An Ordinary Mind Is Not the Way (With Four Verses Following Linji’s Gatha Rhyme)

2008/6/25 18:47:38

Not much to say about the stock market. Rebounding after standing at 2,700 points is the most normal thing. This week, the biggest task on a purely technical level is for the high point to break through 2,945 to form a weekly bottom fractal pattern. A high close would of course be best, but even if not, as long as there’s no new low this week, the formation of this pattern is inevitable. Time-wise, this possibility is quite high — the key is the remaining two days: the bulls must not let their earlier gains go to waste.

Recently, the only thing that can rival the stock market in getting scolded is probably Peking University’s History Department. But even in the History Department, the proportion of birdbrained people at Peking University is surely below the baseline. Trying to destroy Peking University just because of one Fàn and one Wáng — that’s far too naive. As for those who seize on this to put down Peking University and prop up Tsinghua, this kind of bootlicking trick will only end up landing on the horse’s hoof. Peking University has birdbrained people — does Tsinghua or Harbin Institute of Technology not? The day this ID is in the mood to dish out gossip about the birdbrained people at Tsinghua, Harbin Institute of Technology, and so on — those scandals are basketful upon basketful!

Where there are people, there aren’t necessarily birds; where there are no birds, there are certainly no people. Such ordinary biological common sense needs no elaboration. But speaking of the “ordinary,” this instead arouses this ID’s interest. Never mind the birdbrained nonsense — this “ordinary” is actually quite extraordinary; it is one of life’s great matters.

Just finished an intramuscular injection before writing this post. It’s been nearly a month here, and every day is the same injection. Compared to chemotherapy, it creates even greater pressure for this ID. Chemotherapy is extraordinary — it doesn’t have to be faced every day. But this so-called immunity-boosting intramuscular injection must be faced daily — an endless daily cycle with no end in sight. The pressure of such a cycle is indeed latent and immense.

In reality, what grinds people down most is not crisis, not hardship, but the ordinary. For the average person, the nine-to-five commuting cycle alone is enough to erode even the strongest will. Everyone has probably had dreams, but once you enter the red dust of the world, you’re easily intoxicated. In this pendulum-like cycle, how many great dreams are ground to nothing?

The ordinary is the deadliest blade; repetition can grind away everything. For the architects of the capitalist game, this is their invincible secret.

The germination of the capitalist game is closely related to the expansion of the so-called mechanistic worldview. In physics, the study of mechanical motion was developing rapidly at the same time. This worldview once sought to subsume all motion in the entire universe — and ultimately failed utterly in theory. Yet this mad dream was injected deep into the body of capitalism, becoming the key to the ruling class’s art of governing the people.

The rigorous division of labor in social production inevitably leads to the compartmentalization of human beings, and compartmentalized humans inevitably face the cycle of the ordinary and repetitive — which is enough to exhaust the most tenacious of lives.

Non-capitalist frameworks — such as the Confucian cultivation of the whole person, the complete person, or the sage — are not encouraged in capitalist society. The manufactured stupor of mass media further strengthens the existence of compartmentalized humans. In capitalist society, human beings have completely lost their wholeness and integrity. Therefore, when a so-called elite commits inhuman acts, this is the most normal thing in the social structure of capitalism.

In capitalist society, all standards of excellence are measured by economic efficiency. This is the power of the market. The market grinds people into dust, then reassembles them according to market principles into market-people — the market has become the true Nüwa.

Capitalism — the true Genesis. Everything the Bible could never realize has been made real in the packaging of capitalism. That Holy Spirit drifting upon the waters, that invisible hand of the market economy — everything, all of it, has thus become Old Testament followed by New Testament again. Therefore, it’s not hard for anyone to understand why, in the United States where the market economy is most developed, Christianity has instead become virtually a national religion — this is merely one small isomorphic feature in the Genesis game of capitalism.

Thus, after higher education has also been universally economized, we can more easily understand the all-pervasiveness of the capitalist art of governing the people. Nothing consumes human life more than being compartmentalized and made competitive from the very start of education. An entire family, for the sake of one child, is enough to exhaust all available leisure life. Under such conditions, how could the market economy not flourish? How could the nation not be stable and the people not be at peace?

The comprehensive development of the human being is forever a taboo in capitalist society. All institutions, at their root, exist to prevent the comprehensive development of human beings. Making people lose their wholeness, making people into compartmentalized parts — only then can capitalism achieve lasting stability. This is one of the greatest of all capitalist secrets.

A society capable of nothing but revolution is a sorrowful society; a society capable of nothing but the market is equally sorrowful.

Returning to Chinese history, the decline of Chinese culture and society is, at its root, due to the ruling class’s plagiarism and modification of Chan Buddhism through so-called Confucian orthodoxy to form the so-called Chéng-Zhū Neo-Confucianism. China’s decline during the Song dynasty has profound cultural roots.

After the Song, there was categorically no Chan Buddhism to speak of — what remained was nothing but Confucianized falsehood. And the ruling class’s covert promotion of the merging of Chan and Pure Land, the synthesis of the three teachings, and all manner of worthless nonsense — all took the stage one by one, and thus China became what China became.

And “an ordinary mind is the Way” is one of the many distorted Chan sayings frequently mouthed as lip service. In a society where humans are not truly human, the phrase “an ordinary mind is the Way” has become the ruling class’s finest hallucinogen.

May I ask: what mind is not ordinary? The mind — neither existent nor non-existent, neither one nor two — how can it be split into the two halves of “ordinary” and “extraordinary”?

this ID will tell you all today: “an ordinary mind is not the Way.” The Way is neither ordinary nor non-ordinary. That kind of idiotic Daoist drivel about “the Way being in excrement and urine” speaks of nothing but the collective karma of all sentient beings. That the Daoists take this as their supreme teaching — invoking Zhuāngzǐ and Lǎo zǐ — is a textbook case of having excrement and urine for brains.

Of course, “an ordinary mind is also the Way” — but this Way is neither that Way nor that other Way. Ultimately, how so? Investigate!

The general manager of a PE company in which this ID is a shareholder sent a text message, using Línjì’s verse — “Following the flow without cease, how is it? / True illumination boundless, speaks as if it were another. / Beyond form, beyond name, none receives it. / The razor used, one must urgently sharpen it.” — as a get-well wish. this ID, while hooked up to an IV, composed four matching verses, transcribed below:

Four Verses Following Línjì’s Gatha Rhyme

Chán Zhōng Shuō Chán

I

From what land does this person come, with surname Hé once more?

No division of insight and function — I am still as he.

The golden-maned lion, an infinite net —

The octagonal millstone — who turns the mill?

II

Dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows — what can heaven do?

Not I, not god, not he.

Those who silently illuminate and cling to the center are pitiable —

Body and mind both hitched to the ghost that turns the mill.

III

In the red dust, long drunk — how is this dream?

Eighty thousand afflictions — all “I” and “he.”

The rolling wheel of time — who can halt it?

Indra’s infinite net grinds past and present.

IV

Groundless birth and death — ask it, what is it?

The four marks flip in emptiness — you, I, and he.

Waking and drunk, a hundred years, thirty thousand days —

In the dream, still rushing to the dream’s torment and grinding.

A bit of trivia: “他” (tā), ancient form “佗” (tuó), rhymes in the Píng Shuǐ Lower Level, Fifth Gē Rhyme.