Uji makes makes my head spin. I get dizzy. Fireworks go off. Boom! It’s insane.
[emoji3]
Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_
[emoji3]
Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_
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I'm not sure I understand that on anything more than a physical level. I totally get TNH's explanation of inter-being on a materialistic level, but suggesting there's some "other" way that we are all flowing through and creating each other begins to make my anti-mysticism Spidey senses tingle. I sometimes regret the modern preference (or maybe it's just my preference) for objective evidence, rationalism, and materialism and it's ability to stand in the way of knowledge that's gained through direct experience, intuition, or other sources, which are just as valid.
Shinshou (Daniel)
Sat TodayComment
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Hi Shinshou,
I am the most skeptical, down to earth, "I don't believe in the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot" Zen and Buddhist teacher around (or at least, one of them). I regularly get in trouble with more traditional Buddhists for sometimes being disbelieving or "agnostic" on a variety of Buddhist topics such as overly detailed models of post-mortem rebirth (I doubt most of the claims, take or leave the rest) and the existence of literal "hungry ghosts" and the Buddha's ESP. They get mad at me when I sometimes call some historical claims "likely myth," and some practices "hocus-pocus," which explains why we don't really recite many "Dharani" around here ...
... I have been interviewed by the secular Buddhist podcast ...
Episode 233 :: Jundo Cohen :: Religious-Secular Buddhism: The Best of All Worlds
I am not talking about a realization that requires belief in "whoo hoo." (That is why I think the writings of Jill Bolte, the Harvard neuro-scientist who had the stroke and experienced such phenomena when parts of her brain shut down temporarily, is so important).
This is just a perfectly viable, alternative way for the brain to model reality, and self-define the "self/other" divide and the relationship of all things in the universe. The brain is used to seeing the world one way, it can come to see it another, much like one can come to see "beach" as a wholeness or as separate grains of sand, Shinshou(Daniel) as a whole body and life or his various parts and trillions of cells (which are you?). Well, seeing Shinshou(Daniel)'s equivalent inter-identity to the stuff outside him, not only the stuff inside him, is the same ... and your life is actually all of that. You give life and consciousness to your heart and skin as your heart and skin allows life and consciousness to you and -are- you, and likewise for the stars and rain and every grain of sand and -you- to them. Call it a new "poetic" or aesthetic way of seeing ourselves, call it just a new way to gerrymander the borderline of who we are, the result is the same and it does not matter. No "whoo hoo" required. Is every violin and note on a string "Beethoven's Symphony," or is "Beethoven's Symphony" just its instruments and notes? Is not the whole the parts, and the parts the whole, and all together the harmony and symphony that is the sound of the whole? Well, so are you but a note that is also the symphony of the whole world and all universe and whatever is "conducting" all that.
Our Zazen (whether Shikantaza or Rinzai Koan Introspection) softens and breaks down that hard divide, and is an experience I sometimes compare to this optical illusion: Can you see the old lady? The young woman? Are they both or one or the other? Is it the blank paper or the ink? (If you can't see either the old or young lady, write and I will give you some clues here too).
It is also much like those 3-D images they used to publish in newpapers. I could not see it for the longest time, then suddenly one day I relaxed and a "guitar" or "vase of flowers" came jumping off the page.
In any case, trust me on this one.
It is liberating because, when the self/other divide softens or fully fades away, the frictions of "self vs. not self" also soften or fully fade away.
Gassho, Jundo
SatTodayLAHLast edited by Jundo; 08-31-2018, 04:40 AM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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Oh, I’m glad you said that! I’d forgotten, but when I first started sitting shikantaza, I floundered around on the cushion for a couple of months having no idea what I was supposed to be doing with my brain. Then one day I relaxed my focus a bit and suddenly the universe came jumping off the page. It felt almost exactly like the first time I saw a magic eye picture, except with all 6 senses at once. It was beautiful, and somehow I’d completely forgotten about it until just now.
Gassho, Zenmei (sat/lah)Comment
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I really like the diversity of views and understandings shared here.
Something that I remembered and what have helped me to see how it all fits together, is to imagine a ray of light directed through a prism . the light then is "divided" into red yellow green blue etc colors . So the white light contains all the colors but needs a perception "device" (a human body: eyes for seeing, ears for hearing etc) to see separation . yet each color still has characteristic of that original (white) light, although not displayed .
this, for me, has been the most helpful example of unity/absolute/ emptiness and separate entity/relative/form explanation.
maybe it is helpful for someone else as well.
Gassho, eva
sattoday and also LAHComment
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Hi folks,
So I'm going to go out on a limb here. After reading some of the comments I feel like the difference between Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh) and Jundo's discussion of emptiness is one of time. So in Thay's discussion he talks about the coming together of things and their subsequent coming apart. It's something like the visual of a time laps video of a plant living and dieing. Coming in and out of being. Its something that can be seen as a series of events and a clear progression of time. However, time is an illusion(!), man. Not really but its not what we typically think. Often we think of past, present and future as a series and distinct. I think subtlety we think of time in the same way we think of space. The past is behind us, the present is right here and the future is right in front of us. Science fiction about time travel really plays into this type of thinking. The past is a place you can go and when you make changes you adjust the series of events.
However, the past isn't a place neither is the future. Its the same material in the cup of coffee on my desk than it was a moment ago. What holds it together is the action of the world now in the present. So the reason I don't just fly off into space is because of the force of gravity acting on my now not gravity of the past. Does that make sense? Another way to look at it is that everything exists right now and the past is here in the present as the present.
I'm not sure how much of this is hitting the mark but I really think if we can see the past not as a place but more like a piece of origami paper. It can be folded and unfolded and then folded again. Each shape leaves an impression and affects the previous shapes. But each shape is its own thing yet they bare of the marks (creases) of the previous shape and these marks influence the new shape. Not because the crane created the Origami Star Box but because in a very real sense they are the same thing.
I think another issue is that we think of time as a universal variable as there is a constant rate of change which all things can be measured against. But that's not the case. Clock time is just a standard we agree on and while it seems to be universal. It can be influenced by gravity so things change at a slower rate. So if we also let go of time as a universal then things just change at the rate they change. So things are in relations to others things (my hand vs my arm) and things are composed of smaller things (the cells in my hand). These things are in a kind of motion and occasionally they change which changes the way the affect other things and it can cascade through the relationships with other things. If I get arthritis I may be using my entire arm differently.
I am who I am because of everything else that is and the past influenced this by also being everything I am.
This seemed a lot easier when I was thinking about it. So I'm going to get a cup of tea now.
Gassho
Hoseki
SattodayComment
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Tomorrow, I'll begin rehearsing the ensemble of a stage musical. If we practice one particular chord from that song, isn't it still that song, even though that exact chord with those exact voicings are probably present in thousands of other tunes? Isn't it both at once? This is intriguing to think about from a musical perspective. Debussy's "Girl With the Flaxen Hair" starts with a single D flat. So do many other piano pieces. When I play that single D flat, it's at once a solitary note, and part of the Debussy piece, and also part of all those other tunes that start that way as well, and part of every tune that has a D flat in it anywhere, and also part of every tune that has a C sharp since they're the same pitch...and it is also "music" all by itself! It is all that, and more. I can understand all that, there's nothing mystical about it. Maybe my ego still has a strong enough hold that I can't imagine that being true of me? Maybe I'm afraid that notion will radically change who "I am?" Maybe I don't see a consistent way to function with a looser definition of "me" and "you?" I don't know...Okumura, when dissecting the Heart Sutra, says emptiness is "impermanence and egolessness." Maybe I'm thinking of emptiness as impermanence, but not as egolessness. But if what I've said above is close to the mark, then at least I've got something accurate to start with.
Shinshou (Daniel)
Sat TodayComment
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Hi Shinshou (Daniel),
I feel that it is even more radical than that, based on the Hua-yan vision that was so influential on Dogen and others. Let me tell you how.
- Every point radically contains and is the whole. Every note fully embodies the whole symphony, every drop of water holds the entire ocean. You (and all other things too, so don't get a swelled head
) totally contain and express the whole universe. Here is a description by Soto Priest and historian Taigen Dan Leighton of a famous teaching by Fazhang, the great Hua-yan master ...
In other words, each frame of mirror fully contains each of the other mirrors and the totality. You (me too and everything else) are frames of mirror. In fact, one might say that there is only one boundless mirror (not separate mirrors) that is endlessly bending and reflecting upon itself ... and you are this mirror and so am I.Fazang illustrated the Huayan teachings for Empress Wu by constructing a hall of mirrors, placing mirrors on the ceiling, floor, four walls, and four corners of a room. In the center he placed a Buddha image with a lamp next to it. Standing in this room, the empress could see that the reflection in any one mirror clearly reflected the reflections from all of the other mirrors, including the specific reflection of the Buddha image in each one. This fully demonstrated the unobstructed interpenetration of the particular and the totality, with each one contained in all, and with all contained in each one. Moreover, it showed the nonobstructed interpenetration of each particular mirror with each of the others.http://www.ancientdragon.org/dharma/...ornament_sutra
- Dogen and many of the other Mahayana teachers said that reality is beyond "big" and "small," and especially beyond judging worth or importance by size. For example, one cannot say that an elephant is "more important" than a flea just because it appears greater in mass (I mean, the flea and his kids might have an opinion on that!) Likewise, there is no reason to say that an entire galaxy is somehow more important or even "bigger" than a single grain of sand. Values like that are simply human judgments. A grain of sand is a grain of sand, a galaxy is a galaxy. If you go deeper and deeper into the grain of sand with a microscope, you will find whole galaxies of particles and infinity of space inside. You can never get to the end of going deeper and deeper into the grain of sand. Its depth is as infinite as the width of the universe is infinite or time seems infinite. If you cut "a moment" into smaller and smaller pieces, you could slice it into infinitely smaller slices. At the event horizon of a black hole, a single moment of time also merges into infinite time. (Don't blame me for this craziness, blame Einstein). Thus, every point or moment is infinite and equally precious (Buddhists just think everything is precious). Another Huayan image influential on Dogen is the lion's hair ...
- Every point of reality is equality "the center" of reality, much as every point of the surface of a sphere has as much claim to being the center of the surface as any other point. In fact, every point of our universe is as much "a center" as every other, as this physicist explains ...Deeply rooted in the Mahayana cosmology is the relationship between the one and the multiple, or the parts and the whole, a theme explored particularly by the Huayan school of Buddhism. Based on the Flower Garland Sutra, ... They illustrate a world in which the relationship between the parts and the whole is essential, and argue that when the ultimate truth of emptiness manifests to the viewer each phenomenon is paradoxically perceived as interpenetrating with and containing all others. Each and every phenomenon is not only seen to contain each and every other phenomenon, but all phenomena are also seen to contain the totality of the unobstructed interpenetration of all phenomena. This paradoxical violation of the conventional order of time and space is best explained in the ‘Essay on the Golden Lion’ (c: Huayan jin shizi zhang 華嚴金獅子章), composed by Monk Fazang 法藏 (643–712). This essay articulates that the lion [molded out of gold into the shape of a lion] represents the Buddhist universe, and parts of the lion represent the various phenomena of the universe, while gold represents the ultimate truth of emptiness. Although the parts of the lion seem distinct and unrelated, the essence of the lion itself—that is, gold—remains the same [i.e., the lion's foot is the gold, the tail is the gold, every hair is the gold]. Within each and every hair of the lion, paradoxically, exists the golden lion. All of the lions contained in each and every hair simultaneously penetrate into one hair. Therefore, within each and every hair there are infinite lions: simultaneously the whole of things creates itself, the ultimate truth and concrete manifestations are interfused, and the manifestations are mutually identical.
https://www.britac.ac.uk/sites/defau...pba181p205.pdf
So, you are the center of the universe but (before you get a big head again), so am I and my cat and everything.Where is the centre of the universe?
There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a "Big Bang" about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. The Big Bang should not be visualised as an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a centre into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and it is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...GR/centre.html
I am writing a book with my theoretical physicist friend that actually covers a lot of the above, and many currently accepted models of the big bang allow for this. For example, most cosmologists now believe that everything in the universe was a "singularity" (one point with no passing time) with nothing "outside" it at the big bang that has has "expanded" but into that same "nothing outside it," so remains the same one point although inflated like a balloon (but not "into" any space because there is nothing outside the balloon). So, in that sense, the singularity remains the singularity, and since one is only one ... you are that one and so am I and it is still somehow timeless ... and even the word "one" is deceptive for the singularity because there is nothing "outside" to compare it to in size or number.
Why is this important?
Again, the brain can experience much of this in Zazen as our sense of time and separation softens, and as the sense of interpenetration increases. It is very freeing to know that you and I and the cat are everything and all at the center of reality!
Gassho, Jundo
SatTodayLAH
PS - Don't blame Ol' Jundo for this stuff. Not only is it very freeing to experience the world as so, but these are all basic Mahayana and Zen Buddhist teachings. Further, it can all be experienced through Zazen. Trust me on that. As Dogen wrote ...
“The entire universe is one bright pearl.” On the basis of these words, Dogen Zenji developed a unique and fundamental view of reality. He said, “The universe is not bound by ideas of vast or minute, large or small; it is not square or round, not centered or straight [yet all those things] ... " It is human cognition that judges whether something is big or small, square or round, increase or decrease, arises or ceases, absolute or relative, pure or defiled. Essentially, there is only the phenomenon itself. And the actual realities of human life such as birth and death, coming and going, are also the entire universe. Past, present, and future time is also within this universe. Consequently, it can be said that past and present come and go from the entire universe that is the moment ‘now’.”
https://global.sotozen-net.or.jp/pdf...12/de12_02.htmLast edited by Jundo; 08-31-2018, 06:13 PM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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PPS - And before I forget ..
Oh, no cause for worry! Realizing this stuff does not really change our day to day experience of who we are and how we function. You won't lose yourself. Better said, realizing this stuff becomes another way to see things, and informs and clarifies our day to day. It is meant to be helpful and freeing, but the normal experience of reality is simultaneously true.
The experience I give recently is when I had cancer and was awaiting surgery last year. Part of me was all scared of death and feeling awfully small and weak. Part of me was beyond death, all boundaries, just the universe doing its thing as thus beyond any fear at all. That's nice.
ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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"In other words, each frame of mirror fully contains each of the other mirrors and the totality."
This is reminiscent of a hologram. If you cut a photograph into pieces, you will only see a parts of the photograph. But if you cut a hologram into pieces, each piece will contain the whole picture. Each piece is a separate piece that is also the whole, as it is produced by light from every possible angle rather than just one angle.
"There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a "Big Bang" about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere."
This reminded me that when taking geometry, we learned that the center of shape is the point where every measurement to the periphery is the same. If the universe is infinite, then every point in it is the center, as every point is infinitely far away from the perimeter.
Thanks for the explanations, I feel like I have a clear understanding, I will just continue to sit and perhaps have a clear experience. I truly appreciate your teaching on this.
Shinshou (Daniel)
Sat TodayComment
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Hi Shinshou,
I would say that it does not always have to be a clear "experience" (as a side note, a strange word when there is not necessarily a sense of separation between the experiencer and the experienced as in most experiences, but it is a kind of experience nonetheless). Rather, this can be something more subtle, like a felt and unvoiced sense of this which creeps into the bones about life. In fact, I think the subtle, underlying sense is best. The hard borders seem to soften, a light seems to shine through the chaos and mess of this world, without need for a total dropping away.
I think that the Rinzai folks, in their hard push on a Koan phrase like a "hot ball caught in the throat" sometimes induce such powerful "experiences," and they can come to any of us sometimes in Zazen or just walking down the street. In fact, I do believe that many hallucinogenic drugs can induce such or similar experiences, as we have been discussing in the thread on drugs and Zen practice ...
Jill Bolte had such an experience with a stroke, and I understand that even magnets applied to the proper areas of the brain (transcranial magnetic stimulation) might bring about similar experiences.
But, as we discussed in the above drug thread, inducing or having such experiences is just the "helicopter to the summit," and misses the real point. The folks who might have such an experience on drugs do not know how to properly interpret it, manage it, go beyond it without getting overly seduced by it, and (most importantly) making it a beneficial reference point for daily life. In other words, it is not the experience, but how one is educated by it and learns to access the resulting wisdom in the day to day. Zen practice provides such guidance, and it does not come from a pill or a magnet.
Gassho, J
SatTodayLAHLast edited by Jundo; 09-01-2018, 01:59 PM.ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLEComment
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