Sunday, June 19, 2016

Neither Matter Nor Spirit


The other point Dogen makes in this piece is that if we say — as many Buddhist masters do — that the whole world is just mind, it doesn't mean the same thing as saying consciousness is the ultimate reality. It also doesn't mean that the physical world is either nonexistent or, at the very least, unimportant. The physical world as mind is still the physical world. It's real, even though our understanding of it is so messed up that we can call that understanding delusional.

Dogen's Buddhism is not an idealistic or spiritual philosophy that denies the physical world. Nor is it a materialistic philosophy that considers the physical world the only reality. It says that neither of these positions is the right one. Reality, according to Dogen, is neither matter nor spirit but something that transcends those categories. Saying that it is mind alone just reminds us that what we conceive of as mind is an intimate aspect of all things, even inanimate objects, and that we are so deeply connected with everything around us that we can say there is really no separation at all.

---Brad Warner, in his commentary on Master Dogen's Sokushin Zebutsu---

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