M.J. Rose

From Parabola Magazine, a deeply though-provoking article about the nature of reality as seen by Zen Master Dogen…

“Seeing” by Zen Master Dogen

Commentary on, and original translation of, the great Zen icon

by Kazuaki Tanahashi

The view on “seeing” by Dogen, a thirteenth century Japanese Zen monk, is rather unique. He uses the word “dream” to describe the enlightenment of the Buddha, and the meditative experience of all practitioners. Counter to the common notion that dreams are unreal and actual phenomena are real, he asserts that the awakened ones’ profound wisdom is concrete, the source of all teaching, while actual phenomena are transient and unreliable.

Dogen presented this short essay titled “Within a Dream Expressing the Dream” to the assembly of the Kannondori Kosho Horin Monastery in Uji County, south of Kyoto, on the twenty-first day, the ninth month, the third year of the Ninji Era [1242]. The following text is translated by Taigen Dan Leighton and myself. (Excerpted from Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, Shambhala Publications, 2010, with permission by the publisher.)

Every dewdrop manifested

in every realm

is a dream.

The path of all buddhas and ancestors arises before the first forms emerge; it cannot be spoken of using conventional views…

For the complete piece please click here to go to Parabola.

One of our favorite conspiracy theorists and authors, Erich von Däniken, gives his rather optimistic take on 2012, crop circles, the pyramids, the Mayan long count calendar, and extraterrestrial communications:

A thought-provoking and personal story of a man who learned that keeping his past life memories separate from his present day life was something that was both very challenging and incredibly important:

We must live into our own time

(by Robert Moss, author of national bestseller THE SECRET HISTORY OF DREAMING)

It’s time. I’m moving Sir William Johnson and the Iroquois out of my writing Cave and up to a new library room we’ve created on the top level of my house. This is shifting the fulcrum of my life in an interesting way. Let me explain.

I not only dreamed of Johnson; I dreamed of people who were central to his life dramas. I dreamed of a “woman of power” who became Mother of the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk nation, and is known to history as the grandmother of Molly Brant, the only woman who managed to tame Billy Johnson, with his raging appetite for life…

For the complete piece please click here to go to Robert Moss’ blog.