Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

..

        The moon floats above the pines,

        And the night veranda is cold

        As the ancient, clear sound comes from
           your finger tips.

        The old melody usually makes the listeners weep,
        But Zen music is beyond sentiment.

        Do not play unless the Great Sound of Lao-tsu
           accompanies you.

            ~ Hsueh-tou (980-1052)

Last edited by edosan (2006-08-28 11:28:37)

...


      Not likely either group were there about the enjoyment...

Hunger and satisfaction -- both illusions.

Karmajampa wrote:

Okay Darren, we'll put you in the sensory deprivation chamber for a couple of days, see if you still feel the same.

How I feel won't change the nature of things.  But I'm game for the chamber anyways...  Where do I sign up? 

sigwada wrote:

The key word is blessed (makarios) . By ourselves alone our mind can only see  up to illusions.

I understand that my mind itself is in the realm of illusions, so it can really only experience illusions.  But "blessed are..." expressions confuse me.  They seem presumptuous or discriminatory, or draw intellectual lines at the very least.  I believe that if the state of being blessed exists, then all is blessed and all is not.

-Darren.

Karmajampa wrote:

A new-born baby latches onto its mothers lactic nipple because it is hungry, after sucking down nourishment it is satisfied. What is illusory about that ?

In this case, there is a gap or distortion between reality (the baby latching) and your intellectual construct of when and why it is happens.  Your mind lives in your model.  The baby lives in its latching.  They are not the same.  The latching is real and it can happen for many reasons.  The idea of hunger is of our own making and we all have our version of it.  And even if our mind's model of the world is basically sound, it's pale compared to reality.  More distortion.  This is the source of illusion.

It's probably very useful (essential?) to live in our minds' constructs sometimes.  This lets us (attempt to) share our realities.  It also creates problems.  So let's call it what it is -- an illusion that's sometimes wrong and usually pale and always colored by how we were trained and cultured. 

Otherwise, we risk taking our models of the world (such as hunger or satisfaction) too seriously, as if they were real.  But they're only smart models and labels.

All beings live by nourishment, material and intellectual communion.
I don't see this as illusion, I see it as life itself.

I like your model.  The fact that you preface with "I see this as..." emphasizes the important part: it is a model in your mind and subject to perception.

And on that note, I must recognize that my response here is a very intellectual construct and likely to be very flawed.  :-)

-Darren.

The opposite is also true...
What are you referring to Ed ?

I think we confuse the organism with 'self' sometimes, and as such, 'self' is a construct of 'mind' and 'mind' a construct of consciousness in the effort of the questioning intellect to understand, ultimately to survive and reproduce.
'Survive and reproduce' can be applied to all life, consciousness may be another matter. My flow chart is something like this,...direct experience happens through the senses, it is filtered through the feelings of the sub-conscious, then the conscious mind uses intelligence and memory to 'name' the world around it. There is even embellishment into language and imagery. Without the filtering of 'feelings' in the sub-conscious the mind would be over-whelmed with data. Without the identifying of sensations the conscious mind would be a disorderly chaos. Both of these situations would result in the inability of the organism to either survive or reproduce.
The role models the child has will influence their ability to function well within society's conditionings, sane or mad.
All this processing by the organism uses the unconscious state of 'dreaming' to organise and resolve.

"To sleep, to Dream".

Perhaps the Path of Enlightenment involves the discriminating between what is 'direct experience' and what is 'reaction for social approval'.

Where does the hole go when the doughnut is eaten, nowhere, the hole is still there !

Kel.    §

...


Falling Flowers

Subhuti was Buddha’s disciple. He was able to understand the potency of emptiness, the viewpoint that nothing exists except in its relationship of subjectivity and objectivity.

One day Subhuti, in a mood of sublime emptiness, was sitting under a tree. Flowers began to fall about him.

“We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness,” the gods whispered to him.

“But I have not spoken of emptiness,” said Subhuti.

“You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness,” responded the gods. “This is true emptiness.” And blossoms showered upon Subhuto as rain.


...

Emptiness, Sunyata, the void
A state absent of all conceptual views.
Emptiness is the essential state from which all phenomena arise. Form and Emptiness are inseparable, "Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form".

Enlightenment has no height or depth, all measurements are finite views.

The task at hand, bhikku, should you take it up, is to come to the unlimited view, to consciously experience the union you are already in.

The important question is, what causes the enlightenment thought to come to fulfillment ?

Kel      §

Nice one, John. :-)

Anyone go on other Zen forums? Have you noticed how so many threads on them decend into people trying to out-do each other by composing 'zen-ier than thou' one liners?

I have trouble enough arguing with my 'self' re. emptiness. 

I'd rather read the old testament than egoistic 'transcendental' twaddle.

I suppose it could be worse: we could all be sea slugs, and type very slowly.

Regards,

Harry.

It is experienced rather than conceptualized. For instance, we all experience moments of 'absorbtion', of varying depths and resulting good feelings. During these moments or periods we are not thinking about how absorbed we are in the activity, only after we come out of that absorbtion might we reflect on it.
My understanding is that this is Emptiness, there is union with the experience, the Ego is not making comparisons, resulting blissful feelings arise.
The absorbtion occurs during any activity, making music, painting, washing dishes, any wholesome activity. When we are 'present' with what is happning, focussed, concentrated and calm. We are not thinking about being somewhere else or what we were doing yesterday. There is no 'self' dialogue.

There are associated bliss feelings and hormonal, chemical shifts in our metabolism. There may also be associated experiences such as what we call 'koan', "the sound of one hand clapping", "blossoms showering as rain". This is a direct experience of the body, not the self. It cannot be known through conceptualizing.

Children experience this more than most adults.

Kel     §

Harry wrote:

I suppose it could be worse: we could all be sea slugs, and type very slowly.

If you meet the sea slug in the road, salt him.

-Darren.

Harry wrote:

... old Buddhists are the grumpiest!

Precisely.