1  You ask me the meaning of "chaotic content and dynamic flux", and indeed, as heaven-and-earth is the house of man, scholars should make heaven-and-earth the first object of their study.

 It is true that since the introduction of Western science the calendrical studies of astronomy, geography, and the motions of the heavenly bodies have been studied with more and more precision, but that is all there is to it. To my knowledge not one scholar has had a deep knowledge of the jori of heaven and earth. Throughout the whole wide world and the infinity of ages past, countless people have pondered over heaven and earth. Heaven and earth are not concealed, but before us day and night, so how is it that no-one has seen them clearly?

1.1  It is simply because from the moment we are born we unwittingly accustom ourselves to what we see, hear and touch, confining ourselves by habits of thought, and we do not come to doubt or question things. These attachments are the fixations of mind that Buddhists call "jikke". If they are not removed, the function of the mind is impeded.

 Ananda had received enlightenment, but because he had been a monkey in his previous life, he retained the jikke of a monkey. That is a good allegory. For insofar as human beings analyse and speculate about phenomena with human minds, it is difficult for us to give up our human prejudices. Past and present thinkers alike have been affected by these attachments, they have painted the manifold things of heaven and earth with their human colours. It is not easy to open our eyes wide and see with far-sightedness.

 Let us consider these attachments. Because human beings walk with their feet, and grasp things with their hands, attachments of thought could lead people to believe that the motions of heaven and creations of nature also require feet and hands. It could even force them to think that snakes which have no feet, and fish which have no hands, are deficient or handicapped.

 Without feet, heaven turns day and night; without hands, natural creationmakes flowers bloom, provides us with children, and brings forth fish and birds. If indeed we are so confined within ourselves, celestial revolutions and natural creations should be objects of great curiosity. Although our curiosity should be aroused about certain things, no-one questions them, because we see them before us from morning to evening, passing them by with total unconcern.

 When one looks at a thing as the thing it is, heaven-and-earth alone is one object, water and fire are each single objects, and plants, trees, fish and animals, as well as human beings, are each independent objects. Ourselves and others alike are each objects.

 Being human we see things in relation to ourselves, a habit that we cannot readily abandon when we look at other things. It is a human habit to think of things and see things always in human terms. Look at a children's picture book about a rats' wedding, or at a book about goblins. The rats are not treated as rats in the form that we have always known them, they are made into human beings in every detail. The bridegroom wears ceremonial robes with a pair of swords, the bride wears a gown with a long veil and rides in a palanquin borne by footmen and soldiers, all in imitation of a human wedding. Again, when we look at a book about goblins, we find no pictures of umbrellas changed into tea mills, or brooms changed into buckets, instead we seegoblins with eyes, noses, hands and feet, everything is changed into human form. A picture of Nirvana shows the dragon lord dressed exactly in human clothes, and to indicate his dragon form a helmet is drawn on his head.

 When people in such a state of mind speculate about heaven and earth they believe there to be a great lord in the heavens. Upon the solid earth they believe that there are gods of wind, thunder, and suchlike, portrayed as hideous in appearance, but moving around on feet, and working with their hands. Wind is stored in a bag, and thunder is sounded from a great drum. If there were really such a bag, how would it have come to be there in the first place? If there were really a great drum, what skin could have been stretched across it? If one were to go on like this, the heavens would not be able to turn without feet, nor could natural creation work without hands.

 Furthermore, to take a simple example, animals are all male or female, but plants have no sex. It is the way of animals that they require both male and female to reproduce, and it is the way of plants that they flourish despite the absence of sexes. If we were to think of other things in terms of ourselves, how could we ever understand their ri?

 To use another allegory, it is as though fire had a mind and thought about water, wondering "How does water burn things, how does it dry them?" thinking always in terms of its own attributes, never being aware of those it lacks. Conversely, if water also had a mind, when it thought about fire it might think about fire in terms of what it lacks itself. The utmost powers of the intellect and the exertions of a lifetime could be of little benefit under such conditions.

 In accordance with the maxim from I Ching, "Strive to progress by small steps", I shall tell you a simple story. Once upon a time there was a mikado who heard of a beautiful wisteria in Sakai and had it transplanted to his palace garden. One night a beautiful maiden appeared to him in a dream, chanting mournfully "I must return to the beloved wisteria groves of Sakai." He awoke from the dream believing that the flowers were grieving for their homeland, and had the wisteria sent back.

 There are numerous such stories. Nevertheless, plants have no minds, and are not the figures that appear in dreams. It is the human heart that grieves for the homeland it has left, or sighs for days gone by. It is the movement of the human heart that attributes feelings to flowers, and composes lyrics about the commonplace. Wisteria flowers do not do these things. When we transfer our feelings to flowers which are innocent of them, we make flowers human too.

 From ancient times, even the most outstanding thinkers have suffered such an affliction. Confined in a human world they have not been able to detach themselves from mankind, their sight has been obstructed, their thoughts have been fixed by habit and their minds have not been not prepared to question things. If our minds are not ready to doubt or question, we could quite easily end our days in a state of stupor.

 Nevertheless, it should not be said that there is nothing which makes people wonder. When they experience thunder or earthquakes, they all shake their heads and wonder what might be happening. But when I watch them do this, I wonder why they wonder about thunder and earthquakes. People wonder why the earth shakes, without enquiring how things are when it does not shake, or they marvel when it thunders, without enquiring how things are when there is no thunder. Doesn't this seem foolish? From the innocent moment of birth, it is inevitable that we should form habits of thought from what we see, hear and touch, but people think they understand these things because they are familiar with them.

 When I ask a person why a stone falls to the ground when it is released from my hand, he says "because it is heavy, everyone knows this". But he does not understand this thing he says he knows. He does not realise that he is speaking from habit, and to all intents he may as well be speaking in a drunken stupor.

 For it is not strange things that should arouse our curiosity, but everyday things like the falling stone. That is what Confucius means when he asks how we can expect to understand death when we do not understand life. People wonder what will happen to them when they die, yet they do not know how to conduct their present lives. As the saying goes, we cannot cross the next river before we have crossed this one. But people persist in worrying about the next crossing, ignoring the crossing straight before them. It is a mystery to me why they do this. Surely, before wondering whether a stone might speak we should wonder how it is that we ourselves should speak, before wondering whether a dead tree might flower, we should find out why it is that a living tree should flower.

 If we approach each thing with an unbiased mind, then we shall see that all these things, the rising and setting of the sun and moon, the constant changes of generation and decay, the eyes by which we see, the ears by which we hear, the limbs by which we move, the very mind itself which thinks these things, cannot have a single explanation. When we ask about them, people answer simply that this is how things must be, and leave it at that: eyes "must" see, ears "must" hear, heavy objects "must" sink, light objects "must" float, these things are "common knowledge". By this token we should say simply that thunder roars because it must andearthquakes shake because they must. If a dead tree were to bloom it would bebecause it must bloom, if a stone were to speak it would be because it must speak.

 Now someone who has read a little might tell us that thunder is the conflict of yin and yang, but if we were to ask him what yin and yang are he would not know. In this respect the learned man is no better than the fool.

 So when we try to understand heaven and earth, we begin by wondering about thunder or earthquakes, and heaven and earth become one vast area of doubt. A wild animal will hide when it is about to strike, a vulture will fold its wings when it is about to attack, so we ourselves should pause to reflect thoroughly before undertaking these enquiries. When a bow is drawn, the further the arrow hand is pulled back from the bow, the further the arrow will travel. He who has many doubts achieves understanding, he who has no doubts is like the man who shoots an arrow without drawing the bowstring well back.

 People do not understand heaven and earth because they are confined to the familiar, they hold fast to their habits of thought. This means that if we are to see heaven and earth with insight, our first task is to query familiar everyday things, to regard everything we come across as an object of curiosity, and to acknowledge that we who are doubting and thinking are merely human, with human habits.

1.2  Those who are said to understand heaven and earth are those who record celestial phenomena and geographical features, or those who chart the movements of sun, moon, stars and planets. Admittedly people who specialise in these things are diligent in their enquiries and  study with precision, but as we have already said, there is nothing more to it than that. When they are asked why the sun goes around heaven once a year and heaven goes around the earth once a day, why the ecliptic is sometimes in the north and sometimes in the south, they answer that this is the natural course of things, they do not speak with insight.

 Even when it comes to books, the ancients wrote about what they saw before them, those books were not written by lords of creation. Although the scholars no doubt understood some things very clearly, there were other things they could not penetrate. This is analogous to the fact that although a man may understand words, his sense of smell is very limited, he is inferior to cats and dogs in this respect.

 But from ancient times the writers of books have been superior men, therefore it is reasonable enough to rely on them to begin with. No writer, however, has captured heaven-and-earth and held it beneath his gaze, and because we adhere to habit and fail to follow the correct signs, books are also the seeds of great habits.

 If you think it is going too far to say that books are the seeds of great
habits, consider this actual case. Two boys were born, and in their infancy before they had lost a true perception of heaven and earth, one was sent away to become a Jodo priest and the other to be a Nichiren priest. After studying under their teachers for ten years, they returned home and tried to explain to one another what they had learned. But the habits of thought that they had acquired in those ten years were as incompatible as ice and burning coal, not even the threat of death could make them change their opinions. Although as young children they had had a true perception of heaven and earth, there was no hope that this could be regained.

 If we were to rely entirely on books for knowledge, believing this knowledge to be thorough - as though the lords of creation themselves had spoken to us and things could not possibly be otherwise - we should still be relying on human habits of thought, there would be no escape.

 Thus I may visit schools and speak to the masters, and because when I question them I find that they share my own ideas and attitudes, I call them educated and well informed. I ponder the relics of the past, and study the geography of distant lands, how far away they are to west or east, and a hundred other such things. For noting things beyond what I see and hear directly, and confirming other people's discoveries, books are indeed important. Nevertheless, heaven and earth are neither old nor new, ancient nor modern, they are always constant and unchanging. The fire in my fireplace is the same fire that is ten thousand miles away, the water in my bowl was the same water a thousand ages ago. Since this is so, if we try to understand heaven and earth, and to under stand this fire and this water, we must first apply ourselves to the unchanging. When we consult the books beside us, we should reject anything contrary to our findings, and accept only what does agree.

 When it comes to seeing heaven and earth with insight, some people have been called "sages" or "buddhas", but because they were nothing other than human beings, their place is in the long line of companions in our continuing discussion. Heaven-and-earth is the teacher.

 If the teacher is heaven-and-earth, although from the works of the ancient sages or the hundred schools, to the words of grass-cutters or lunatics today there will always be great differences, these people can all become our companions with a common bond of learning, we can accept some doctrines and reject others. Because heaven-and-earth is immeasurably vast, there is nothing that it does not contain, and because there is nothing that it does not contain, seeing heaven-and-earth with insight is not confined to any school.

 Once someone came to me and said "I have already absorbed heaven-and-earth". I replied "Heaven-and-earth is so vast that if you have absorbed it, how many millions of people who have also absorbed heaven-and-earth you must have inside you!", and he laughed. However vast or small we say it is, the vastness or smallness is still within heaven-and-earth. However exceptional or superior a person may be, he still stands and moves within heaven-and-earth.