This sadness is unfathomable,
Through this practice, I sit beyond.
Mistakes from the past are beyond repair.
Through this practice, I wipe them all and sit beyond.
Nothing happening to me can ever bring me anything,
Through this sitting, everything becomes possible.
©FJ Jan 2021
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Yet are not sadness and joy the same? Is not to be beyond sadness, therefore, not to know joy, but to exist beyond such emotions?
Are there past mistakes? Is there not just the memory of how one came to be now, itself the step toward becoming?
What could an event bring? What might one expect, other than to become?
And how can any of this be given a practical expression today? That, perhaps, is the most difficult issue.
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Yes.
These lines were a free interpretation of the four traditional bows of the bodhisattva, recited in Soto Zen…
You are certainty aware of this content,
Let me share with you a link I have just found, containing different versions…
https://terebess.hu/zen/szoto/vows.html
J’aimeJ’aime
Sadness and joy do not differ in substance.
Yet, isn’t there a level of grace corresponding to a non relative form of joy?
Again…your second paragraph is very dogenish/ shobogenzo-like, should I say.
The four Bodhisattva vows are clearly multi layered and their apparent contradictions really pregnant with endless wisdom,
as you have perceived yourself.
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Well, I have never previously read those vows. Then again, many paths are merely a reformulation of the same ideas. Generally, I would prefer « intend » to « vow ». I suppose I would say something like: « I intend to seek to develop in my own path, for in doing so I will best fulfill whatever purpose I have ». That is very much an « off the cuff » formulation, however. I may change it.
Dogen appears again…! Maybe the connection with Fort’s ideas was not so fanciful.
Grace, however, I find a more difficult concept. Perhaps because I have seen it much misused. Whilst I am no atheist, I see the force of the lines of a poem that state: « You are your own devil, you are your own god ». It’s not the whole story, but to me emphasises personal responsibility for one’s place and state. « Non-relative joy », also, is a difficult idea in our highly relative existence. Would it not, necessarily, relate to something beyond this phase of life?
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