A crop of yellow on this lovely blue sky day.
Yellow
Monthly Archives: May 2020
Embracing the Wise and the Foolish
A wise person learns the mystery of existence in a flash
And climbs in a leap beyond the world of hollow phenomena,
Whereas a foolish person holds willfully to facts and details,
To drown in subtle differences of words and lines,
Not happy with these lines above. There is a strong pointing to the opposites and for most people, this can be a grand opportunity to climb aboard the ‘foolish’ label and stick it securely to the self. Where it can remain for decades, which is indeed foolish! Or, and this happens, one sticks on the wise label and believes oneself to have ‘lept beyond the world of hollow phenomena’. Maybe so, maybe not but this is still within the realm of the opposites.
One does come across texts that extol the reader to let go of the intellect and allow oneself to ‘leap’ or more often to ‘let go’ of discursive thinking and habitual behaviour. As is said above, ‘to drown in’ and ‘to hold willfully’ to facts, details, subtle differences of words and lines, neither any of us would want to do, certainly not for extended periods of time. It takes as long as it takes to realise the futility of such thinking. So I take the lines from the poem by Ryokan copied above as a strong pointing past what we often term ‘the ordinary mind’. Such teachings can be and are a powerful reminded of the futility of such thinking.
The ‘leap’ then is a leap of faith/trust that there is a deeper aspect to ourselves/existence that is not available via the normal means of understanding ‘why things are the way they are’ and to work out how to change them in oneself or others or both.
Faith in this tradition does not need or require an ‘object of faith, nor is ‘blind faith’ what’s being pointed to. Rev. Master Jiyu said in my hearing that the solution to all koans, including the koan of daily life, is a leap of faith. I’d think this was about doing something deliberately with my mind. I’ve learnt that it’s the opposite, that it’s to deliberately decide NOT to do something! Committing to sitting still in formal meditation is to deliberately decide not to something, anything, one could be doing and JUST SIT! And to simply and actively engage with ‘what is’. This embraces the ‘wise’ and the ‘foolish’, without discrimination.
Buddha Together With a Buddha
Had we wisdom deep enough to know ourselves, single-handed,
No benefits would result from the works of ancient saints.
And there are benefits but how they come about point to the truth of no separate self.
As I understand it taking refuge in the teaching (Dharma); doctrine, scriptures and sayings and the like can be ‘educational’. On a basic level that’s learning something you didn’t know. During the monastic retreat, I took refuge in Living by Vow by Shohaku Okumura reading a bit now and then when there was time. I learned a lot I didn’t know about, for example, the references made in our formal mealtime scriptures are explained in chapter five. And the chapter titled Awakening to Incompleteness, The Verse of Repentance (sange) confirmed something I’ve often repeated when introducing meditation. ‘Meditation is a natural spiritual cleansing process’. Here quoting directly from this chapter, ‘Sitting in zazen and letting go of thoughts is formless repentance. This kind of repentance has been emphasized in the Soto tradition since the Edo period (seventeenth-nineteenth centuries).’ There is much to say about sange but that will have to be at another time.
So the benefits flowing from the works of ancient saints are ‘educational’. However on a non-information gathering level education, at it’s best, draws out what one already knows. We do not lack wisdom we are identical with the ancients, how could it be otherwise since there are no Buddhas alone. No lone Buddhas locked in time. The ancient saints are not bound by conventional time or space any more than we are. Thus it is said (somewhere), Always we are sitting on Vulture Peak listening to the Buddha preaching his first sermon.
That’s how I understand this part of Ryokan’s poem anyway.
Unique Expressions
Ancient sages left their works behind, not to let us know
About themselves, but to help us understand our own stamp.
Now, isn’t that interesting? The ancient sages left their ‘works’, wrote scriptures and the like leaving their own ‘stamp’. By so doing leaving their wholely unique expression; quality, flavour, colour, voice as an altruistic act, not a self-promotional one and yet they DID let us know about themselves in a certain sense.
I think I’ve talked about this before, about writing and why put pen to paper or fingertips to the keyboard? And my answer is and has been consistent to understand better my own stamp. Or more accurately writing helps me to get out what is basically a tangle of unformed thoughts and ideas lurking in the background of my mind trying to make sense of existence. In the process or organizing my thought allowing my ‘voice’ to be heard, this blog would be seen as being ‘all about Mugo’! Scary. By the way, what I write is not worthy of posterity in the same way or level the ancients expressions.
It is said that the scriptures were written at ‘death’s door’ and by that, I understand the ancients gave their lives to the Dharma not that they waited until they were close to death to put what they had found into a written form or spoke about it.
So I am grateful for the scriptures and writings passed down to us and for me, they resonate in such a way that the universality of what is being pointed to points directly into me. In so doing making it true for myself, then the truths become lived and as a consequence, become basically invisible. That surely is the way to digest teaching, ancient or modern. Ownership is not part of the picture.
The Contemplations?
As you will now have realized the daily contemplations of the past week or more were part of a poem by Ryokan. However, a couple of lines published each day did seem to work quite well as separate posts to contemplate. I hope they worked for you too.
I cut right back on my ‘screen time’ during our retreat here at Throssel but I did check emails to make sure nobody needed to be in touch urgently. Each day I saw the Jade post come into my inbox and decided to contemplate along with all of you. Firstly the images were stupendous I thought. Over the next days, I will revisit some of the posts and see what I come up with in response.