My cat is an illusion. There is no cat, no I and certainly no my, and for that matter no illusion. There is a form, only perceived by my mind. The cat is nothing more than blood, bones, flesh, organs, a brain all of which perish in a heart beat, each heart beat. Yet some sentient being is asleep there on the conceived couch. Something which I don’t know, yet there that being is. Cat mind. This mind. Body experiences cold and suggests it needs sleep.
Posts Tagged ‘Zen’
My deluded cat
Monday, July 27th, 2009God is Nothing Special
Saturday, July 18th, 2009Everything that I’m about to say is a lie. Hopefully it’s a useful lie.
If we start with something that we all take for granted, the only permanence is change. Although that itself isn’t strictly correct either, but it is a truth. Where there are beginnings there are ends. And everything we know has a beginning and an end. Wherever there is a quality there is the opposite of that quality and there is a beginning and end to the quality. There is no intrinsic quality, nothing which is intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad for that matter.
What is isolated out separated out is impermanent. And the idea of its permanence is an illusion created by our minds. It is the idea that any quality is permanent that is an illusion.
Yet, somehow there is mind, free of content. Not a mind, but mind. Itself not dependent on the fluctuations of matter. Unlike our ego mind dependent on a concept of self. Dependent on a constellation of particular qualities. The self that surely dies.
It is the mind that hears without conceptualising what is heard, independent of all qualities, like our change, ever present in the here and now, always as it is, which is the most ordinary thing of all. Ordinary, constant, and fully awake. It is the flip side to ever changing form. The form which is the mind’s content.
By looking for what is special we miss the ever present awareness. And that’s what our egos are; an illusion that there is a story, a drama, that is our special reality. A reality that will vanish in a puff of smoke at our death, physical or otherwise. Our sense of self, like this diatribe here is a lie, but which is the more useful lie.
What is mindfulness?
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008It strikes me that the spiritual journey is a turning inward of consciousness. This is why so much emphasis is put on knowing oneself because to know who one is requires consciousness to be turned inward. And that’s the same as sitting in silence, i.e. not being distracted by thoughts, feelings or bodily sensations. The advice is the same. Just different ways of describing the same process.
Counting the breath, meditation on an object are all techniques that build up the concentration, but that same concentration can come out of an intense inquiry into the nature of oneself.
And so it seems to me that Soto Zen and Rinzai Zen are essentially the same. Sitting on one’s mat in still awareness is the same as enquiring “Who am I?” I think it’s no co-incidence that Hui Neng, in my opinion the founder of Zen, asked his first student “What was your original nature before you were born?” You have to sit quietly for an answer don’t you.
It’s the same as the Christian injunction to “Be still and know that I am God.” And Dolano’s advice that you must love meditation is basically saying that you must love being still.
Christ pointed to the kingdom of heaven being within. Isn’t that such a major hint. Buddha pointed to the fullness of the seeming void. And more recently Ramana and Krishnamurti both pointed to the inquiry into one’s own nature.
And then to carry this stillness, call it spaciousness if you will beyond meditation and into one’s outer life. It strikes me that’s what mindfulness is.
Some teachers point to the idea that the practise of mindfulness in meditation leads to mindfulness in one’s life. If mindfulness and stillness are the same then we’re saying even in action be still.
And that carries the conversation back to that teaching in the Bhagavad Gita
He who can see inaction in action, and action in inaction is the wisest among men. He is a saint, even though he still acts.
The Method of No-Method: The Chan Practice of Silent Illumination