The Realized Universe (Genjo kôan, Part 2)
The first paragraph of this chapter is as follows
1. “When all
dharmas are (seen as) the Buddha Dharma, then there is delusion and
realization, there is practice, there is life and there is death, there are
Buddhas and there are ordinary beings.”
2.
“When the myriad dharmas are each not of the
self, there is no delusion and no realization, no Buddhas and no ordinary
beings, no life and no death.”
3. “The Buddha’s
truth is originally transcendent over abundance and scarcity. So there is life
and death, there is delusion and realization, there are beings and Buddhas.”
4.
“And though it is like this, it is only that
flowers, while loved, fall; and weeds while hated, flourish.”
What does Master Dôgen want to tell us with such important sentences
which are not easy to understand? Without question they are altogether the essence
of Zen Buddhist teaching, but often they are misunderstood and people are not
aware of their true meaning and do not concentrate on it.
If we read this chapter of the Shôbôgenzô and especially these sentences
very carefully, we understand that there are four different views or, more
precisely, four philosophies of our life and of the world in general. The first
sentence explains that a distinction can be made between delusion and
realization, between practice and acting and life and death and between Buddha
and ordinary beings. This philosophy is based on ideas and thinking, for
example on the basis of theory and teaching. even the sutras in Buddhism. It is
the idealistic method. But normally this philosophy expressed in sentence one
is based on the belief in a separate ego
or I: the thinking I has ideas and theories.
The dimension of the second sentence is completely different and
represents another method of thinking:
It is the materialistic view, focused
on the outside of the person. In this case the thinking I is not important. It
can be characterized by “when the myriad
Dharmas are each not of the self.”
It is not the subject who is thinking ideas and theories; on the
contrary, it is the view and belief that there is an objective world outside us. In this case we cannot speak of
delusion and realization, Buddhas and ordinary human beings, life and death. In
other words the meaning of these
words and ideas cannot be understood because the materialistic philosophy is not aware of the delusion and
realization of Buddhas and ordinary people. The materialistic view has no
understanding of the Buddhist teachings. This view sees only the outside and
form and has no understanding of spiritual or mental contents. It is clear that
this philosophy is very close to the understanding of the natural sciences and
technology in the western world.
But as we know, the scholar Albert
Einstein, who might be considered the greatest physicist of the last
century, was a religious and spiritual person and he was quite aware of the
limitations of our scientific understanding of the world. In the same way, the
great physicists Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg are quite clear about
the areas that can be understood by the thinking human brain and what cannot be
understood.
Therefore we can assume that a one-sided materialistic view is not
sufficient for us to understand ourselves and the world; these brilliant
scholars in the natural sciences were already
aware of these limitations, more than one century ago. Another scholar, a
social scientist, Niklas Luhmann,
teaches us very clearly that the world is of infinite complexity. In this way
science tells us to be humble and not to over-estimate what we can understand
with intellectual thinking. A philosophy of life, which is just materialistic,
is indeed naive and superficial.
