seeds of infinite possibilty

(4) […] Those who greatly realize delusion are buddhas. Those who are greatly deluded in realization are living beings. furthermore, there are those who attain realization beyond realization and those who are deluded within delusion. [Dōgen Zenji, “Genjokoan”]

    “… If we are truly honest and sincere with ourselves, we will find that no matter how hard we practice, our motivation for practice is still based in some amount of self-centeredness. Dōgen said that those who recognize this self-centered basis of their practice are buddhas. This means that the act of truly seeing our self-centeredness is itself Buddha, and when we see this self-centeredness we must bring repentance[1] into our practice to work to free ourselves from our selfish motivations. Our practice, the awakening that allows us to see our own self-centeredness and let go of it, is Buddha. So to awaken to the reality of our delusion, the reality that we are almost always self-centered and unable to see the truth of impermanence and lack of independent existence, is itself Buddha. This is what Dōgen means when he says that to realize delusion is to be a Buddha.” [Okumura, “Realizing Genjokoan”, pp 57-58]

[1] The word “repentance” as I use it here is a translation of sange the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word chanhui. Chanhui is a translation from Sanskrit of the Buddhist term ksama. The San of sange is taken from the first part of chanma, the Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit word ksama, meaning “to repent” or “to regret.” The ge (Ch.: hui,) of sange also means “to repent” or “to regret” in the original Chinese.