Sympathy for the awakened...

[disastermouse]

If they could tell you, they would.

If you haven't seen it, no amount of talking will do anything but confuse you - except the admonition to sit, relax, and stop looking for something.

If you have seen it, there's really no reason to talk.

Every (good) book written about it is just another clever obstacle or admonition.

A message-less message - always the same, yet manifested in near infinite variety.

Chet

[Taigu]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

Very good one Chet,

If you have seen it

Still watching?


gassho


Taigu

[Tb]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

Hi.

Who watches the watchmen?

Mtfbwy
Fugen

[Rich]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

If they could tell you, they would.

If you haven't seen it, no amount of talking will do anything but confuse you - except the admonition to sit, relax, and stop looking for something.

If you have seen it, there's really no reason to talk.

Every (good) book written about it is just another clever obstacle or admonition.

A message-less message - always the same, yet manifested in near infinite variety.

Chet

That's funny because I think Buddhists have done more talking and writing about it than any other group in the history of mankind.

[disastermouse]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

Very good one Chet,

If you have seen it

Still watching?


gassho


Taigu

The limits of language, mon ami, not the limits of practice.

[miheco]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

Agree,

Talk doesn't cook rice. (Chinese Proverb)


Gassho

[Taigu]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

Thank you for your patience, Chet. Yes, of course, everbody's limit.
Sure Miheco.
And yet, everybody here seems trap in the thinking that language has to represent something and fails to represent what is beyond its limit, namely the ineffable. If you are ready to be patient with the mumbling of an ex University lecturer ( one of my old masks) This idea that language mirrors the world is somehow old fashioned, and since post-modern philosophy, works of Derrida and the likes, we know that language is a world of its own. it doesn't just succeed or fail at mimicking reality. It is a a body of reality too.

In short, and welcome back the priest, when guys like Dogen or Wanshi write their stuff, they are not just writing about the ineffable or expressing something or pointing at something that would exist outside the letters, the ineffable is writing itself, the letters are as real as mountains or rivers, in our world, towers, supermarkets, highways, name it. Nothing missing. You may eat the painted rice-cake.
You may cook rice in words. For language is not separated from what it is supposed to stand for.

Than you all for your patience, and read again if you have time the chapter gabyo of shobogenzo.

Only a few have heard that "painted rice cakes do not satisfy hunger" and none have really understood what it meant. I've asked several of these skin bags about it and everybody was quite certain about it without even bothering to look into it. They were like someone overhearing a conversation that they were not involved in. You should understand that this "painted rice cake" is the face that you were born with and the Original Face you had before your parents were even born. A rice cake, although made of rice, is neither born nor unborn, neither exists nor does not. As a rice cake, it is the moment displaying itself as impermanence; and yet what it is as such never moves. It cannot be understood if it is only understood as something that comes and goes.

In painting a rice cake you use the same materials as you would to paint a landscape. You can use blue pigment to paint mountains and rivers and powdered rice to paint a rice cake. The work of composition is the same. This being so, sesame cakes, vegetable cakes, milk cakes and so on are all this "painted rice cake." There is no difference between paintings, rice cakes, or any thing6 at all and you should understand that these rice cakes in front of you that you are about to eat are all "painted rice cakes." If you are looking for these "painted rice cakes" anywhere else you still don't know how to eat a rice cake. Sometimes they appear as rice cakes, sometimes not. However, they completely transcend any coming or going, old or new and it is in this7 that the realm of "painted rice cakes" reveals itself.

"Hunger" which is "not satisfied" means that, although we are not bound to the conditions of contingent existence, somehow we do not know that we are encountering "painted rice cakes" and so, even though we eat these "painted cakes" we are still "hungry." "Hunger" means that we have distanced ourselves from "painted cakes" but there is no need to try to satisfy this "hunger" because there is really nothing lacking. This "hunger" is what presents itself as all of the changing manifestations of confused experience. But "painted rice cakes" display themselves as this whole bodymind; blue, yellow, red, and white; long, short; round, and square.

enjoy your meal!

Gassho


Taigu

[disastermouse]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

It takes more than I have at the moment to over-run the limits of my language. All I can do is talk or be silent and hope it helps.

Derrida went to extremes, reducing everything to sliding chains of signifiers - which isn't really true either.

All conception is an attempt to freeze in place something that is not actually graspable.

Awakening is not a matter of getting, but a matter of letting.

IMHO.

Chet

[anista]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

Awakening is not a matter of getting, but a matter of letting.

If you're not awakened, how could you possibly know what awakening is a matter of?

Not you particularly; generally speaking.

[disastermouse]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

Awakening is not a matter of getting, but a matter of letting.

If you're not awakened, how could you possible know what awakening is a matter of?

Not you particularly; generally speaking.

It's not an on/off switch. Sometimes I'm awake, sometimes I'm asleep.

As for how I'd know...better to wonder how you'll know.

[anista]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

Awakening is not a matter of getting, but a matter of letting.

If you're not awakened, how could you possible know what awakening is a matter of?

Not you particularly; generally speaking.

It's not an on/off switch. Sometimes I'm awake, sometimes I'm asleep.

As for how I'd know...better to wonder how you'll know.

Me? I don't know.

But you're right. Better to wonder how I'll know.

[disastermouse]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

Me? I don't know.

But you're right. Better to wonder how I'll know.

Even better to wonder if you don't already know.

Chet

[Eika]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

Me? I don't know.

But you're right. Better to wonder how I'll know.

Even better to wonder if you don't already know.

Chet

One will not necessarily be aware of his/her own enlightenment. Or so I've been told . . .

Gassho,
Eika

[Stephanie]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

This is where I get, and stay, stuck--looking for something. It's an addiction! I don't know how to stop! I think I've stopped looking for something, think I'm just sitting with what's right here, but then I find that on some subtle level I'm still looking, still waiting... don't even know what I'm waiting for... waiting for Godot... ops:

[Rich]

Re: Sympathy for the awakened...

Expect nothing, get everything.

I waited so long for a waitress to return, I forgot what she looked like.

Why does waiting seem so boring? I have more important things to do than wait

How dare you make me wait, do you realize how valuable my time is? :x

waiting is just being. :wink:

The big problem is thinking when doing and doing when thinking. :roll: