#valleysounds

Repentance is: 

“Although my past unwholesome actions have accumulated, causing hindrance in the study of the way, may buddhas and ancestors release me from these actions and liberate me. May the merit of practicing dharma fill inexhaustible worlds of phenomena. May compassion be extended to me.”

Before awakening, buddha ancestors were like you. Upon awakening you will become buddha ancestors. When you look at buddha ancewstors you are a buddha ancestor. When you look at their aspiration for enlightenment, you have the aspiration. Working with compassion this way and that, you achieve facility and you let facility drop away. 

Thus, Longya said: 

“If you did not attain enlightenment in the past, do so now.  Liberate this body that is the culmination of many lifetimes. Before enlightenment, ancient buddhas were like us. When enlightened, we will be like those of old.”

This is the understanding of a realized buddha. We should reflect on it. This is the exact point of a realized buddha.

With repentance you will certainly receive invisible help from buddha ancestors. Repent to the buddhas with mind and body. The power of repentence melts the roots of unwholesomeness. This is the single color of true practice, the true heart of trust, the true body of trust.

Dogen Kigen | Shobogebzo (Ed. Tanahashi) | Valley sounds and mountain colours pg.94

Endeavour wholeheartedly to follow the path of earlier sages. You may have to climb mountains and cross oceans when you look for a teacher to inquire about the way. Look for a teacher and search for understanding with all-encompassing effort, as if you were coming down from heaving or emerging from the ground. When you encounter a true teacher, you invoke sentient beings as well as insentient beings. You hear with the body, you hear with the mind.

To hear with the ear is an everyday matter, but to hear with the eye is not always so. When you see buddha, you see self-buddha, other-buddha, a large buddha, a small buddha. Do not be frightened by a large buddha. Do not be put off by a small buddha. Just see large and small buddhas as valley sounds and mountain colours, as a broad, long tongue, and as eighty-four thousand verses. This is liberation, this is outstanding seeing.  

There is a common saying that expresses this: “Totally superb, totally solid.” An earlier buddha said: “It covers heaven, it encompasses the earth.” This is the purity of a spring pine, the magnificence of an autumn chrysanthemum. Just this.

When you reach this realm, you are a master of humans and devas. If you teach others before arriving in this realm, you will do great harm to them. Without knowing the spring pine or the autumn chrysanthemum, how can you nourish others and how can you cut through their roots of confusion?

Dogen Kigen | Shobogebzo (Ed. Tanahashi) | Valley sounds and mountain colors pg.93