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39 FOUR Genjôkôan 現成公案 (Manifesting Suchness) Genjôkôan was the second fascicle of Shôbôgenzô to be written. According to its colophon, it was written in mid-autumn [the eighth month], the first year of Tempuku [1233], for a lay disciple named Yôkôshû of Chinzei (an alternate name for Kyushu), about whom nothing else is known. It has been conjectured that he was an official attached to the Dazaifu, the government outpost located in northern Kyushu that dealt with foreign affairs and national defense. Many have written about the difficulties, beauty, and unobtainable depths of Genjôkôan. Nishiari Bokuzan, an eminent Sôtô teacher of the Meiji era, calling it one of the most difficult of all the fascicles, said, “This is Dôgen’s skin, flesh, bone, and marrow. His entire teaching begins and ends with this fascicle . . . the other ninety-five fascicles are all offshoots of this one.” The term genjô-kôan is difficult to translate satisfactorily into English. It appears a few times in earlier Zen writings, but in Shôbôgenzô Dôgen attached a special significance to it, using it as a technical term and an important concept in his thought. Genjô, literally something like “becoming manifest” or “immediately manifesting right here and now,” does not refer to the manifesting of something previously not manifested but rather to the immediate presence (or presencing) of all things as they truly are in their suchness, untouched by our conscious strivings; their ultimate reality, realized in religious practice. According to Shôbôgenzô shô, the earliest commentary on Shôbôgenzô, kôan indicates 40 THE HEART OF DÔGEN’S SHÔBÔGENZÔ both the individuality of things and their absolute equality—“the sameness of their differences, the difference of their sameness.” Hence the term genjôkôan points to ultimate reality in which all things exist in their distinctive individuality and are at the same time identical in their “presencing” or manifesting of suchness (Ôkubo, vol. 1, 7–10). GENJÔKÔAN When all things are the Buddha Dharma, there is illusion and enlightenment, practice, birth, death, Buddhas, and sentient beings. When all things are without self, there is no illusion or enlightenment, no birth or death, no Buddhas or sentient beings. The Buddha Way is originally beyond any fullness and lack, and for that reason, there is birth and death, illusion and enlightenment, sentient beings and Buddhas. Yet for all that, flowers fall amid our regret and yearning, and hated weeds grow apace.1 Practice that confirms things by taking the self to them is illusion: for things to come forward and practice and confirm the self is enlightenment.2 Those who greatly enlighten illusion are Buddhas. Those greatly deluded amid enlightenment are sentient beings.3 Some people continue to realize enlightenment beyond enlightenment. Some proceed amid their illusion deeper into further illusion.4 When Buddhas are truly Buddhas, there is no need for them to perceive they are Buddhas. Yet they are realized, fully confirmed Buddhas—and they go on realizing Buddhahood continuously.5 1. A similar passage appears in Dôgen’s collected sayings: “Flowers fall because of our longing, weeds flourish because of our hatred” (Eihei kôroku, ch. 1). 2. Although self and all dharmas (things), enlightenment and illusion are originally one and undifferentiated, within the myriad dharmas in constant flux there are occasions when the self is directed toward things (searching for Buddha externally, outside oneself), which is said to be illusion, and occasions when the self is confirmed by things, which is enlightenment. This is because the former is not, as is the latter, free of the self’s conscious strivings. Here Dôgen indicates that oneness is not equality that merely eliminates distinctions. Cf. “The Dharma turns the self: the self turns the Dharma. When the self readily turns the Dharma, the self is strong and the Dharma weak. When, on the other hand, the Dharma turns the self, the Dharma is strong and the self is weak. The Buddha Dharma originally includes both of these” (Gakudô-yôjinshû, section 7). 3. Enlightenment and illusion, Buddhas and sentient beings, are inseparable. Illusion means being deluded about enlightenment; enlightenment is being enlightened about illusion. 4. Realize enlightenment beyond enlightenment indicates the elimination of the “traces” of enlightenment, mentioned previously. This is butsukôjôji 佛向上事, “the matter of going beyond Buddha,” not abiding in Buddhahood but transcending it (referred to in Bendôwa...

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