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Home | More Houn Kobun Zenji On the subject of Karma Karma is the cycle of life, it goes on and on. If you are aware of it or not, it goes on and on. Awareness of this samasara was the origin of Eastern religions, and it is from the very beginning, awakening experience, because without enlightenment there is no opportunity to see ignorance. So what we have to know is that the people who wrote Genesis, who knew the beginning of separation, were enlightened. In Eastern religions, the opposite of Samsara exists from the beginning: Nirvana. Nirvana has the sense of peace, of freedom. Another word is perfect innocence, or maybe perfection. "Shariputra, all Dharmas are marked with emptiness." When the word Dharma was written, it contained the whole teaching of past Buddhist history, so in order to make Buddha's teaching appear again in it's very original state, the word "No" was put to each element of it. At the same time, understanding all Dharmas as phenomenal existence, like each one of us, these individual existences in the phenomenal world are marked with emptiness too. By marked by emptiness you do not stop existing. The basic function of this word "No" is to free you from stuck state, to cut delusion from your existence. Like , we don't doubt this is "Nose," and these are "Eyes," and all at once we begin to see the nose is a bump on the face sticking out. Everything we experience in words is very true, and at the same time it is not true at all, from the very beginning to the very end. We don't need to say such a thing. To say, "I can see" is a statement of complete ignorance. Your eyes are not seeing anything actually. By starting to see, you begin not-seeing. That is how you discriminate. Perfect existance doesn't need to be seen, so trying to see is the beginning of separation. So to say, "The eye works as seeing" is also awareness of the reason of separation, and to deny it is to bring you back to perfection, actually constant perfection, without losing your eyes. Zazen and all other experiences are like that. You do Zazen and you come back, You don't lose your body. Nose is still nose. If two men appear, there is one world, and two existing there in one world. At the same time, there are two worlds, and there is not one world with two men. If there are ten existences, there is one world and ten existing in the world. And there are ten worlds, and no one world, at that time there are no ten. This is how the world is so strange. Our logical consciousness, our conscious mind cannot catch this complicated world, so the necessity of communication between people, and between things and people appears, so we can really know that everything is in everything. Everything is in each thing, and each thing is in everything at the same time. Houn Kobun
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