The Zen Master's Dance Quotes

“In “Dream within a Dream,” Dōgen said that although everything is a dream, it is our dream. Thus we had best see through it and dream it well. Sometimes the dream is not to our liking, sometimes it can seem like a nightmare, but Buddha is the dreamer and the dream too. When we wake up, we can see through those same dreams. But in order to realize this in our zazen and our lives, we must drop all thought of the least separation between us and Buddha from our minds. Otherwise Buddha will seem a million miles out of reach. Dōgen also warns us that this realization is not a stagnant knowing, a final stopping place, but is instead a realization that keeps unfolding:”
― Jundo Cohen, The Zen Master's Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe

“Yet we must not stop there, for we must keep living in this world that is also separate things, coming and going: In the Buddha Way, we must leap clear of and right through both the view of fullness and the view of lack; thus there are again birth and death, delusion and enlightenment, sentient beings and Buddhas.”
― Jundo Cohen, The Zen Master's Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe

“This is the truth of “emptiness,” in which categories and names for separate things are swept into wholeness. We can encounter the world this other way too, without making judgments of near or far, flawed or flawless, perfect or imperfect, high or low, and without applying mental categories and thoughts of separation. Then the division of ordinary beings and Buddhas evaporates, and the strife of this world vanishes too. Buddhas and sentient beings are then experienced as not apart, not separate. Enlightenment is never hidden — even in the world of confusion — once we learn to see. We can drop away our ideas of coming and going, birth and death, and instead experience an ongoing continuity and wholeness beyond time, beyond birth and death.”
― Jundo Cohen, The Zen Master's Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe

“When the myriad things are realized as each without an individual self, there is no delusion and no enlightenment, no Buddhas and no sentient beings, no birth and no death.”
― Jundo Cohen, The Zen Master's Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe

“In “Dream within a Dream,” Dōgen said that although everything is a dream, it is our dream. Thus we had best see through it and dream it well. Sometimes the dream is not to our liking, sometimes it can seem like a nightmare, but Buddha is the dreamer and the dream too. When we wake up, we can see through those same dreams. But in order to realize this in our zazen and our lives, we must drop all thought of the least separation between us and Buddha from our minds. Otherwise Buddha will seem a million miles out of reach.”
― Jundo Cohen, The Zen Master's Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe

“Dōgen had great faith in this fact. But if that is the case, it also left him with a conundrum. If we are already Buddha, then why do we need to practice? Dōgen wondered. It was a real dilemma.”
― Jundo Cohen, The Zen Master's Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe

“Mahayana Buddhists often use this word “Buddha” as a term for the truth of everything. But please don’t get caught up in labels or ideas about what kind of “thing” Buddha is. When you freeze it into an idea and paste a name on it, you might forget how all-pervading this truth is. If we must try to explain it, Buddha might be said to be this world and life when we put aside all judgments and mental categories, names and labels. All those names, categories, and ideas create a separation between us and the rest of the world. This is what we Buddhists call “delusion.” Buddha then means seeing beyond all those divisions, putting aside all our considerations about the world. And when we do so, what remains is not an empty vacuum, but rather a wholeness, a flowing dance that sweeps up everything that is this world, and sweeps us up too. It is wondrous, peaceful, and whole, even in the face of all the ups and downs, sickness and health, life and death of this world. To see that fact is what we call enlightenment. This Buddha is what you and I truly are.”
― Jundo Cohen, The Zen Master's Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe