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Beginning
Know that in this way there are myriads of forms and hundreds of grasses [all things] throughout the entire earth, and yet each grass and each form itself is the entire earth. The study of this is the beginning of practice.
Dogen Kigen | Shobogenzo (Ed. Tanahashi) | The Time Being pg.105
Entire world
The way the self arrays itself is the form of the entire world. See each thing in this entire world as a moment of time.
Things do not hinder one another, just as moments do not hinder one another. The way-seeking mind arises in this moment. A way-seeking moment arises in this mind. It is the same with practice and with attaining the way.
Thus, the self setting itself out in array sees itself. This is the understanding that the self is time.
Dogen Kigen | Shobogenzo (Ed. Tanahashi) | The Time Being pg.105
Even though
Even though you do not measure the hours of the day as long or short, far or near, you can still call it twelve hours. Because the signs of time’s coming and going are obvious, people do not doubt it. Although they do not doubt it, they do not understand it. Or, when sentient beings doubt what they do not understand, their doubt is not firmly fixed. Because of that, their past doubts do not necessarily coincide with the present doubt. Yet, doubt itself is nothing but time.
Dogen Kigen | Shobogenzo (Ed. Tanahashi) | The Time Being pg.105
Mad intention
If you exclude those who have broken precepts, you may exclude all bodhisattvas. If you exclude those who may break precepts in the future, you exclude all bodhisattvas who arouse the aspiration for enlightenment. If you exclude them in such a way, you need to exclude everyone. Then, how can buddha dharma be actualized? To make such vows is the mad intention of fools who don’t know buddha dharma. It should be lamented.
Dogen Kigen | Shobogenzo (Ed. Tanahashi) | Obtaining the marrow pg.80
Refrain From
Even if you caution against doing unwholesome action by intention, and encourage doing wholesome action by intention, you actualize 'refrain from'. On the whole, in the Buddha dharma, what you first hear from a teacher and what you finally achieve are the same. This is called genuine from head to tail. It is also called "inconceivable cause, inconceivable effect," or "buddha cause, buddha effect." Cause and effect in the buddha way is neither heterogeneous maturing nor a homogeneous stream. Since this is so, without buddha cause, buddha effect cannot be experienced.
Repentance
Repentance is:
“Although my past unwholesome actions have accumulated, causing hindrance in the study of the way, may buddhas and ancestors release me from these actions and liberate me. May the merit of practicing dharma fill inexhaustible worlds of phenomena. May compassion be extended to me.”
Before awakening, buddha ancestors were like you. Upon awakening you will become buddha ancestors. When you look at buddha ancewstors you are a buddha ancestor. When you look at their aspiration for enlightenment, you have the aspiration. Working with compassion this way and that, you achieve facility and you let facility drop away.
Thus, Longya said:
“If you did not attain enlightenment in the past, do so now. Liberate this body that is the culmination of many lifetimes. Before enlightenment, ancient buddhas were like us. When enlightened, we will be like those of old.”
This is the understanding of a realized buddha. We should reflect on it. This is the exact point of a realized buddha.
With repentance you will certainly receive invisible help from buddha ancestors. Repent to the buddhas with mind and body. The power of repentence melts the roots of unwholesomeness. This is the single color of true practice, the true heart of trust, the true body of trust.
Dogen Kigen | Shobogebzo (Ed. Tanahashi) | Valley sounds and mountain colours pg.94
Valley sounds and mountain colours
Endeavour wholeheartedly to follow the path of earlier sages. You may have to climb mountains and cross oceans when you look for a teacher to inquire about the way. Look for a teacher and search for understanding with all-encompassing effort, as if you were coming down from heaving or emerging from the ground. When you encounter a true teacher, you invoke sentient beings as well as insentient beings. You hear with the body, you hear with the mind.
To hear with the ear is an everyday matter, but to hear with the eye is not always so. When you see buddha, you see self-buddha, other-buddha, a large buddha, a small buddha. Do not be frightened by a large buddha. Do not be put off by a small buddha. Just see large and small buddhas as valley sounds and mountain colours, as a broad, long tongue, and as eighty-four thousand verses. This is liberation, this is outstanding seeing.
There is a common saying that expresses this: “Totally superb, totally solid.” An earlier buddha said: “It covers heaven, it encompasses the earth.” This is the purity of a spring pine, the magnificence of an autumn chrysanthemum. Just this.
When you reach this realm, you are a master of humans and devas. If you teach others before arriving in this realm, you will do great harm to them. Without knowing the spring pine or the autumn chrysanthemum, how can you nourish others and how can you cut through their roots of confusion?
Dogen Kigen | Shobogebzo (Ed. Tanahashi) | Valley sounds and mountain colors pg.93
You and I are just this.
in the practice of unsurpassable, complete enlightenment, what is most difficult to find is a guiding teacher. The guiding teacher should be a strong person, regardless of being male or female. The teacher should be a person of thusness, with excellent knowledge and wild fox [transformative] spirit, whether living in the past or present. This is the face [essence] of attaining the marrow, the guiding virtue. This is “not ignoring cause and effect,” and “You and I are just this.”
After you encounter your guiding teacher, practice diligently in the endeavour of the way, casting of myriad conditions, without sparing a moment. Practice with heart, practice beyond heart, practice even with half a heart. In this way, brush off the fire on your head [practice with urgency], or stand on your toes [practice intensely].
If you practice in this way, you will not be destroyed by jealous demons; the ancestor [Huike] who cut off his arm and attained the [Bodhidharma’s] marrow becomes not other [than you]. The master who drops away body and mind is you yourself.
You attain the marrow and are invariably transmitted dharma through your utmost sincerity and trusting heart. There is no path that comes from anything other than sincere trust; there is no direction that emerges from itself.
Thus, you regard dharma as weighty and your own body as lightly weighted. You retreat from the world and make the way your abode. If you consider you own body weightier than the dharma, dharma is not transmitted to you and you will not be able to attain the way.
Although the aspiration for making dharma weighty is not limited to a single path, and does not depend on instructions from others, let me make one or two points.
Regarding dharma as weighty mean this: If you encounter someone who maintains the great dharma, having received the acknowledgment -- “You have attained my marrow” -- whether the person is a pillar of a lantern, a buddha, a wild fox, demon, man or woman, you should keep your body on the zazen seat and attend to the person even for immeasurable eons. It is common to attain body and minds, which are just like widely spread rice plants, flax, bamboo, or reed. But it is rare to encounter dharma.
Dogen Kigen | Shobogebzo (Ed. Tanahashi) | Receiving the marrow by bowing pg. 72-73
Look to trees and rocks, fields and villages, to expound dharma. Ask pillars about dharma and investigate with walls.
Dogen Kigen | Shobogebzo (Ed. Tanahashi) | Receiving the marrow by bowing pg. 73
A billion worlds
A person's body and mind change according to situations and time. A billion worlds can be sat through within a single sitting. Even so, at that very moment the body and mind cannot be measured by self or other. It is the power of Buddha dharma. The scale of the body and mind is not five or six feet, because five or six feet is not unchangeable.
Where the body is neither bounded nor boundless, it is not limited to this world or that world, to the entire world or the immeasurable entire world. As in an old saying, "What is it here? Describe it roughly or in detail."
The scale of the mind cannot be known by thinking or discernment, either. It cannot be known by beyond thinking and beyond discernment. The scale of body and mind is like this; so is the scale of cleansing. To take up this scale of cleansing, practicing and realizing it, is what Buddha's and ancestors have cared for.
Do not make your scheming self a priority. Do not make your calculating self real. By washing and cleansing, you thoroughly take up the scale of body and mind and purify them. Even the four great elements and five skandhas, and what is indestructible [in the body and mind], can be purified by cleansing.
Do not merely think that rinsing with water makes things clean. How can water be originally pure or impure? Even if water is originally pure or impure, we do not say that water makes the places it reaches pure or impure. Only when you maintain the practice and realization of Buddha ancestors, the Buddha dharma of washing with water and cleansing with water, is water transmitted. By practicing and realizing this way, you leap over purity, penetrate purity, and drop away beyond purity and beyond impurity. In this way, the teaching of washing what is not yet defiled and washing what is greatly pure is maintained in the way of buddha ancestors alone. It is not known by those outside the way.
If the statement by those who are ignorant were true, even if you grind the five organs and six sub-organs into powder, make them into emptiness, and wash them with the entire ocean, how could the body and mind be pure if you don't wash inside the particles? How could you attain purity without washing inside emptiness? But those who are ignorant don't know the way to cleanse emptiness.
You take up emptiness and wash emptiness, take up emptiness and wash body and mind. If you accept washing with trust in this way, you maintain the practice and realization of buddha ancestors.
When you wash in the true dharma authentically transmitted by buddha's and ancestors, the inside and outside of body and mind, as well as the inside, the outside, the in-between of the five organs, six sub-organs, body, mind, environs, the world of phenomena, and empty space are immediately cleansed. When you cleanse with incense and flowers, the past, present, future, causes and conditions, actions and effects are immediately purified.
Dogen Kigen | Shobogebzo (Ed. Tanahashi) | Washing the face pg. 59-60
…this assembly of students is your companion in the buddha way of enlightenment for all time.
Impermanent & Unreliable
Now is the time for the fire on your head to be brushed off. Is it not sad if you waste this time, concerning yourself with secular affairs? Life is impermanent and unreliable. No one knows where and when this dew-like existence will drop from the grass. Not recognizing impermanence is truly regrettable.
Dogen Kigen | Shobogenzo (ed. Tanahashi) | Regulations for the Auxiliary Cloud Hall | Pg.40
Practice what is rare to practice.
Those who have way-seeking mind and wish to abandon fame and gain should enter. Those who are half-hearted and lack sincerity should not enter...
The assembly of students in the hall should blend like milk and water to support the activity of the way. Although now for some period you are either guest or host, later you will be buddha ancestors equally throughout time. Therefore, you should not forget the feeling of gratitude. It is rare to meet one another and practice what is rare to practice.
Dogen Kigen | Shobogenzo (ed. Tanahashi) | Regulations for the Auxiliary Cloud Hall | Pg.39
Inside the clothes of a dear friend
A man sewed a valuable pearl inside the clothes of a dear friend who was drunk [as told in the Lotus Sutra]. A dear friend always gives a valuable pearl. When a pearl is sewn inside one’s clothes, one is always drunk. This is one bright pearl, the entire world of the ten directions. All things, turning or not turning [seen when one is drunk or sober], are one bright pearl. Knowing the bright pearl is one bright pearl. This is how it is with one bright pearl.
Dogen Kigen | Shobogenzo (ed. Tanahashi) | One Bright Pearl | Pg.37
Limited views are merely limited
... Although you may say, “I am not a bright pearl,” you should not doubt. Whether you doubt it or not, such doubt comes from a limited view. Limited views are merely limited views.
How lovely is one bright pearl’s infinite colours and shades? Bits and pieces of its colours and shades express the entire world of the ten directions. No one can take it away, or throw a tile at it in the marketplace. Do not be concerned about falling or not falling into cause and effect in the six paths. Not ignoring cause and effect, from beginning to end, is the face of the bright pearl, is the eye of the bright pearl.
To think or not to think one hundred times about what the bright pearl is or is not is like gathering and binding weeds [to trap yourself]. But when you clarify the body and mind as the bright pearl through the dharma words of Xuansha, you understand that mind is not the self.
Who is concerned whether or not appearing and disappearing are the bright pearl? Even if you are concerned, that does not mean you are not the bright pearl. It is not something outside of the bright pearl that causes practice and thought. Therefore, forward or back, your every step in the demon’s cave on the black mountain is one bright pearl.
Dogen Kigen | Shobogenzo (ed. Tanahashi) | One Bright Pearl | Pg.37-38
Another One Bright Pearl
One time a monk inquired of him, “Reverend Monk, I have heard you say that the whole universe throughout all its ten directions is one bright pearl. How am I, as a trainee, to understand the meaning of this?”
Shibi answered, “Since the whole universe throughout all its ten directions is the One Bright Pearl, what use is there in trying to understand this with the intellect?”
However, the next day the Master asked this monk, “The whole universe throughout all its ten directions is the One Bright Pearl, so what do you think this means?”
The monk responded, “Since the whole universe throughout all its ten directions is the one bright pearl, what use is there in my trying to understand this with my intellect?”
Shibi replied, “It is indeed clear to me that, even though you are blindly looking into the demon’s cave within the pitch black mountains of ignorance, you are doing your training.”
(Translator unknown for this one)