Crossing Nebraska

Koku is one of the shorter fascicles of Dogen’s Shobogenzo . Notwithstanding its brevity, it is still as dense and difficult to comprehend as many of his other works. One can glimpse the nature of this difficulty by contemplating for a moment the various English translations of the one word title alone: Space (Nishijima, 2009), On the Unbounded (Nearman, 2007), and, of course, Universal Emptiness (Nishiyama, 1975). Each of these reveals a slightly different way of thinking about the Buddhist concept of shunyata (Sanskrit) or ku (Japanese). According to Okumura (2012) koku actually has three different possible meanings. In our very ordinary way of looking at things it can refer to the empty space that is between objects or which is bounded in some way. It can also refer to space which does not lose its nature on account of being occupied. Yet another meaning, however, points to the most profound of Buddhist teachings, i.e. the emptiness of all phenomena. As Okumura says: ...

Nestled here at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, the air around my hometown is often laden with moisture rising up to become part of the clouds that form over the region and then rain back down again. This summer has been an especially wet one here, and when it hasn’t actually been raining, or storming, there have been beautiful billowing cumulus clouds streaming past overhead like I haven’t noticed in a long, long time. They’ve actually reminded me of very pleasant times during my childhood when I’d lay back on the cool grass, alone or with a friend, holding to my nose a wild onion freshly plucked from the earth while watching clouds slowly form and change and slip away against a backdrop of brilliant blue – pulling me with them deeper and deeper into the joyous reverie of watchfulness without separation.   Unfortunately, even as I’m reminded of this joyous childhood reverie – and slip into some adult approximation of it from time to time in the here a...

The previous post explored the nature of emptiness , shunyata , and closed with a few observations that could be thought of as either clarifying descriptions or logical conclusions, as the case may be. Essentially, when we’re experiencing emptiness we realize that our usual quantitative or qualitative judgments about things simply don’t make sense anymore. Ideas regarding young and old, small and big, bad and good, are just that – ideas; and ideas need not necessarily be grounded in reality. Thich Nhat Hanh (1988) illustrates this quite well with his examination of the life cycle of one of our most beloved flowers, the rose. We normally think of a bunch of plump blossoms in full bloom as being the ultimate state of existence for roses. After due consideration, however, we can see that the subsequent wilting, dying, and decaying of those very blossoms creates ‘new’ soil that makes possible ‘new’ life – ‘new’ roses, ‘new’ food, ‘new’ habitat for animals. Thus, the wilting of flower ...

I'll dive right into this second installment on the Heart Sutra by quoting once again from the invocation and prologue of the three selected translations: Rosan Yoshida’s translation : Invocation:       The Sutra of the Heart of Great Perfection of Insight Prologue:         The Venerable Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when carry’ng out the profound Prajnaparamita career, penetrated through the five aggregates and saw that they are Shunya in their nature.                                                    Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation : Invocation:       The Heart of the Prajnaparamita Prologue:       ...