..续本文上一页g. That same energy is generated in sesshin. And it wasn”t just by luck or chance, all those Zen stories where the ancient teachers just said one word and the student was enlightened. It”s the same as when you”re with a labouring woman, you stay with her through the night, you breathe with her, you can tell when the baby”s going to be born, you can tell the stages of labour easily when you”re a midwife. And it”s the same with those great Zen teachers. They know when the student is ripe. That one word can awaken the mind.

　　There”s another beautiful analogy about form and emptiness that is very simple. It is like the wave and the ocean. The wave has a beginning and an end, a birth and a death, and the Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra says that the wave is full of emptiness but is empty of a separate self. Now the wave is a form created by the wind and the water, but if the wave only sees its form, its beginning and end, it will be afraid of birth and death. But if the wave identifies with the water, with the essence, it will not be afraid of birth and death. The water is free from birth and death.

　　Through the process of practice, we see there is an exclusive identification with our own body and mind, and this attachment to this body is our greatest limitation. I feel, I think, I am this, I hear, I, I, I. And Dogen said, if you are attached to your body and cannot detach from it, you will not find the way of Buddhas, not even in ten thousand aeons. I did my own contemplation of the impermanence of the body some years ago while sitting with the Tibetan lamas. They had us meditating on death for two weeks, then two weeks on the hell realms. Then I spent time in Benares, arose every morning at four am, went down to the Ganges, found my own special boatman and gave him some rupees to take me up the river to the burning ghat. The river at five am is an intense experience.

　　A million people descend to bathe in it and chant by it just as the sun rises over the plains of India. Every twenty minutes a body is brought to the burning ghat, carried on a stretcher with four pall bearers, chanting as they come, through the winding back streets down to the river. And the chant was, Rama nama satya hai and it translates as "the only truth is the name of god". And I was fascinated by this chant, because it didn”t matter what caste you were, every body got the same chant. Contemplation at the burning ghat was not something ugly, it was an embracing of life and death, that whole process. It”s quite sane actually.

　　So when we sit, we can experience the moment to moment impermanent nature of all the elements. We have the heat, the air, the water, thoughts and feelings. So what elements can you truly consider to be your own body if you truly look at it just as elements arising and passing away on a moment to moment level

　　 Try and grasp hold of any one of those elements, try and hang onto one, just even one sensation in the body and say, "that is me". It is impermanent. When we contemplate the body we can experience that microscopic level of that constant change and flux., bubbles, atoms. And we can experience this directly. There is no permanent, separate entity called "self" there in all those elements. And that constant changing, that state of flux is what Dogen meant when he says, "The green mountains are forever walking". There is no separation between yourself and the green mountains. Green mountains come forth as self. Turning the light around and looking back is the path of the ancient ones, the mountains and waters of the immediate present.

　　However there is more to the Buddha”s teaching than the realisation of emptiness. We must not stagnate in that realisation of emptiness. That must be replaced by a more comprehensive realisation of integration, and that integration is merging with the world in compassion. Dogen had an analogy here, "It”s like stepping back and stepping forward" - stepping back - introspection, and stepping forth - merging with the world. This is like the dance we do - we come to sesshin - introspection - we merge with the world - we come out. We do this dance in many ways continually, back and forth. There”s a beautiful rhythm there. Keep up that rhythm, and please do not doubt the walking of the green mountains.

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