Devadatta
Well-Known Member
A starting koan:
Costello: Who's playing first?
Abbott: That's right.
Another bit:
Everything returns to the one. Where does the one return to?
I’ve heard some orthodox Buddhists say that the whole edifice of Buddhism rests on the foundation of karma & rebirth. Others have pointed out that it’s much simpler than that. Underlying even the Four Noble Truths is the observation that reality is constant flux. You can’t step into the same river twice, as Heraclitus said. Both words “constant” and “flux” or change are telling. Deeply realizing this flux is to realize its constancy. Realizing this constancy is to realize complete stability and security from change – without recognizing anything stable.
That’s where the trouble starts.
The whole gambit of non-self results from nothing more complicated than the fact that a defining feature of a metaphysical “self” was thought to be exemption from the flux i.e., being not subject to change. Since everything in the Buddhist view is subject to change, this kind of self cannot be asserted.
It could be said that the fact of change is the anxiety underlying all religious thinking, against which such thinking erects the outward forms of mighty metaphysical castles in the air.
But as Zen would have it, Why add a head to the one you already have?
Some Upanishadic thinkers arrived at the formula: Atman (individual soul) is identical with Brahman (the Godhead, or God without attributes). But what’s in a name?
The distinguishing feature of Buddhism, which both the tradition and its opponents recognized very early on, is that it refuses to erect metaphysical structures. It doesn’t campaign against them as idolatry or say they’re wrong in some absolute sense, but only that ultimately they obscure the view.
All views obscure the view.
All major traditions have an inward track that says roughly the same thing, while outwardly they can offer much comfort, or lead you on a merry chase, depending on your state of mind.
In that sense, Buddhism only differs in putting the inward track up front and in advertising this track on its marquee.
Buddhism will also lead you on a merry chase.
There’s no avoiding a merry chase, thank God.
The metaphysical won’t go away. It keeps lurking. Why? Because constant flux is easy to understand but impossible to realize.
Realizing its impossibility is the path to its realization, says the Diamond Sutra.
Even one of the latest sutras in the Buddhist canon (according to modern scholarship), the Mahaparinirvana, rounds back on an uppercase “Self”, though hedged about with Buddhist qualifications.
Much more recently, Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote an article called “Like a fire unbound”, where he points out the metaphorical background of nibbana. In India, an extinct fire wasn’t simply non-existent but passed back into a state of potentiality. It was “unbound”. Upanishadic thinkers called this the passing from self to Self.
Is it just a matter of some call it Smith and some call it Smyth?
Zen is a trick of words, says Zen, speaking of Zen.
Thanissaro is careful to note that Buddhists would only assert unboundedness, or at most freedom. After all, there must be an unconditioned, or there would be no escape from the conditioned, goes the sutta. And that’s where a proper Buddhist should stop.
If you don’t name it, it will disappear.
So there.
But the Self just keeps coming back, like that uncle whom you love but who in the end is just too much.
I mean, he won’t stop giving you advice.
Even now, the warmer & fuzzier of Western Buddhists talk about Self because it seems more cozy.
Actually, the Self, like Sunyata, like Ein Sof, like all the non-dual gambits in their most abstract forms, isn’t as cozy as it seems.
Now, you and I, we’re cozy.
Without ordinary people, buddhas are like the children of a barren woman.
Meanwhile, the hard-asses among us return again and again to the willow switch of non-self.
That’ll larn ‘em.
Are you afraid of birth & death?
Sunyata is non-self writ large. Emptiness is the inadequate translation.
Everything must be felt-tipped marked with emptiness because we are so badly ignorant. We’re not yet the right kind of children for the Kingdom.
Chanting is like writing on the blackboard a million times, I will not pull Suzie’s hair ever again.
That would be Suzie Creamcheese.
That’s not to say it doesn’t work.
Everything marked with emptiness is thought to be emptiness. That’s what we’re like. Don’t blame it on reason. So emptiness must be emptied. Otherwise, it becomes full without the benefits we usually get from fullness.
It becomes full of b.s. It becomes b.s.
Nagarjuna preferred to talk about wrongly handled snakes, but I’m not so tasteful.
What is the emptiness of emptiness?
What does the one return to?
It’s said that Bodhisattvas forego entry into final nirvana for the sake of all sentient beings. Really, there is no other place they’d rather be.
At a certain point, asserting non-self is worse than asserting Self and even worse than asserting self, that unregenerate Adam.
We call ourselves non-selves over cocktails and we titter.
Say I write or speak as a non-self. This non-self would be the same as your non-self and we would all wear the same saffron-coloured baseball caps, like good little monks. Of course our non-selves cannot resemble one another, being without characteristics and all. But our hats would give us away.
A non-self is a light-headed head added to the head I already have, which is light enough as it is.
I’m best to write & speak as myself, which can’t be found, and so is really no trouble at all.
Take two selves if you like, they’re small.
The emptiness of emptiness is a return to your old neighbourhood, without improvements.
Emptiness is not unconditioned. Emptiness is conditioned by and interdependent with your neighbourhood. Unlike metaphysics & concepts, your neighbourhoods offer no obstruction. They offer themselves up without shame.
And there’s a lot to do. But no worries. Doing is all you have to do. Forget about being.
Yet the improvements have already been made. See the Brahmajala Sutta, by tradition first in the canon. You’ve already become a fine human being. This part of the path is not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about what comes after.
Still, it’s nice to see that the streets are in the same state of disrepair, and that the old rusty Buick is still abandoned in that empty lot.
These things only make it easier to turn them into Kingdoms or Buddafields, which is the joyful work we all have to do.
I hope one day to become a fine human being.
I can only talk about these things because I don’t know what I’m talking about.
We have some great neighbourhoods. It’s no wonder that bodhisattvas can’t tear themselves away. They see the potential.
The West offers a great & dangerous gift, built on the backs of Jews, Greeks, Romans, the X factor of Jesus, Celtic headhunters and gnarly Saxons. Built up by so many hands, it’s the property of no one.
It’s misnamed Western Individualism, and it’s created a lot of static, junk and even mayhem. But it’s also introduced a new flexibility and depth of self that’s still so new that no one yet understands it.
The Lotus Sutra will be re-written in the West with the same countless bodhisattvas & buddhas but with more individual distinctions, so that you’ll remember and think about more than just a few, the way you now remember Shakespeare, Freud, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Zeppo Marx, Hitler, Donald Duck, Santa Claus & the Cheshire Cat.
Suffering, its escape and the path to its escape are here, in this fathom-long body.
The Kingdom of Heaven, the Western Paradise and innumerable Buddhafields are here, in this fathom-long body.
(Note to Vajra: hope you don’t mind the aphoristic style; I found it congenial and also it saves me from being even more hopelessly long-winded. And yes, I see the irony of my signature!)
Costello: Who's playing first?
Abbott: That's right.
Another bit:
Everything returns to the one. Where does the one return to?
I’ve heard some orthodox Buddhists say that the whole edifice of Buddhism rests on the foundation of karma & rebirth. Others have pointed out that it’s much simpler than that. Underlying even the Four Noble Truths is the observation that reality is constant flux. You can’t step into the same river twice, as Heraclitus said. Both words “constant” and “flux” or change are telling. Deeply realizing this flux is to realize its constancy. Realizing this constancy is to realize complete stability and security from change – without recognizing anything stable.
That’s where the trouble starts.
The whole gambit of non-self results from nothing more complicated than the fact that a defining feature of a metaphysical “self” was thought to be exemption from the flux i.e., being not subject to change. Since everything in the Buddhist view is subject to change, this kind of self cannot be asserted.
It could be said that the fact of change is the anxiety underlying all religious thinking, against which such thinking erects the outward forms of mighty metaphysical castles in the air.
But as Zen would have it, Why add a head to the one you already have?
Some Upanishadic thinkers arrived at the formula: Atman (individual soul) is identical with Brahman (the Godhead, or God without attributes). But what’s in a name?
The distinguishing feature of Buddhism, which both the tradition and its opponents recognized very early on, is that it refuses to erect metaphysical structures. It doesn’t campaign against them as idolatry or say they’re wrong in some absolute sense, but only that ultimately they obscure the view.
All views obscure the view.
All major traditions have an inward track that says roughly the same thing, while outwardly they can offer much comfort, or lead you on a merry chase, depending on your state of mind.
In that sense, Buddhism only differs in putting the inward track up front and in advertising this track on its marquee.
Buddhism will also lead you on a merry chase.
There’s no avoiding a merry chase, thank God.
The metaphysical won’t go away. It keeps lurking. Why? Because constant flux is easy to understand but impossible to realize.
Realizing its impossibility is the path to its realization, says the Diamond Sutra.
Even one of the latest sutras in the Buddhist canon (according to modern scholarship), the Mahaparinirvana, rounds back on an uppercase “Self”, though hedged about with Buddhist qualifications.
Much more recently, Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote an article called “Like a fire unbound”, where he points out the metaphorical background of nibbana. In India, an extinct fire wasn’t simply non-existent but passed back into a state of potentiality. It was “unbound”. Upanishadic thinkers called this the passing from self to Self.
Is it just a matter of some call it Smith and some call it Smyth?
Zen is a trick of words, says Zen, speaking of Zen.
Thanissaro is careful to note that Buddhists would only assert unboundedness, or at most freedom. After all, there must be an unconditioned, or there would be no escape from the conditioned, goes the sutta. And that’s where a proper Buddhist should stop.
If you don’t name it, it will disappear.
So there.
But the Self just keeps coming back, like that uncle whom you love but who in the end is just too much.
I mean, he won’t stop giving you advice.
Even now, the warmer & fuzzier of Western Buddhists talk about Self because it seems more cozy.
Actually, the Self, like Sunyata, like Ein Sof, like all the non-dual gambits in their most abstract forms, isn’t as cozy as it seems.
Now, you and I, we’re cozy.
Without ordinary people, buddhas are like the children of a barren woman.
Meanwhile, the hard-asses among us return again and again to the willow switch of non-self.
That’ll larn ‘em.
Are you afraid of birth & death?
Sunyata is non-self writ large. Emptiness is the inadequate translation.
Everything must be felt-tipped marked with emptiness because we are so badly ignorant. We’re not yet the right kind of children for the Kingdom.
Chanting is like writing on the blackboard a million times, I will not pull Suzie’s hair ever again.
That would be Suzie Creamcheese.
That’s not to say it doesn’t work.
Everything marked with emptiness is thought to be emptiness. That’s what we’re like. Don’t blame it on reason. So emptiness must be emptied. Otherwise, it becomes full without the benefits we usually get from fullness.
It becomes full of b.s. It becomes b.s.
Nagarjuna preferred to talk about wrongly handled snakes, but I’m not so tasteful.
What is the emptiness of emptiness?
What does the one return to?
It’s said that Bodhisattvas forego entry into final nirvana for the sake of all sentient beings. Really, there is no other place they’d rather be.
At a certain point, asserting non-self is worse than asserting Self and even worse than asserting self, that unregenerate Adam.
We call ourselves non-selves over cocktails and we titter.
Say I write or speak as a non-self. This non-self would be the same as your non-self and we would all wear the same saffron-coloured baseball caps, like good little monks. Of course our non-selves cannot resemble one another, being without characteristics and all. But our hats would give us away.
A non-self is a light-headed head added to the head I already have, which is light enough as it is.
I’m best to write & speak as myself, which can’t be found, and so is really no trouble at all.
Take two selves if you like, they’re small.
The emptiness of emptiness is a return to your old neighbourhood, without improvements.
Emptiness is not unconditioned. Emptiness is conditioned by and interdependent with your neighbourhood. Unlike metaphysics & concepts, your neighbourhoods offer no obstruction. They offer themselves up without shame.
And there’s a lot to do. But no worries. Doing is all you have to do. Forget about being.
Yet the improvements have already been made. See the Brahmajala Sutta, by tradition first in the canon. You’ve already become a fine human being. This part of the path is not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about what comes after.
Still, it’s nice to see that the streets are in the same state of disrepair, and that the old rusty Buick is still abandoned in that empty lot.
These things only make it easier to turn them into Kingdoms or Buddafields, which is the joyful work we all have to do.
I hope one day to become a fine human being.
I can only talk about these things because I don’t know what I’m talking about.
We have some great neighbourhoods. It’s no wonder that bodhisattvas can’t tear themselves away. They see the potential.
The West offers a great & dangerous gift, built on the backs of Jews, Greeks, Romans, the X factor of Jesus, Celtic headhunters and gnarly Saxons. Built up by so many hands, it’s the property of no one.
It’s misnamed Western Individualism, and it’s created a lot of static, junk and even mayhem. But it’s also introduced a new flexibility and depth of self that’s still so new that no one yet understands it.
The Lotus Sutra will be re-written in the West with the same countless bodhisattvas & buddhas but with more individual distinctions, so that you’ll remember and think about more than just a few, the way you now remember Shakespeare, Freud, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Zeppo Marx, Hitler, Donald Duck, Santa Claus & the Cheshire Cat.
Suffering, its escape and the path to its escape are here, in this fathom-long body.
The Kingdom of Heaven, the Western Paradise and innumerable Buddhafields are here, in this fathom-long body.
(Note to Vajra: hope you don’t mind the aphoristic style; I found it congenial and also it saves me from being even more hopelessly long-winded. And yes, I see the irony of my signature!)
Zen is full of the "oneness" of paradoxical thinking. So here's a paradoxical observation of mine which might relate to what you said about "Western" individualism & the "self" of "non-self," (or vice versa). It seems the most interesting, "self"-assured poeple to be around are those you feel no need to assure themselves of a firm self-image; i.e., those who do not concern themselves with "self," having grown beyond those concerns (as opposed to those who have not grown enough and are unconcerned simply because they're oblivious to their own self-created difficulties). In Jungian thought, the epitomy of "self-development" was the term "individuation." To truly become an "individual" means/meant to Jungians that one has explored and integrated all nooks and crannies of their psyche to such a point that they have enabled themselves to become their "true Self." The irony/paradox about that iis that process implied that to achieve it one had to be sufficiently unattached to the various facets of one's psyche to enable the awareness and unfolding process to emerge; i.e. you have to be "self-less" to some degree to find a "Self." Of course, they also would tend to agree with their pschoanalytic cousins that development of a human psyche always involves the initial development of the basic ego/self structures that later require a process of relativization to enable that "non-self/self-development" process to unfold-early life as in-"corporating"/in-"forming"; later life as "letting go" of some of the rigidity of the structures built. The necessity of the first developmental phase is such that that is typically why among other reasons you're not going to engage children well in the meditative journey of adults. Weel nuff said by me for now. I'll probably chime in again later. Thanks for the musings D. Earl