Or it is like this (or those darn 3-D pictures they printed in the newspapers for awhile ... took me forever to see, then one day there it was, jumping right off the page!) ... Seeing this, and getting it in ones bones can be a bit tricky. One should not really understand just intellectually, although 'tis hard to really sink in and truly see (that is one reason for all this Sitting and Practice). And once seen, it is known as having always been there. In this way, piercing ths puzzle is very much like the old optical illusion of the young lady and the old crone. Can you see both? (Post here if you can't, and I will give a clue) ...
Is it an old lady? Is it a young lady? Both at once? YES!! Yes, both are there and depends on being able to see things each way. As well, the open spaces and lines are a single whole ... and there is no drawing at all without both as one.
So, in Zazen, we "open the hand of divisive thoughts" and realize this whole view.
If one fails to see through the "little self" and encounter one's True Face Before Even One's Mother & Father Were Born as the "True Self/small self, True Nature, Dharmakhaya, Relative/Absolute, Mu, Emptiness, Shobogenzo, Big 'B' Buddha, Mirror Mind, Capital "M" Mind etc. " ... then one is simply missing one of the central points (perhaps THE Central Point among the many good points) of all Mahayana Buddhist Practice, including Zen Buddhism. One is simply coming to the "Non-Birthday Party" and leaving without eating any Non-Birthday Cake!
The old adage that "Zen" is about "Becoming One With The Universe" is really not so far off the mark!
What is more, I propose to you that this is really not so hard to see or understand (even for us with a modern, skeptical mind), although 'tis hard to really sink in and truly see (that is one reason for all this Sitting and Practice). And once seen, it is known as having always been there.
Thus, for me ... a great skeptic, agnostic, "show me the evidence" guy who doubts UFO's, Big Foot and the Lock Ness Monster ... and who is skeptical of literal, mechanical rebirth as a rat or a ghost (just let what will be just be on that) ... I can still sink my teeth into this view of "Non-Birth", that we were never quite born ... thus we never quite die. It is easy to see and pierce (through Practice), it is easy to grasp intellectually too. My own "Kensho" moments are much like actually having seen the world inside out and rightside up, without self/other separation, the all encompassing interpenetration of all things, where the young lady now is witnessed clearly as the crone through and through, without a drop of separation ... neither displacing or replacing the other. Through this Zen Practice, the hard borders between "my self" and "all the rest" soften, and sometimes fully drop away. Now, with years of practice, I can pretty much access pierce the illusion any time when taking a moment to see ... a way of "I" and "non-I" at once.
Simply put, it is easy to understand: If you are you ... but you are also simultaneously just the "universe" or (better said) the reality underlying everything ... then, when "you" die you don't really quite die so long as that "reality" is still going, keeping it real. Same for being "born".
Yes, it is a bit hard to fully fathom. But also as simple as child's play.
For you and me and the other folks are simply star dust, made of the same stuff as all the planets, trees and bees. We are like these individual finger puppets, stuck in their unique and separate identities ... who cannot see (without Practice) that they are each simultaneously also just the whole hand, and maybe even the little child behind it.
(What the hand or child is up to, if anything at all? Well, that's a whole 'nother question. Whatever, best to just play along!)
Basic Mahayana Buddhism, Zen Buddhism 101.
As is written on the wooden block calling folks to Zazen, and chanted each night in about every Zen monastery anywhere ...
Let me respectfully remind you
Life and death are of supreme importance, the Great Matter.
Time passes swiftly and opportunity is lost.
Let us awaken ...
Awaken!
Do not squander this life.
Gassho, J
SatToday
PS - If you would like more pontificating by me on this subject (and non-subject), here is an old thread ...
Another traditional simile is that of "waves on the sea". A wave arises on the surface of the sea for a time, rolls along, and then disappears back into the sea. If that sea wave were to somehow become conscious and self reflective (like us), it might think "I am separate from the sea and all the other waves, and when I vanish I die." However, from another perspective, a wave is just the sea all along ... no wave apart from the water ... and the wave was never just the wave. The wave was also always the sea, just temporarily arising a certain way under local conditions. So, the wave would be partly right (it will vanish and die when it disappears) but also wrong (because it was the sea along, both before and after never anything else). Science seems to be saying much the same, that each of us is just the same matter and energy, atoms and waves and such as all the rest of the universe.
Comment