The way I understand it (and I could certainly be wrong) but if the master
tells you a Koan about Frogs and Ponds and splashing sounds, and you start
intellectually analyzing these images, then you have missed the point of
what a Koan is supposed to do.
For example (from Zen Buddhism:the Selected writings of DT Suzuki):
A monk asked,"All things are reducible to the One, but where is the One to
be reduced?" The master answered, "When I was in the district of Ch'ing I
had a robe made that weighed seven chin."
Try analyzing that for sense.
Rick
At 11:56 AM 10/23/98 -0400, you wrote:
>
>
>http://members.tripod.com/~lithien/Lila2.html
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: lonewolf <lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
>To: lithien <moq_discuss@moq.org>
>Date: Wednesday, October 21, 1998 1:31 PM
>Subject: MD Taoist rocks & Zen trees
>
>
>hello, donny:
>
>you wrote:
>
>I would submit that this anicdote is much closer to the ultimate spirit of
>Taoism and Zen than "becomeing one with all the consciousness of the
>universe." Zen is not a pantheism. It is not that all is alive and
>consciouss
>-- it's overcoming the dualities of life-death and conscious-unconscious.
>To
>quote Muneyoshi Yanagi: "In Buddhist discipline, the central problem, the
>problem of primary importance as well as of greatest urgancy, is how to
>eradicate man's two most represenative forms of dualism -- the opposition
>between life and death and the opposition between one's self and other;
>every
>effort in Buddhism is directed to the solution of this problem." (*The
>Unknown
>Craftsman*)
>
>The rock is not alive nor conscious -- and neither am I. We are both
>emminations from the Void, which is beyond such dualities. But (as Pirsig
>would say) this is only good from the point of view of the Buddha. In the
>everyday world on the street we may say that I am living mater and the rock
>is
>not (Bio vs. InOrgPoVs) and that I have a conscious self/personhood/"ego"
>(SocPoVs) and the rock does not.
>
>donny, needless to say my view of zen differs intrinsically from yours. in
>"Zen and Japanese Culture" by Daizetz T.Suzuki, there is a much different
>definition. it says:
>
>What is there even before the world came into existence? what the zen
>master wants to know about is the cosmic landscape prior to the creation of
>all things. When is timeless time? Is it no more than an empty concept?
>the master's answer was:
>
> The old pond, ah!
> A frog jumps in:
> The water's sound!
>
>Let me try to give a little more intelligible account of the master's koan.
>An ancient pond is likely to be located in some old temple grounds, filled
>with many stately trees. Such surroundings add to the tranquility of the
>unrippled surface of the pond. When this is disturbed by a jumping frog,
>the disturbance itself enhances the reigning tranquillity; the sound of the
>splash reverberates, and the reverberation makes us all the more conscious
>of the serenity of the whole. However, this consciousness is awakened only
>in him whose spirit is really in consonance with the world spirit itself.
>
>These images are not figurative representations made us of by the poetic
>mind, but they directly point to original intuitions, indeed they are
>intuitions themselves. When the latter are attained, the images become
>transparent and are immediate expressions of the experience. An intuition
>in itself, being too intimate, too personal, too immediate, cannot be
>communicated to others; to do this it calls up images by means of which it
>becomes transferable. But to those who have never had such an experience it
>is difficult, even impossible, to reach the fact itself merely through
>images, because in this case images are transformed into ideas or concepts,
>and the mind then attempts to give them an intellectual interpretation.
>
>As long as we are moving on the surface of consciousness, we can never get
>away from ratiocination. but the master is not living there as we are, he
>has passed through the outer crust of consciousness away down into its
>deepest recesses, into a realm of the unthinkable, into the Unconscious,
>which is even beyond the unconscious generally conceived by the
>psychologists.
>
>It is by intuition alone that this timelessness of the Unconscious is truly
>taken hold of. And this intuitive grasp of reality never takes place when a
>world of Emptiness is assumed outside our everyday world of the senses; for
>these two worlds are not separate but one. therefore, the master sees into
>his Unconscious not through the stillness of the old pond but through the
>sound stirred up by the jumping frog. Without the sound there is no seeing
>into the Unconscious, in which lies the source of creative activities (DQ?)
>and upon all artists draw from their inspiration.
>
>For me, this is zen and its parallel to MOQ very evident as well.
>
>i thank you for making me aware of Bryson's book "A Walk in the Woods". i
>will read it for i have had similar experiences when walking, as well as
>with sounds when in meditation.
>
>Lithien
>
>
>
>
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