SIT-A-LONG with JUNDO: I Don't Believe in Buddha!!

[Jakuden]

Anyone else around here take Calculus? In many equations that describe the physical world, "infinity" is an important number. In elementary school arithmetic, we learn about a number line, which has no start or end... then we spend years learning math, working with the limited numbers, geometrical shapes, etc. that our minds can grasp in between the ends of that number line. Is practicing Zazen is like a function in Calculus where x goes to infinity? Math tells us infinity exists, but our minds can't see it.... life tells us Buddha exists, but our minds can't grasp it.

Gassho,
Sierra
SatToday

[Sekishi]

Hi Sierra,

I minored in mathematics in college, and despite my hopes that it would help makes sense of the world, it didn't help me all that much. Ditto for philosophy (but I still love them both in their way). This post prolly won't help either.

Anyhow, to continue your analogy, maybe Zazen helps us "integrate" the Dharmakaya. Normally we try to count each and every lemma (continuing the calculus analogy), though there are an infinite number of them (by definition!). We try to peer into the future, and relive the past, one lemma at a time. In Zazen, we let them go, and allow them to be just what they are - infinite in number, creating a beautiful curve, or graph, or flower, or tumor, or bullet. To a Bodhisattva, all functions are continuous!

A completely different analogy from mathematics (the philosophy of mathematics in particular) is an age old debate between the "Mathematical Realists" and the "Mathematical Anti-Realists". The realists argue that mathematical concepts exist independently of human minds (or any other sentient beings capable of perceiving them). These concepts are DISCOVERED, not invented. The anti-realists argue that mathematical concepts exist through formal rules only, which may sometimes align with entities "in the world", but are ultimately useful fictions. (BTW: I am not doing either side justice, but its tough to sum up in a sentence or two.)

Anyhow, this struggle reminds me so much of the heart sutra - form and emptiness, being and non-being, difference and unity. I think the price of sentience is living in a universe that we have cut and shredded into uncountable separate pieces using logic and symbols. Sentience is the act of creating me, you, black, white, up, down, matter, energy, life, and death. Sentience allows us to perceive the difference between the road and the guardrail, the tiger and the puppy. Mathematics does not really exist, the lemmas between x=0 and x=1 in this curve are infinite, but 1+1=2 and we really CAN integrate the volume under that curve! A miracle!

So for me, Zazen is setting in the space between existence and non-existence, realism and anti-realism, self and non-self.

But I'm a doofus about math, and even moreso about the Dharma, so YMMV.

Gassho,
Sekishi
#sattoday

[Jakuden]

Gee it sounds like the realists and the anti-realists would end up in the same place though, pretty much? Finding a way to describe the indescribable in our limited terms, be it language or mathematics... whether the rules are there and we discover them, or we invent and apply them, they are not two.

Anyway, I like Sekishi's Theorem on Sentience and Zazen!

Gassho,
Sierra
SatToday

[Sekishi]

Gee it sounds like the realists and the anti-realists would end up in the same place though, pretty much?

Yeah, delusion. ;-)

Gassho,
Sekishi

#sattoday

[Theophan]

Thanks Jundo

Gassho
Theophan
Sat Today

[TyZa]

Old post, but I just saw it and wanted to thank Jundo for an excellent talk. I feel more and more at home at Treeleaf with these kinds of teachings.

Gassho,
Tyler.
Sat_Today!

[Chikyou]

More evidence that I've found the right Sangha. Thank you Jundo!

Gassho,
SatLah
Kelly

[michaelw]

Thank you Jundo.

It took me some time to realise that this is a 2011 talk, yet strangely timeless, and ties in with my secret thoughts
about the mounting pile of books I have acquired on Zen Buddhism.

Question if I may?
Where you always of this opinion or did it shift from a Buddha/object based belief later?

Gassho
sat

M

[Jundo]

Thank you Jundo.

It took me some time to realise that this is a 2011 talk, yet strangely timeless, and ties in with my secret thoughts
about the mounting pile of books I have acquired on Zen Buddhism.

Question if I may?
Where you always of this opinion or did it shift from a Buddha/object based belief later?

Gassho
sat

M

I have always been pretty skeptical of extreme religious claims, even as I see value in the path.

Gassho, J

STLah

[joshr]

Older post, but a newer member of the sangha.

This really rings true, particularly for one whose meandering path took them on an extended voyage through the Vajrayana.

Thank you for for your candor.

Gassho,
Josh

Sat this morning

[Jundo]

Older post, but a newer member of the sangha.

This really rings true, particularly for one whose meandering path took them on an extended voyage through the Vajrayana.

Thank you for for your candor.

Gassho,
Josh

Sat this morning

Thank you for finding this, Josh. I must confess that it is something that still speaks to my own heart too.

Buddha is fantastic, wonderful, magical, powerful, all curing ... I truly believe that ... but maybe not always in the ways that people assume.

Gassho, Jundo

stlah

[Jenny A]

This is an old thread, but I am a new member, and finding this thread makes me more grateful than ever to have found Treeleaf. I am grateful, also, that my mother taught me when I was still very small that Santa Claus the jolly elf is not real--but that the spirit of giving that resides in the human heart is very real. Like Santa Claus, all those tall tales of the Buddha are myth. And myth is not untruth but metaphor--not meant to be taken literally but a way of pointing at deeper truth. My mother also taught me, as Jundo (citing Dogen) has written elsewhere, that "It's all sacred everywhere, all the world, right here . . ." So, once again, I am so grateful to have found Treeleaf. Thank you!

Gassho,
jenny
stlah