Neither Yin nor Yang

[Anonymous]

Neither yin nor yang is a statement of wholeness, one unified energy.

[Anonymous]

Tsung-shan Liang-chieh (807-969) was asked by a monastic one day:
“When cold and heat come,
how shall I escape them?”

“Why don’t you go to a place where there are not cold or heat?”
said the teacher.

“Where is such a place where
neither cold nor heat exists?”
asked the monastic.

The teacher’s answer was:
“When it is cold, it makes one exceedingly cold;
when it is hot, exceedingly hot.”

Dogen used this koan as a text for the exposition of his view on the four seasons as follows:
“This cold and this heat mean
the whole of cold and the whole of heat,
both being cold and heat in their thusness (kansho zukara).

“Cold and heat in thusness”
is precisely the place where there exists
no cold and no heat.

While living in cold,
the enlightened person lives cold totally
in absolute freedom;

While living in heat,
one lives heat totally
in the same way.

It is not an escape, but a choice —
the choice of duality,
though not dualism,
undefiled and free.

Therefore this statement ensues:
“Where there is body-mind cast off,
there is an escape from cold and heat …
You know the signs of this cold and heat,
live in the seasons of cold and heat,
and make use of cold and heat.”

Kim, Hee-Jin, “Dogen Kigen, Mystical Realist,”
The Universtiy of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1987,
pages 191- 192.

[Author]

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