Emptiness is form and form is emptiness

[MickHeys]

I read all. The approaches of explanation may have helped me understood some. Definitely more than when I started. But did consider having a cup of tea. So how do we combine this understanding with our daily practice as we walk this path? That is the “I” in me-trying to apply this understanding. Jundo I believe you answered my question above when you talked about emptiness as vital to buddhist because of the liberation it brings But I have yet to fully understand.

Gassho
Doshin
St

I think for me, understanding the interconnectedness has helped me become more compassionate and tolerant. As an ex police officer I have dealt with sections of society that are not the best. This had quite an effect on forming opinions of people. Even now 25 years later there are still some of those remnants and I find myself having to check my thoughts to try and remember that we are all part of the dance as Jundo says.

A verse in the xin xin ming says "to set up what you like against what you dislike, this is disease of the mind". Keeping that in mind with the interconnectedness above, I am much better at trying to live the now. I don't worry when my train is late, I don't avoid certain people because of their "annoying habits", I try not to judge behaviors in others, but rather just live in the now and live right effort, right speech and right action in all I do.

I am sure there is more to it than my naive answer, but I am finding that my Buddhist journey is a compound one where new things can build on things that I have learned so far. I don't worry about whether I'm right or wrong, as if I'm wrong I'm sure I will learn or someone will tell me and if I'm right about things then I have improved my impact on the world in some small way. Either way it is what it is and I try to use right effort to understand more. I continue to sit, I continue to read, I continue to listen to others and I will continue to be a new person in every moment to the best of my ability.

Beyond that, it just is.

Just my rambling thoughts. Hope that's OK.

[emoji120]

Sattoday

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[Jishin]

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Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Jundo]

I think for me, understanding the interconnectedness has helped me become more compassionate and tolerant. As an ex police officer I have dealt with sections of society that are not the best. This had quite an effect on forming opinions of people. Even now 25 years later there are still some of those remnants and I find myself having to check my thoughts to try and remember that we are all part of the dance as Jundo says.

A verse in the xin xin ming says "to set up what you like against what you dislike, this is disease of the mind". Keeping that in mind with the interconnectedness above, I am much better at trying to live the now. I don't worry when my train is late, I don't avoid certain people because of their "annoying habits", I try not to judge behaviors in others, but rather just live in the now and live right effort, right speech and right action in all I do.

I am sure there is more to it than my naive answer, but I am finding that my Buddhist journey is a compound one where new things can build on things that I have learned so far. I don't worry about whether I'm right or wrong, as if I'm wrong I'm sure I will learn or someone will tell me and if I'm right about things then I have improved my impact on the world in some small way. Either way it is what it is and I try to use right effort to understand more. I continue to sit, I continue to read, I continue to listen to others and I will continue to be a new person in every moment to the best of my ability.

Beyond that, it just is.

Just my rambling thoughts. Hope that's OK.

[emoji120]

Sattoday

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This is an important part of it, down here on planet earth.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

[ATTACH]5284[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]5285[/ATTACH]

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

Once again, he hits the marrow of the funny bone!

[MickHeys]

This is an important part of it, down here on planet earth.

Gassho, J

STLah

Thanks Jundo. Nice to know I'm at least on the right path.

[emoji120]

Sattoday

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[Jundo]

I read all. The approaches of explanation may have helped me understood some. Definitely more than when I started. But did consider having a cup of tea. So how do we combine this understanding with our daily practice as we walk this path? That is the “I” in me-trying to apply this understanding. Jundo I believe you answered my question above when you talked about emptiness as vital to buddhist because of the liberation it brings But I have yet to fully understand.

Gassho
Doshin
St

I would have thunk that a professional environmentalist such as yourself would get this in a flash ... every lizard looking at you is you too. I would actually offer the thesis that part of your brain is subliminally getting this, even if the "higher" part might feel not ... How else to explain what keeps dragging you back here year after year like a xantusia arizonae in mating season?

Hmmm.

Over the years, I actually have come to feel that there is somehow an aspect to my brain (and some other folks, no stroke needed) that taps into some aspect of what Jill talks about here. Maybe Rinzai Koan work and Shikantaza are kinds of stroke substitutes?

https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?16386-WHAT-IS-ZEN-Chap-4-Awakening&p=228514&viewfull=1#post228514

Maybe that is why I can tap into this on and off the cushion, while others seems to struggle more. Not sure. When I write crap like the above it is as clear as a bell ... we live in a broken and divided world of me and you, war and peace, birth and death ... yet in the wholeness, not. Not rocket science.

I bet you know this, Doshin (and many of the others around here, Jishin for sure) more than you "think" you know this. You feel it somehow.

In any case, I am glad that you and others don't get this so easily, for otherwise me and other Buddhist teachers would be out of a job and on the unemployment line. I would have to find a real job.

Gassho, J

SatTodayLAH

[Kokuu]

I would have thunk that a professional environmentalist such as yourself would get this in a flash ... every lizard looking at you is you too. I would actually offer the thesis that part of your brain is subliminally getting this, even if the "higher" part might feel not ... How else to explain what keeps dragging you back here year after year like a xantusia arizonae in mating season?

I agree. Ecology is, for me, the most natural fit as an explanation with emptiness being represented as a food web in which energy and matter are constantly being recycled, one moment as a lizard, the next as soil providing food for some kind of xerophytic shrub.

"Earth, water, fire and air
Met together in a garden fair
Put in a basket bound with skin
If you answer this riddle
If you answer this riddle
You'll never begin."

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-

[Doshin]

Thank you MickHeys that is well said. I hope I have been getting there as well through my practice. I just did not connect this concept of emptiness as a probable cause. You might say I had not made the intellectual connection but in other ways I have been inching in that direction hopefully. My practice for so many years has been primarily Zazen and applying the precepts. My focus has been trying to understand the physical/ecological reality. Only recently have I really begun to focus on some of the deeper (my way of expressing this) Zen ways of “understanding/relating”.

And yes Jishin, your images do resonate with my understanding. They are great visual aids.

Doshin
St

[Doshin]

Jundo, your post appeared after I posted my attempt to explore this idea further. I do believe I am touching with some understanding the concept of emptiness now, especially as you just put it. I guess I was struggling to apply it and yet when you say it that way I have been applying emptiness without realization. Thank you

No worries Teacher. Your work with me will never be done.

Gassho
Doshin
ST

[Kyoshin]

Jishin, you post the best photos
Gassho,
Nick

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[Shoki]

MickHeys,
If you want to explore further, there is a book, Thunderous Silence by Dosung Yoo. Much of it is a pretty esoteric Korean style Buddhism but the first eight or so chapters really break down what exactly does "form is emptiness and emptiness is form mean?" For me it is one of the best nuts and bolts explanations.


Gassho,

Sat Today LAH
James

[MickHeys]

Sounds great. Thanks James.

[emoji120]

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[Doshin]

I agree. Ecology is, for me, the most natural fit as an explanation with emptiness being represented as a food web in which energy and matter are constantly being recycled, one moment as a lizard, the next as soil providing food for some kind of xerophytic shrub.

"Earth, water, fire and air
Met together in a garden fair
Put in a basket bound with skin
If you answer this riddle
If you answer this riddle
You'll never begin."

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-

Doshin
St

[Shinshou]

When I think about emptiness, I don't think in terms of numbers, that I am "one" and there are "many" and on some level the one and many are really both separate and a whole; although I do realize that truth, and at times have had direct experience with it, when I read "emptiness," that's not what comes to mind. I think in terms of inherent, permanent, meaningful qualities. The rock has no inherent, permanent, meaningful qualities. At some point it didn't exist, but its parts existed in some other forms. Now those parts are a rock. We think of the rock as a definable, describable, permanent object. But it's not. All those definitions and concepts we assign to the rock are impermanent. They're empty. The same can be said for myself. The things I think of about myself as being unchangable, meaningful, and inherent, are not. My concepts about myself are empty. I am just as empty as the rock. This may be off from what the traditional Zen teaching is on sunyata, but it's where my mind goes.

Shinshou (Dan)
Sat Today

[Jundo]

When I think about emptiness, I don't think in terms of numbers, that I am "one" and there are "many" and on some level the one and many are really both separate and a whole; although I do realize that truth, and at times have had direct experience with it, when I read "emptiness," that's not what comes to mind. I think in terms of inherent, permanent, meaningful qualities. The rock has no inherent, permanent, meaningful qualities. At some point it didn't exist, but its parts existed in some other forms. Now those parts are a rock. We think of the rock as a definable, describable, permanent object. But it's not. All those definitions and concepts we assign to the rock are impermanent. They're empty. The same can be said for myself. The things I think of about myself as being unchangable, meaningful, and inherent, are not. My concepts about myself are empty. I am just as empty as the rock. This may be off from what the traditional Zen teaching is on sunyata, but it's where my mind goes.

Shinshou (Dan)
Sat Today

I think that there is much more to the Mahayana teachings than just that we are impermanent, made of parts that fall apart and become something else (like we will become food for worms). A bit too nihilistic for my taste.

I even sometimes criticize Thich Nhat Hanh's famous poem on "interbeing" as being a bit too materialistic, as he seems to only talk about parts and physical influences ...

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here-time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. “To be” is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of “non-paper elements.” And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without “non-paper elements,” like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.”

That is an amazing poem and image. I would still criticize it for missing the forest for the trees a bit. Dogen and other Zen and Mahayana/Hua-yan folks had an even more radical vision of all things literally pouring in and out of (and as) all things, and giving life to (and being) all things. It is a subtle difference, but a bit like saying that the music and wonder of "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony" is just (to copy TNH) vibrations on strings, wind passing through metal, the seats in the theater and the paper the music is written on. He is correct, but it somehow misses the real music and the harmony of the universal symphony that is somehow sweeping all that in and much more to create the wondrous creative whole.

Perhaps you will get a feel if I quote a portion of Shobogenzo-Uji (Being Time), where Dogen presents his amazing vision of time and all things as one, with each moment embodying all moments, which is each thing being itself and all things ...

Know that in this way there are myriads of forms and hundreds of grasses throughout the entire earth, and yet each grass and each form itself is the entire earth. The study of this is the beginning of practice. When you are at this place, there is just one grass, there is just one form ... Since there is nothing but just this moment, the time-being is all the time there is. Grass-being, form-being are both time. Each moment is all being, is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment. ... In essence, all things in the entire world are linked with one another as moments. Because all moments are the time-being, they are your time-being. The time-being has the quality of flowing. So-called today flows into tomorrow, today flows into yesterday, yesterday flows into today. And today flows into today, tomorrow flows into tomorrow....

... or his vision of in "Zenki" (The Whole Works) ...

[L]ife is the manifestation of the whole works ... There is nothing at all, not so much as one time or one phenomenon, that is not together with life. Even be it a single thing, a single mind, none is not together with life.. Life is like when one rides in a boat: though in this boat one works the sail, the rudder, and the pole, the boat carries one, and one is naught without the boat. Riding in the boat, one even causes the boat to be a boat. One should meditate on this precise point. At this very moment, the boat is the world-even the sky, the water, and the shore all have become circumstances of the boat, unlike circumstances which are not the boat. For this reason life is our causing to live; it is life's causing us to be ourselves. When riding in a boat, the mind and body, object and subject, are all workings of the boat; the whole earth and all of space are both workings of the boat. We that are life, life that is we, are the same way. ...

Gassho, J

STLah

PS - I have been struck by how much Dogen's quote on blades of grass resonated with this attributed to Rumi ...