Feeling Our Way to Awakening

HONGZHI was a twelfth-century Zen master in China who had a great influence on Dogen. The following is one of his practice instructions—it’s something we are to do:

Emptiness is without characteristics. Illumination has no emotional afflictions. With piercing, quietly profound radiance, it mysteriously eliminates all disgrace. Thus one can know oneself; thus the self is completed. We all have the clear, wondrously bright field from the beginning. Many lifetimes of misunderstanding come only from distrust, hindrance, and screens of confusion that we create in a scenario of isolation. With boundless wisdom journey beyond this, forgetting accomplishments. Straightforwardly abandon stratagems and take on responsibility. Having turned yourself around, accepting your situation, if you set foot on the path, spiritual energy will marvelously transport you. Contact phenomena with total sincerity, not a single atom of dust outside yourself.

—from Cultivating the Empty Field, translation by Taigen Dan Leighton with Yi Wu

I’ve often said that if I could meet Hongzhi, I would probably ask him to read me his poetry while I lie on my back and watch the clouds. Maezumi Roshi wrote this about him: “The tongueless one prescribes with wordless sparklings, a medicine of nondual existence for the bodiless one. When we appreciate the effect of this medicine, we know that medicine, we know that Master Hongzhi’s 834-year-old relics are still fresh and warm and vitally universal.” And I might add, they are here with us today.

We come together and collect our hearts and our minds, ceremoniously. , the Latin root of ceremony, means “with reverence, with sacredness, with healing.” So we collectively gather together our griefs, our joys, our sorrows, our broken trusts—in reverence, in