Dogen Sangha Blog

  by Gudo NISHIJIMA

Japanese / German

Monday, November 3, 2008

MMK (3) Examination of the Eyes and Other Sence Organs

1. Function to see, function to hear, fuction to smell, fuction to taste, fuction to touch, and function of central sense perception.

Those six kinds of sense functions are very familiar with us,
And what has been seen, and so forth, are the objects of sense functions.


2. Because a function of our own mind works as the function to see,
It is impossible for our mental function to see and the object to be seen, will both become the object to be seen together at all.

Something, which can never be seen by ourselves, is just our own mind,
And so how is it possible for us to get some kind of very vague objects, which exist so far at the opposite side from us, to get into our own range of vision even in future at all?


3. What we have got relying upon our enormous efforts, are different from a simple fire, which we have got easily,
And so even though the thing is just to be looked at only, it has some kind of dignity as a thing surely, which has been accomplished as an article.

A fact, which can be seen with our own eye, is actually talked in very familiar situations,
Therefore as I have explained the example in detail in the chapter 2,
Simple verbal explanations of "Is going on,""Have gone," and "Haven't gone," are totally different from the real act to go just at the real present moment.


4. If we have had the idea that there is nothing, which can not be seen, in the world,
Contrariwise, it might be possible for us to lose our own ability to look at everything really at all.

To look at something suggests that there is inevitably something to be seen,
And so it is necessary for us to think that it is not always attached to some strange idea at all.


5. It can never occur for a function to see to be seen by others at all.
It can never occur for any blind man to look at the real situation of his blindness at all.

The exact explanations of the actual facts might be possible by looking at the fact directly,
And so it is possible to say that efforts to look at evrything carefully are just the methods to approach everything actually.


6. It is not alway true that an action to look at something does not include any kind of contempting meaning.
When someone looks at something, there are possibility that he is looking at it sometimes with some kind of contempt.

The meaning of words "looking at" usually includes that everyone, who looks at the object, can usually esteem the value of it.
Therefore it might be completely impossible for the object to be unclear whether it is valuable, or not.


7. When we have got rid of an idea that it is actually impossible for the situationsins, in which the states that things and phenomena can be seen clearly and ability to look at them have been combined into one really,
The four kinds of perception, and so forth, that is, consideration, perception, action, and Reality, work together their common functions

If there were possibile that consideration, perception, action, and Reality do not really exist,
What on earth can actually exist at all?


8. The explanations of function to hear, function to smell, function to taste, function to touch, and function of the central sense perception,
Can be done relying upon the function to see as a matrix,
Therefore it is possible for us to utilize it for to hear and what is heard, and other kinds of sense functions.

1 Comments:

Blogger Mike Cross said...

I would like to add two comments:

(1) "The function of central sense perception" is very closely related with the function of the vestibular nuclei, which lie deep in the most ancient part of the brain. I think that when Nagarjuna's grandfather Ashvaghosa wrote of the five senses, as opposed to the six senses, he was including this central processing function of the vestibular system with the ears -- which are the organs not only of hearing but also of balance. Similarly, in Ashvaghosha's five senses, the proprioceptive sensors in muscle spindles, joint capsules, and Golgi tendon organs are included with the body -- which is the organ not only of external touch but also internal touch, or proprioception.

(2) In the Nishijima-Cross translation of Shobogenzo, Nishijima was strong in the areas where Cross was very weak, and Cross was relatively strong in the areas where Nishijima was very weak. So I think that it was extremely regrettable that the Nishijima-Cross translation partnership was broken -- due to deep faults in each partner in responding to difficult external stimuli. These deep faults (what Ashavaghosha called dosha-vyalan, or "reptilian faults" ) also, in my opinion, are deeply entangled with functioning of the vestibular system.

6:52 PM, November 06, 2008  

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