Sawaki says: « The eye is the eye and the navel is the navel; they do what they are there for. »
(Talk on 08/15/42)
The navel « does » nothing, from a physiological point of view, and the singular eye has no meaning.
Sawaki speaks of the eye and the navel: they respond to each other on either side of a subtle axis. The navel is the hara, the center, the energy focus.
The eye is the middle of the forehead, sometimes a little below.
The two centers operate below the posture, they smolder beneath the ashes of zazen.
They are to the being in posture what the flow of magma is to the rock formed in a mountain.
« They do what they are there for. »
In this respect, there has always been no difference between the practices of the ancients and the practices of today, and whatever the shape, erosion, or solidity of the rock, it changes nothing in the circulating magma.
The eye, the navel.
“Eyes vertical, nose horizontal,” said Dogen, things as they have always been, beneath the form and the names we give them despite our childish, useless attachments to the forms and names of practice, the twinkling of our eyes for clothes,
beneath the attachments of our ears to the exotic sounds of this or that language.
These attachments are obstacles. They slow us down on the path. Yet, all the rocks in the world placed on the path change nothing in the course of the road.
Sawaki says: “one with God,” “no demarcation between us and the Buddha,”
Of a single fabric, of a single essence,
Get into posture and let be.
Sawaki again: “the wise have nothing”…
The wise are without egos, and have nothing more, nothing that you do not have.
The other has nothing more than you,
You have more than the wise man,
The wise man has nothing: He has laready lost everything
Return to this nothing.
« The wise have no place of their own. »
The place is that of practice, their spiritual address, the coordinate of practice.
Buddhism; Zen; Soto…The wise are homeless, without a fixed abode, wandering monks, wandering practitioners; they see the pitfalls of well-established spiritual addresses.
Yet when Sawaki says, « The eye is the eye and the navel is the navel, »
He is speaking of the seeing eye and the navel area of the epidermis.
There is no difference.
Notes & Silence 
The posture is the posture. It does what it is there for.
Therefore, is it not, equally, an obstacle?
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..in the same way the canoe that allowed the crossing of the river becomes one when we refuse to step out of it once the crossing has occurred, I would say…
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… but recognising whether one uses a canoe, a kayak, stepping stones, or a refreshing swim to get across is irrelevant
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Whatever the means they are of no use on the other side.
A saucepan may not be such a good idea.
Some practices are sure to drown people.
Self growth (?)
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Self growth is sure drowning?
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Self dévelopement.
Self inflation,
Yes , I bellieve
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