The Eternal Rightness of Things

I have been attending a dharma-study group that at present is discussing a book called The Hidden Lamp, a collection of koans with commentaries. One of the koans, from ninth-century China, is called “The Old Woman’s Relatives.” A monk asks an old woman living alone in a hut, “Do you have any relatives?” She answers, “The mountains, rivers, and the whole earth, the plants and trees, are all my relatives.”[1]

The old woman has realized that the whole world is the buddhadharma, and she feels herself to be a comfortable part of this world. In Zen, the buddhadharma is the world seen through enlightenment.[2]


That the whole world is the buddhadharma has been an inspiring idea to me over the years. In words that underscore this idea, Suzuki Roshi says, “In your big mind, everything has the same value. Everything is Buddha himself.”[3] And Dogen says, “Hundreds of grasses and myriad forms – each appearing ‘as it is’ – are nothing but the buddha’s true dharma

body. . . .”[4] Dogen also says, “The great ocean has only one taste.”[5]


The principle of the buddhadharma is that everything is always all right. The sense of the rightness of everything transcends reason and is beyond intellectual verification. I think this is what Dogen means when he says, “Now, the realm of all buddhas is inconceivable. It cannot be reached by consciousness.”[6]


The sense of the rightness of things lies at an intuitive level beyond reasoning. It is available to a zazen practitioner. Chogyam Trungpa says, “Through the practice of meditation, we begin to find that within ourselves there is no fundamental complaint about anything or anyone at all.”[7]


The intuition of the rightness of things will come to any persistent zazen practitioner. It is the source of strength and inner stability as one confronts the trials of life.


Footnotes

  1. The Hidden Lamp, Massachusetts, 2013, p. 173.
  2. The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen, Boston, 1991, p. 30.
  3. Suzuki Roshi, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, New York, 1970, p. 44
  4. Dogen, Moon in a Dewdrop, New York, 1985, p. 129.
  5. Ibid., p. 62.
  6. Ibid., p. 148.
  7. Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Boulder, 2007, p. 21.
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