When we are no longer identified with the idea of ourselves, the entire relationship
 between subject and object, knower and known, undergoes a sudden and revolutionary change.
 It becomes a real relationship, a mutuality in which the subject creates the object just
 as much as the object creates the subject.
 The knower no longer feels himself to be independent of the known.
 The experiencer no longer feels himself to stand apart from the experience.
 Consequently, the whole notion of getting something out of life, of seeking something
 from experience, becomes absurd.
 To put it in another way, it becomes vividly clear that in concrete fact I have no other
 self than the totality of things of which I am aware.
 This is the hua-yen doctrine of the net of jewels, of shi-shi-wu-ai, in which every jewel
 contains the reflection of all the others.
 Man's identification with his idea of himself gives him a specious and precarious sense
 of permanence, for this idea is relatively fixed, being based upon carefully selected
 memories of his past, memories which have a preserved and fixed character.
 But to the degree that he identifies himself with the fixed idea, he becomes aware of life
 as something which flows past him, faster and faster as he grows older, as his idea
 becomes more rigid, more bolstered with memories.
 The more he attempts to clutch the world, the more he feels it as a process in motion.
 On one occasion, Ma-tsu and Po-chang were out for a walk when they saw some wild geese
 flying past.
 "What are they?" asked Ma-tsu.
 "They are wild geese," said Po-chang.
 "What are they doing?" demanded Ma-tsu.
 Po-chang replied, "They have already flown away."
 Suddenly Ma-tsu grabbed Po-chang by the nose and twisted it so that he cried out in pain.
 "How!" shouted Ma-tsu.
 "Could they ever have flown away?"
 This was the moment of Po-chang's awakening.
 The relativity of time and motion is one of the principal themes of Dogen's Sho-bo-gen-zu,
 where he writes, "If we watch the shore while we are sailing in a boat, we feel that the
 shore is moving, but if we look nearer to the boat itself, we know then that it is the
 boat which moves.
 When we regard the universe in confusion of body and mind, we often get the mistaken belief
 that our mind is constant.
 But if we actually practice Zen and come back to ourselves, we see that this was wrong.
 When firewood becomes ashes, it never returns to being firewood, but we should not take
 the view that what is laterally ashes was formerly firewood.
 What we should understand is that according to the doctrine of Buddhism, firewood stays
 at the position of firewood.
 There are former and later stages, but these stages are clearly cut.
 It is the same with life and death.
 Thus we say in Buddhism that the unborn is also the undying.
 Life is a position of time.
 Death is a position of time.
 They are like winter and spring, and in Buddhism we do not consider that winter becomes spring
 or that spring becomes summer."
 Dogen is here trying to express the strange sense of timeless moments, which arises when
 one is no longer trying to resist the flow of events, the peculiar stillness and the
 self-sufficiency of the succeeding instants, when the mind is, as it were, going along
 with them and not trying to arrest them.
 The measuring of worth and success in terms of time and the insistent demand for assurances
 of a promising future make it impossible to live freely both in the present and in the
 promising future when it arrives.
 For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live
 anywhere.
 The show Borghenzo says, "When a fish swims, he swims on and on, and there is no end to
 the water.
 When a bird flies, he flies on and on, and there is no end to the sky.
 From the most ancient times there was never a fish who swam out of the water, nor a bird
 who flew out of the sky.
 Yet when the fish needs just a little water, he uses just a little, and when he needs lots,
 he uses lots.
 Thus the tips of their heads are always at the outer edge of their space.
 If ever a bird flies beyond that edge, he dies, and so also with the fish.
 From the water the fish makes his life, and from the sky the bird.
 But this life is made by the bird and the fish.
 At the same time the bird and the fish are made by life.
 Thus there are the fish, the water, and life, and all three create each other.
 Yet if there were a bird who first wanted to examine the size of the sky, or a fish
 who first wanted to examine the extent of the water, and then try to fly or to swim,
 they will never find their own ways in the sky or the water.
 This is not a philosophy of not looking where one is going.
 It is a philosophy of not making where one is going so much more important than where
 one is, that there will be no point of going.


{END}
Wait Time : 0.00 sec
Model Load: 0.64 sec
Decoding  : 0.53 sec
Transcribe: 412.99 sec
Total Time: 414.16 sec