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CITATION from DOGEN ZENJI'S
EIHEI KOROKU (永平広録, Volume One) [EK 1.29]
(Rational Zen: The Mind of Dogen Kigen, trans. by Thomas Cleary)
photos: earlywomenmasters.net
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ALTHOUGH AWARE of the cold wind chilling you,
you don't yet know for whose sake the bright moon is white.
This is the saying of one who studies from the same source
as Shakyamuni; it transcends the teaching and goes beyond the marrow — it is not high, middling, or low.
How do you express the highest of the high?
Do you comprehend?
When a white heron stands in the snow,
they aren't the same color;
the bright moon and the white flowers
are not like each other.
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Translator's note: "This is a traditional Zen metaphor, representing
the experiential integration of the absolute and the relative; in which their unity does not obliterate their distinctiveness."
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