Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage Update

January, 2005

Theme: Within Our Own Story – Through and Through

It is Epiphany.

Beauty sees birth through. It also sees death through.

Appearing as we are to others, receiving the gifts associated with acceptance, respect, reverence, and presence -- we experience epiphany.

To appear. To show. To see. This is what epiphany means. From Greek epiphaneia, manifestation, from epiphainesthai, to appear : epi-, forth; see epi- + phainein, phan-, to show; see.

Epiphany is "a revelatory manifestation of a divine being. It is a sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something; a comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization."
(from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition)

Christ-nature is a shock to our sensibilities. To see Christ-nature in the everyday -- is to see the hidden no longer hidden.

When you look closely, you see that people of the present are none other than people of old, and the functions of the present are none other than the functions of the past; even going through a thousand changes and myriad transformations, here it is just necessary for you to recognize it first hand before you can attain it.
(- Foyan 1067-1120)

Everything is what it is. Nothing is other than what it is. Christ-nature shines through. But something radical occurs. We see. And when we see everything is what it is. Nothing is other than what it is.

Arise, shine out, for your light has come,
the glory of the Lord is rising on you,
though night still covers the earth
and darkness the peoples.
(Isaiah 60:1)

So it is -- our journey. We travel through intrigue and political machination. We bump up against people wanting to make things other than what they are, wanting to make themselves other than each other, wanting to make everything in their own image, that is, a hiding otherness frightened of their own ground.

This is the journey through what is not true to what is itself -- truth.

7. Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.
8. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
(Matthew 2: 7-8)

Give Herod a pause. Maybe some instinct called from deep within him. Saying, 'Go, find who you are, bring it home, love the truth shining through; see the Christ here for you, you, here for Christ.'

Maybe Herod duplicated the earlier killings of innocent children because he was himself killed by not being seen-through, not accepted as who he was, not respected nor reverenced in the light shining through all beings, the one shining through him?

We are metaphorically killed before we actually choose to enact killing ourselves. Repetition finds its source and follows flow into actual world.

We'll let Herod rest here; here at this line in Matthew. No interpretation has yet been imputed. He merely says: "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him." We've all had the grace of this impulse. What happens afterward is another story within that story. Within our own story.

But, if we were to pause at this impulse, if we took a while to look around -- without calculating what we might hide, or what we might grab for ourselves -- there is good chance we might see.

Your sun will set no more
nor your moon wane,
but the Lord will be your everlasting light
and your days of mourning will be ended.

Your people will all be upright,
possessing the land for ever;
a shoot that the Lord has planted,
my handiwork, designed for beauty.
(Isaiah 60: 21-22)

We might see beauty.

We might end the mourning of any and all death -- death that easily infiltrates that mind in us which calculates and computes data based on rational deduction and sensory limitation.

Beauty is seeing each as it is. It does not end, but begins, at the senses. Beauty is the beginning, the day-star, of our true reality. Beauty sees death through.

Beauty sees birth through.

Let us say that beauty, in this particular metaphor of Epiphany, is Christ-nature emerging through this reality. Jesus is seen through. This world is seen through. And we are seen through.

Day by day we bless you, Lord: we praise you for ever and for ever.
Of your goodness, Lord, keep us without sin for today.
Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us.
Let your pity, Lord, be upon us, as much as we trust in you.
In you, Lord, I trust: let me never be put to shame.
(from "Te Deum")

Everything is what it is. Nothing is other than what it is. Christ-nature shines through. But something radical occurs. We see. And when we see everything is what it is. Nothing is other than what it is.

Wisdom is the gift we are.

Given.

When we are seen.

Through and through.

With love.

Ground opens.

, Sando , Cesco , Mu-ge , 
and all who grace Meetingbrook 

6 January 2005

Feast of the Epiphany