“Nothing in the universe has ever been concealed.”
I stumbled across this Dōgen quote over forty years ago in a book that I pulled from a library shelf while killing time between classes my first year of college, and the entire world changed.
Or maybe the entire word was suddenly allowed to be itself. Or maybe simply being itself was suddenly more than enough. Or maybe both of these, and I suddenly noticed something about myself that I should have known all along.
Dōgen’s eight words are as direct and unadorned and sturdy as the potent message they convey, a simple and profound wisdom. I understood the purpose behind his words immediately; it was as clear and fresh and new as if I was sitting beside him as he spoke to his students at the Eihei-ji monastery northeast of Kyoto in the thirteenth century. I could smell the 750 year old incense lingering in the cool mountain air.
Problems arise when we get stuck on the surface of things. Dōgen, however, seemed to be saying that the real problem is not that we get stuck on the surface, but that we assume there is something besides the surface itself, something else, something more fundamental lurking beneath or behind the surface, that there is some deeper or more meaningful reality than our actual moment-by-moment experience. Where could such a reality be? Where might it be hiding? Why would it do so?
The universe is exactly what it is, and is not intentionally trying to make life difficult for us. We don’t need to search for hidden meaning behind, beneath, or outside of experience. Moment-by-moment experience is all that has ever been. It is all that can ever be.
And it is entirely enough.
