I have always liked the weaving loom as a metaphor for weaving the absolute and relative together into one cloth. The absolute can be the warp, the relative can be the woof, and the shuttle or the jade works , can spin them all together into one cloth. It’s not that we have to make them into one cloth, they are always manifesting together in simultaneous realization . The jade works is the activity of life itself, the total dynamic functioning of the activity of the universe. Sometimes translated as: The Whole Works. Always right here. All-at-oneness.

Dogen is constantly and repeatedly trying to knock us off our intellectual center and interrupt our thinking.  He does not confirm any one solid view of so-called reality. He doesn’t want us to get stuck to one side or the other in the dynamic pivoting of life’s opposite. Do not cling to the absolute or the relative truth. They dynamically and mutually work with each other. Dogen would describe this interaction as “The Whole Works.”