A seed, as ‘an embryonic reality endowed with power of growth’ (Chapter 18), is a symbol of the Point. Another is the dewdrop, as for instance in Yeats:
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass.— ‘Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors’
or in Dogen’s ‘Genjokoan’:
Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.
(Tanahashi 2010, 31)
The pearl in Thomas 76, the big fish in Thomas 8, the hidden treasure – each is a symbol of the phaneron.
The timeless thusness of this one bright pearl is boundless. It is just that the entire world of the ten directions is one bright pearl, not two or three. The entire body is one true dharma eye, the true body, a single phrase. The entire body is illumination; the entire body is the entire mind. When the entire body is the entire body, there is no hindrance. It is gently curved and turns round and round.
— Dogen, ‘One Bright Pearl’ (Tanahashi 2010, 37)