{"id":573,"date":"2015-07-05T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-05T12:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/?p=573"},"modified":"2021-03-01T12:06:55","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T20:06:55","slug":"dogens-genjo-koan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/?p=573","title":{"rendered":"Dogen’s “Genjo Koan”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Moonrise(The following is excerpted from a commentary I’ve just completed, Dogen’s “Genjo Koan”<\/a>)<\/p>\n

There’s a sentence in the “Genjo Koan” where Dogen speaks about the life that fish and birds enjoy, and he says:<\/p>\n

…each one realizes its limitations at every moment and each one somersaults (in complete freedom) at every place…<\/p>\n

(translation by Gudo Nishijima)<\/p>\n

In\u00a0D. L. Bartilink, “No Special Effort”, and the “Best of Ways”<\/a>, I wrote about somersaulting in place:<\/p>\n

The trick is to allow for movement in where I am, even when I’m not moving.<\/p>\n

The place where I am can “turn and move freely everywhere” (as another translator rendered “somersaults”), and the place where I am can also remain stationary; when the place where I am is free to move yet remains stationary, the rest of me may turn around the place where I am, instead.<\/p>\n

Cheng Man-Ch’ing spoke of a saying from the classic literature of Tai-Chi, “the millstone turns, but the mind does not turn”:<\/p>\n

the turning of the millstone is a metaphor for the turning of the waist. The mind not turning is the central equalibrium resulting from the sinking of ch’i to the tan-t’ien.<\/p>\n

‘The millstone turns but the mind does not turn’ is an oral teaching within a family transmission. It is similar to two expressions in the T’ai-chi ch’uan classics which compare the waist to an axle or a banner. This is especially noteworthy. After learning this concept my art made rapid progress.<\/p>\n

The statement in “Genjo Koan” about finding your place is followed by a parallel statement about finding your way:<\/p>\n

When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. When you find your way at this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point…<\/p>\n

While I sometimes separate out and bring forward certain senses in the experience of place, and at those moments my ability to find where I am appears in fact to depend on the exercise, there is in the wake of such moments an awareness of where I am as contact in any sense takes place. This I believe is why Dogen spoke not only of “when you find your place”, but also of “when you find your way”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(The following is excerpted from a commentary I’ve just completed, Dogen’s “Genjo Koan”) There’s a sentence in the “Genjo Koan” where Dogen speaks about the life that fish and birds enjoy, and he says: …each one realizes its limitations at every moment and each one somersaults (in complete freedom) at every place… (translation by Gudo … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Dogen’s “Genjo Koan””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1234,"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions\/1234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenmudra.com\/zazen-notes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}