Dogen's zazen as other power practice

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Luke
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Dogen's zazen as other power practice

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"Dogen's zazen as other power practice" by Taigen Dan Leighton

http://www.ancientdragon.org/dharma/art ... r_practice" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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明安 Myoan
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Re: Dogen's zazen as other power practice

Post by 明安 Myoan »

Wonderful, thank you for sharing.
:twothumbsup:

I've often felt a synergy between Other-Power and what Zen authors variously describe as life-functioning, enlightened activity of all the Buddhas, the grasses and trees exalting the Dharma for sentient beings, the miraculously aware nature of moving our limbs and eyes, and so forth.
Namu Amida Butsu
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Luke
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Re: Dogen's zazen as other power practice

Post by Luke »

I think that when "self-power" or "other-power" methods are properly done, they both dissolve the ego and lead to the non-dual experience of "neither self nor other."

My Zen teacher once said that if you practice Zen seriously, you aren't able to say "I practice Zen" because you don't have such a limited sense of "I" anymore.

Soto Zen seems to be a lot about expressing gratitude and then just letting go.
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Concordiadiscordi
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Re: Dogen's zazen as other power practice

Post by Concordiadiscordi »

"To study the way of enlightenment 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. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly."
- Dōgen Zenji

This may counted amongst the most liberally cited of passages from master Dōgen's oeuvre, but it certainly bears much of significance to the discussion currently under way. As may be readily gleaned from the venerable pen of master Dōgen himself, the inconceivable flowering of zazen is fundamentally irreducible and all-encompassing, in that it involves neither the mere exertion of self (jiriki), nor the mere exertion of myriad things (tariki), but also the eventual dropping away of both self and other within the ungraspable sphere of traceless and continuous practice-realization. How could this possibly be limited to one or many?

The boundless circle of the Great Way traverses each step along the path, whilst each step along the path traverses the boundless circle of the Great Way.

Gasshō.
"The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen."
- Tommy Smothers
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