http://dogenandtheshobogenzo.blogspot.sg/2012/06/buddha-dharma-dream-in-dream.html
Friday, June 01, 2012
Buddha-Dharma: A Dream in a Dream
<http://dogenandtheshobogenzo.blogspot.sg/2012/06/buddha-dharma-dream-in-dream.html>
On the True Nature of the Self...
The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to
be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to
know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it
willingly.
Wallace Stevens
The appearance of buddhas and ancestors in the world, being prior
to the emergence of any incipient sign, has nothing to do with old,
narrow opinions. This accounts for the virtues of buddha-ancestors,
as of going beyond the Buddha. Unconcerned with time, the life-span
[of buddha-ancestors] is neither prolonged nor momentary, as it is
far from the comprehension of ordinary minds.
The ever turning wheel of the Dharma is also a principle prior to
the emergence of any incipient sign; as such, it is an eternal
paragon with immeasurably great merit. [Buddha-ancestors] expound
this as a dream in a dream. Because they see verification within
verification, it is known as expounding a dream in a dream.
The place where a dream is expounded in a dream is indeed the land
and assembly of buddha-ancestors. The buddha-land and
buddha-assembly, the ancestral way and ancestral seat, are all
verification founded upon verification, hence all are the
expounding of a dream in a dream. Upon encountering their
utterances and discourses, do not think that these are not of the
buddha-assembly; they are the Buddha’s turning the wheel of the
Dharma. Because this wheel of the Dharma turns in all directions,
the great oceans and Mt. Sumeru, the lands and buddhas are all
realized. Such is expounding a dream in a dream, which is prior to
all dreams.
The entire world, crystal-clear everywhere, is a dream; and a dream
is all grasses [things] clear and bright. To doubt the dream state
is itself to dream; all perplexity is a dream as well. At this very
moment, [all are] grasses of the “dream state,” grasses “in” [a
dream], grasses“expounding” [a dream], and so on. Even as we study
this, the very roots and stalks, leaves and branches, flowers and
fruits, lights and hues [of our perception] are all a great dream.
Never mistake this, however, for a dreamy state.
Dogen, Shobogenzo, Muchu-setsumu (Expounding a dream in a
dream), Trans. Hee-Jin Kim, Flowers of Emptiness,
p.279-280
It’s a wonderful, wonderful opera. Only it hurts.
Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (with Bill
Moyers)
Dogen here relates nyo (“like”), to ze (“this”), evoking the
familiar Zen association nyoze (“like this,” “thusness”).
He goes on to draw the implication that “like this” signifies not
mere resemblance but the nondual identity of symbol and symbolized.
He thus rejects any dualistic notion of metaphor or simile
(hiyi), whereby an
image points to, represents, or approximates something other than
itself. Rather, for Dogen, the symbol itself is the very presence of total dynamism,
i.e., it presents.
Hee-Jin Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, note 8, p.251
If the new empirical results are taken seriously, then people
throughout our culture have to rethink some of their most cherished
beliefs about what science and philosophy are and consider their
values from a new perspective...
If conceptual metaphors are real, then all literalist and objective
views of meaning and knowledge are false. We can no longer pretend
to build an account of concepts and knowledge on objective, literal
foundations. This constitutes a profound challenge to many of the
traditional ways of thinking about what it means to be human, about
how the mind works, and about our nature as social and cultural
creatures.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By,
p.273
Allegory and metaphor both start off saying one thing as if it were
another. But where allegorical method divides this double talk into
two constituents – latent and manifest – and requires
translation of manifest into latent, the metaphorical
method keeps the two voices together, here the dream as it tells
itself, ambiguously evocative and concretely precise at each and
every instant. Metaphors are not subject to interpretive
translation without breaking up their peculiar unity... Since
symbols and metaphors cannot be translated, another method for
understanding dreams is needed, a method in which masks, disguises,
and doubleness inherently belong, a method that is itself
metaphorical.
…if the dream is psychic nature per se, unconditioned,
spontaneous, primary, and this psychic nature can show a dramatic
structure, then the nature of the mind is poetic. To go to the
root human ontology, its truth, essence, and nature, one must move
in the fictional mode and use poetic tools.
James Hillman, Healing Fiction, pp35-36 [italics
Hillman’s]
Peace,
Ted