The Archaeology Of The Mind.
Apr 14, 2010 10:45:15 GMT 1
Post by Shi Da Dao on Apr 14, 2010 10:45:15 GMT 1
'Zen practice, consisting primarily of zazen and koan study, is a practice of digging down through the various layers that cover the light of clear knowing, a kind of spiritual archaeology, so to speak. In human beings, these layers are made up of such things as concepts, symbols, language, categories, habits, ideological presuppositions, and the natural, innate tendency to divide the world into "self" and "not self." Some layers are made up of the acquired, some of the innate, but all are perceived in Buddhism as similar to the layers of excrement that obscure the precious jewel of clear knowing. Once these layers are removed, a way of knowing is recovered that functions without conventional concepts and categories of thought, which, according to all schools of Buddhism, superimpose a meaning on events that does not belong intrinsically to them. To experience events as they truly are, one must experience them without the least bit of personal or cultural meaning added to them. This kind of knowing might best be called "no mind," a term favoured by some Zen masters. "No Mind" is not confusion, uncertainty or blankness, but rather, an extremely clear knowing freed of all conceptualisation and symbolization.
This kind of knowing is said to be innate, basic, and prior to ordinary descriminative, conceptualizing knowing. It is prior because it is the root and origin of the latter, which arises from the more basic, prior consciousness in the form of a bifurcation into a knowing aspect and a known aspect. The consequence of this split is tw0-fold. On the one hand, consciousness becomes self-conscious, so that human beings are not only aware of an experience but can also be aware of being aware. on the other hand, what are thought to be events or things "out there," external to the mind, are in reality only the mind's ideas of events. Thus, rather than knowing an event as it truly is in itself, what we know is our idea about the event. This latter is the known aspect of mind, or mind as its own object. Consequently, as Western thinkers admit, we are ordinarily locked within our own minds and have no access to the true and real. Buddhist also admit that this is the case ordinarily, but that the subject/object split can be healed and the mind restored to its original form. This is awakening or enlightenment and is the professed objective of Buddhism.
Since this awakening is, by definition, the ability to know events just as they are, apart from interpretation, assumption, and emotional reaction, then it follows that there is really no "correct" way of knowing events that stands in opposition to a "false" way. The religious and existential problem is not a matter of having wrong ideas about events so much as it is having any idea at all. Any interpretive mechanism is, as an interpretation, a distortion, even a "Buddhist" interpretation, and so enlightenment can never be a matter of replacing bad ideas with good ones.'
(Sitting With Koans: Edited By JD Loori - Page 170-171 - Chapter 9 - By Francis Dojun Cook.)
This kind of knowing is said to be innate, basic, and prior to ordinary descriminative, conceptualizing knowing. It is prior because it is the root and origin of the latter, which arises from the more basic, prior consciousness in the form of a bifurcation into a knowing aspect and a known aspect. The consequence of this split is tw0-fold. On the one hand, consciousness becomes self-conscious, so that human beings are not only aware of an experience but can also be aware of being aware. on the other hand, what are thought to be events or things "out there," external to the mind, are in reality only the mind's ideas of events. Thus, rather than knowing an event as it truly is in itself, what we know is our idea about the event. This latter is the known aspect of mind, or mind as its own object. Consequently, as Western thinkers admit, we are ordinarily locked within our own minds and have no access to the true and real. Buddhist also admit that this is the case ordinarily, but that the subject/object split can be healed and the mind restored to its original form. This is awakening or enlightenment and is the professed objective of Buddhism.
Since this awakening is, by definition, the ability to know events just as they are, apart from interpretation, assumption, and emotional reaction, then it follows that there is really no "correct" way of knowing events that stands in opposition to a "false" way. The religious and existential problem is not a matter of having wrong ideas about events so much as it is having any idea at all. Any interpretive mechanism is, as an interpretation, a distortion, even a "Buddhist" interpretation, and so enlightenment can never be a matter of replacing bad ideas with good ones.'
(Sitting With Koans: Edited By JD Loori - Page 170-171 - Chapter 9 - By Francis Dojun Cook.)