Tuesday, November 10, 2009

To learn dharma, to learn ourselves

Ok, een raadseltje. U heeft 3 weken.

To learn Buddhism is to learn ourselves.
To learn ourselves is to forget ourselves.
To forget ourselves is to be experienced by millions of things and phenomena.

To be experienced by millions of things and phenomena is to let our own body and mind, and the body and mind of the external world, fall away.
[Then] we can forget the [mental] trace of realization, and show the [real] signs of forgotten realization continually, moment by moment.

When a person first seeks the Dharma, he is far removed from the borders of Dharma.
But as soon as the Dharma is authentically transmitted to the person himself, he is a human being in his own true place.

Eihei Dogen - Genjokoan

This is Nishijima Roshi's translation,
which can be be found here, along with 8 others.