The Zen Master's Dance - 10 - Fukan Zazengi (Bottom of p. 41 to Bottom of p. 45)

[Jundo]

We continue from "Think of not thinking" at the very bottom of page 41, stopping right before "no distinction should be made between the sharp and the dull."


First Assignment -

Can you give an example of a third sentence exemplifying "thinking-not-thinking," with the first sentence being an example of ordinary thinking, the second being the wholeness beyond analysis, categorization, division and judgements, and the third sentence (which you will provide) being an example of the two coming together as one, showing how 1 transforms into 3 when passing through the clarity of 2? I will help by giving you, so you do not need to, the first and second sentences already filled out (although the 2nd really might be an empty and open space beyond words).

DO NOT look at what others post before responding.

The third sentence should not be a meaningless non sequitor or Zenny "MU" of the like, but should make use of the following elements (cat, anger, then, caught, mouse, lunch), but with the meaning and grammar structure changed by having passed through 2:

Sentence 1 = The cat became angry, then caught a mouse for lunch. **

Sentence 2 = Clear, open, boundless, beyond all divisions, separation, friction and judgements.

Sentence 3 (1 + 2) =



Second Assignment -

Dogen references several old Koan stories in which ancient Teachers expressed the dropping away of divisions, or the coming together of the absolute (beyond divisions) and the relative (this world of divisions). Examples include a fist in which five finger come together as one hand, or a needle tossed into water which thus vanishes from sight, yet is still present. There is also the example of Manjusri announcing in grand words a Talk by the Buddha in which nothing is said.

Please choose some picture or shout or phrase that does the same in your heart. No need to explain why.

Gassho, J

STLah

** As to Assignment #1, I sure did pick a violent image there, didn't I?! Hmmm. I should remind folks that this is one reason we live by the Precepts, so that this practice does not turn us into heartless killers!

[Houzan]

Assignment 1, take 1:
”Lunch was the mouse already embraced in her warm cat fur.”

Gassho, Hōzan
satlah

[Hosui]

Assignment 1
The cat, being utterly free, recognised and let go of anger (along with greed and delusion), continued to eat the mouse it’d caught for lunch, then did the rest of the work that came to it that day, knowing it was utterly sufficient and already true to its source.

Assignment 2
As Shohaku Okumura says of zazen, in The Mountains and Waters Sutra (p.228), “Shikantaza is not a method of sitting; shikantaza is the only thing we can do when we face the dual reality of peacefully abiding and constantly walking”.

Gassho
Hosui
sat/lah

[Koriki]

The cat was caught having lunch with a mouse, which then angered his friends who didn't know the way.

The universe is a soup

Gassho,
Koriki
s@lah

[Jundo]

In this hot soup, Tom is just Jerry, Jerry precisely Tom ...
.

Gassho, J
stlah

[Houzan]

Assignment 2, take 1:
On the moon gazing at Earth, a breathing blue jewel. On Earth gazing at the moon, a pearl, a cloud, and a smelly diaper.

Gassho, Hōzan
satlah

[Jundo]

Assignment 2, take 1:
On the moon gazing at Earth, a breathing blue jewel. On Earth gazing at the moon, a pearl, a cloud, and a smelly diaper.

Gassho, Hōzan
satlah

Are the moon and Earth truly two?

image.png

Image from the JAXA Kaguyu (Selene) spacecraft, run from here at Tsukuba Space Center.

Gassho, J
stlah

[Houzan]

Are the moon and Earth truly two?

image.png

Image from the JAXA Kaguyu (Selene) spacecraft, run from here at Tsukuba Space Center.

Gassho, J
stlah

Moon = emptiness, but I see how duality sneaks in. Let me try to add a sentence then:
On the moon gazing at Earth, a breathing blue jewel. On Earth gazing at the moon, a pearl, a cloud, and a smelly diaper. The sky the moon’s, moonlight in the diaper.

Gassho, Hōzan
satlah

[Hokuu]

First Assignment

Sentence 1 = The cat became angry, then caught a mouse for lunch.

Sentence 2 = Clear, open, boundless, beyond all divisions, separation, friction and judgements.

Sentence 3 (1 + 2) = The clear mouseness of the angry cat beyond the divisions of catness and mouseness, separated without boundless separation, frictions, and judgements - the former catches the latter for lunch.

Second Assignment

“And blood-black nothingness began to spin
A system of cells interlinked within
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.”
-Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

Gassho
Hokuu
satlah

[Furyu]

A boundless cat beyond all anger arises then ends all separation as it catches lunch in the form of a mouse in the mouth of the gaping universe.

IMG_6089.jpg
Gasshō
Fūryū
sat-lah

[Jundo]

Thank you Hokuu

Cells interlinked within cells interlinked

Cells are life, growth, working in cooperation, a wonder in their workings ... even as, sometimes, a few here and there turn to cancer.

Furyu ...

il_570xN.2876037488_gkx7.jpg

Gassho, J
stlah

[Chikyou]

Sentence 1 = The cat became angry, then caught a mouse for lunch. **

Sentence 2 = Clear, open, boundless, beyond all divisions, separation, friction and judgements.

Sentence 3 (1 + 2) =9 (my iPad chose to answer for me when I hit the space bar LOL it cracked me up, so I’m leaving it here for all to enjoy).

My real sentence 3: The mouse, having disappeared inside the cat, is unseen but ever present, as it truly had nowhere to go.

Assignment 2: The Cosmos is all that ever was or ever will be. (Carl Sagan)

Gassho,
SatLah,
Chikyō

[Jundo]

What transcends even notions of a "Carl Sagan"?

Gassho, J
stlah

[Chikyou]

What transcends even notions of a "Carl Sagan"?

Gassho, J
stlah

Funny you should ask, and I’ve been thinking about this question off and on since yesterday. Maybe I’m getting off topic here but something that has always done my head in (and continues to do so) is attempting to contemplate what is (or isn’t) outside of the cosmos, past the edge of the known universe. What was before the Big Bang? Empty space? That’s still space right? Infinite nothingness? How does that nothingness not take up space? And see, I’ve done myself in again.

Gassho,
SatLah,
Chikyō

[Jundo]

Funny you should ask, and I’ve been thinking about this question off and on since yesterday. Maybe I’m getting off topic here but something that has always done my head in (and continues to do so) is attempting to contemplate what is (or isn’t) outside of the cosmos, past the edge of the known universe. What was before the Big Bang? Empty space? That’s still space right? Infinite nothingness? How does that nothingness not take up space? And see, I’ve done myself in again.

Gassho,
SatLah,
Chikyō

I am actually writing a book (and my last book a little too) that touches on that. Talking to my theoretical physicist buddy, who advised on the book, I will give you a little taste ...

The "Big Bang" theory proposes that our entire universe began at a definite moment of the distant past at which everything was jam-packed into a single satchel that somehow burst its seams … starting out from infinite density and temperature … then expanding, gradually thinning out and cooling … further expanding and steadily cooling …

In truth, an “explosion” is not the best image. Nor was there an “expansion” of matter into empty space … for there was likely no space as yet for anything to expand into. It may have been more of an “unfolding,” a “blossoming unto itself.” Perhaps the best way to picture the Big Bang is as an expansion of space qua space, a cloth unwrapping with nothing outside it, with the stretching marking out the site and scope of stretching.

"Nothingness" may truly be "no thing," i.e., not a thing or anything at all.

and

You now find yourself in a universe thought to have commenced some 13.8 billion years ago, give or take. What came before that remains a matter of conjecture.

Some physicists propose long sequences of universes leading to new universes and even newer universes, maybe in endless cycle. Others suggest an empty void’s quantum spark, thus setting things going. If a deity was the creator, from what came the deity? If “turtle rests upon turtle, with turtles all the way down,” what birthed the first turtle, not to mention the whole turtle tower?

In fact, “before” may not be the appropriate notion at all, as the foundation state could be beyond our usual ideas of causes-leading-to-effects, and passing time. Because we live in a world where all phenomena we encounter appear as impermanent existences, starting and stopping within finite lengths of time, with visible causes that come before effects, we humans struggle to imagine a state that simply might not be so. We no more can picture a realm where time does not apply than a person blind from birth can picture the color red. This puzzle may appear perplexing mainly because we pose mistaken questions, something like asking “What is a square circle?” or (to quote Stephen Hawking) “What lies south of the South Pole?”

I also note that, if there is nothing "outside" the universe, then we cannot say the universe is big or small, for nothing outside to which it can be compared. We can only say that, compared to us or an ant or atom, it appears vast.

I also note that you are the center of the universe. It is true:

In 1543, Copernicus published his De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), where he proposed that the Sun, not our Earth, lies at the center of the cosmos, while the Earth and other planets orbit the Sun. It was a revelation. This demotion in humanity’s place has been radically furthered in recent decades by the discoveries of the Hubble, Webb and our other great telescopes: Not only is our Sun but one star within a galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars, but our Milky Way galaxy is but one of a trillion galaxies, or perhaps trillions. And that is in the visible universe alone!

It is truly one of the great discoveries of humankind.

However, the vastness of the cosmos has also led to vast misunderstandings. The first concerns the location of “the center.”

Physicists and mathematicians point out that all the universe is“the center of the universe” in actuality, because the Big Bang happened here, there and everywhere in the universe as a single singularity’s blossoming. It is not that the Big Bang happened far away. Rather, all has unfolded as the Big Bang’s unfolding, and every point in space has arisen equally “inside” the singularity … and still is. Every place is equally the singularity unfolding in that one place.

Thus, here, there and everywhere is “the center” of the universe because the cosmos remains one point expanding.

And there is another way in which you, me and every individual thing is “a” center of the universe:

According to some models of the universe, each spot of the universe is “a” unique center of the universe because none is more privileged above any other. This may be better understood if we see the cosmos as resembling the surface of an expanding sphere, much like the outer skin of an expanding balloon …
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Were one to take a pen and place a dot on the surface of a sphere, no matter the place or size of the sphere, that point would be as much the center of the surface as any other possible point. In that way. every point is just as much the “starting point” of the sphere which spreads forth from that point in all directions, and thus as much the center of the sphere as any other. No point is more … or less … privileged as the center of the totality.

If doubtful, check with mathematicians and physicists on this “point.”

I do not mean to say that Earth, or where you are standing in your little square foot of Earth, is somehow more central than the rest of the universe. In location, it is not so. It is just that your current place is not less central either. Truly, you are standing at THE center of the expanding universe (as are all things in the one expanding singularity) and also at A center of all the universe emanating in all directions from where you now stand.

.

Gassho, J
stlah