Another poem of Dogen

 Another poem of Dogen:-

In the heart of the night,

Moonlight framing

A small boat drifting,

Tossed not by the waves

Nor swayed by the breeze

The meaning of this, at least for Dogen, can be illuminated by his words found in his "Genjokoan" (the actualisation of reality) He writes:-

If one riding in a boat watches the coast, one mistakenly perceives the coast as moving. If one watches the boat in relation to the surface of the water, then one notices that the boat is moving. Similarly, when we perceive the body and mind in a confused way and grasp all things with a discriminating mind, we mistakenly think that the self-nature of the mind is permanent. When we intimately practice and return right here, it is clear that all things have no fixed self.

Dogen, in his poem, gives voice to the vulnerability of enlightenment. We do not possess enlightenment. It possesses us.

"A clearly enllghtened person falls into the well. How is this so?" (A zen koan)

And Thomas Merton:-

We stumble and fall constantly, even when we are most enlightened.

As I see it, many fear vulnerability. We can cling to being right, of having "all truth" - but Faith is of another order. It is a letting go, trusting in becoming.

Which is the "eastern" way of seeing things. Becoming, not Being. The eastern preoccupation with impermanence is well known to anyone who approaches its poetry, and impermanence can - and does - bring suffering when we cannot trust in the river of change.

But impermanence, if we "let go", can transform the suffering. But Impermanence, it becomes clear, doesn’t mean that things last for a while then pass away: things arise and pass away at the same time. That is, things don’t exist as we imagine they do. Much of our experience of reality is illusory. And this is why we suffer. We attempt to hold onto happiness, as if it is a thing, a state of being, but as William Blake has written:-

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

He who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity's sunrise

Therefore Being IS becoming. "God" can become an idol.