![]() Continuous practice is limitless but is actualized in each moment of
continuous practice. It is only through the kind of exposure to the reality of
experience that zazen embodies that there is a present moment, a now at all.
Although what pretends to be a self, the pattern and congealing of Knowing
as a knower that knows knowns, cannot be alive at any other time than now, it can
never know now. It is always pulling back, pushing forward. This immediate
moment is not the idea of a now that students so often struggle to be mindful of in
the beginnings of their practice. Now is not arrived at by any strategy of being
here. It is not the product of any of self-images actions or intentions.
Moment by moment, self-image tells itself stories about itself, falls into this
state or that. Now you feel trapped and constricted, now you feel free and easy. Now
you want to die, now you want to kill everyone else, now you want to take a pee,
now you want to take the world out for a beer. Now you want to have sex, now you
dont want to be touched. Now youre designing your new house, now you fear being
homeless. Now youre enlightened and know that no matter what your Teacher says,
angel food cake or blue algae nutritional tablets or chocolate or wheat grass juice is
the food of choice of the Buddhas and Awakened Ancestors and all the other
students should be required to eat them at every meal. And now you feel like an
idiot because you actually said this aloud. In the coming and going of all of those
moments, all that is going on for you are those states and none of those moments
were experienced at all.
Now this and now that is not the immediate now of continuous practice.
But in fact there is no other now than the now of gyoji. Now is the limitless
activity which exerts and upholds the earth and sky, the sun and moon, and the
farthest expanse of limitless space throughout the ten directions. Just as the three
dimensions of width, depth, and breadth are aspects of this limitless activity, so too
is the coming and going which we call now or time. And it is only when we sit up
straight, stand up straight, walk each step, and lie down straight out through
continuous practice that there really is anything for us that can be called now.
Dogen zenji says,
Thus, one day of continuous practice by us is the seed of all the
Buddhas and is the continuous practice of all the Buddhas. Through this
continuous practice, all the Buddhas are manifested and sustained.
The reference to one day here foreshadows some extensive use of the
following phrase: Living for a hundred years without realizing your own potential to
Awaken is worth less than living for only one day and realizing it. This phrase is
spoken by Gayashata in the Jingde Chuandenglu Chapter 2 and is attributed there to
the Buddha. As Dogen himself will have much to say and plays in many ways with
this phrase later on in the text, we will leave it until then.
Dogens point here is that it is your own practice now, of this moment,
throughout the day continuously that provides the seed for the Awakening of the all
the Buddhas, which means the Buddhas throughout the past, present, and future. Of
course, it is because of the Buddhas of the past that it is possible for your practice to
take place now. We can easily understand that our practice right now makes the
Awakening of people in the future possible. If we do not practice the Way, who will?
If we do not realize the Way and try to make it available to others now, in the future,
who will? Through your continuous practice you can continue the Way so that
Awakening is possible for coming generations. But how is it that your practice makes
possible the Buddhas of the past? Continuous practice, gyoji, pervades not only the
whole earth, the whole sky, the ten directions but the totality of the Total Field of All
Possibilities, the Dharmadhatu. All times and places take place within it now and all
times and places are the ceaseless activity which is continuous practice. And so it is
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