Mujo Seppo - thezensite

Shōbōgenzō: On the Dharma That Nonsentient Beings Express 656
believed to be nonsentient things expressing the Dharma, but such people are not
persons who have learned what the Buddha taught. If it were so, then who could
not hear the Dharma that is expressed by the nonsentient? For the moment, you
should reflect on whether or not there are grasses and trees and forests in the realm
of the nonsentient, and whether or not the realm of the nonsentient is intersecting,
or mingling with, that of the sentient. At the same time, to take such things as
grasses and trees or tiles and stones to be nonsentient is to be less than fully
educated. And to believe that being nonsentient means being grass and trees or tiles
and stones is to tire of exploring the Matter. * Even if you were to believe that
human beings view such things as grass and trees to be patterned after the
nonsentient, such things as grass and trees are not something that the mental efforts
of ordinary, worldly people actually take measure of. And the reason for this is that
there are great differences between the celestial forests of those in lofty positions
and the forests of ordinary human beings, and that what is produced in China is not
equivalent to what is produced in its bordering lands, and that the vegetation which
grows in the oceans and that which grows amidst the mountains are not the same.
And what is more, there are forests that grow in the open sky and forests that grow
in the clouds. And there are hundreds of grasses and thousands of trees that sprout
up in wind and fire. In sum, there are those things that need to be explored as being
sentient and there are those things that need to be explored as being nonsentient.
And there are grasses and trees that resemble humans and animals when the
differences between the sentient and the nonsentient have not yet been made clear.
And what is more, when we see a Taoist mountain hermit’s trees and rocks, flowers
and fruits, and hot and cool springs with our own eyes, they are beyond doubting,
but explaining them is difficult indeed! Having barely even seen the grasses and
trees from a great country like China and observing only the grasses and trees of a
small, single nation like Japan, do not imagine that they must be like those found
throughout the whole universe.
❀
The National Teacher said, “Saintly ones can hear It.”
That is to say, in the assembly where a nonsentient one expresses the Dharma, all
saintly ones stand up to listen. The saintly ones and the nonsentient ones bring
about listening and they bring about expressing. 4 The nonsentient one is already
4. That is, their response encourages others in the assembly to listen, and their attention to what
they are hearing encourages the one who is speaking to give voice to the Dharma.