What does a good teacher see?

[andyZ]

Re: What does a good teacher see?

.....so a statement about knowledge is no knowledge :?:

gassho

Willow

He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.
Laozi

[Shokai]

Re: What does a good teacher see?

_/_

[RichardH]

Re: What does a good teacher see?

Sounds like driving the whole cast off a cliff in a bus.

[Heisoku]

Re: What does a good teacher see?

And a good teacher sees.......... _/_ _/_ _/_

[Kaishin]

Re: What does a good teacher see?

.....so a statement about knowledge is no knowledge :?:

A statement about knowledge is a statement about no knowledge Everything dissolves into emptiness. Don't go chasing your own tail, maybe. 8)

[Jinyo]

Re: What does a good teacher see?

Kaishin wrote

A statement about knowledge is a statement about no knowledge Everything dissolves into emptiness. Don't go chasing your own tail, maybe. 8)

I get awfully befuddled with the word play in Zen - think I've got it and then the meaning disappears! ops:


Gassho

Willow

[Rich]

Re: What does a good teacher see?

Kaishin wrote

A statement about knowledge is a statement about no knowledge Everything dissolves into emptiness. Don't go chasing your own tail, maybe. 8)

I get awfully befuddled with the word play in Zen - think I've got it and then the meaning disappears! ops:


Gassho

Willow

Some call it opposites thinking. If you say something about knowledge it automatically infers something about no knowledge. Zen is pointing to before thinking. What's that all about?

[Jundo]

Re: What does a good teacher see?

I look at it more this way, from actual experience with questions from my 8 year old son:

Sometimes he will ask me about things I can answer, for example, "Where do clouds come from?" Oh, I explain about evaporation, condensation, precipitation and the little bit of science I recall ... but, after awhile, I make sure to shut up ... and teach him just to sit down quietly and look at the clouds ...



He might see flying elephants there. Are they really there, those flying elephants?

Sometimes my son will ask his dad about something that really frightens him, the "Boogeyman Under the Bed" ...



Oh, I will explain to him that the "boogeyman under the bed" has no more existence than our own thoughts bestow ... that the "boogeyman under the bed" is only there and scary to the extent we are scared of the "boogeyman under the bed" ... that the thoughts and fear themselves are all that make the thoughts and fear real. But more than some rational explanation (my son seems to understand the point, but still the boogeyman lingers), I will actually try to get him to forget the "Boogeyman" by sitting with him quietly, letting him quiet his mind, drop all such thoughts ... maybe distracting him if need be ... and POOF! ... THE BOOGEYMAN IS INSTANTLY GONE!

My son may ask me, after watching the latest 'Harry Potter', where "magical dragons go when they die", if the good ones "go to Dragon Heaven" and the evil ones to "Dragon Hell". I might explain that (while I am not sure, not being myself a wizard) dragons probably do not 'go anywhere' when they die ... nor are dragons ever really 'born' ... except to and from the wonderful fruitful garden of endless human imagination. Also, it may seem like the film begins and ends, but the story is truly timeless and always being read by some child in the world! I might explain that movie dragons are no more real than light on a screen. But, more than such explanations, I might say to my son that it is just better to be silent ... to fall into the wonderful show which, though perhaps like a dream or like a fantasy movie ... is OUR dream and movie and the ticket in our hand! Best just to be quiet and enjoy the film ... get some popcorn and dig in. (And it is okay to close your eyes at the scary parts ... and to recall at those times that "it is all just a movie" ... cause they do seem so real!)



Zazen is so much like, for a time, dropping all thought of the Dragons and Boogeymen of life, and hitting the 'reset button' on the real-virtuals and virtual-reals! Ultimately, our thoughts and mental creations about 'how the world is' are "empty" ... meaning that they have no more solid existence to them than our own thoughts bestow. Buddhist philosophers have debated for thousands of years whether all of our experience of reality is mind created ... or only lots of it ... and how much is truly "out there" in front of our eyes versus the simulated model of reality we create behind our eyes (in fact, the Lanakavatara Sutra is about that very subject ... and how the world outside, inside and the eyes themselves are all one Great Theater). Yes, there seem to be real horrors in the world ... war and disease and poverty ... and we must roll up our sleeves (dreams or not), and get to work to fix them! But even then, this birth and life, heaven and hell and so very much in between are largely up to us and our actions, all based on our fertile imaginations. One thing that all the Buddhists agree on is that ... whether 'all' or just 'a lot' ... we certainly create our experience of this life and world by the divisions, labels, fears, frictions, aversions, attractions, memories of the past, dreams of the future, anger, joy, greed, jealousy, generosity, love and other emotions, thoughts of "birth and death" and all the rest that sentient being impose in interpreting the world ... which can be dropped away in Shikantaza ... thus revealing how much of the things and fears of the world ...

... are no more substantial than cloud elephants and monsters under the bed and flying dragons. What then remains is a peaceful blue sky ... boundless, clear and holding all ... with clouds of appearances drifting through. Sometimes, the clearest statements about flying elephants and boogeymen and dragons are no statements at all.

Maybe something like that.

Gassho, J

[RichardH]

Re: What does a good teacher see?

So things do not have absolute or inherent existence, and are empty. But smoke is solid to smoke. By that I mean you and me and everything we see is without inherent existence, yet this empty show, without inherent existence, is the only existence we have, the only value we value. This show is the only show in town.

This teaching of emptiness helps me not give absolute value to this show, but whatever value it is given, touch and go, is the only value there is.

Sorry to ramble.

[Jundo]

Re: What does a good teacher see?

So things do not have absolute or inherent existence, and are empty. But smoke is solid to smoke. By that I mean you and me and everything we see is without inherent existence, yet this empty show, without inherent existence, is the only existence we have, the only value we value. This show is the only show in town.

This teaching of emptiness helps me not give absolute value to this show, but whatever value it is given, touch and go, is the only value there is.

Sorry to ramble.

Hi Kojip,

Oh, I (dream of "I" or not) feel that is so right! Master Dogen spoke of Muchu Setsumu, a 'dream within a dream' ... a dream so dreamy, but not merely dreamy ... a dream of life, but our lives nonetheless and the place for awakening. Taigen Dan Leighton writes:

In another of the numerous examples in Shobogenzo of Dogen using wordplay to invert conventional thinking, in [Shobogenzo] Muchu Setsumu "Within a Dream Expressing the Dream," written in 1242, Dogen extensively elaborates on the statement that all buddhas express the dream within a dream. He thereby denies the supposedly lesser reality of the "dreams" of the transient phenomenal world, and negates a Platonic exaltation of the absolute, which LaFleur describes as the antithesis of Lotus [Sutra] teaching. Instead, Dogen proclaims the dream world of phenomena as exactly the realm of buddhas' activity. "Every dewdrop manifested in every realm is a dream. This dream is the glowing clarity of the hundred grasses. . . . Do not mistake them as merely dreamy." The liberative awakening of buddhas is itself described as a dream.

Without expressing dreams, there are no buddhas. Without being within a dream, buddhas do not emerge and turn the wondrous dharma wheel. This dharma wheel is no other than a buddha together with a buddha, and a dream expressed within a dream. Simply expressing the dream within a dream is itself the buddhas and ancestors, the assembly of unsurpassable enlightenment.

Dogen is not frivolously indulging in mere paradox here, but follows the logic of the dream as necessarily the locus of awakening. As Dogen says in his celebrated essay, Genjokoan, "Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas."

...

[Dogen] quotes a long passage that concludes the final verse in chapter fourteen of the [Lotus Sutra], beginning from, "All buddhas, with bodies of golden hue, splendidly adorned with a hundred auspicious marks, hear the dharma and expound it for others. Such is the fine dream that ever occurs. . . ." Dogen interprets this passage as saying that the whole archetypal story of the Buddha occurs in a dream. Dogen's reading takes this passage out of its context in the sutra to emphasize that the Buddha is "made king," leaves the palace, awakens under the bodhi tree, and conducts his whole teaching career, all in a dream. ...

Dogen uses his creative reading to validate, or at least exemplify, his teaching that the dream-state of the conditioned phenomenal world is exactly the arena for awakening. ... Dogen continues,

People in the past and present mistakenly think that, thanks to the power of expounding "this foremost dharma," mere night dreams may become like this dream of buddhas. Thinking like this, one has not yet clarified the Buddha's discourse. Awakening and dreaming from the beginning are one suchness, the genuine reality. The buddha-dharma, even if it were an analogy, is the genuine reality.

For Dogen, the particular events of this dream world are the reality, and also the skillful discourse, of the awakening of buddhas.

http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/Dog ... ource.html

[Rich]

Re: What does a good teacher see?

Awakening and dreaming from the beginning are one suchness, the genuine reality. The buddha-dharma, even if it were an analogy, is the genuine reality.[/i]

Thanks Jundo for explaining what a good teacher sees. I really liked the Leighten quote you quoted.