Zen quotes

[balon!]

Isn't that true of everything?

--A

Thats what I thought. Of course his answer is suposed to open your mind too so.....

[balon!]

There is no right or wrong in the world...only suffering and joy

[Avatar]

A young buddhist monk, in search of enlightenment, came upon a wide and raging river in the course of his journey. He sat on its banks for some time, searching for a way to cross the obstacle in his path. Eventually, seeing no way across, he rose to continue his journey in another direction. Then, as he was about to leave, he saw a Zen master approaching on the opposite bank.

He called out to him, "Master, tell me how may I get to the other side of the river?"

The master looked up and down the banks, and peered long at the young monk, before replying, "My son, you are on the other side of the river."

--A

[Fist and Faith]

[balon!]

love it.

[[Syl]]

Zen Master Gutei raised his finger whenever he was asked a question about Zen. A young novice began to imitate him in this way. When Gutei was told about the novice's imitation, he sent for him and asked him if it was true. The novice admitted it was so. Gutei asked him if he understood. In reply the novice held up his index finger. Gutei promptly cut it off. The novice ran from the room, howling in pain. As he reached the threshold, Gutei called, "Boy!" When the novice turned, Gutei raised his index finger. At that instant the novice was enlightened.

This is about form in void and void in form. When the boy raised his finger before, it was imitating an act of wisdom. Yet there was no wisdom in the act. The finger was empty (void in form), a construct of Mind where No Mind is what is valued. When the finger was removed, the master called to the boy (remember, he raised his finger when asking a question, so he is implicitly asking the boy something there), basically telling him to raise his finger. For the act he was imitating did not require the finger, but if he could understand this without the finger... then he could indeed raise the finger... even if he no longer had it (form in void).

Zen parable or just someone being cruel

[balon!]

thank you for that explanation, Syl. I've been trying to figure that one out for awhile. haha.

Great link, too.

[[Syl]]

hardcorezen.blogspot.com/

I've been thinking about the subject of ego lately because it keeps coming up in my writing for the new book I'm working on. When Eastern religions, including Buddhism, first started washing up on our shores the buzz on the streets said that meditation was all about giving up, transcending or sometimes even destroying the ego.

There is some truth to that. But a lot of times the word "ego" is used as a synonym for self-esteem. In fact if you look it up using the thesaurus tool on MS Word that's one of the synonyms that comes up. It's often paired with the word hubris, which means excessive pride.

In some of the interviews John Lennon gave in the early Seventies you can see that he, for one, picked up on this meaning of the word ego. So he spent a lot of time cutting himself down, destroying his self-esteem and the natural pride he felt in his work. I'm sure a lot of people did this and probably are still doing it.

This is one reason why I avoid using the word "ego" in this context. It's unhealthy to try and get rid of your self-esteem and there is no sin in pride as long as it doesn't get out of control.

Ego, in the sense that it's used in Buddhism, is not self-esteem. In fact, your ego can often be enriched even better by a negative self image than a positive one. I am worthless, I am ugly, nobody loves me. All of this just builds it up even more.

Also, in a somewhat related topic is the idea of using positive thoughts to try and combat negative ones. This never works either. Because every thought includes its opposite. White is white precisely because it's not black. "I am a good person" is what it is because it contrasts with "I am not a good person." And so on and on and on and on. It's all just more thought.

If you're absolutely drowning in negativity maybe the contrast can lift you up a little. But it's not going to hold for long. The trick is to see that none of the ways you characterize yourself are ultimately any better than any other.

[Kaydene]

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

-- James Wright

[Gadget nee Jemcheeta]

"From birth to death it is just like this"

"So the secret is just to say 'Yes!' and jump off from here. Then there is no problem. It means to be yourself, always yourself, without sticking to an old self."

[Hashi Lebwohl]

The people who study and read about Zen don't understand it at all.

That is why I have it in my signature that to begin to understand Zen you must burn all your books about Zen.

[Avatar]

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.

--A

[peter]

The people who study and read about Zen don't understand it at all.

That is why I have it in my signature that to begin to understand Zen you must burn all your books about Zen.

But if you cannot study Zen how can you achieve enlightenment. (Answer; is Zen the 'sound of one hand clapping', the sound of the 'tree that falls in the forrest' ie nothing unless the second hand or the ear is there to give it existence). Zen may not be found in a conventional 'book' but the 'book of the World' the 'book of the inner self' - are these the books to study?

[Avatar]

I suspect it's one of those things you only find if you're not looking for it.

--A

[peter]

Like girlfriends you mean

[Hashi Lebwohl]

But if you cannot study Zen how can you achieve enlightenment. (Answer; is Zen the 'sound of one hand clapping', the sound of the 'tree that falls in the forrest' ie nothing unless the second hand or the ear is there to give it existence). Zen may not be found in a conventional 'book' but the 'book of the World' the 'book of the inner self' - are these the books to study?

Studying Zen is great and all those books are useful for figuring out how to get started. The problem is that so many people then rely on those books and fall back on the information contained within them rather than relying on their inner book to continue to find Zen (or whatever else it is they are trying to find).

This is true for any theological, philosophical, or metaphysical book. They are maps to help you find the path but they aren't the path themselves. Although I do count myself as a Christian, I apply this even to the Bible--it introduces you to God and to Christ but they don't live there and neither should I.

That analogy to maps is a good one; I should keep it. The map will tell you how to get to where you are going but the road is actually in front of you, not on the map.

[[Syl]]

Enlightenment is over-rated. And I'm not just being flip. Our (Western) concept of enlightenment largely comes from its focus in the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism, which was more or less the first form of Buddhism introduced in the West by Suzuki and the like, which was then popularized by the counter-culture movement of the 60s and 70s.

I think it's also important to understand that our conception of Buddhism has been shaped by our own history and culture. Raised Christian or in a Christian environment, we compare Buddha to Jesus, Nirvana to Heaven, enlightenment to the rapture (or what have you). Kung fu movies and the like have trained us to think of Zen masters as sainted, infallible beings who flow through life like petals in a stream. It's not really like that, as any reading of the history of many Zen masters, past and present, can show you. They're often as messed up—if not more—than the rest of us.

Brad Warner in his blog article "What is Enlightenment."

It all goes back to a certain reading of Buddha’s life story. The most common telling of it has Buddha meditating under a tree for 40 days at the end of which he had a deep awakening experience that turned him in one moment from plain old Siddhartha to the legendary Gautama Buddha. Sort of like how Japanese superheroes like Ultraman and Kamen Rider transform in a flash from regular human beings into giant bug-eyed alien monster fighters.

But experiences like that do not necessarily have any direct one-to-one relationship to any kind of moral maturity or sensibility. They’re just experiences. Like getting into a car crash or seeing a UFO or having a near-death experience.

I had such an experience myself, once. During my later teen years, I found myself someone who could no longer believe in the religion in which I was raised, started looking around for "the truth." I read quite a bit of Zen stuff and really enjoyed it. I mean, it sounded so cool and looked like it probably made sense if I could wrap my head around it. But in the meantime, I had to keep on living.

So one day, a girl I was in class with asked me, "Why are you so weird?" At this point, I was fairly comfortable with being weird, so I humored the question and started to give her an answer. Then I realized that it wasn't as simple as it sounded, so I'd have to write it down and get back to her (if it helps this story make sense, she was cute and I was starting to develop a crush on her).

Back in my barracks room, I started to write out that I wasn't that weird, that in my head I was as normal and as different as anyone else. I was just perceived as weird. It sounded too simple, though, and didn't require any questioning on my part. So I started to wonder, if I'm perceived as weird, what does it matter what I think? Trying to meld these two viewpoints into one argument, I had... a moment. You know those scenes in the movies where the central character has some big revelation, clips from previously in the movie are played in rapid succession to reveal what is now obvious. It was like that, but it was my entire life and all these times where I felt really close to some understanding only to have it slip away like the memory of a dream. More than that, it was everything I'd learned about the universe, the world, and all that Zen stuff I'd read a couple years earlier.

Well, it was profound. Everything made sense. Me, the universe, everything. The euphoria of it lasted for weeks. And then it started to trail off. Real life would intrude, and that golden aura around me would slip. It would intrude some more, and I'd have to dip back into my memory to get it back.

Eventually, years later I'd... well, not wonder if it had ever happened, but I questioned it. I thought, 'Maybe it was just an "awakening," something less than enlightenment. I knew what I'd experienced was true, and it had changed my life in many ways, but... I certainly didn't feel like a Zen master. My life didn't seem to resemble what I thought an enlightened being's life should.

A few years ago, I was doing some research for job hunting in Borders and picked up a book, Hardcore Zen by the guy I linked above (I generally browse any Zen books I come across but almost always put them back down without any further thought). It really spoke to me. Come to find out, there's whole branches of Zen Buddhism. Some, like Sōtō, don't even focus on enlightenment at all. Instead, the emphasis is on the hard work of sitting and doing nothing, the same thing that made Buddha what he was.

To me, this makes sense. I've sat zazen, and it is actually hard work. I'm not a big fan of hard work, submitting to it only when I have to. This explains why I am not an enlightened being. My enlightenment was a valuable experience, but it was only an experience. My thoughts and understanding of things are great and useful in their own right, but only thoughts. My life is still my life (and the world I live in still the world I live in). It's my responsibility to make things better if I want, and my choice not to do so if I don't.

And anything that can really teach that to people is worth writing down.

[peter]

If I could move your comment 'sideways' a bit Hasi, I'm thinking we could say a similar thing even in respect to a discipline like physics. You can learn physics from a book I guess - but you will never *do* physics by following the book - for that you must find your own path.

My enlightenment story Syl is I'm afraid much more low grade than yours, but perhaps worth telling because it may illustrate the same point. Also in my teens, to young to give a damn about learning anything about my situation, I took LSD many times with my cohort simply for the buzz and fun of it. On one particular early morning, out in the countryside and 'tripping away' nicely I became aware that I could see the pattern of every branch, every tree, every blade of grass and every stone on the path in front of me. I could see 'the Oneness' of which I was a part clearly laid out before my eyes as though I had been sitting Bhudda-like on a mountain top for the past thirty years. It lasted for a few minutes untill some other ridiculous antic performed by my friends or indeed myself distracted my attention from it. I 'came down' with all the attendant grubby feelings of an ended trip, slept for a day and then went out in search of the next (female, drink or drug related) bout of 'fun' to be had. I was changed (alas to say) not one iota by what should have been a life-altering event and in this (if there was any veracity in the experience at all) was totally undeserving of it!

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Enlightenment is over-rated.

Especially when people think of it as a goal to be attained in and of itself. "Hooray! I hvae finally attained Enlightenment! erm...what happens now? Where do I go from here?"

Kung fu movies and the like have trained us to think of Zen masters as sainted, infallible beings who flow through life like petals in a stream. It's not really like that, as any reading of the history of many Zen masters, past and present, can show you. They're often as messed up—if not more—than the rest of us.

If you want to see some true Zen masters then look at your pets. Your dog doesn't try to be anything other than what it is--a dog. Your cat doesn't worry about anything except the moment, especially when it is playing with a milk ring then decides that it is bored with that and that sitting in the window is much better.

Although there are lessons there, who wants to be a cat?

I've sat zazen, and it is actually hard work.

I can verify this.

And anything that can really teach that to people is worth writing down.

I don't disagree with this. My point was that people shouldn't rely only on books for everything. Learn about it, yes, so you don't make the same mistakes someone else already made but for pity's sake don't think that all the answers are in some book.

If I could move your comment 'sideways' a bit Hasi, I'm thinking we could say a similar thing even in respect to a discipline like physics. You can learn physics from a book I guess - but you will never *do* physics by following the book - for that you must find your own path.

Yes, the analogy could be stretched to hard sciences. It is easy to memorize then regurgitate something from a physics book--momentum is mass*velocity, the "right hand rule" shows you which direction the magnetic lines of force point around a wire with an electric current flowing through it, etc--but unless you are teaching physics or working in a lab you won't do anything with it other than regurgitate what you have learned. You probably won't ever discover anything new.

[Orlion]

Although there are lessons there, who wants to be a cat?

[/color]

My rebuttal