Monakhos

“Nevertheless, Flowers fall among attachments.
And weeds flourish amidst annoyance.”
-Dogen - Genjokoan

Hakuun Yasutani in his commentary of the Genjokoan, Flowers Fall, warns that explaining this passage to too great a depth causes the words to die. He also warns against making the passage into a experiential guide.

“In last night’s storm the beautiful blossoms all fell off. Ah! What a shame. When it rains for two or three days, again the weeds have grown up. Oh, well.”
-Hakuun Yasutani - Flowers Fall

This passage is not suggesting that we need to avoid attraction and repulsion, but rather showing a truth about the universe. Everyone is attached to something whether it is a possession, or a person, or an ideal. Nothing lasts forever. Attachments fall and repulsions grow.

I’m finding it hard to explain this further, and I don’t want to kill the words (as Hakuun Yasutani warned) so I am going to stop here and let the living words speak for themselves.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2006 at 19:52 and is filed under Buddhism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.