MEANING AND CONTEXT DOoEN 1252, 7-10 In the Zen tradition, the kéan, as a conundrum to which one responds without thinking, is central to many practices. In addition, “kan” can some- times refer to the equanimity of all phenomena as they appear to the enlight- ened Zen Buddhist in meditation. These two meanings merge in Dogen’s phrase “genjokoan.” In their raw givenness within the state of nonthinking, phenomena are open or empty (this is sometimes referred to as ‘suchness’). Yet, in their “presencing” (genjé), they coalesce into meaningful matrices appropriate to their context or “occasion.” Thus the same meaningless phenomena can config- ure themselves in multiple possible matrices of meaning (“there are many worlds everywhere”). This attention to meaning-in-the-making is the major theme developed in “Genjokéan,’ Dogen’s most famous philosophical essay and one he himself highlighted when he starting collecting his own writings. Dagen’s writing style is famously complex: full of Buddhist literary allusions, technical Zen ter- minology, numerous neologisms, and syntactic idiosyncrasies. Not surprisingly, since no single translation can do justice to all the nuances and implications and because of its importance within Japanese philosophy, this essay is one of the most frequently translated Zen texts. Genjokéan: ‘The Case of Presencing (1233, revised 1252) When phenomena are expressed as the Buddha’s teachings, on those occasions, there is “delusion/realization” and there is “praxis”; there is “birth” and there is “death”; there are “buddhas” and there are “ordinary beings.” On occasions when there is no “I” adjoined to the totality of phenomena, there is neither “delusion” nor “realization”; there are neither “buddhas” nor “ordinary beings”; there is neither “generation” nor “extinction.” In itself, the way of the buddhas leaps clear of both the richness and the lack of categories. Therefore, there is birth-extinction; there is delusion-realization; and there are ordinary beings-buddhas. Yet, despite all this, cherished blossoms only scatter to our regret and weedsDoGEN | 145 only flourish to our dismay. To practice-authenticate the totality of phenom- ena by conveying yourself to them—that’s delusion. To practice-authenticate yourself by letting the totality of phenomena advance—that’s realization. The buddhas profoundly realize their delusions, whereas ordinary people are pro- foundly deluded in their enlightenment. And there are those who attain further realizations based on their previous realizations, while there are also those who keep on deluding themselves further while in their delusions. When buddhas are truly buddhas, they have no need to acknowledge themselves as buddhas. ‘They are, nevertheless, authentic buddhas, and buddhas go on authenticating. When seeing forms and hearing sounds wholeheartedly with one’s “body- mind’, one engages the phenomena intimately. Yet, it is not like capturing an image in a mirror or the moon's reflection on the water. In those cases, when you verify in one direction, the other is dark. ‘To model yourself after the ‘way’ of the buddhas is to model yourself after yourself, To model yourself after yourself is to forget yourself. To forget your- self is to be authenticated by the totality of phenomena. To be authenticated by the totality of phenomena is to completely drop away one’s own body-mind as well as the body-mind of others. All traces of enlightenment are depleted and those depleted traces of enlightenment go on and on. When you first seek the dharma, you actually distance yourself from its environs, but when the dharma is already correctly transmitted to you, you are immediately what you really are. Suppose a person travels aboard a ship. If she turns her eyes to look back at the coast, she mistakenly thinks the shore is moving away from her. But if she fixes her eyes close by the ship, she knows it is the ship that is moving forward. Analogously, if she has a confused notion of her own body-mind, when she tries to sort out the totality of phenomena, she mistakenly assumes her own mind and her own nature are permanently fixed. Yet, if she returns inward, engaging her daily tasks intimately, she will have clarified the way of things—the totality of phenomena is there without an “I” Firewood turns into ash and it cannot turn back into firewood. Yet, you should not take this to mean that earlier, it is firewood and later, it is ash. Think of it in the following way. Insofar as it persists in the phenomenal status as firewood, it has its own “earlier” and its own “later” Although one can say there is a before-and-after, the firewood itself is distinct from the temporal divisions of before-and-after. Similarly, ash, while persisting in its phenomenal status as ash, has its own “earlier” and its own “later” As the firewood, after becoming ash, cannot turn back into firewood, after one dies, a person cannot come back to life. Yet, one would not say life itself becomes death. As an established Bud- dhist teaching, we speak of the “unborn.” Conversely, death does not become life, As a definitive enunciation of traditional Buddhist doctrine, we speak of the “unextinguished” In its phenomenal status, life is a particular moment and146 | BUDDHIST TRADITIONS: ZEN death is a particular moment. This is like winter and spring, for example. One does not think the winter itself becomes spring and one does not say spring itself becomes summer. When a person attains realization, it is like the image of the moon on the water. The moon doesn't get wet; nor is the surface of the water breached. Although the light of the moon may be expansive and great, it resides in the smallest drop of water. The images of the whole moon and sky dwell in dew- drops on blades of grass. They reside in even a single droplet. Realization does not destroy the person any more than the moon's image pierces the water. The person does not limit the realization any more than the dewdrop limits the image of the sky and the moon. The depth of the droplet must be the measure for the height of the image of the sky and moon. As for whether the occasion for a realization is long or short, one has to consider, as it were, the volume of the water and discern in it the expanse of the moon and sky. When we have not yet fully engaged phenomena with the body-mind, we think that is all there is to the phenomena. If we sufficiently engage them with the body-mind, however, we sense there is something more left out. For example, suppose I board a ship and go out to sea beyond the sight of land. When I look around in all directions, what is visible is a circle of water with no distinguishing marks, nothing else. Yet, the ocean is not simply a circle or a square—one cannot exhaust all the other things the ocean can be. The ocean is like a palace to a fish and like a glittering string of jewels to a deity looking down at the glistening water from the heavens. It is just that what reaches my own eyes as an individual is, for the moment, nothing but the visible circle. The totality of phenomena is like this. Whether it is a delusion-permeated realm or something beyond, the world takes on many aspects. Yet, we see and grasp only what reaches our eyes in our practice. If we are to inquire into the manner and style of the totality of phenomena, we should know that beyond their being vis- ible as circularity or angularity, there is no limit to the other things the ocean or the mountains can be. We should bear in mind that there are many worlds everywhere. And it is not just that the all-encompassing world around us is like this, but you should know that it is the same right here at your feet and in the single drop of water. A fish swims through the water and however much it swims about, there is no limit to the water. A bird flies through the sky and however much it flies about, there is no limit to the sky. Yet, the fish has never yet left the water; nor the bird the sky. It is just that when the task at hand is great, the use of the water or sky is great; when the requirements are small, the use is small. The bird and fish nei- ther fail to utilize completely each opportunity, nor fail to flit about everywhere. Yet, if the bird leaves the sky or the fish leaves the water, it will immediately die. You should certainly know that the fish lives because of the water and the bird