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[Poetry Chaikhana] Dogen - In the stream

Here's your Daily Poem from the Poetry Chaikhana --

 

In the stream By Dogen (1200 - 1253) English version by Steven Heine   In the stream, Rushing past To the dusty world, My fleeting form Casts no reflection.   -- from The Zen Poetry of Dogen: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace, by Steven Heine Amazon.com / Photo by goiter.flickr /

============ Thought for the Day: We can choose the world we live in and the way we live in the world. ============

Here's your Daily Music selection -- Martino Atangana Mot Songo Listen - Purchase More Music Selections

 

Hi Omss -

I really like this short poem by Dogen... and it's been too many months since we last had a selection by him.

In the stream,
Rushing past
To the dusty world...

The "dusty world" is the daily world, the world of objects and experiences. It is dusty because it isn't swept clean; that is, we tend not to see existence in its luminous purity. We see the surfaces. We don't even see that, actually. We see our thoughts about the surfaces. That's what the dust is, the accumulation of assumptions and projections that cover the world and prevent us from seeing directly.

My fleeting form
Casts no reflection.

In the ecstatic state, the psychic tension that you normally call yourself disappears. Any action you engage in is not personal, not an creation of your personal will; it is just a part of the flow of movement you witness. Your sense of your self is "fleeting," ghostlike, a mere idea. It has no lasting stamp upon the flow of being; it "casts no reflection."

This is not a negation of existence, it is a merging with Existence... a beautiful state of supreme psychic rest yet also expansion.

==

Dogen, sometimes respectfully referred to as Dogen Zenji, was a key figure in the development of Japanese Zen practice and the founder of the Soto Zen sect.

Dogen was born about 1200 in Kyoto, Japan. At the age of 17, he was formally ordained as a Buddhist monk. Considering the Japaanese Buddhism of the time to be corrupt and influenced by secular power struggles, Dogen traveled to China to discover the heart of the Dharma by studying Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism at several ancient monasteries.

Much of the Ch'an Buddhism he explored utilized koans and "encounter dialogues" to startle the consciousness into enlightenment, but Dogen was critical of this practice. Instead, he was drawn to the teachings of silent meditation.

Dogen returned to Japan in 1236. He left the politicized environment of Kyoto, and settled in the mountains and snow country of remote Echizen Province, where he established his own school of Zen, the Soto school.

While he proved to be a talented writer and poet, the core of Dogen's teaching was to transcend the mind's addiction to language and form in order to become fully present and recognize one's inherent enlightenment.

Ivan

 

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