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Main Index
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IT IS SAID THAT LIFE NEVER BECOMES DEATH; LIFE IS BEYOND THE CONCEPTION OF LIFE. IT SAYS THAT DEATH DOES NOT BECOME LIFE; DEATH IS BEYOND THAT OF DEATH. LIFE AND DEATH ARE BOTH ONLY ONE STAGE OF TIME, JUST LIKE WINTER AND SPRING. LIKEWISE, WE MUST NOT THINK THAT WINTER BECOMES SPRING, OR SAY THAT SPRING BECOMES SUMMER.
Dogen is saying that forms don't change into other forms. Winter remains winter, summer remains summer, but something inner moves on from one climate to another climate ... which is beyond birth and beyond death, which is beyond life, which simply is. You can give it any shape, any form, but you cannot take away its isness. This isness is the greatest discovery of the East, the West has missed it completely.
A haiku by Hokushi runs:
THE MOON ON THE PINE;
I KEEP HANGING IT -- TAKING IT OFF
AND GAZING EACH TIME.
I have told you the moon is one of the great symbols in the mystery school of Zen ... you will come across the moon many times from different aspects.
THE MOON ON THE PINE;
I KEEP HANGING IT ...
Just try to understand the poetry.
I KEEP HANGING IT -- TAKING IT OFF
AND GAZING EACH TIME.
Certainly you cannot hang the moon and take it off; but what you can do, you can open your eyes and you can close your eyes. When you close your eyes you have taken the moon away. When you open your eyes you bring the moon again. And gazing at it every time -- it never fulfills the desire, the longing for beautitude.
Another haiku runs,
ONE FULL MOON;
STARS NUMBERLESS; THE SKY
DARK GREEN.
These are not ordinary poetries, these are expressions of deep meditation. Night, and particularly moonlit nights, have been found to be very supportive to meditation. Now even science suspects that the moon has a certain effect on the mind; because most of the people who go mad, go mad on a full moon night, hence the word `lunatic'. It comes from luna, the moon. Another word is `moonstruck' ....
More people commit suicide on the full moon than at any other time and more people have become enlightened on the full moon than at any other time. Science has
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