"The plain tea and light food of everyday life are the deep meaning of the Buddha's teaching and the instructions of the ancestors." -- Dogen, "Kajo" ("Everyday Life")
Yesterday our Dogen class reviewed "Kajo," a fascicle of Dogen's Shobogenzo. "Kajo" goes on about tea and rice and ancestors, and in various commentaries around the Web I see that all kinds of meanings have been read into the tea and rice and ancestors. Maybe some of this meaning is what Dogen intended, and maybe it isn't. However, this being Dogen, intensive language parsing may or may not help sort it out.
On a most basic level, Dogen (I think) is telling us not to separate holy and mundane or mystical and ordinary. Practice is not about transcending the ordinary but rather perceiving the awesomeness already present in the ordinary.
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