#zen koan

[salmonella-destroyer-of-worlds]

A monk asked the master, “Does a dog have Buddha nature?”

The master replied, “Fetch me the dog’s bark, and I will answer.”

The monk wandered the village, listening to every dog’s bark, but returned empty-handed. “I could not catch the bark,” he said.

The master laughed and asked, “If the dog does not bark, where is its nature?”

[mountain-sage]

“Bodhidharma's Vast Emptiness"

Emperor Wu of Liang asked Bodhidharma: "What is the highest meaning of the sacred truths?" Bodhidharma replied: "Vast emptiness, nothing sacred." The Emperor asked: "Who are you, standing before me?" Bodhidharma replied: "I don't know."

Meaning: The ultimate truth is beyond concepts of "sacred" or "profane". It is emptiness (sunyata), a non-dual state. Bodhidharma's "I don't know" is the perfect non-dual answer, transcending the idea of a fixed, conceptual self. This exchange marks the beginning of the Zen lineage in China, a transmission of "nothing sacred" but a direct experience of reality.

[beccawise7]

Monday Mindset...

Expanding your mind to see different avenues of thought can transform any situation from dire to calm.

~beccawise7💜🖤

[cloudswamp]

[nuanimistdatabase]

A Japanese Zen Monk Explains What Zen Is Really About

A Japanese Zen Monk Explains What Zen Is Really About

Despite developing in Asia, as the Chinese form of a religion originally brought over from India and later refined in Japan, Zen Buddhism ha

In the interview clip above, Rinzai zen monk Yodo Kono explains how he arrived in the world of Zen. Having come from a line of monks, he inherited the role after the deaths of his grandfather and his father. Already in his late twenties, he’d been working as a physics teacher, an occupation that — however fashionable the supposed concordances between advanced physical and Buddhist truths — hardly prepared him for the rigors of the temple.

“I entered a role completely opposite to logic,” he remembers, “a world where logic doesn’t exist.” Think of the Zen kōans we’ve all heard, which demand seemingly impossible answers about the sound of one hand clapping, or the appearance of your face before your parents were born.

Advised by his master to stop trying to gain knowledge, skills, and understanding, the frustrated Yodo Kono began to realize that “Zen is everything,” the key question being “how to live without worries within Zen.” That can’t be learned from any amount of study, but experience alone. Only directly can one feel how we create our own suffering in our minds, and also that we can’t help but do so. This leaves us no choice but to relinquish our notions of control over reality. In daily life, he explains in the clip just above (also from the documentary Freedom From Suffering, about the varieties of Buddhism), one must be able to move freely between “the undivided Zen world and the divided world,” the latter being where nearly all of us already spend our days: not without our pleasures, of course, but also not without wondering, every so often, if we can ever know permanent satisfaction.

[didmyownresearch]

The Five Stages of Perception

Before I started learning physics, I thought Quantum mechanics was very weird and mystifying. Then I took several courses in Quantum theory and came to the conclusion that, although it is indeed counter-intuitive, it is still logical and can be grasped and fully comprehended. But then, one day, I suddenly understood what this theory implies with respect to reality. I had to admit to myself: Quantum mechanics is far stranger than I had imagined before I've studied it.

Well, some time ago I stumbled upon a saying attributed to the nine-century Zen master Qingyuan Weixin (Ch'ing-yüan Wei-hsin), that goes like this:

“Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters.”

Now, this Zen koan, or proverb, seems to indicate quite the opposite progression than the one I have experienced with Quantum physics. Starting with the pragmatic, simplistic view: everything is as it seems; Then, coming to question the external appearance of material objects; Finally finding rest at the understanding that, at the "very substance", a cigar is just a cigar.

Then I thought some more about the koan. I reckoned that, rather than contradicting my own experience, the two paths are in fact complementary. There are not three but five stages of perception, as one comes to understand the world better. They are:

The naïve state: everything is grasped at face value, without any questioning.

The mystic state: things are not as they seem. There is a hidden, spiritual nature to matter.

The materialistic state: objects and phenomena may be complex, but they are governed by mechanisms that are knowable and intelligible.

The bewildered state: things don't add up. There is something fundamental that we don't understand about nature. Mountains are not mountains.

The enlightened state: it puts your mind, finally, at rest. Alas, you must be enlightened to be able to grasp it.

The ancient Zen masters didn't have any science and therefore could not truly comprehend a materialistic view. Qingyuan Weixin begun its journey from the naïve stance of the layman, but after he was introduced to the arcane Zen knowledge, he adopted a mystical view. Then, (so we are supposed to believe) by absorbing the essence of Zen thinking, he managed to leap straight into the enlightened state.

I, on the other hand, started from a mildly mystical view of physical nature, but quickly adopted physicalism, as befit a respectable man of science. This comfortable view was shaken and finely shattered as I grew older and wiser. So, both me and master Weixin climbed the same ladder, but stepped on different stairs. He started lower but reached higher. I'm still stuck, bewitched, bothered and bewildered.

[tilbageidanmark]

(See all the other memes I’ve made..)

[jordynfinity]

What questions does your heart ask of truth?

The door swings wide open, But the threshold feels too far, What stops you from crossing?