your bridge home
Saints and Poets
If everyone already has Buddha-nature, then what exactly is all this practice for?
His question was: if we already have it, why are we doing this?
Dogen was born in Kyoto in 1200. His mother died when he was seven, and the accounts say the sight of the incense smoke rising and dispersing at her funeral was the thing that started him off, a child watching smoke and understanding, before he had words for it, what happens to everything.
He went to Mount Hiei and studied the Tendai teaching, and there he hit the wall that would not let him go.
Tendai taught that all beings already possess Buddha-nature. It is not something you acquire. It is what you are.
And Dogen said: then why practise?
If I already have it, then all this sitting and studying and disciplining is either unnecessary or it is a way of getting something I already have, which is nonsense. And nobody at Hiei could answer him.
So he got on a boat.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.