3 Quotes & Sayings By Tagawa Shunei

Tagawa Shun'ei was born in the year of the Tiger (1892) in the village of Anan, in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. He is one of the most renowned Zen masters in Japan. He began his Zen training in 1912 under Koun Ejima at the age of twenty-one and transferred to Kyoto University, where he studied botany. After earning his D.Sc., he became a professor at Kyoto University and later at Tokyo University. After meeting Master Dogen, Tagawa Shun'ei took up residence at Soshin Temple in Kyoto, where he studied Zen with Dogen for over twenty years Read more

Tagawa Shun'ei wrote three books about Dogen (Dogen's Teaching; The Gateless Gate; and The Lamp that is Not Lit) and founded Tassajara Zen Mountain Center near San Francisco.

1
On the other hand, we can all call to mind the case of seeing the same thing many times over and over. Everyone has had the experience of having their impression of a particular object change depending upon their feelings or conditions at a given moment. This is because the object is seen under the influence of the mental state of that moment. Of course, at the time when we are looking at something, we are generally not aware of the way our feelings are being protected into the situation. Seen in this way, our so-called cognition, or the action of discerning the meaning of things as they are perceived by us, is never in any case a perception of the external world exactly as it is, but rather a world that can only be apprehended via its interface with our present mental state. In other words, it is nothing other than our own mind that constructs things and determines their content. This is the meaning of "consciousness-only, " or "nothing but the transformations of consciousness." And, if we turn this around, we ourselves are nothing other than things that dwell in a world defined by the limits of that which is knowable by the functions of our own mind. . Tagawa Shunei
2
We live our lives based on the assumption that we directly perceive, and are accurately interpreting, objects with a fair amount of accuracy. Since we naturally assume that we are apprehending objects of cognition as best as possible, it does not occur to us that we are purposely twisting the object before our eyes to fit our own convenience. Tagawa Shunei