Great Doubt, or "The Question"

[galen]

Jundo.... I thought before I had joined these forums to post, I was just observing at the time, that I had read something to this idea you did not approve of this book. I had been visiting the site www.zenguide.com (I no longer visit, Chon Tri has been gone for quite some time, last I checked, and it seems a little weird now) at the time, and even though I read much Buddhism over the years, was all of a sudden interested in Zen. So at the time I had asked Chon Tri on that site, what books would he recommend and he said ZMBM by Suzuki and TPZ by Kaplin. So when I had seen you post this none approval, I had not actually read TPZ yet, was just finishing ZMBM, but was some what taken back. So I sat on that for a while and then thought, well I will read it for myself and decide what it had for me. I have read many depth books over 40 some years, and maybe the timing hit me just right as Zen beginner, but it knocked my socks off, blew me away. I loved its historical sense of the two main Japanese Zen sects. It mentions Dogen a lot, Shikantaza throughout, but most of all I really enjoyed ‘real’ writing exchanges between Westerner Zen students and Yasutani-Roshi. And also the real letters exchanged between students and Bassui, and the enlightenment path of a long exchange by a bed ridden young women and Yaeko Iwasaki, brilliant!

So after reading it and thinking it was pretty profound, and was confused why any student of Zen would not read it, esp if they were from the West, I could only come to one conclusion why this site is against such, and I think there is only a couple paragraphs that warn of newer Zen teachings and not to trust all Priests. But that did not stop me from being even more interested in Treeleaf instead of less, or any lesser of you or Taigu. I realize here you are making the case for its different case studies for Kensho and the more forceful way to enlightenment, as I like to characterize it, the path to enlightenment, or Kensho, done on steroids (its real cool for those who choose this very robust path, and cool to read and witness as a reader). But still do not get some of your fear about that for new students. You guys do a great job here, even if I have contested some, on making your case for this Dogenized Soto Zen. I feel that to take such a hard line against this book, when not leaving it to the reader as just a historical look on Zen tradition, and not letting things fall as they may, is an injustice, and still do not get your paranoia around this very insightful read, other then those couple paragraphs that could relate to you and this site of the chance of some charlatanism. If what you bring to fore stands up on its own to feet, then so be it. Your stance kind of reminds of the take Mormonism takes on their teachers, and thus students, at BYU; if read, write books and transcripts or stand for something outside their doctrine (no opens minds in this church, don’t go there) you are excommunicated or treated very harshly in public. That is fear and paranoia on steroids, and why many look at it as shallow cult.

I apologize to all in this forum and this site, for my on going poor phrasing and sometimes poor spelling. My old shoolism. just missed most the english part !

[RichardH]

Tricky thread.

The whole subject of Great Doubt and Kensho, has changed a lot for me. I understood it as cornering your self absolutely, completely, until trapped in impossibility, you die, .....and that has happened on the cushion.. but then ...presto!, born again. Maybe that is not “great death” but I have yet to meet another human being who is not always being born again.

Another way of looking at doubt involved realizing that the problem was not a fundamental existential question, or mystery.... “mystery” is a mcguffin. The problem is the basic feeling of incompleteness holding sway. Existential doubt and mystery are just a mental production of that basic feeling, and that is basically the First, Second and Third Noble Truths. Looking at Doubt means looking at the feeling, the very basic sense of incompleteness, being it unconditionally. Then the feeling , the doubt, the question, the answer, the mystery,... all of it .....is resolved. Not answered, just resolved, like a knot, in just sitting. Doubt is done...when reaching is done.

Also , the “kapow!” one time Big Enlightenement idea is I believe a matter of framing. Practice has no end, and no final state, that much is clear to me. Practice goes on, and there are plenty of “Ah” moments, some big some small.

This is my honest experience and view.

[Omoi Otoshi]

Another way of looking at doubt involved realizing that the problem was not a fundamental existential question, or mystery.... “mystery” is a mcguffin. The problem is the basic feeling of incompleteness holding sway. Existential doubt and mystery are just a mental production of that basic feeling, and that is basically the First, Second and Third Noble Truths. Looking at Doubt means looking at the feeling, the very basic sense of incompleteness, being it unconditionally. Then the feeling , the doubt, the question, the answer, the mystery,... all of it .....is resolved. Not answered, just resolved, like a knot, in just sitting. Doubt is done...when reaching is done.

Honest and insightful as always. Thank you Kojip, I loved reading that.

Gassho,
Pontus

[alan.r]

Honest and insightful as always. Thank you Kojip, I loved reading that.

Gassho,
Pontus

Me too. Right on, Kojip. Though, maybe not the mystery part. But everything else. I think mystery is kind of like awe, or, I don't know. I'll let Cormac say it:

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

[galen]

After searching 3PZ that Nindo referenced for `the question or great doubt, i went to their index, and their vocabulary and Buddhist doctrine section (which is very good) and all i could come up with (i am sure it appears else where, as Stephanie can point out) was The Great Question, referred to a priest student who was having trouble with kensho in using koan MO. As it appears here `the great question is used to get away from MO (when that is not working for the student) to a different context of asking the question Who am I, What am I, or What is it that hears (or who). It seems all these `great this and that, point to the Great Way or the Way of the Buddha..... or in easier and simpler terms, our true nature. It seems they wanted the student to stay totally in that realm in zazen 24/7 until this could be more resolved. I used some of these for some period of time and they are helpful keeping present and asking, who is present here (small mind or Big Mind), but most significant while sitting, and not, and sitting again and again..... It was helpful through out my day to keep me reminded where and who I `really Am, but i realize here that Jundo and Taigo would look at this as a goal and unnecessary and i can also understand that more and more.

As Kojip seems to point to, its not some existential outer thing (of course) or some metaphysical concept needing to be grasped, its just our true nature/Buddha nature. So simple, but we seem to make it so hard with all the brain farts and letting the ego do its thing in its small mindedness that keeps us all stuck.

[pinoybuddhist]

much to learn you still have, young Padawan Great story bro.


Raf

Anecdote:
A couple of weeks before starting my job in anesthesiology and intensive care, I was sitting around a table with some of my old colleages and the wife of one of the anesthesiology guys. I told her I was going to work with her husband and she said: "So you're going to work with that cocky bastard (her husband) and the rest of the cocky bastards!". "Yes, so it's a good thing I'm not so cocky." I said. *silence* "I'm not, am I..?" I said and looked at my former colleages. *silence* (moment of insight).

/Pontus

[Stephanie]

Who said anything about doubt as a means to an end - spiritual TNT for permanently blasting something apart?

And are there only the extremes of pressured, tense, explosive doubt and relaxed, mellow abiding?

There is a difference between a steady fire and a sudden, passing combustion.

Great Doubt has manifested in my life not in the form of some choreographed practice, but as a kind of energy, a humming wire, an unresolved chord... it is not an unpleasant angst, or a self-willed contraction. Quite the opposite... it is enlivening, a creative tension that keeps my practice going. Far from something that can be mastered, it, like love, is something that comes unbidden when the world has gone dark, when the trail has gone cold, to show me the way.

If anything, I have less of it now than I did before, and I want it to come back as I look for renewed inspiration in my practice. The problem for me is that, precisely as some folks here have described, many of my old questions have been answered or have simply faded away. And I have realized: I cannot manufacture new questions. I cannot manufacture the buzzing energy that sent me along my way in my college years. But I can connect to the embers still smoldering in my heart. I can ask, What is this? I can even ask, What is the question? The point is that questions that capture the energy of this Doubt cannot be answered or resolved. They change your attention, they invigorate the drowsy mind, they quiet the noise in the mind of that which is not keyed in to the very heart of this existence. They are like a musical phrase that at once seems to indicate exactly what is going on and to make everything more unfamiliar and mysterious.

Love and The Question connect me with what cannot die or be lost when the changes and losses of life leave a cold void in their wake. Just when I feel like my spirit has become frozen in ice, a Question comes along, or Love throws a line, and something stirs. When the path seems to have stopped, suddenly two trees appear with a gap between them, and there is a way to keep following.

In the Soto way, in Dogen's way, there is no end point to practice, not even temporarily. The blue mountains are walking. How can you get to the top of a mountain that is moving? You can try to hold on, I suppose; try not to get swept away in the river of loss, try to shield the tree from the autumn wind so the leaves will not fall. Yes, there is a stillness that pervades even the most chaotic environment, but we cannot stay in it. Even if we could find a perfectly still, unchanging environment to sit in, our bodies would age and die right out from under us.

So we must find a way to walk with the mountains and fall with the leaves, and it is not stillness. It is dynamic connection with and response to the world. We must keep walking down the path. And the question is, where do we walk? Do we walk where someone else has told us to walk? Or do we find our own way? And how do we do that? How do I trust myself, when I know how easily I can be fooled and swayed by the world, and my own thinking? It comes to light when a question comes, a real question, one that cannot be answered and won't go away, but that requires me to follow its contour and rhythm.

This well-known quote from Rilke comes to mind:

I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

[RichardH]

Me too. Right on, Kojip. Though, maybe not the mystery part. But everything else. I think mystery is kind of like awe, or, I don't know. I'll let Cormac say it:

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

Hi Alan. I guess the word “mystery” can mean different things. To me mystery is a reaching for hidden truth, born from reaching, made of reaching, and left hanging. With no reaching there is no dark corner, no behind, or hint of a behind , or a within, or a without, or a beyond. In negative language it is Cessation of Dukkha, in positive language I've always loved the term “Mahamudra” , which weirdly enough is no secret to painters..though not by that name. It is the body, mind, and world , of self-luminous self-same perfection, standing alone, with all shadow of mystery long long forgotten.

But.. this is talk from a painter after a good studio session, rather than a humble Buddhist student. So please don't take it too seriously.

[Jundo]

Your stance kind of reminds of the take Mormonism takes on their teachers, and thus students, at BYU; if read, write books and transcripts or stand for something outside their doctrine (no opens minds in this church, don’t go there) you are excommunicated or treated very harshly in public. That is fear and paranoia on steroids, and why many look at it as shallow cult.

Hi Galen,

I did underline in my posting ...

I do not particularly recommend it for us "Zen Farmers", although it might be good for the "warriors" ...

I am not being critical, and it is simply that our Soto way is different (same ... but different). I primarily provide this information because folks should know that there are very different approaches to Zen and Zazen, and not all "Zen" is of the same flavor (different ... but the same).

If wishing to master Aikido, one should not set out to do so by learning and practicing Karate ... nor someone's invented hybrid "Airate". One may learn about Karate a bit as another great way ... but realize that it is not Aikido if one wishes to learn Aikido. That does not mean, however, that Aikido is the best way for all people, nor that Karate and Airate are not also wonderful for people mastering those. I know they are, and many paths up the non-mountain mountain.

I haven't looked at the book for a couple of years, and will try to read it again.

Kapleau Roshi/TPZ is further discussed in these threads ...

SPECIAL READING - ONCE BORN TWICE BORN ZEN (Part 1)

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?6514-SPECIAL-READING-ONCE-BORN-TWICE-BORN-ZEN-%28Part-1%29

SPECIAL READING - (MORE) ONCE BORN TWICE BORN ZEN

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?6539-SPECIAL-READING-%28MORE%29-ONCE-BORN-TWICE-BORN-ZEN

Another way of looking at doubt involved realizing that the problem was not a fundamental existential question, or mystery.... “mystery” is a mcguffin. The problem is the basic feeling of incompleteness holding sway. Existential doubt and mystery are just a mental production of that basic feeling, and that is basically the First, Second and Third Noble Truths. Looking at Doubt means looking at the feeling, the very basic sense of incompleteness, being it unconditionally. Then the feeling , the doubt, the question, the answer, the mystery,... all of it .....is resolved. Not answered, just resolved, like a knot, in just sitting. Doubt is done...when reaching is done.

Also , the “kapow!” one time Big Enlightenement idea is I believe a matter of framing. Practice has no end, and no final state, that much is clear to me. Practice goes on, and there are plenty of “Ah” moments, some big some small.

PLEASE, EVERYONE, READ THE ABOVE WORDS THREE TIMES, AND THREE TIMES AGAIN.

... Though, maybe not the mystery part. But everything else. I think mystery is kind of like awe ...

I think this is so too, at least for me. Great Awe.

Gassho, J

[Stephanie]

Ah, I have a very different sense of what the word "mystery" refers to, kojip. For me, "mystery" is a quality in things or situations I encounter that points to something that my left brain could never define, but that connects with some quality of knowing that occurs in a different modality. I mean, sure, there is the "mystery" of a detective story that is an answer waiting to be found; but then there is the mystery of a David Lynch movie, full of "clues" that are empty signifiers, pointing to some dark reality that you can feel but can't fully explain. "The owls are not what they seem..."

[Jundo]

In the Soto way, in Dogen's way, there is no end point to practice, not even temporarily. The blue mountains are walking. How can you get to the top of a mountain that is moving? You can try to hold on, I suppose; try not to get swept away in the river of loss, try to shield the tree from the autumn wind so the leaves will not fall. Yes, there is a stillness that pervades even the most chaotic environment, but we cannot stay in it. Even if we could find a perfectly still, unchanging environment to sit in, our bodies would age and die right out from under us.

So we must find a way to walk with the mountains and fall with the leaves, and it is not stillness. It is dynamic connection with and response to the world. We must keep walking down the path.

This is exactly right, Stephanie. Beautifully expressed. Our way of Stillness is both moving and still, rarely staying and standing still. It is the Peaceful that's so Full of Life that it need -not- always feel peaceful.

And the question is, where do we walk? Do we walk where someone else has told us to walk? Or do we find our own way? And how do we do that? How do I trust myself, when I know how easily I can be fooled and swayed by the world, and my own thinking? It comes to light when a question comes, a real question, one that cannot be answered and won't go away, but that requires me to follow its contour and rhythm.

If that feels right for you, then do that. You are the best and ultimate judge as to whether some way of being is fruitful or a dead end. Like a doctor prescribing medicines, if one cure does not work ... try a different medicine. If a dosage works, drink that.

Gassho, J

[disastermouse]

This is such an interesting conversation! Pontus proves me completely wrong and finally there's a clarification that Great Doubt isn't the same as 'Kensho or Bust' pressure cooker sitting. I think of the proper attitude a bit like 'leaning into' the practice. Too much driving is suspicious. Too much relaxing is also suspicious.

And this thread shows how great this community is!

Chet

[disastermouse]

Clarification: I'm hardly an expert or anything. When I say 'the proper attitude', I'm speaking only of my own practice.

Chet

[Jundo]

I think of the proper attitude a bit like 'leaning into' the practice. Too much driving is suspicious. Too much relaxing is also suspicious.

That sounds in tune to me. I often repeat the story of Buddha, Sona and the Lute Strings ...

[The Buddha said], "Sona, you were a musician and you used to play the lute. Tell me, Sona, did you produce good music when the lute string was well tuned, neither too tight nor too loose?"

"I was able to produce good music, Lord," replied Sona.

"What happened when the strings were too tightly wound up?"

"I could not produce any music, Lord," said Sona.

"What happened when the strings were too slack?"

"I could not produce any music at all, Lord," replied Sona

"Sona ... You have been straining too hard in your meditation. Do it in a relaxed way, but without being slack. Try it again and you will experience the good result."

Gassho, J

[Jinyo]

Brilliant thread - thanks for starting this discussion Stephanie.

Gassho

Willow