The Wholehearted Way is a love song to the world. All beings awaken, each in our own way. We humans awaken into awareness of the underlying natural fabric of the world by wholeheartedly participating in life. The world we wake up to is immeasurable, incomprehensibly grander than we can possibly think. The land, trees and grasses, fences and walls, tiles and pebbles, all the various things in the ten directions perform the work of the buddhas. Those who receive the benefits produced by these wind and water elements are inconceivably helped by the buddhas’ wondrous guidance, and all awaken intimately to themselves.

When delusion and enlightenment are not seen as opposed to one another, interdependence opens the life of the whole self.

The heart of the Bendowa, Dogen’s Wholehearted Way, is the section called Jijuyu Samadhi (or Zanmai), the samadhi of the who giving-and-receiving self. He lays out his immense vision of the meaning of zazen in the life of the individual practitioner and of the universe of all beings. He says that when a person takes on the buddha-mudra with their whole body and mind, all space and all beings awaken. What is the buddha mudra?

Third in a series on Zen practice (#1 Spiritual Practice at All Times and Places; #2 Practice Outside the Zendo).