‘Our practice depends on our personal initiative and energy, and yet that is only part of it. We are oriented and taught by the world around us, by what we don’t yet know. The energies we call on for inquiry and action rise in us but don’t originate in us as our own independent entities…
Great energy is native to the four great elements of earth, air, fire, and water. It is equally native to our human selves, so often described by the five aspects of self (skandhas: form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness), which are of course made of the four elements. It is no different whether we think in terms of the four great elements or the hundred-plus elements of the periodic table. The basic elements interact energetically in all things, functioning with the power we call life, or ten-direction universe, or buddha, or dharma. Dogen says that all naturally practice; that is all fulfill their nature completely. And he says that the power of this fulfilled nature is the basis of our practice; it is the motive power, the engine.’ (Receiving the Marrow)
I took this book to Wilbur with me, and it informed and articulated what I felt as I walked and sat in the landscape. Look out for more posts from this chapter soon.
Shundo David Haye 