No-Present Moment

The Meaning Of Bodhidharma’s Coming From The West:  Chao-chou Ts’ung-shen/Joshu/Jojo’s  the oak in the garden or wash your bowl, or Tung-shan/Tozan’s three pounds of flax, or a contemporary perspective such as “Wherever you are at is here.”

Still, when you come to the oak or wash the bowl, mindfulness of what?  When you are here, where are you?  And who are you, and what are the oak and the bowl and the flax?  And what do you do?

Not facile, Bodhidharma’s coming opened the presence of buddah in the oak and the bowl and the flax, what is that?  Where are you?

Past/present/future are here (Dogen’s “Time-Being” and Huai-hai’s admoniton to no longer need to distinguish the idea of the present—not attached to the moment, not making time, not contriving apartness). 

And then, searching for substance, oak and bowl and flax (1+1+1) = 0.  Not a single anchor can be discerned.  This realization is relatively unhidden and only concealed by discrimination.