[Buddha-l] a question to Shobogenzo

[M.B. Schiekel]

Dear friends,

the title of Shōbōgenzō #11 is kaiinzammai, chin. hǎiyìn sānmèi,
海印三昧, the subtitle is sāgara-mudrā-samādhi.

T. Cleary translates this as "ocean seal samādhi", but other people, 
like K. Nishiyana and especially the Huayan-interpeters translate hǎiyìn 
sānmèi as "Meeresspiegel samādhi" in German, so I guess "surface of the 
sea samādhi" or "sea mirror samādhi" in English.

Now hǎi is the 'ocean', yìn is 'seal' or 'to reflect'. And sometimes yìn 
is used as an abbreviation of yìnxiàng, 印相 (印契), meaning mudrā.

Now the questions:

1. is there any occurence of sāgara-mudrā-samādhi in Sanskrit-sutras?
    If yes, what's the context and the meaning there?
    Or is sāgara-mudrā-samādhi simply the Dōgen back-translation of
    hǎiyìn sānmèi?

2. from my meditation experience I have an idea, what states of mind
    could be called "sea mirror samādhi", but I have no idea, what could
    be meant by "ocean seal samādhi" or "ocean mudrā samādhi".

Thank you very much!

in metta,
bernhard


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