[1] There is the leisurely one (from The Shodoka)
by Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia / Yoka GenkakuEnglish version by Robert Aitken
Original Language Chinese
There is the leisurely one,
Walking the Tao, beyond philosophy,
Not avoiding fantasy, not seeking truth.
The real nature of ignorance is the Buddha-nature itself;
The empty delusory body is the very body of the Dharma.
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It's a sleepy morning here, overcast after many long days of summer heat and sun. And this poem appealed to me. It suggests to me the drowsy way of enlightenment.
There is the leisurely one,
Walking the Tao, beyond philosophy,
Not avoiding fantasy, not seeking truth.
Not through effort, but through quiet being and quietly seeing.
Not trying to control the mind or force silence or a specific way of seeing. Simply observing. The movement of the world, the movement of thoughts, they come, they go. Watching these flickering phenomena though drowsy eyes, they tell us more about the spacious depths than their jostling surfaces. We yawn behind a hand as we watch the show.
An enlightenment for sleepy mornings.
The real nature of ignorance is the Buddha-nature itself;
The empty delusory body is the very body of the Dharma.
To clarify what is meant here by "ignorance" and the "delusory body" it may be helpful to mentally substitute the concept of Maya, which is the world of seeming and illusion. It is the world of apparent thingness and separation, when underlying it is the real world of unity and interbeing. Our ideas about the world, confused as they usually are by the illusions of Maya, lead us into a state of ignorance as to the true nature of reality. But as we quiet and honestly see, then that ignorance itself is seen not so much as a barrier to truth but an invitation to look deeper. Ignorance is itself of the Buddha-nature.
Likewise, all of our ideas about who we are within a separate physical body amidst a world of separated bodies, that "delusory" point-of-view surprisingly relaxes into the recognition that there is only the presence of Dharma, the outpouring "way" of the Eternal.
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A confession: I sat down this morning thinking I would pick a short poem and not try to add many of my own words by way of commentary. I feel like I've been a bit long-winded lately. And here I am writing another longish commentary. Someday soon I may recover the virtue of succinctness. But not today, apparently.
Recommended Books: Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia / Yoka Genkaku
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