Wednesday 7 January 2015



moonlit night

6 comments:

  1. reading this one I got a mini-vision that lasted for a split second

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    Replies
    1. thanx for telling me that, it's hard to know what works and what doesn't, I did have a feeling that one was on the nail !

      you had a sort of kensho, that's all zen is about really, it's like you walked into infinity and carried a memory back out of that "foreverness"

      " the transmission outside of the scriptures "

      these experiences take a lifetime to work out . .

      there's an awful lot that comes with them, a heft of understanding that starts to alienate and remove you from the morons eg reddit zen . .

      so "enlightenment" is this process of these insights, doesn't happen very often and when it does it is surprising and you have to work it in and through like taking a gold thread through some weaving or sewing

      B E WA R N E D

      it's very disrupting and also an indication your life and health are falling apart, attention is needed in a functional way to these areas . . ! :o()

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    2. It's actually more powerful than the popular koans and I'm not saying this to flatter you

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    3. (perhaps it's because of translations; or simply because the popular koans were written for a totally different age/society, ancient China is nothing like modern world and our mindset is very different... So we need new koans? I say this one is a good candidate)

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    4. I get a psychosomatic tingling in my body upon reading it, reminds me of freezing cold, and shaking, or taking a bath as a child, and an uncanny deja vu from early childhood, or even a recurring dream from childhood, something I can't put my finger on, a pure feeling, an empty center around which I try to put some words to delineate it. But I fail, I can't describe it. An other scene, quite liberating, a premonition of a different reality which is much weirder, but free from all anxiety, however ultimately useless. A cold reality, I free-associate it with absence of people, absence of persons, personality, absence of me. I disappear in the cold, starry night. It's just there. Its "just-being-there" though has repercussions on this life here, it seems, like you say: disruptive, very hard to make sense of. Probably also need to be on a good diet to cultivate proper sharpness of mind. Anyway, thank you for building these bridges to infinity.

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    5. "It's actually more powerful than the popular koans and I'm not saying this to flatter you"

      having a negative opinion of huang po, I was surprised to come across this quote of his in the chun chou record

      "That which is called the City of Illusion contains the Two Vehicles, the Ten Stages of a Bodhisattva's Progress, and the two forms of Full Enlightenment. All of them are powerful teachings for arousing people's interest, but they still belong to the City of Illusion.

      Yet since there are neither Buddha nor sentient beings, neither subject nor object, where can there be a City of Precious Things? If you ask, 'Well, so much for the City of Illusion, but where is the Place of Precious Things?', it is a place to which no directions can be given.

      All we can say is that it is close by. It cannot be exactly described, but when you have a tacit understanding of its substance, it is there."

      this "city of precious things" is that same space, sort of frightening to us because of its association with death and the transparency of non-existence/existance that some of us find ourselves caught up in . .

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