Originally posted by Taoman
You are fortunate - and we are fortunate to have you around here. Thanks again for your expressive gift.
Thank you for the kind words; I feel fortunate whenever I return to this place and see that you’ve posted. I did understand your question in the OP as just that; and love your line “Buddha was trying too hard”—as well as the whole poem). I, too, try too hard. And I thought this might be a good thread on which to share some of my own concerns with how we express ourselves on here, and to see what insights you might have.
I regret today some of what I have posted on Zen recently—or at least the way I expressed myself. As you know, I am more “zen” than “Buddhist”. And I am just reading a little book by Albert Low on Zen koans, in which he points out that the koans are originally spontaneous exchanges between particular zennists (usually master and student) in the immediacy of the particular moment. These were remembered and recorded, and found useful by other teachers—in the right circumstances of a new particular immediacy. Later, they get recorded in book-collections (The Blue Cliff Record, the Mumonkan, etc.), and later teachers build systems out of these collections—you have to “pass” a certain number of koans in the proper order, etc.
Some modern roshis, such as Nakagawa Soen roshi and the Korean master Seung Sahn roshi, have tried to return to more of the spontaneity of the past I think (and Shunryu Suzuki roshi, a Soto master, left Japan in part to escape the institutionalized systemization). But they also have a lot written about them (as well as their own writings), and I think we have to be careful not de-contextualize and generalize their recorded teachings as well.
—Note: There is always going to be some de-contextualization and generalization on a public forum such as this.
In the face of quite legitimate requests for explanations of Zen (and Zen writings that I have quoted), I’m afraid that I have often done exactly that: inappropriately de-contextualize and over-generalize; or, alternatively, throw out a koan or such without regard to contextualization. On the one hand, there are no secret teachings (and it is quite proper, I think, to deconstruct whatever “cultural coding” may over-coat the traditional koans and stories); on the other hand, Zen is not about explanations at all, but a direct pointing to the
tathata (just-so-suchness) of reality as it is, which is vibrant and prior to all conceptualization—and which recursively includes us and our own mind-play. And it is this recursive inclusion that is partly responsible for the deliberate paradoxes of Zen.
I am, of course, no Zen teacher. You and I and blackbeetle and some others might “lock eyebrows” on here in the spirit of zen-play, and when we do we often shortcut by using the kind of lingo that we have learned to comprehend. There is no reason to expect that someone who has not learned some of that lingo to have any idea what we’re talking about. And honest inquiries by intelligent folks like divegeester (and others in the past and future) ought not to be dismissed with jargon—or, worse, some kind of “Oh, you couldn’t understand because you haven’t met X preconditions”! Sure, sometimes its valid to recommend certain readings—with the proviso that I might recommend to one person one reading(s), and another reading(s) to another, maybe just based on my intuition, maybe based on prior discussions.
But there are no preconditions for someone realizing what, after all, is their original condition, in and of tathata! I know my own flaws and foibles and resistances in this regard—hey, there have been times when what I really wanted was a set of preconditions to keep
thinking about, so I could continue wandering in the comfortable fog of forgetfulness. I am not immune now. But I have had teachers (both more formally, and such as yourself and blackbeetle) who hammered me into wakefulness anyway. Forgetfulness in a sea of enjoyable—and even useful—conceptualizing is my particular “syndrome”. (Conceptualizing and study of other conceptualizations—such as the philosophical—is not the problem; only forgetfulness is.)
Since, as I say, I am no Zen teacher, I think I should just shut up for awhile on the subject—maybe “lock eyebrows” with you guys once in awhile, or post what is just my own expression. My worst fear is that I come across as presumptuous or condescending to people who do not deserve that. I have learned much on here over the years from people who held other religious or philosophical views—and often in the heat of sharp, but still friendly, argument. I have received, in that regard, more than I have given.
All of the above might be best viewed as a series of clumsy questions.
I will end, though, with two Zen sayings: “If you can’t improve on silence, don’t speak.”
And this from my wife, quoting a favorite line of mine from a film about (American) football: “Zen is the six inches in front of your face!” 🙂
"All anger is a fetter to realization." (From a Buddhist site).)
14 Sep '12 13:171 edit
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