辺なやま | Imagine how mountains walk.

正法眼蔵はどうやら「〜辺り」の言語、つまり近傍系の言語で書かれているらしい。It might be Dogen’s or even Buddha’s aim that the world could be redesigned through a shift in language. 

「辺^あたり」の説によると、花なら花の、月なら月の辺り、これをあらためて「花」や「月」の意味と定める。「私」と言えば、私の辺りのあなたやかれらや街や川や橋まで、私から見渡すかぎり、いや見渡せるさらに先までが「私」になる。限界はない。これは「あなた」や「川」についても同様なので、私・あなた・山河大地日月星辰それぞれの「辺り」がみな、重なり合う。音みたいだ。笛の音というとき、音源である笛だけを指してはいない。音は笛の辺りに広がり、鐘や鼓の辺りと重なり合う。

人のふつうの言語は物・事について語る言語。これに対してどうやら正法眼蔵の言語は「辺り」の言語、言い換えると、近傍系の言語になっている。世界を近傍系に移す。もしかしてこれが道元の、そしてもっと遡れば、ブッダのプロジェクトの一つなのではないか。だとすると、道楷和尚の言ったこの言葉の意味もわかろうというものだ：

青山常運歩　石女夜生児
（山はいつも歩いている。石女は夜に児を生む。）

正法眼蔵第二十九「山水経」

歩く旅人の近傍の山々も「歩く」風景の一部だろうし、石女（石像の女）の近傍で産声を上げる人の児もある。

 

Think about “aroundness”, again. Whereas our language usually deal with an object or event x, the idea of aroundness shifts the reference of a word ‘x’ to U(x), the space and time around an object/event x. For example, the ‘flower’ means the space-time where the flower is, and the ‘moon’ refers to the night and the landscape where the moon shines. Similarly, ‘I’ does not mean just the person sitting here, but every being around me including you whom my text is addressed to, the bridge I see over there, the town I live, the cloud I see, and so on. There is no limit to U(I).

And it is also true that U(I) and U(you) are distinct, that U(bridge B) and U(flower F) are never identical, because they are distinct aroundness of these objects. The total of all U’s that are overlayed on each other makes the space ‘here’ and the time ‘now’. The aroundness thus described is similar to the nature of sound. When you listen to a flute, you do listen to the sound filling the space-time around it, often overlaid with the sounds of other instruments like a piano and a base.

Shobogenzo is a text written with a language rich in aroundness, or in another word, neighborhood. It might be Dogen’s or even Buddha’s aim that the world could be redesigned through a shift in language, from the object-focused system to the neighborhood system. Then the following phrase by Dàokăi will be acceptable in spite of its apparent strangeness:

The green mountains are always walking; a stone woman gives birth to a child at night.

–––Quoted in “Mountains and Waters Sutra”, Shobogenzo

(Translated by K. Tanahashi.)

To say that a man X is walking is now shifted to say that a neighborhood U(X), in which there are mountains, is walking. In the neighborhood of the stone woman, a child may well be born at night.