18/10/2025
"To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe. To be enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever."
I picked Dōgen up again today.
I’ve been deep in studying yoga texts for my teaching diploma — the structure, the sutras, the theory — and I realised I was missing the feeling of truth that first drew me in.
Reading Dōgen feels like a return. His words don’t just make sense; they vibrate with something beyond sense — like I already know what he’s pointing to but can’t quite name it.
Here, he lays out a kind of roadmap:
1️⃣ Study the self
2️⃣ Forget the self
3️⃣ Fall into all things in the universe
4️⃣ Let go of body and mind — ours and others’
Easy-peasy. 😅
For me, this is the real work of yoga — not perfecting shapes but unravelling the self that clings to perfection. The more I study, the more the ‘self’ slips through my fingers like water.
Yet that’s where the practice lives — in the noticing.
When I catch myself gripping, defending, wanting to be seen — that’s where Dōgen whispers: study, forget, fall, let go.
I’m still on step one (maybe one-and-a-half on a good day). But perhaps the Way isn’t something to master — it’s something we keep walking, even as it disappears beneath our feet.
Dōgen was a 13th-century Zen Buddhist monk and founder of the Sōtō school, though his words ripple far beyond any one tradition. The more I read — the Vedas, Daoist texts, Zen writings — the more I sense the same current running underneath:
Many paths, one invitation — to wake up.
