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Something strangely wonderful -
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Source: Shohaku Okumura and Taigen Daniel Leighton
(1977)
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| "Our life is part of the universe, and yet we
think our life is our own personal belonging. We create our own
personal world through our distinctions, our discrimination, our value
judgements and definitions. We analyse and put a name or label on it,
and put it into categories to make it easy to understand, to make it
easy to deal with. That is the man-made world. Our life is created by all the experiences from our birth, or even before our birth. We receive and create a human world. In that sense subject and object, ourselves and the world, are one. The world is created by our discrimination. And within that world, there are subject and object. There is a kind of separation. Although it is one, we think there is a separation. |
The world is created
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The fact that we are deluded
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So our creation, our discrimination, our world is not real. It is
like a phantom. It is not substantial. It appears and disappears
moment by moment. Yet our life, including our delusions and
discriminations, is a kind of manifestation of reality. But even
though it is the manifestation of reality, we are deluded. The fact
that we are deluded is the reality for us human beings. So our practice is not to eliminate our delusions, but to be aware of the fact that we are deluded. Just become aware of it and let go of it. Do not be pulled by the delusions. Then we really become one with the Buddha way or wondrous dharma (myoho). |
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| Even though we are inherently given wondrous dharma,
we do not know it.
If we could understand or know it, then it would
not be wondrous. So in a sense we have doubt as to whether this is
really enlightenment, or really the Buddha way, or whether we are
really in the Buddha way from the beginning. Our task is to let go of this sort of doubt and sit on the basis of the wondrous dharma, the reality including delusions. This is our practice moment by moment. Wondrous dharma is already given, and yet within our life we have delusions. Delusions mean our individuality, our limitations as individuals, and also egocentricity. |
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The way I see things is different
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We cannot see the universe from the viewpoints of other people; we
can see things only from "my" point of view. I cannot see from your
point of view. Even though I think I can understand it, I cannot
really see it, because it is not reality for me. Even if I stand in
the same place, the way I see things is different from the way you
see them. Our own picture of the world is a kind of fantasy made of our memory in our brain. Each person has this limitation. That is why we have problems, troubles, fighting, arguments. The angles we see the world from are different and the supreme awareness is to see that we cannot see the whole world, to understand that we are deluded and limited. This means that we have to let go of our viewpoints. |
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| (SO) we sit on the
cushion, we sit in the correct
posture, and breathe quietly and let go of thought. Just do zazen. In
our sitting we are freed from our limitations by letting go of our
limited views.
This is the supreme awareness Just let go of everything, memory or consciousness or whatever. Only when we actually do this are we free from the limitations of our individuality." |
the supreme awareness is to see that we cannot
see the whole world,
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