Thinking That You’ve Got It: Genjokoan Webinar 7

Here’s the webinar from this morning: Click here.

As usual, after you get the recording going, click View and then Video.

We’re working with the following passage this week that points to opening our hearts to a perspective that we haven’t appreciated before – getting ourselves upside-down, if you will. This one is also about getting over our selves and our attainments.

[10]When the Dharma has not yet fully penetrated into body and mind, one thinks that one is already filled with the dharma. When the dharma fills the body and mind, one thinks that something is [still] lacking.

For example, when we sail a boat into the ocean beyond sight of land and when our eyes scan [the horizon in] the four directions, it simply looks like a circle. No other shape appears. This great ocean, however, is neither round nor square. It has inexhaustible characteristics. [To a fish], it looks like a palace; [to a heavenly being] a jeweled necklace. [To us] as far as our eyes can see, it looks like a circle.

All the myriad things are like this. Within the dusty world and beyond, there are innumerable aspects and characteristics; we only see or grasp as far as the power of our eye of study and practice can see.

When we listen to the reality of myriad things, we must know that there are inexhaustible characteristics in either an ocean or mountains and there are many other worlds in the four directions. This is true not only in the external world, but it is the same right under our feet or within a single drop of water.