|
ZEN
HANNYA
SHINGYÔ | SHO DO KA |
SUGGESTED BOOKS ON ZEN | LINKS
ZEN
Zen
can never be seen as a means or as an end, as it is beyond
such concepts and volitions. However one cannot deny its value
inside an Initiatic path. It balances and puts into perspective
the various degrees of the path, it calms the Initiate's soul,
it is like an oasis that refreshes in a profound and essential
manner. The Initiate, as he progresses, becomes anxious, his
imagination becomes extravagant, he's obnubilated by the profoundness
and by the numinous force of the guessed destination... Zen
teaches us how it is not this final station that is existentially
important, but the whole process, the Path itself. Follow
this intuition!
Beyond and above all desire lies a serene absence of desire
and attachment, a longing, an un-longing, a going beyond wanting
and not wanting, just sitting down and concentrating in the
present moment, here and now, without any spirit of profit
or gain (mushotoku). With time, it will be clearer
to you how the world is a flux of Essence-less existences,
how chimerical the idea of Being is, how only perpetual Becoming
exists... But remember this: never expect anything from
zazen, as it is not an activity but the only "activity",
forever existing independent of our knowing... Zazen
is Reality itself, right now!
back
SHIN
JIN MEI - Poem on the Faith in Zazen, by Master
Sozan (died 606 CE)
(first 10 lines, Deshimaru version)
The real Way, the essence of the Way, is not difficult, but
we should not specially like it or choose.
If
we do not like or dislike, the Way appears clearly, like the
entrance of a cave on the mountain's side.
If
a difference of the size of an atom is created, immediately
an infinite distance will separe heaven and earth.
To
attain enlightenment here and now, we should free ourselves
from the idea of right and wrong.
When
right and wrong battle, the spirit is sick.
If
we do not know the deepness of the origin, our mind tires.
The
true Way is like the infinite cosmos, it lacks nothing and
nothing is superfluous to it.
Addicted
to gain or loss, we are not free.
Do
not run after phenomena, do not linger on emptiness.
If
our spirit stays calm and serene, in its original state, it
will disappear naturally and spontaneously like in sleep.
back
Zen
reminds us of the great despised possibility that was Heraclitus
to the West, Heraclitus the Obscure who ended up obscured
by Plato and Aristotle, great thinkers of the equivocal notion
of Being and founders of what came to be our Western philosophical
tradition...
back
Compassion.
Real compassion, not the one that comes from some inconstant
sentimentality, derives from the clear perception that our
I am happens to be situated in this specific body (our
body) by what seems to be some Cosmic aleatory caprice. There
does not seem to exist any (cosmic or human) Justice in this
particular fact. At the most basic level, where each individual's
specific personality does not matter, we are all identical
copies of a same I am, of a same Presence. A Presence
that is not even specifically human...
The
intellectual acknowledgement of this fact might be banal,
but it should not be apprehended in this way. Mingle yourself
physically with the daily mass of people in the streets of
a big city and live this fact with every fibre of your
being, feel how you could in fact be anyone
of these people... You could be anyone of them for on a deeper
level you are each one of them simultaneously, you
are a solitary and profoundly alienated particle of the Universal
I am.
back
This
story aims at a very precise point of the practice. Should
you truly understand it it, it will subtly influence your
life in a general way. Deshimaru relates the dialogue in the
following way (L'Esprit du Ch'an, ed. Albin Michel,
pp. 49-50):
Yakusan
was practicing zazen alone in the dojo; his
master, Sekito, entered the room and asked: "What are
you doing?"
He answered: "I'm practicing 'doing nothing'".
- In this case, why are you seated? asked the Master. Yes,
I understand, you are "doing nothing". Well, then
why don't you "do nothing"? You, Yakusan, you say
"I do nothing". But what does it mean to do something,
what does it mean to do nothing?"
Yakusan answered: "Even ten thousand sages cannot understand
it, Master. Neither can the Buddha."
After this, the Master transmitted the shiho to his
disciple.
back
If you have arrived this far, dear curious reader, perhaps you might be interested in the following note.
While Buddhism and Zen are a respectable Path for the masses endowed with a slave morality, the Dao and Daoism are the respectable and select Way for a discreet elite endowed with a master morality.
They are respectively the exotericism and the esotericism of the Meditative Path.
Alchemy and its Stone or Pill is one sole thing in our entire planet. Differences are due to the outer or inner instruments. There is a natural transition from external to internal techniques. This perception is clearer as a civilization gets older and remains uninterrupted.
If it be your Destiny, search for this Virtue and this Way.
Lü Tung-Pin
|
The Eight Immortals
|
back
Transcendental Meditation. It can be felt as a watery thing that keeps expanding more and more vertically/depth-wise (during the practice) and horizontally-wise (during the rest of the day)... a pervading thing/feeling... as if one was dropping Prussian Blue ink on translucid water... the colour expanding vertically and horizontally in the water...
back
Phenomenological observations on one's own TM practice. As one continues his Transcendental Meditation practice, he feels as if he is (very) gradually enlarging a watery container so it is able to contain more and more of this 'meditative water'... it's just a feeling, hard to put into words but easier expressed in imagery... perhaps Gaston Bachelard would be perfect for this kind of task (of putting this into words-images)...
Water... It reminds us of one of Notre-Dame's portico bas-reliefs... The one about the 'waters above' that Genesis refers to, a female figure with a ladder on her and with her head half-immersed in 'the waters above'... Fulcanelli thought she stood for Alchimia... this 'water above' (on brain level, or upper-chakra level) reminds us very much of TM practice...
SUGGESTED READING
• Peter Russell. The TM technique. London, Elf Rock Productions, 2002. Originally published in 1976, it’s the classic treatise on the subject from a scientific viewpoint.
• David Lynch. Catching the Big Fish : meditation, consciousness, and creativity. New York, Tarcher/Penguin, 2006. An informal and intuitive talk on the subject by film director D. Lynch. Very interesting.
• Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Science of Being and Art of Living. Plume/Penguin, 2001. Classic.
• Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Bhagavad-Gita Chapters 1-6. Arkana/Penguin, 1990. Classic.
LINK
• Dr Orme-Johnson’s site. Very informative.
back
It's so interesting to observe the physiology of meditation... Even when the mind is very unruly and dispersed, as soon as the sitting ends the brain area and the whole body feels the effects of meditation...
As if the meditative process (in physiological terms) occurs no matter if our mind is tuned to it or not during the session - of course, when the mind plunges deep into it the effect seems to be much much stronger...
Unchartered territory (in neurological terms)... this phenomenon seems to validate the Alchemical analogy, as it suggests structural/hardware change. A Work (Opus) is seemingly at work.
back
Deepening our practice. One of the results one can experience is a persistent feeling of déjà vu... as if we could step for some moments out of time and see our actions from this point of view. Let’s hope that’s not the onset of some neurological disorder...
P. D. Ouspensky (and Nietzsche too) liked this idea of Circular Time, as if we did forever the same actions throughout Eternity, repeating them over and over again...
Nietzsche deduced from this his Stoic notion of Amor Fati, to intensely love each moment and action as we would be repeating them anyway throughout Eternity - a Life-affirming gesture.
Ouspensky, on the other hand, thought that real freedom would only begin when we could step out of this Wheel and then be able to consciously change our lives and actions (which he saw as unconscious or automatic, following his mentor Gurdjieff).
So what is this déjà vu sensation that we sometimes experience after attaining a certain level of practice in Meditation ?
Our guess would be towards a slightly different metaphysical explanation, more in tune with Muslim fatalism : this déjà vu may be a glimpse of our inexorable actions during this lifetime, written since the beginning of Time in the Book of Life...
back
Happiness. The greater and more lasting Happiness resides in knowing Mind through Meditation... and this Happiness then expands to our daily activities... It’s something you will taste through your practice.
back
Q : I see that you practice TM. Can you talk about that practice? What are the results? Do you ever get bored with it and want to change to something else? I need variety, so I change meditations.
A : As our TM practice gets deeper there's really little we can say abt it - it just is. A bit like when you go deeper in Zazen... seems like diving within, deeper and deeper, towards the seabed... I remember a Zen master saying that when Zazen is done properly it's "nothing special"... TM seems like that.
At the same time it's the most incredible experience in one’s personal world. Gaining lucidity, perhaps ? Presence ? Just "being here and now" ? All and none of the above. It just is.
Heidegger's Phenomenology could help, perhaps... TM seems to get us near Being/God/Absolute, the Grund of Existence. The scent of Being as Apeiron, the Limitless, where we originated from and where we're heading to (as Anaximander would put it). Using the images of the Hinduist Pantheon we could say that it gets us nearer to the three aspects of Being : the Creator, the Sustainer and the Destroyer...
So, at this level, there is no variety. We don't deny our need for variety, but at least for us we get enough variety in the relative world (space/time, senses, ideation, etc) - there does not seem to be variety at this specific level.... perhaps only in the sense of a 'getting closer or distancing oneself' from the awareness of Being.
back
The finger and the Moon. To paraphrase Hui Neng, Zen’s 6th Patriarch, do not look at the finger pointing to the Moon - but look at the Moon itself... that is, don't mistake the discursive, verbal maps for the real territory... how difficult it is to speak about Meditation - we end up having to translate a wholistic activity into a left-hemisphere mental ramble, faute de mieux... So my final advice is : go for the Real Thing.
back
The Roots of Reality. At a certain level of our Meditation practice we discover that we can play with any emotion at will. As soon as we decide to feel x or y, our body immediately responds to that. We can try anger, grief, joy, power, lack of power, or any other. We can then actually feel the body 'act' those emotions on itself...
That makes us think about how we create our subjective (and objective) realities...
back
|
