Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘What exactly does Dogen mean by “the conceptual Buddha,” and how can one be free of it? The long and complex answer to those two questions is the most fundamental teaching of the entire Zen tradition. The short version, as Dogen indicates, is that the “binding” is not just of the object–namely, what is being conceptualized, in this case the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha but also of the subject, the one doing the conceptualizing. Even uttering the name Buddha, much less giving a definition of it as “this very mind” is abusing the Three Treasures. Any time we say see, or know what something is in the sense of it being a this as opposed to a that, we are conceptualizing or binding. We are binding by giving boundaries to whatever it is as well as to whatever it is not. Buber’s way of saying this is that it becomes what he calls an “it”- namely, “a thing among things” which “borders on other its.”‘ (Opening to Oneness)