The Treasure Store (Joy in Living)

Dogen’s Fukanzazengi was written to recommend zazen to everyone. Within its last paragraph is the admonition to “devote your energies to a way that directly indicates the absolute.” The essay ends with the promise that if a person devotes himself in this manner, “Your treasure-store will open of itself, and you will use it at will.”

Dogen also has other terms in this essay for the “treasure store,” not only “the absolute” above, but also “your original face,” “suchness,” and of course “enlightenment.”  

I suggested in an essay in the January, 2022 Newsletter, that “enlightenment” for Dogen was “a non-articulated sense of connection with things, a comfortable sense of unity.” And there are other aspects to the treasure store. For example, there is a sense of joy in living that is irrepressible. I heard that Abraham Maslow, the great psychologist, close to his passing, said that he regretted having to leave life, he loved it so much. Joy in life, love of it, is characteristic of an awakened person. So irrepressible is this sense of joy that it might be called “indomitability.” Nothing can shake it, not loss of loved ones or any other sadness.  

That is not to say that a person who has uncovered the treasure store does not feel sadness or grief. I remember when I was a member of a Sufi order many years ago, the Sheikh of the order, during a gathering of the dervishes, was asked to characterize earthly life. He said, “Trouble.” There is plenty of trouble in life: loss of friends, stress in family relations, illness, old age, and death. In Sufism, to offset this trouble, there is “heart-opening,” the influx of the love of God into the heart. In Buddhism, there is awakening or the uncovering of the treasure store.

With the treasure store uncovered, there is a paradox that ensues, where although sadness and pain are still felt, an underlying joy does not leave. In Zen I have often heard that in an awakened life, happiness and unhappiness are the same. That is a good description of this paradoxical situation.