Teaching You Zazen 18: Did You Come from a Pair of Horny Lovers?
2007/12/9 12:51:20
The content going forward becomes increasingly difficult. The difficulty is not that the reasoning is hard to understand, but rather that purely theoretical, purely verbal discussion can't even qualify as "using yellow leaves to stop a child's crying."
Let me ask: Without a cane, without legs, without a wheelchair, without anything at all — how do you walk? Without a tongue, without assistive voice devices, without anything at all — how do you speak? Without hands, how do you clench a fist?
Everything that follows requires a tongueless person to speak, a handless person to clench a fist — to sit in zazen over everything while depending on nothing. Tell me — do you still remember the true meaning of zazen?
Let us imagine this: could this leap from the scattered orbit to another orbit be technologized? If someday we only had to press two buttons and the orbit would jump, wouldn't that be far more convenient?
Unfortunately, technology and science are still within the scattered orbit. Technology and science are merely humanity's collective karma — nothing remarkable. If you believe in evolution, then technology and science are simply a capacity that emerged during humanity's evolutionary process, with no essential difference from the famous ability developed by chameleons. The development of technology and science is merely the continual expansion of this capacity — and capacity is a form of karmic force.
In other worlds composed of different karmic forces, there exist beings who naturally live for eighty thousand kalpas — one kalpa being roughly equivalent to 4.32 billion years in our current human reckoning. Moreover, they naturally experience no illnesses, cold, hunger, or any dissatisfaction whatsoever, and they naturally possess various abilities that would be considered absolutely supernatural from our world's perspective. For example, we need rockets and spaceships to get to the moon, but in that kind of world, one need only think it, and it happens.
In such a world, things are probably more communist than communism itself. Yet sadly, it's all just karmic force at work — when the karma is exhausted, the dream dissolves. Even if humanity's technology and science were to develop to the point where everyone naturally lives for eighty thousand kalpas, with no illnesses, cold, hunger, or any dissatisfaction, and pressing a button lets you tour the universe — it's still just karmic force. Just a dream.
Even in such a world, one would still be in some orbit formed by karmic force. Many people love talking about so-called supernatural powers, but in truth, technology and science are also among humanity's supernatural powers in this world. Don't imagine supernatural powers as anything strange. For example, there's a world where everyone can casually walk through walls — there, the inability to walk through walls would be the great supernatural power. For ants, our atomic bombs are certainly ridiculously supernatural, but the entire universe is no more than an anthill. The humans within it, relative to the universe, are no more than ants to their anthill — if even that. That shabby technology and science are merely the various gadgets ants have evolved through tinkering within their anthill. What's there to boast about?
In this world where we are bound by scatteredness and karma, nothing can help us leap out of this scattered orbit. And the reason zazen is difficult is precisely because it demands the completion of this impossible mission. There is nothing you can rely on, because anything you could rely on is within the karmic force of scatteredness. It's like being within a closed field — no matter how much you thrash around inside a closed field, you remain inside it. Anyone who's studied a bit of abstract mathematics should understand this.
So then — who threw you into this closed field? Who is inside it?
Fine — even if you believe the nonsense of medicine and biology, and you simply came from the fornication of a lusty couple, and in the future you might also come from things like test tubes — you still cannot escape this proposition: you came from some karmic force that caused you to come.
Let's not debate where exactly you came from. This question needs no debate. When conditions ripen, it will naturally reveal itself. Otherwise, debating is utterly meaningless — like arguing with a blind person about the shape of the sun. What's the point?
A most basic premise is this: you came from some karmic force that caused you to come. Whether this karmic force is the cycle of birth and death, or the fornication of some couple, or the game of test tubes and genes — none of that matters. Set this question aside for now; when the time comes, you'll know naturally. The key is: starting from this premise, what must you face?
What you must face is everything you face.
Everything you face is that total enclosure, like a closed field — an orbital state constituted by karmic force, a state of scatteredness.
Every thought, action, word, sight, sound, and sensation of yours — your everything — is within this enclosure. But within this enclosure, you can sense infinity, eternity, and so on — just as ants might perceive their anthill as infinite and eternal.
This enclosure is eternally and presently displayed within your six-sense realm. Your world, your universe, your time, your body, your thoughts, your emotions, your career, your honor, your loved ones, your faith, your survival, your death, your everything — all within this enclosure.
Your zazen is also within it. You have been established, you have been given a foothold, you have been placed in an orbit — you have nowhere to escape. This karmic enclosure is like a gravitational field: everything within a gravitational field has nowhere to escape.
And zazen is precisely about breaking through this karmic enclosure where there is nowhere to escape. So what tools do you have? You cannot rely on anything within the karmic circle, because anything within it — like elements in a closed field — no matter how you manipulate them, will only keep you sealed inside.
Nor can you rely on anything outside the karmic circle, because this karmic circle is your everything. Even if there were something outside it, it would have nothing to do with you — how could you rely on it?
When you sit in zazen, this is the predicament you face. If you do not squarely confront this predicament, then your pilfering mind has not died. Here, there is nothing you can rely on. There is no transcendent-something-beyond-something you can rely on.
Squarely confronting this predicament — truly confronting it, not studying and discussing it with a pilfering mind that refuses to die — only then is there a possibility of truly sitting in zazen.
Replies
缠中说禅 2007/12/9 23:58:40
You little SB dogs, come lick me
缠中说禅 2007/12/9 23:39:55
[Anonymous] Sina Netizen — Delete all comments by this person
2007-12-09 23:32:50
The content going forward becomes increasingly difficult. The difficulty is not that the reasoning is hard to understand, but rather that purely theoretical, purely verbal discussion can't even qualify as "using yellow leaves to stop a child's crying."
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Reporting in! Understood!
A "human being" has to be actually "made" by a pair of lovers in a state of arousal!!! Absolutely not talked into existence or theorized into existence!
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Dead wrong!
That night my mother was raped by an unknown male ape-man. My mother was not aroused at the time! There was no mutual arousal involved! That's why I'm special!