Embodying Authentic Self
Monday, March 7, 2011 at 03:09AM Authentic self is not an ontological self. It is a way of being, a lived experience of the world. I take that back. It is not a way of being; it is being in the world. Dogen writes, “practice and realization are identical… practice is practice in realization… realization is endless… practice is beginningless."
Realization is embodied. It is not a subjective experience gained by some objective observer. That is not what I mean by embodied. There is no separation of mind and body. No separation of self and other. There is simply an experience in the moment that is realized within the relationship we are calling the participatory self. I say that it is a relationship, because there is no self to point to. What is is an experience that is had because conditions are right. In this way we start to understand Dogen above. Practice and realization are identical - I hear this over and over. Zazen is enlightenment. One discovers what is there when the conditions are right, but what is discovered is and always has been, what we might term “thusness”.
There is not a self as we conventionally conceive of one. What there is is an experience of living, of being in the world. Practice slows us down enough to start to realize what it means to be, as opposed to thinking about being in the world. That is not to say that we should do away with thinking. This is not the way of being in the world a child has, where there is no awareness of self. The authentic self is an awareness of being alive, of being, as we are, now. It has differentiated itself and gone on to realize its own true nature.
If I look to the future I am not embodying.... If I go out and sit on my zafu and look around for enlightenment I will not find it. I can only realize it as authentic self, not from the zafu but as the practice of zazen. It is the actual practice that brings me to this realization, but practice is beginningless. There never was a time before what is, It is eternal. There never was a time before practice - practice is now. Zazen is enlightenment; embodied realization as authentic self.
Dogen says that realization is endless. Again we step out of the future/past and into the groundlessness that is… embodied experience. There is nothing to separate practice and realization; they are one in the same without beginning or end.
To quote Dogen one last time: “What faith has he who does not know the body which is the spring pine, or the true reality which is, just as it is, the autumn chrysanthemum? How can he ever cut off the roots of birth and death?” There is a truth that comes from realizing one is alive (like a spring pine), and that one will die (the autumn chrysanthemum). Between these two seeming opposites lies eternity, unconditioned being, and within the ground of this being unfolds the reality of what is. Both spring and autumn in the same moment… forever, and aware.
Authentic Self, Dogen, participatory.me in Buddhism, Embodiment
Reader Comments (3)
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