Surprisingly, to make a Western mind understand what is meant by Dharma, in the sense of ‘cosmic order’, ‘infinite reality’, it is relevant to go through what is called the greatness of God.
‘God is great’, this favourably disposes the mind, the heart of the practitioner, to hear the Dharma.
In Zen, the mountain, the river, the sky, the ocean, the dharma, this is where the greatness of God to whom we ‘submit’, through wisdom, points to.
Submission is not the result of any repressive process,
It is an abdication of any desire for apprehension, of taking hold through the small being,
In this, it is wisdom: the result of a knowledge of the strata of consensus.
God is great = I submit to great wisdom, to reality, to the Dharma.
I stop trying to feverishly knit meaning with my worn-out woolen balls and my anxious needles, I realize that this will never be able to clothe me,
I then wear the Great Coat,
Squares of fabric gathered together,
Seamless clothing
Unique piece,
Unified soul.
©FJ Sept 2024
Recueils / Participation/ Groupe
Notes & Silence 
And how do you explain this to the atheistic, agnostic, materialistic, western mind?
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I don’t.
I’m not good at explaining things.
I’ve stopped believing in explaining.
People self-understand when the moment has come.
I just talk in the meantime.
(this is what a (half?) life of teaching positions has ‘taught’ me)
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I asked because I doubt the « Western mind » takes that much notice of « God is great, » these days.
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