Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Within this unsurpassable manifestation of enlightenment, the entire world of the ten directions is but a small portion; enlightenment exceeds the boundary of the entire world. You are an accoutrement that exists in the entire world of the ten directions. How do you know it to be thus? You know it because your body and mind are not you; they appear in the entire world of the ten directions.

Your body is not you; your life is transported, moving in time without stopping even for a moment. Where has your youthful face gone? When you search for it, there is no trace. When you ponder deeply, there are many from the past whom you cannot encounter again. The pure mind does not stay; it comes and goes in fragments. Even if there is truth, it does not stay within the boundary of yourself.

Because of thusness, you arouse a boundless aspiration for enlightenment. Once this aspiration arises, you let go of what you have been playing with. You come forward to hear what you have never heard and realize what is not yet realized. This is not at all self-doing. Know that it is so because you are a person of thusness.

How do you know that you are a person of thusness? You know it because you want to attain thusness. As you already have the face and eye of a person of thusness, do not worry about thusness now. Even if you worry, it is thusness not to be worried about. Also, do not be startled at the thusness of thusness. Even if there is thusness that you are startled at or wonder about, it is thusness. It is thusness not to be startled at.

Do not measure this with the yardstick of buddha or mind. Do not measure it with the yardstick of the world of phenomena or the entire world. It is just If you are already a person of thusness, why be worried about thusness? This being so, thusness of sound and form is thus; thusness of body and mind is thus; thusness of all buddhas is thus.’ (Shobogenzo Immo)

I posted this on Instagram recently, at the end of my Dogen class, and was a little surprised that I had not also posted it here – though I did use most of this passage in 2015. Things being what they are these days, not only do I scan some posts from my phone – or dictate them into Notes – but I can also pull up the entire Shobogenzo in a pdf, and do a quick word search. I don’t feel bad about having Kaz’s translation as a pdf as I paid full-price for the hardback edition when it came out (it’s funny that I end this post with a regret about the Shobogenzo not being available as a pdf), and the word search is incomparable, though I can affirm (since WordPress also have a good word search feature) that I have used the word ‘accoutrement’ as many times in this current blog as Dogen did in the entire Shobogenzo. Make of that what you will.