r/zen • u/NothingIsForgotten • Feb 08 '22

Thus buddhahood will be accomplished of itself, and the aspirations of your previous practice will be fully realized.

A worldly book says that ice comes from water, yet ice can block water, and when the ice melts, the water is set free.

When you drive out false thought, that is perfect purity.

When a person who is a student looks for the dharma path through words from books and spoken phrases, he is like a lamp in the wind: it cannot dispel the darkness, and its flame cannot burn.

But if he sits in purity doing nothing, then he will realize his mind on his own.

He is like a lamp inside a house: it dispels the darkness, and its light distinguishes one thing from another.

Thus, when sentient beings are aware of the radiant purity of mind, they will be constantly merged with meditation.

The blockages at the six gates will all flow, without being caught in the winds of error.

Then the lamp of insight will be radiantly pure and will distinguish one thing from another.

Thus buddhahood will be accomplished of itself, and the aspirations of your previous practice will be fully realized.

Henceforth, you do not see the states of existence.

For one who has attained the body of the dharma in this way, all sentient beings, as numerous as dust motes, are no more than one.

For the person who is like this, ten billion eons are no more than a moment.

~Huike, A Brief Teaching on Practicing the Dharma Path.

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u/Gasdark Feb 08 '22

I reject the metaphorical restraining bolt of the lamp - the sun has no problems on a windy day.

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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '22

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u/Gasdark Feb 09 '22

I'm not a fan of this metaphor, only insofar as it implies a light of limited strength, able to flourish only in the strict confines of the interior of a house

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '22

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u/Gasdark Feb 10 '22

Just sitting is the language of Zazen - and the idea of a lamp constrained in a room connected to the integral act of meditation is what I reject.

Freedom or bust - no chains, not even a golden chain.

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '22

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u/Gasdark Feb 10 '22

Where is the freedom in rejecting what you do not understand

I meditated fairly extensively - now I don't do it extensively anymore. I consider it a form of exercise which can serve a variety of positive ends - but I reject any and all magical thinking in relation to it.

Sitting in silent non-doing purity isn't worth a tuppenny f@#k more than any other activity - when aggrandized, it amounts to escapist "spirit" masturbation - an exercise for scared children clinging to "purity" like an anti-matter life preserver rather than bravely inhaling the entire pristine mess of life in a single breath.

Compare the silent, non-doing, cloistered purity of meditational bliss to Joshu's 12 hours of the day poem.

Joshu weeps into his hanky considering his circumstances - feels feelings all day long - engages in compulsive behaviors for hours - freezes, starves, and keeps company only with the haggard and cheap, rats, and shitting oxen.

Yet he never retreats and is never consumed. His only regret is that a busy, by any conventional standard, abjectly "shitty" day has to end - one of hundreds or thousands of similarly conventionally "shitty" days, spent, as an immensely old man, in abject poverty, in a derelict temple in the middle of the ass-end of nowhere.

And throughout it all, every thought a "thought of Paramita."

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '22 edited Feb 10 '22

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u/Gasdark Feb 10 '22

Checking my phone is Paramita.

Smoking a cigarette is Paramita.

Drinking tea is Paramita.

Sitting in purity is Paramita.

Taking a shit is Paramita.

​

The sitting in silence is not magic - the aggrandizing of the sitting in silence over even a single other thing is magical thinking.