Having never left, I am back again.
This, although I traveled to Portugal, where we sat together deepening the minutes, hours, days, surrounded by green hills and the brassy music of a fireman’s band rehearsing in the ramshackle hall next door.
This, although I then crossed mountains and rivers and towns, returning now to the lush ground of home, a black bird on the grass, the garden a bloom of spring, with friends, family, work.
Reading Dogen, Bataille, Layman Pang, Giacometti, all reporting the daily news.
It’s Dogen today:
»When I climbed the mountain and crossed the river, I was. Time can only be in me. Since I still am, time cannot leave me.
If time does not come and go, the time I climbed the mountain is the living now of being-time.
If time keeps coming and going, the living now of being-time is in me. This is being-time. »
Who climbs the mountain and who crosses the river?
Nothing mysterious about it.
They are subjectles processes.
The climbing climbs, The crossing crosses.
And who does the thinking?
Just process without subject.
Also without object.
A mountain is in process like a slow flowing river.
One can not climb the same mountain twice.
All of this is empty and interconnected throughout space and time.
Separating near from far and soon from late is like drawing a map of one limitless ocean.
The witness is within and equally empty, unborn.
I do not understand Dogen either.
My goodness, I don’t even understand myself!
I bow to this not understanding.
being the witness of myself?
No need to understand.
What is important is experience: When eating soup for lunch, I was (experiencing me eating soup for lunch). Now at my desk, I still am (experiencing me here now at my desk).
Wherever I am is here, the living now.
The "point" is to experience directly "I am (the living now)."
I dont understand what Dogen is saying.