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A lot folks just go about their lives without ever really questioning what the hell’s going on! Really I mean, what is happening? Yeh, once you start poking around, it is impossible to know how it unfolds or unravels for each ‘individual’. For me it started when I was 13 yrs old with believe it or not, T. Lobsang Rampa 🙂 Hey don’t knock it…it stirred and fired the imagination and I had to know more and rest is history. Enjoying your posts and I am still reading the Dharmakaya Sutra. Very slow reader am I. Not much of an edumacation, left school when I was 16 and muddled throught life the best way I could(so I thought).
Much thanks – Suki
Suki,
“Not much of an edumacation”…
Don’t worry about it…it’s vastly over-rated! 🙂
Glad you enjoy!
Namaste!
Very interesting post. We have differing temperaments. But thankfully to the Mahayana path we can have faith that as to Buddha-Nature, we’re all the same.
It’s not easy to cultivate a “lotus in the fire”. The Last Patriarch directly says there’s no need to go to monasteries and everyone can train at home, he reassures us:
“If fire can be kindled with a piece of wood,
Mud surely will produce the lotus flower.”
Ta-Hui advanced this idea and saw the noisy ordinary life as even more favourable than the monastic lifestyle. He guided his students from far away, which is why he could be considered a forerunner of what we’re involved in, “Internet Zen” (he conducted Zen teaching through mail) –
“Ma-tsu stresses the need ‘to be free of defilement’ and ‘spontaneous’. Ta-hui refuses even to posit the necessity of maintaining an undefiled state, which the ordinary person might find daunting. For Ta-hui, nothing at all need be perfected to achieve enlightenment: not purity, not samadhi or prajna, not even the bare ‘faith’ [in Buddha-Nature] of Lin-chi. Ta-hui insists instead that the practice must begin and end amid the typical afflictions of ordinary life – especially ignorance, delusion, insecurity and stress.”
Someone I correspond with, Upasaka Heng Yu, wrote this recently:
“Richard Hunn once lived in a bedsit where people use to walk through to get to other parts of the house. This went on all day andmost of the night. He said that he held the hua tou so firmly that the people became like waves in the sea, neither present nor absent. This is an interesting perception. What we seek is above the phenomena, but it is through phenomena that we find it.”
Very inspiring words for us “home practitioners”. These devices that were handed to us compassionately, the kung-an, hua t’ou penetration or, what lies at the root of them, the “Word” within the Lankavatara Sutra (Tozen), surely are not hindered by external circumstances or temperament.
Sansiddhah,
You are Colin Wilson + 1! 🙂
His work focuses pretty much exclusively with the Western experience but you have tied in the Eastern Path most nicely. Certainly Ta-Hui was above the fray of “consensus reality” by providing his students a viable alternative to the prevailing monastic lifestyle. Has encountering Ta-Hui helped you to resolve any monastic leanings? Your post seems to indicate that you’re growing evermore accustomed to the “home practitioner” stance.
Bodhichild, it did help. I’m starting to slowly understand the circumstances in which the monkey mind produces the monastic idea. It’s deluded insofar as it wants to deny this phenomena (ordinary) to replace it with other phenomena (sacred), instead of transcending within this situation here! Dahui is showing to be a tremendously helpful resource. I never heard of Colin Wilson before you wrote about him. Interesting implications here …
“I never heard of Colin Wilson before you wrote about him. Interesting implications here …”
Perhaps more than you realize at this junction. At the time of The Outsider’s publication in 1956, Colin Wilson was 24 years of age–a great breakthrough for him–it was on the Times’ Best Seller List for some time. With your erudite and developing encyclopedic grasp of Zen Masters, who knows, perhaps you could write something like, “The Outsider Looks East”–starting from your own existentialist western angst, like Wilson’s work, and then bringing in that Mahayana vantage-point of superseding the dilemma via your own grasp of the Buddhadharma and Buddha-nature. Highly recommend you read The Outsider–it’s a great read and will open up new vistas of possibilities for you.