi’s new, independent translation says:
“If there were even though a bit of the smallest gap, then the gap would become bigger and bigger as if it were like distance between the heaven and the earth.”
The emphasis is different, and I have asked the Master on his blog to clarify. But in either case, it is not in doubt that Master Dogen is cautioning against the arising of a gap.
I have my own ideas about what Master Dogen meant by a gap. I think the gap is related to Master Dogen's discussion of polishing a tile vs making a mirror, which corresponds to Alexander's principle of means-whereby vs end-gaining. But if there are any different or opposing views out there, they would be welcome.
Reflecting on how this blog has, and hasn't, been useful over the past months, one good thing that did come out of it was when I asked for people's interpretations of MU-I. I found that exercise valuable, not least because of Bubba's hint to check out Frank Lambert's site at www.entropysimple.com.
So what did Master Dogen mean by "a gap"? Comments are cordially invited.
This suggests that heaven and earth are originally not separate, but there is something about we tottering bipeds that causes a gap to open, in which case, even if the gap is very slight, we experience heaven and earth as being far apart.
Nishijima Roshi’s new, independent translation says:
“If there were even though a bit of the smallest gap, then the gap would become bigger and bigger as if it were like distance between the heaven and the earth.”
The emphasis is different, and I have asked the Master on his blog to clarify. But in either case, it is not in doubt that Master Dogen is cautioning against the arising of a gap.
I have my own ideas about what Master Dogen meant by a gap. I think the gap is related to Master Dogen's discussion of polishing a tile vs making a mirror, which corresponds to Alexander's principle of means-whereby vs end-gaining. But if there are any different or opposing views out there, they would be welcome.
Reflecting on how this blog has, and hasn't, been useful over the past months, one good thing that did come out of it was when I asked for people's interpretations of MU-I. I found that exercise valuable, not least because of Bubba's hint to check out Frank Lambert's site at www.entropysimple.com.
So what did Master Dogen mean by "a gap"? Comments are cordially invited.
posted by Mike Cross at 9:49 PM
9 Comments:
“If there is a thousandth or a hundredth of a gap, heaven and earth are far apart.”
hard to comment on this verse. to comment is to gap. mind the gap! besides you already pointed right to it with the tile/mirror metaphor. metaphors are easier. i like to imagine two mirrors perfectly parallel to each other. can you imagine what they are reflecting! what the heck, i'll poke at it a little:
to gap is to crave
to crave is to identify with
this instant's phenomena
to identity with
this instant's phenomena
is to want or not want it
one instant of craving
one hundred instants of craving
one thousand instants of craving
are all the same distance from
one instant of knowing
+++=+
I imagine that those two mirrors might be reflecting three kinds of effort, or two kinds of effort and a kind of effortlessness -- i.e. (1) with body, (2) with mind, and (3) body and mind dropping off.
“Two mirrors and three kinds of reflection”... mmmm. Now, where have I come across that expression before?
The idea of body-mind unity or mind-body unity is common currency nowadays. I laughed a few months ago when I received a flyer from a local trendy hairdressers advertizing "holistic hairdressing."
More worthy of consideration is Master Dogen's statement in Shobogenzo chap. 72, Zanmai-o-zanmai, that there is mental sitting which is not the same as physical sitting, and physical sitting which is not the same as mental sitting.
My understanding is that body and mind are not a unity. Body and mind are totally opposite conceptions of something that is a unity.
Could it be about non-dualistic thinking. As long as there is no gap there is no difference between heaven and earth, you can't tell where the first one ends and the other one begins.
But if you start to draw a border, even the smalles kind of distinction, the unity falls apart. You end up with a heaven-part and an earth-part. Unity can't be restored as long as you've got your distinction gap.
Nice try, docreto, but I think it is necessary for you to meet in person somebody who is very diligent in dualistic thinking and yet, in his or her physical being, doesn't seem to suffer from any kind of separation between heaven and earth.
Unfortunately, we can never meet such a person on the internet.
Hello Michael,
Your comments are always welcome -- so beautiful and persuasive.
If you are enlightened already, your words might be a very nice expression of the truth.
If you are not a truly enlightened master yet, then there might be gap between your actual state and what you are pretending to be.
Without meeting you in person, it has been difficult for me to suppose which is the case.
I think Master Dogen knew the latter case very well from his own experience -- that’s why he described it so accurately at the beginning of Fukan-zazengi.
There is thinking as a means of initiating a spontaneous happening in the real world -- as predicted by the second law of thermodynamics.
And there is thinking ABOUT initiating a spontaneous happening in the real world, as predicted by the the second law of thermodynamics.
As we sit at our computers, tapping away, we are inevitably in the second consciousness -- thinking ABOUT. My question to you is: when you sit on your zafu, do you practice the first kind of thinking, i.e. thinking the state of not thinking?
Of course you don’t. You express yourself as if you might know what I am talking about, but I know you don’t. Because I know your Master, and the Master of your Master, and I am afraid that neither of those two blokes, sincere though they are in their respective ways, have understood one iota of what I have been going on about these past 12 years about the first kind of thinking.
If what you are expressing is your own real understanding (in which case there is no gap), and not just a parrotting of my ideas (in which case there is a gap), then it is very important that YOU assert the fact, to your Master, and to your Master's Master -- because they haven't understood it clearly yet.
You may well be called a pretender, a dog and a fool for your trouble. I doubt very much that anyone will reward you for your trouble by calling you buddha. But if you are a true bodhisattva, you won't mind that.
One cannot do an undoing. Body and mind dropping off is either realized as a spontaneous undoing of muscular holding, involving the dissipation of energy, or it is not. A process cannot be a little bit spontaneous. It either is or it isn’t.
To put it another way, in the matter of undoing, if there is even the tiniest bit of doing, the process is not one of undoing but some variation, whether subtle or gross, on the theme of doing.
Now I have told you this, you will no doubt regurgitate it, beautifully, as if it were your own understanding.
But this understanding cannot be got only from words on a page or words on a screen. Gudo Nishijima hasn’t got it clearly yet, Michael Luetchford hasn’t got it yet at all, and I have no doubt that you also haven’t got it yet at all. If you had visited me like you were going to do, I could have begun to show you. But you didn’t come. You bothered me with an appointment but could'nt keep it.
It was a very good lesson for me to be completely deceived by such a clever wordsmith. Thank you, Michael.
You give yourself airs of having understood something. But you haven't understood anything. Don't give yourself airs, you pretentious fool.
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