- As for the blog's name: -


I was @ Gustav Ericsson's sight, - Anzenkai, and I was looking at Nishijima Roshi’s calligraphies over there. Particularly there is one - "seki shin hen pen" - about which Gustav has earlier said in a blog post that it is Nishijima's favorite phrase from Master Dogen.

This seemed strange to me. It was not what I would expect Nishijima Roshi's favorite phrase to be. It seemed it could be some Rinzai master's favorite quote, - it seems to express continuous and constant sincerity, - but it did not seem to fit my view of the way Nishijima Roshi saw things.

So - consequently - I tried to think what would I expect his favorite quote to be. But all phrases I could think of did not seem to fit just what I might have had in mind.

So I tried to come up with what I would see it as, - and what I have come up with - is - "this universe out here".

- And this seems to be the right name for this blog here too.


- Definitely.                                                 ________________________

Common sense

Simple logic can sometimes supply the answer to questions aimed totally elsewhere. There is the famous story about Master Tokusan, - who was not yet a master, - and the old woman selling rice cakes. - Tokusan was asked which mind he wants to refresh. (“Refresh”, of course, is an English translation, - but never mind that) Kalo says he should have said he wants to refresh the hungry mind, but then Kalo changes the story in his translation referring to “unreal” mind rather than to one that can not be grasped. However, - putting that aside, - well of course Tokusan wanted to “refresh” the future mind. He wanted to eat the mochi (“rice cakes”) in the future, how could it be otherwise? So without any understanding of “Zen” or Buddhism, and without any knowledge of the Diamond Sutra, - just a bit of common sense, - would have been enough.

So far.
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