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Often folks interested in Eastern and other religions speak of things like "(Cosmic) Consciousness" or "God" or "Ultimate Reality." Zen folks should avoid pondering such concepts. We sometimes mumble words like "Buddha" (with a big "B") or "the Universe" or "Original Face," but best do so with resignation and chagrin. It is really better to leave such things be, without trying to stuff them as manageable ideas into the little stupid box between our ears. Why do we silly humans think that we could ever hold something as vast and strange as a "God" or "Buddha" or "the Universe" within a tiny package held inside our narrow skulls? Foolish humans have no more chance of defining these things than a child, seeing a storybook drawing of a blue sea, might know the true oceans, capturing the uncountable waves, every single grain of sand and twist of coral, each bend of shore along beaches near and far, all the life and death held there, the patterns of chemistry and biology, the salty tastes and smells, all calm and storms, the darkest mysteries of the deepest deep, the endless expanses beyond the horizons and through time.
So, best not to define ... and best to drop all names, images and categories, as well as the sense of these things as one more outside "object" apart from ourselves ... whereby "Consciousness" or "God" or "Buddha" etc. are made small and separate, defined and finite, another piece of life's furniture, like a glass fish bowl on a table in our room that we can point to, keep in the corner and hold distant from us.
AND YET ... by one's very dropping so, just perhaps, one actually gets as close as one can (for there never was any separation to start with!) to what "God" or "Consciousness" or "Buddha" or "Universe" or "Reality" and such might feebly be trying to capture. Rather than trying to name or paint "the ocean," and to hold the entire "ocean" as an idea in one's head ... best to jump in, get all wet and merge with the waters, for we are waters of these waters, brine of the brine. Then, one is no longer like a child, just reading books and standing on the shore. We are the ocean's very flowing itself, every fish swimming, every wave rising and falling, endless complexity yet as simple as simple can be, timeless and boundless, near and far, every grain on every shore.
Often folks interested in Eastern and other religions speak of things like "(Cosmic) Consciousness" or "God" or "Ultimate Reality." Zen folks should avoid pondering such concepts. We sometimes mumble words like "Buddha" (with a big "B") or "the Universe" or "Original Face," but best do so with resignation and chagrin. It is really better to leave such things be, without trying to stuff them as manageable ideas into the little stupid box between our ears. Why do we silly humans think that we could ever hold something as vast and strange as a "God" or "Buddha" or "the Universe" within a tiny package held inside our narrow skulls? Foolish humans have no more chance of defining these things than a child, seeing a storybook drawing of a blue sea, might know the true oceans, capturing the uncountable waves, every single grain of sand and twist of coral, each bend of shore along beaches near and far, all the life and death held there, the patterns of chemistry and biology, the salty tastes and smells, all calm and storms, the darkest mysteries of the deepest deep, the endless expanses beyond the horizons and through time.
So, best not to define ... and best to drop all names, images and categories, as well as the sense of these things as one more outside "object" apart from ourselves ... whereby "Consciousness" or "God" or "Buddha" etc. are made small and separate, defined and finite, another piece of life's furniture, like a glass fish bowl on a table in our room that we can point to, keep in the corner and hold distant from us.
AND YET ... by one's very dropping so, just perhaps, one actually gets as close as one can (for there never was any separation to start with!) to what "God" or "Consciousness" or "Buddha" or "Universe" or "Reality" and such might feebly be trying to capture. Rather than trying to name or paint "the ocean," and to hold the entire "ocean" as an idea in one's head ... best to jump in, get all wet and merge with the waters, for we are waters of these waters, brine of the brine. Then, one is no longer like a child, just reading books and standing on the shore. We are the ocean's very flowing itself, every fish swimming, every wave rising and falling, endless complexity yet as simple as simple can be, timeless and boundless, near and far, every grain on every shore.
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