The Six Supernatural Powers

Shohaku Okumura is here at City Center, talking about the Dogen Fascicle called Jinzu, or, in Carl Bielefeldt’s translation, “Spiritual Powers”

Okumura gave this translation today, “activities which cannot be measured with our discriminating mind.”

Bielefeldt, in his introduction says that in the text, these powers become “the welling up of the world itself.”

Yes. Otherwise it’s a parlor trick.

Words like magic and supernatural are misleading. We need them because we tend to underestimate reality. For example, did this bowl of solid chocolate appear in the small kitchen today by means of supernatural power, or is it the welling up of the world itself?

We can keep being surprised, or we can, as the Vimalakirti Sutra says, be “disciplined by miracles.” I think one of the main reasons we like to think magic exists as some kind of exception is because it lets us off the hook. If we accept that the world includes huge bowls of (vegan!)chocolate then I think that leaves us with somewhat more responsibility to operate at a level closer to our actual powers.

To provide some context, Shohaku explained in early Pali texts, the six supernatural powers are clairvoyance, clairaudience, mind-reading, knowing past lives, flying, and the power to stop deluded thoughts.

All extremely useful.

Here is an elaboration from the Samaññaphala Sutta:

He then enjoys different powers: being one, he becomes many — being many, he becomes one; he appears and disappears; he passes through fences, walls and mountains unhindered as if through air; he sinks into the ground and emerges from it as if it were water; he walks on the water without breaking the surface as if on land; he flies cross-legged through the sky like a bird with wings; he even touches and strokes with his hand the sun and moon.

And it was good to be reminded of these capacities, because after the lecture, I offered to make 8 more copies of the handout, a 2-sided 14-page document.

Sounded simple enough, but it turned out that to complete the task, I had to draw on all six of these powers.

I find it very useful, when, for example, changing a toner cartridge, to bear in mind the flexibility of the physical world projected in such frameworks. At those moments–it actually said “Toner life end”– it’s easy to adopt an adversarial relationship with matter, but as the Dalai Lama says, all that meditating is good training for dying. So I just pressed down on the blue lever, and instead of being convinced it was designed for vexation, I let the cartridge release. I removed the yellow strip, as it said. Moved the wire cleaner from one side to the other. And clicked in the new cartridge.