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: ...

‘He insulted me, he hurt me, he defeated me, he robbed me.’ Those who think such thoughts will not be free from hate. ‘He insulted me, he hurt me, he defeated me, he robbed me.’ Those who think not such thoughts will be free from hate. – The Dhammapada   Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another … sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” – NRSV   Yes, we can all stand to be a bit more forgiving, can’t we? It’s a capacity that spiritually-oriented individuals will likely recognize as being worthy of cultivation – for the sake of community, for the sake of relationships, for the sake of our own well-being, for the sake of the world. But even as we aspire to being more forgiving we might also wonder at the possibility of being too forgiving, thereby condoning bad behavior that serves nobody well in the long run. Is it even possible to be too forgiving?...

Okay, the topic of this week’s post was “supposed” to be loving-kindness – the last of the four sublime abodes to be addressed in this series. Regular readers will note that during the course of my exploration of the other three (compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity) I also delved into their respective near enemies (pity, comparison, and indifference). And so it was that I fully intended to eventually address attachment, the near enemy of loving-kindness (Kornfield, 1993). As I sat down to start writing, however, I immediately realized that attachment really deserves top billing here – if only by virtue of it being one of the most misunderstood of all Buddhist concepts. I’ve actually spoken with people who have “tried to get into Buddhism but just couldn’t get past the whole non-attachment thing.” Apparently non-attachment, for many, means living a passionless existence – devoid of romantic love, deep caring, pleasure, and commitment. So, please bear with me; I’ll be gett...

The Buddhist concept of shunyata , or emptiness, is perhaps one of the most difficult to grasp of all. One reason for this difficulty, of course, relates to the fact that there is simply no really good English equivalent for it. The Western mind is too used to thinking of the world in dualistic terms to have invented vocabulary suitable to the discussion of such a foreign concept. And so we scratch our heads and pick a word that comes close, and then we spend a little time (or a lot of time) expounding upon what we really mean. The problem with a concept like shunyata is that it is so far removed from how we normally think about the world that we have no ready frame of reference for it. It’s a little like trying to imagine a five-dimensional universe when all we’ve ever known are the four dimensions of space and time. How do we even begin to comprehend five dimensions when the very blood and bone and nerves and tissue of our body/mind have evolved over billions of years tightly enmes...