Dogen
Simultaneity, 2005, acrylic on paper, 22.5" x 30"
"The power of the modular grid is that it is at once a deductive (centripetal) and an all-over (centrifugal) system", writes Yve-Alain Bois in Ad Reinhardt. "As such, it eliminates any notion of a formal unity: this unity is given at the beginning, thus there is no struggle to achieve it; it is not a reward." In "DreamMaking," the modular grid sustains the nonduality of worldly and ultimate truth in Dōgen's Zen realizational/dynamic process, whose dynamics of emptiness is rooted in the weighing task of equilibration and equilibrium—expounding a dream within a dream—in every area of life.
Emptiness radically rejects the substantiality of any beings—persons and things alike. Emptiness may appear static, abstract or one-dimensional. Yet in reality it is not neutral, vacuous or value free. Emptiness is dynamic, concrete, and preeminently present in relation to weighing dependent origination/worldly truth.
In olden days, people used a steelyard, or a portable unequal-arm balance, to measure the weight of an object.
The shorter arm has a hook or pan for holding the object to be weighed and the longer one has a scale and mov-
able counterpoint for obtaining the weight of the object. The steelyard is suspended at the point where these two
portions, or arms, of the beam meet. . . . In a broader context, then, the beam with unequal arms, the object to be weighed, the counterpoise moving along the scale, the person who weighs, the force of gravity operative in the physics of the steelyard, and the rest—all work directly in concert with one another, in accordance with dependent origination to attain equilibrium, fairness, and reasonableness in commercial transactions.
Dōgen's expression ku ni kakareri means at once "hanging in empty space" and "hanging in emptiness."
"Hanging" in the present case draws on the fact that the steelyard, when in use, is suspended from the
hand of the one who weighs. By extension, the object to be weighed, the person who weighs, the steelyard,
and its functioning are all suspended in the air, in emptiness.
Imagine a person who is being suspended in a vast expanse of empty space that holds nothing whatsoever in any direction. However far one may look, there is nothing to secure a foothold or handhold on, just empty space itself. Empty space has no foundation, no substratum, and no boundary; it is absolutely void and boundlessly open. Empty space is not a source or origin to which the ten thousand things return, according to Lao-tzu’s familiar image. Knowing that things, ideas and values have no self-nature and that there is nothing whatever to cling to, is an unbearable threat to our whole way of life.
The steelyard analogy points to a new direction in Zen thinking. "Seeing" things as they are is construed as "changing/making things as they are." This is precisely the point highlighted by "expounding a dream (or dream making) within a dream" in terms of the dialectics of equilibration and equilibrium in the steelyard analogy.
—Hee-Jin Kim, Dōgen On Meditation and Thinking
T h e S t e e l y a r d, 2007, acrylic on paper, 22.5" x 30"
The Intimacy of Picture/Reality
Paintings by Richard Stodart
Words by Hee-Jin Kim
7" x 10," 84 pages
Publisher: Fourth Lloyd Productions 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9889391-1-0
$39.95
22 color plates
A quest with cast off/totally exerted delusion and enlightenment as orientational and cotemporal foci of dream, in and through the wisdom of emptiness (qua right-thinking/nonthinking), free of mystical coincidence or a substantive order beyond them.
"The relationship between delusion and enlightenment is such that one is not the simple negation nor absence of the other; nor does one precede the other. In this respect they are "foci" rather than "antitheses" or "polarities" within the structures and dynamics of realization (genjo). "Permeable" rather than incommensurable," their boundaries, though provisional, are never erased. Delusion is constantly illumined and clarified by enlightenment in the salvific process. Enlightenment is never free of values and meanings, frustrations and disappointments any more than delusion is. The human condition is such that even if we overcome delusion, we cannot eradicate it.
Accordingly, the differences between delusion and enlightenment are never erased in their intimacy. As such, no hiatus exists between them,"
—Hee-Jin Kim, Dōgen On Meditation and Thinking
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