Here’s Judith’s text for tonight:

In the heart of the great spiritual traditions, in the practice of inner silence, we attune to the Teacher within; there, the self – some call it the true self – can hear its own wisdom, perceive its oneness with Source, with God, the Creative energy that is All That Is. Gently we stop and allow ourselves to just be, aware of our own awareness, touching the foundational love that makes us fully human.

Last week we considered a few lines from Rumi, the Persian Sufi poet, who said that the road of The Way demands courage and stamina, and that it’s easier in the company of fellow travellers …like us

This evening we’ll hear from his 13C contemporary, Japanese Zen Master Dogen Zenji.

In one of his many beautiful treatises, Dogen reminds us that the very essence of The Way is universal, all-pervading, perfect and complete in itself; the Way in fact is just our life, and this life has two distinct aspects: the spiritual – what he calls the intrinsic or absolute, and the experiential or relative. The first refers to an ultimate all-pervasive reality, and from this perspective just being as we are is “perfect and complete;” the second, the experiential, is what we directly and consciously experience as ‘real’ …” in the day to day of our lives. According to Dogen, enlightenment is synonymous with the dual aspect Way of life … and enlightenment is “Perfect Wisdom.”

And Dogen says we don’t have to chase after this wisdom, because we already have it and are constantly using it. When it’s cold, he says, we put on more clothing. When it’s hot we take some clothes off. When hungry, we eat. When sad, we cry, and so on. “That’s perfect wisdom,” he writes.

And “The Way is always here; always right here and right now …complete, free, and all-pervading.” So, what is the point of our meditation practice, then? His answer is clear: “it is not to become something other than what we already are, such as a buddha or enlightened person, but to … become aware that we are intrinsically, originally the Way itself, free and complete. … To study the enlightened Way is to study the self” And to do this we have to forget the self, just step aside from our conscious functioning. “We think we can figure out everything by our intelligence, by our thinking” We can’t and we don’t have to, he says. “So,…set aside … the whole process of analysis” in order to become aware of the ‘absolute’ nature of ourselves first hand, to know it directly, or at least to glimpse it.