The transmission of a tradition is its continuity in practice, which is intimacy itself.
As Dogen said to his community, ‘We must eat rice with the mouth of the assembly; our vitality must be the strength of the assembly’ (EK 8, shosan 6, p. 481).
Our self-control must be the self-control of the community, which guides our present path into the future. We never know how long that path will persist.
The individual, knowing that he will die, can take comfort in the belief that the community (and therefore his contribution to it) will continue after his death. But he can’t be sure of that; the community is only relatively more permanent than he is. Better then to take refuge in the path rather than the destination; or better, in what Peirce called ‘the great principle of continuity’, by whose light we see that ‘all is fluid and every point directly partakes the being of every other.’ To get this point is to get Dogen’s point that impermanence is the buddha-nature.