“Flowers fall always amid our grudging, and weeds flourish in our chagrin.” ~Dogen

I am amazed, sometimes, at the synchronicity I notice in my life. The synchronicity may only be constructed by my mind’s organizing structure; but, the pattern lies there before me just the same. In particular, I mean that separate areas of my life (family, profession, etc.) demand from me similar lessons before I can move freely. Troubles stand like identical, yet prismatic gates that all require the same bloodstained key.

This post comes from several events that happened to me over the past week, including visiting my brother’s birthday and the beginning of fall teaching. The lesson has something to do with the intentions of nurturing and the ends of such actions. But to be honest, I don’t know if I’ve reached any conclusions, so far.

More after the ‘port.

Dogen, the Zen master and philosopher, put forth the title quote of this post in his seminal work, Shobogenzo Genjokoan. Dogen left these writings as lectures and lessons to Zen monks, but the entire tradition holds up his words to a higher philosophical status. This specific quotation has a metaphysic dimension. Dogen could mean that there is a real disconnect between what happens and what we want to happen, but this is both too simplistic and inconsistent with his greater work. Zen Buddhist tradition holds that the world is interconnected, albeit illusory. Still, just as external events can cause ripples in internal states, the reverse can also be true.

Another interpretation of this quote is that it attacks the notion that our desires are important or influential. Just because I love flowers, I cannot stop them from withering away, and just because I detest weeds, I cannot stop them from growing. It is likely that Dogen is lecturing his monks here on the Stoic’s project—reigning in the mind and desires to gain better control of the self. But, for those of you who know Buddhist thought, there is not a self to pseak of, but instead, no-self (anatman in Sanskrit). Control is a skill taught and fostered in Zen, but it cannot be the ultimate goal. If control were the ultimate goal, then there probably exists a controller that desires control, since control is not a neutral display of power. That being said, control is contradictory to ideas of no-self. What Zen typically strives for (and not without its own paradoxes) is a cessation of control and a fostering of no-mind. You can understand this no-mind as a sort of living in the moment, similar to the Tao, but that simplifies the matter a bit.

Right now, I take up Dogen’s words as saying something cautionary about our passions, while at the same time, pointing in the direction of the best way to nurture.

First off, I believe that Dogen is warning against teleological thinking, which roughly means focusing on the end of action. One way that we engage in teleological th

inking is to see the end as the validation of the action, with which Zen Buddhism (not to mention Kant) would disagree. If the withering of the flower invalidates our affection for it, then it is the affection that is flawed. The same for the weed: if our affections are only positive in the absence of the weed, then it is the affection that is mistaken in the reality of the world, i.e. shit happens.

Teaching is a sort of nurturing. It requires the teacher to give to the students in hopes that the students will improve in general or gain a certain skill-set to put in her metaphoric tool kit. In philosophy, I hope to mostly give my students good training in analytical reasoning, but also general instruction on some of the great thinkers in our history. If I engaged in mostly teleological thinking, I would likely feel distraught or dissatisfied to learn that many students of intro level classes never read philosophy again, and may never pick up the analytical reasoning skill-set from her or his toolboxes after the semester ends.

Dogen’s answer would be that we must shift our thinking, but a full exploration that will have to wait until another day. Before I go, I will put forth a counter-argument prior to any paradigm shift.

Without abandoning teleological reasoning, I could argue that I at least left the student with the opportunity to pick up that skill set. Indeed, it would be a sadder affair if the student reached into the toolbox in her future and couldn’t pull that dusty reasoning when she wanted

and maybe needed it. However, if we are truly focused on the ends, we would have to consider the statistics (which may or may not be possible for predictions) and probably conclude that this explanation would not be strong enough. Would teachers still teach as fervently, if they not that it may avail nothing? If we are teleological, that seems unlikely. Do we pull weeds because we one day hope that they won’t return?

Not without being foolish.

And now a word from our humorous sponsors on the topic of "best intentions."


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