Dogen's Private Notes from the Hokyo Era: The Interacting Communion of Appeal and Response
And then there's the burning house of the whole human and nonhuman world. What can a practitioner do but to join palms and cry out, praying for the help of the Buddhas and Ancestors?
If you practice and study the buddhadharma with rigor, it is likely that you will find yourself comparing yourself to those in more advanced stages of realization. In our koan training, it's the vivid and dynamic awakened minds of the great Zen masters, who with limpid clarity, see where their students are stuck and vigorously pull exactly the right pins.
When studying the Mahayana sutras, the many stages of the path through which the great Bodhisattvas and the Buddhas negotiate the Way for the benefit of us all become soberingly clear.
And there is also just looking around at the vigorous diligent practice of our co-practitioners, for example, in the midst of a sesshin. You might say to yourself, "And here I am awash with greed, anger, and ignorance, as well as conceit and every other secondary affliction. Some days, it's just too painful to face."
And then there's the burning house of the whole human and nonhuman world. What can a practitioner do but to join palms and cry out, praying for the help of the Buddhas and Ancestors?
Well, there is vigorous, diligent practice (the focus of our last post), but even in the midst of vigorous, diligent practice, and the unguarded moments that come with such, it is clear that we've got issues.
Thus, in the received tradition, there is a long history or praying for help, invoking the interacting communion of appeal and response (Japanese, kanno doko). This post looks at the interacting communion of appeal and response as it is framed by old master Rujing to the young Dogen. And along the way, we'll also take a look at the phase of practice referred to as the womb of the sages.
We have written previously about both of these topics. For example, see the following (both of these are now open to nonsubscribers):
Dosho Port
Dosho Port
This post continues our series on Dogen's Private Notes from his time in China, Hokyo-ki, with translations of two new sections that we're calling "Dogen gets some positive feedback," and "Dogen feels shame." As before, we'll offer some annotations for the translations and then a few highlights. Comments are welcome.