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the Way.
7
You should understand that birth and death are met within your
practice, but that practice is not bound within birth and death. Nowadays,
foolish people reach the age of fifty, sixty, seventy, or eighty and stop
practising. No matter how many months and years you have lived up to now,
they are just restless thoughts now, and you do not understand them within
your practice. Instead of looking back over those years or worrying about
being past your prime, just whole-heartedly practice and study the Way.
Come shoulder to shoulder with the Rib Saint. Do not regret or look back to
what is no more than a handful of dust in a cemetery. Without exerting
yourself, you can never inspire anyone else. Wandering in the wild fields, like
ownerless and eyeless skeletons, you should practice and come to see.
Parshva’s practising throughout the day and night, even to the point of
vowing to never let his ribs touch the ground, is meant to be an inspiring example of
exertion. That he was able to receive and embody the Transmission through only
three years of continuous practice also reflects this and perhaps Dogen’s own few
years with his Master Tiantong Rujing as well.
The main point however is not to follow a sense of obstruction. You do not
need to believe the limiting views of others. You do not need to limit others by your
view of them. You do not need to become blocked by your feelings of incapacity and
how you define yourself through thoughts.
Everything is always beyond our definitions and ideas about it. For example,
this life is seen as a matter of being born but the Buddhas and Awakened Ancestors
know all things to be always Unborn, always sheer luminosity moving within itself. Is
it born? Is it Unborn? If it is Unborn, then is there old age? If there is old age, is it
still Unborn?
Water is seen and known differently by different kinds of beings with different
perspectives. The way that fish know water as something to breathe is different from
how humans perceive water as something to drink. How would a shining being, a
demon, a being arising in a space of 18 dimensions perceive water? Is water
naturally ice crystals, something wet, or something gaseous or is it naturally any of
these depending upon its environment? So then what is water?
Somewhere between being born and dying, we have come upon this practice
of zazen, this gift of the Buddhas and Awakened Ancestors in this life of ours. In
each moment of our practice, we meet birth and death in the coming and going that
is our lives. But what we are practising is alignment with birth and death and also
that which is without birth or death, the Shobogenzo-nehan-myoshin: the Treasury
of the Eye of Reality, the unsurpassable radiant Knowing which is beyond reference
point, the nirvana of the Buddhas.
So, as for the aging that usually comes in between birth and death, how old is
old? How can we be too old to attend openly? If you think you’re too old to do
something as simple as zazen, you must be too old to be aware of anything at all so
you must be dead. But if you’re thinking you’re too old, then obviously you’re not
dead. Do you think you are too weak to practice? Too strong? Too cowardly? Too
brave? Too round? Too square? Too queer? Too straight? Too broke? Too rich? Too
smart? Too stupid? Too tall? Too small?
You can sit in a chair. You can sit on a stool. You can take some kapok out of
the zafu or add more. You can practice lying down using a mala, if you’re too sick to
sit up. As long as you are alive, you can sit. And you should sit because otherwise
you will miss your life as it passes away with every year, every day, every moment.
Zazen is the continuous practice of the Life that lives as you, the ceaseless activity
which shines as the sun and moon in the open sky over the vast earth.
                                                
7
Bendo-kufu. Exerting oneself in zazen.