Awakened I hear the one true thing

This slowly drifting cloud is pitiful;

What dream-walkers people become.

Awakened I hear the one true thing--

Black rain on the roof of Fukakusa Temple

Dogen (1200-1253)

I think many of you are familiar by now with Dogen's declaration and again Joko on that to study the Buddha way is to study the self again. How. The word study in Japanese Benkyō language is no real, which means to become intimate with Become intimate with like how the household chores that are done mindfully, you know, when we make cookies or clean, garden repair a fence or sit quietly. Studying the self is not studying some idea of yourself as an object, its to become intimate with yourself through all of your actions throughout the day. The more we become intimate with ourselves, the more we become intimate with the most fundamental of our afflictions. The Affliction of ignorance by which we split the world into a billion pieces, me and everything else.

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Buddhism's three essentials: 

meditation and serenity that is cultivated (dhyana), 

wisdom or insight (prajna), and 

morality or precepts or ethics (shila)

This the three-legged stool of practice as found in the eight-fold path