Original Face

Dear Friends,

Here's our meditation theme for today, a poem by Eihei Dogen (1200-1253):
 

Original Face

In spring, the cherry blossoms.
In summer, the cuckoo's song.
In autumn, the moon, shining.
In winter, the frozen snow.
How pure and clear are the seasons!

And here's the much older Zen koan to which Dogen's title refers:

What was your original face before your parents were born?  

The koan sets us on a quest for our true nature, an unusual kind of self, a self that does not overly confuse itself with this current bodily or mental form (face).

Dogen's solution of the koan appears as a poem, though the body of the poem seems to have nothing to do with his or anyone's original face.  And that is just the point.  The way the poem converses with its title recalls a well-known passage from Dogen:

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. 

So the poem shows how our self or face is fruitfully forgotten and so to speak resurrected in the things of the world around us.

This has everything to do with climate change and our response to it, as well as the other troubles in our personal, regional, global and universal lives.  Sticking to our normal sense of self, there is no hope.  To be "actualized by myriad beings" is to have something better than hope: participation.

with love,
Michael