Awaken on your own

[Buddy]

"How often have you looked at a new born baby and thought " crikey!! there's a point to carry "

or, "How soon can I abandon this one?...crikey"

[SimonM]

Originally posted by TaiChiBob

Yet, toady with its formal schools, its intricate Koans, its harsh masters, it is difficult to recall its humble origins..

But some of us remember. I am a Chan Buddhist yet I don't intend to become a wuseng, will honestly say that I don't know the Koans and haven't had any harsh masters. I just meditate, and try to be a good person.

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

We are traveling to where we have always been, from ignorance to enlightenment.. awareness is the vehicle..

We are enlightened.. we simply have so many distractions to divert our awarenesses that we seldom recognize it.. we often get distracted by judging others, by attempting to coerce others to believe the things we believe, by indulging the illusion that we are separate from our environment or separate from others.. i sense that we are One thing behaving in a universe of different ways..

Enlightenment eludes actual description, we only know it when we experience it.. those that have attained it know the futility of trying to describe it.. "the Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao".. but, my mentor says that when we accept (know) that we are each only individual aspects of One universal truth (experience).. then, our enlightened selves will be revealed.. the trick is in the knowing.. wishing, hoping, believing and desiring are not substitutes for knowing.. my experience seems to suggest that my mentor is correct.. though, i struggle with conflicts between the knowing and the distractions.. (i do favor certain distractions )... That, for me, is the beauty of Taoist philosophy.. it is what it is.. we are here for a time, then we are not.. i suggest that this unique physical existence is not intended to be subjugated by harsh disciplines and critical judgements.. it is intended to be embraced with gusto and a sincere reverence for its simple beauty..

Be well...

[SPJ]

Good points.

When we are 3 to 5 years old, we experience life directly.

For we do not know many words to describe our experiences.

For we do not yet acquire some of the add-ons or distractions in life, culture or "civilizations".

And most important of all, we usually say what we feel directly without any facade.

With this honesty to ourself and directness of our minds, we then see everything in the light.

In Chan Buddhism, they call it the Buddha mind or the awakened mind.

In Christianity, Jesus said to the fact that we all have to be like a child to be able to come to the presence of God.

[SPJ]

In a sense, to do Chan meditation or Za zen is to cleanse our mind of daily dusts defiling thoughts, ill intentions or negative interaction in emotions, etc

We are to cultivate the clear and direct mind.

Or as you nicely put it as the awareness without distractions.

Good posts.

[SPJ]

Off the subject of the thread;

On Tao or Dao;

Yes. Agreed that we are all from the one or universe. We are part of it. Therefore we conform to its ways or the way/dao of the nature or universe.

In the theory of Dao, there are 3 harmonies.

The heaven (Tien) which is the time, weather, and the cosmos etc.

The earth (Di) which is the platform, we live on. There are the environments, air, water, rivers, etc.

The people (Ren), us, coworkers and other.

Ren is between Tien and Di. We acquire the Qi from Tien and Di and then cultivate the harmonies between the three.

Yes, we are all connected; not just people to people but also to Tien and Di.

So the Dao is to achieve Tien Di Ren harmonies.

How to do it are the lessons for our lives.

[Scott R. Brown]

Hi SPJ,

I am afraid you are incorrect about the purpose of Chan being to cleanse our minds of: “ill intentions or negative interaction in emotions, etc”. This was the view that
Shen-hsui took, and because he believed this he did not acquire the robe and bowl of authority from his master and they went to Hui-neng.

Remember the two poems I mentioned earlier:

Shen-hsui’s:

Our body is the bodhi tree,
And our mind a mirror bright,
Carefully we wipe them hour by hour,
And let no dust alight

And Hui-neng’s:

There is no bodhi tree,
Nor mirror bright,
Since all is void,
Where can dust alight?

We can certainly improve our character through the process of wiping away dust, but this is not the purpose of Chan. The purpose of Chan is to directly perceive, for ourselves, the truth. That is to remove the veil from our perception in order to understand existence completely or rather to see it as it truly is, without obstruction. The creator of this veil or obstruction is our ego.

Our ego is a tool we use to navigate through society. It is an artificial identity, but it is not who we truly are. Our ego is artificially constructed, similar to the character an actor plays in a movie or theater production; when the production is over the actor returns to his original identity. So we return to our true selves through realization. The problem with most of us is that we confuse our artificial construct (ego) with who we truly are; we think our ego IS who we really are; but it is not.

The purpose of Chan is to directly point to the truth so we may see it for ourselves and thereby be transformed. But the transformation is merely artificial as well. We are only seeing the truth as it always was and the false views were only illusion that we have realized as illusion. The error was in our minds, our perception and not in the world. The pain and sorrow we experience in life is a direct result of our over identification with our artificial construct. Our ego filters our perceptions through its own value system which is in and of itself an artificial construct as well. We cannot perceive the truth accurately because of the limitations imposed upon our perception by this artificial construct (ego). The goal of Chan is to provide the means to help use make an end run around our ego so to speak, in order to allow us to directly perceive the truth.

So because of our egos’ we confuse illusion with reality. This is what we must understand and transcend and this is why everyone must do so on their own. At the best a master can only point the way and inform us of mistakes and pitfalls, but nothing more.

If I remember correctly on an occasion, D. T. Suzuki was asked what was the difference he experienced upon gaining realization, he respond that there was no difference; life was exactly the same, but just 5 inches off the ground. That is a poetic way of saying, “it is the same, but different.”

Think of the attempt to perceive without obstruction as similar to the optical illusion where there are two faces in silhouette facing each other; it can be seen as either two faces, or as a vase. Now, imagine a person who can only see the faces and not the vase. It takes a certain kind of perception or perspective to see the vase and a certain perspective to see the faces, but it is a skill that must be learned. No one can show you the vase. They can point to it, or try to describe it, but you have to perceive it on your own. And once you perceive you can see both whenever you choose and this is the same activity that occurs when perceiving or realizing the Truth.

So the question arises, is it a picture of two faces or is it a picture of a vase? Well the answer is, “It is both at the same time.” This is why realization is said to be nothing special, it is like when you finally understand how a magician’s trick is done, the common reaction is, “You mean that is all it was?”

[SPJ]

Execellent post.

Agreed.