With palms together
Good Morning Everyone,
Right now I am sitting quietly in the dark in my residence.1. I am looking out over the mesa to the mountains in the east. It is dark and the ambient light is not enough to clarify anything. But there it is, in the dark, right in front of my eyes.
Our universe is itself beauty, each and every aspect is a manifestation of its entirety: whole, alive, an quite conditional. As scientist-philosopher Brian Greene suggested, it is an Elegant Universe. Do we take any time at all to notice it? We look, but do we see?
Sitting zazen in the park, I often look out at the trees, the iron fence, and the iron bench. In front of me, beyond the park boundary, there are newly constructed southwestern style apartments. A playground sits behind me. Blue sky is above me and grass beneath me. Do I really see these? How? What are they?
As I squint my eyes as artists sometimes do, I see less detail, but in its place patterns emerge. There is positive space and negative space. A tension between the two arises. Good art always has tension, as does a good life.
We often come to Zen in order to quiet our minds. Wrong idea. Quietism is a disease. Serene reflection is active and dynamic. Students, come to Zen to witness. Come to Zen to see. Seeing enables tension to be seen for what it is, the energy between points that are bound together by that energy. And more. When that energy is realized, the points fall away. What is left is the entire universe residing right there, right now.
Be well.
4 comments:
You say "We often come to Zen in order to quiet our minds. Wrong idea. Quietism is a disease."
It is only from a quiet ans still mind can one perceive the universe as it is. It is a mistake to continue to make something beautiful out of roof noise in ones' head. It is not Buddhism but poetry. Which is fine, but it is not what Buddhist practice is. Sit with nothingness, the void that is not empty, no manufactured thoughts, and do this for 1/2 hour or so and then walk away free of delusion and tricking yourself into believing there is no difference in mind filled with content, and one that is free of content/meaning making. Read some Huang Po and he will guide your meditations. :)
The Huang-po Literature
Dale S. Wright
The Zen Canon: Understanding the Classic Texts
© Oxford University Press
S. Heine & D.S.Wright, editors
ISBN13: 9780195150681
ISBN10: 0195150686
Fundamental to the Huang-po texts and to Hung-chou Zen is that processes of conceptual thinking are inimical to spiritual practice and Zen awakening. Understanding this critique is difficult, since it is obvious that the author of the text was ignoring his own advice as he wrote, but it helps to put this theme in historical context. Because China inherited Buddhism largely in the form of a vast collection of sophisticated texts, it was natural over the first half millennium of Chinese Buddhism that textual practices would dominate the tradition. Through the early part of the the T'ang dynasty, the most revered and the most famous Chinese Buddhists were scholars who had worked hard to master this vast canon of religious texts.
The rise of Zen Buddhism marks the arrival of impatience with this scholarly tradition; from this point on, focus on practice and simplification of doctrine would be leading concerns. Reconceiving enlightenment meant restructuring Chinese Buddhism from the ground up, and Zen texts like Huang-po led the way in this new emphasis. If awakening was a sudden breakthrough into a domain of consciousness that was so close that you have always resided within it, then ordinary thinking processes would be of no avail. Therefore, Huang-po claims that “If you stop conceptual thinking, and let go of its anxiety, then the Buddha will appear because mind is the Buddha.”39 “The mind is no mind of conceptual thoughtif you eliminate conceptual thinking, everything will be accomplished.”40
Conceptual thinking is here considered a kind of activity that is imposed upon the world as we experience it. Eliminating it is not thought to eliminate the varieties and movements of experience, but rather to enhance it. The “emptiness” of Buddha-nature is experienced within the form of ordinary life rather than abstracted from it conceptually. Therefore, the Ch'uan-hsin fa yao sets up a distinction between eliminating thought and eliminating phenomena experienced in the world such that getting rid of thought is not getting rid of the world. “The ignorant eliminate phenomena but not thinking, while the wise eliminate thinking but not phenomena.”41 Huang-po helps develop the iconoclastic dimension of the Zen tradition in his claim that even sacred thoughts end p.121 are obstructive: “If you conceive of a buddha, you will be obstructed by a buddha!
from "The Huang-po Literature"
Dale S. Wright
The Zen Canon: Understanding the Classic Texts
You say "We often come to Zen in order to quiet our minds. Wrong idea. Quietism is a disease."
Huang Po the Zen master disagrees.
read some of his quotes at....
http://www.poetseers.org/spiritual_and_devotional_poets/buddhist/huang/huangp/3/
Huang Po. Yes. Good for him...what, on the otherhand, is good for you? Tell me, if you meet the Buddha on the road what should you do?
Ideas are like sugarplum fairies.. sweet delusions. Put them down.
With palms together,
Dear Chana, My apologies. I did not see this comment as it was in a SPAM folder. I am not sure you understood my post. Of course coming to Zen to quiet our minds may be an aspect of quietism, still, people do come to Zen in orfder to do that. Quieting the mind does not mean silencing it, it means changing one's relationship to the sensory perceptions of the six sense organs. When we change our relationship to one of acceptance of what is, no problem. Do not forget that the 2nd Chinese Patriarch came to zen for exactly the same reason. Huang Po is a wonderful beginning, but the practice is the most essential thing. Do you practice? What are your words?
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