BEING

BEING

In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang describes how opposite or contrary forces are actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.

Being, in the context of Tao, means “something.”  Non-being, on the other hand, means “nothing.”

     They are existent in all things we know. Being is a manifestation of yin yang. It is a central concept of the Tao.

     To understand what the two words mean, look at a drinking cup.

     Being is the physical presence of the cup.  It is in the something that you can see, including the body of the cup, its handle, and so on.

     What we often overlook, however, is the non-being, because it is something we cannot see. Nevertheless non-being is the most important part of existence. 

     Ask yourself, “What is the purpose of a cup?”

     Most likely you say you want the cup to hold a liquid drink.

     A cup that cannot hold liquid is no longer a cup, right?

     Then, look closely at the cup.  In which part of the cup do you find the drink?

     It is not the handle. It is not the cup body. It is not the being.

     It is the space within the body.  Something you cannot see, and appears to be empty.

     It is the non-being.  

     So although the cup or the something is what you own, it’s the space—the nothing—that you use.  You own the being—the cup—for the non-being, the space.

     Now, consider the place where you live. The place is a being. It has pillars, walls, and furnishings.

     What's the use of the place?

     The use of the place is not in the being, the pillars, the walls, the furnishings. It is in the non-being, the space. A house, or an apartment, or a cave without space is useless, no matter how fine the furnishings are.

     To perceive the center of your life, and find the meaning of the things you do, don’t just see the being.  Be aware of the non-being.

     Being aware of non-being helps us to have clear minds. Non-being cuts through noises and goes to the core of reality.

     As Lao Tzu put it:

Spokes are connected to make a wheel;

yet it is the hole within the hub that moves the wagon.

Clay is molded to shape into a pot;

yet it is the emptiness within that makes it a utensil.

Doors and windows are cut to make a room;

yet it is the space within that makes it livable.

Therefore, advantage comes from what is,

usefulness comes from what is not.

THE NATURE OF THINGS

NATURE

For a moment put your mind on a flower, or a bird, or a white cloud. Think of the calmness of nature.

      But nature is not always peaceable. There are floods, and avalanches, and tidal waves, and other violent goings-on. Still, such events are as much a part of nature as is a flower.

      Somewhere I read that Hindus never complain about the weather because it is a natural phenomenon. I don’t know if that is true, but it’s a nice thought. Mark Twain supposedly said “Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

      A flower may be beautiful, but it doesn’t exist for human enjoyment. In nature a flower’s color, and fragrance, and form are necessary for the survival of the species.

      Ginkgo biloba, commonly known as the maidenhair tree, is the only living species in the plant division Ginkgophyta, all others being extinct. It has been around a long time. Fossils of it date back 270 million years. Talk about survival!

      Ginkgo has long been cultivated in China, and some living trees are believed to be over 1,500 years old. Because of its status in Buddhism and Confucianism, the ginkgo is revered in other parts of Asia.

      Gingko is the official tree of Tokyo, and the symbol of Tokyo is a ginkgo leaf. The leaf is also the symbol of the Urasenke School of the Japanese tea ceremony.

      The point of all this is, humans may appreciate nature, or they may attempt to destroy it. But nature is not made for humans, and the gingko, like all of nature, is accustomed to change.

      Despite ice ages, rising temperatures, and rising seas, nature will go on long after we are gone.

      Even if there is no one to appreciate its beauty.

One of China’s most celebrated gingkoes is located near a hermit cave where an ancient Taoist lived. The tree is estimated to be almost 2,000 years old, and it is more than 350feet tall. When a temple was built around the hermitage, the tree became incorporated into the structure which is called Cave of the Heavenly Teacher.  

A Qing dynasty poet wrote about the tree:

In exquisite billows the foliage

Cascades from its shrouded source in the sky,

Green abundance veils the top,

Dwelling place of the lone crane;

Like a dancing phoenix,

Its trunk soars to the clouds,

Like a coiled dragon perching on a cliff

Its invisible qi.

TO READ

TO READ

          Some people read everything they can find on Zen. I’m one of them.

Is this good, or is it bad? Well, like everything in Zen it can be good or it can be bad. It can be both good and bad. And it can be neither.

          You may remember an ad campaign that featured two photographs. The first shot showed a nicely fried egg with the caption, “This is your brain.” The second shot showed a messily scrambled egg, and its caption read, “This is your brain on drugs.”

Reading Suzuki’s essays, or Aitken’s Dharma talks, or the old masters’ koans won’t mess up your brain as long as you don’t take these things as gospel or as spiritual revelations. They may even help you, if you take them as words and ideas that were created by other humans, not by omnipotent beings.

          Still, if you limit your reading to only Zen or Buddhist literature you may allow yourself to be led down a garden path. When it comes to misguiding their readers—innocently or purposely—Zen writers can be as culpable as any other sort of writer whether they be philosophers, medical doctors, self-help artists, or financial advisors.

          So who else might be read without damage to one’s psyche? For starters there is Krishnamurti, who as a fourteen-year-old Indian boy, was designated by the Theosophical Society “World Teacher” and was trained to become a Western Messiah. That didn’t sit well with him, and in later years he denounced his elevated position by stating, “I desire those who seek to understand me to be free, not to follow me, not to make of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect.” 

There’s Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk who was constantly being called on the carpet by his superiors because of his ever-growing interest in Eastern philosophies, especially in the tradition of Zen.

There’s Meister Eckhart, a German Catholic theologian who was excommunicated because of his radical ideas and his thought that rejected authority and dogma.

There’s Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher who developed his then-controversial ethics from a belief that the whole of reality stems from nature. He denounced the supernatural and metaphysics and subscribed to the notion that the ultimate is beyond discovery. In other words, there is no meaning to life.

Then there’s the Scottish thinker David Hume who also was denounced by the Church as a flaming heretic. He stated that reason and rational judgments are merely habitual associations of experiences. This notion comes very close to what Zen individuals want to rid themselves of in order to see their face before they were born.

And so on, and so on.

Krishnamurti repudiated his unwanted blind followers, those people who can’t think for themselves but depend on others to tell them how to behave.

Merton, Eckhart, Hobbes, and Hume were four freethinkers who showed healthy tendencies toward skepticism and for that had their ass busted by organized religion.

I’m fascinated by words and their interpretations, so just for the fun of it I went to a thesaurus and looked up the word freethinker. Here are some synonyms for an individual who uses his or her own mind instead of following someone else’s dictates. Brace yourself.

Heretic, radical, atheist, fanatic, revolutionary, nonbeliever, leftist.

I digress, but I’d like to believe you see my point.

Anyway, by reading Zen material you can certainly be helped to grasp the mechanics of practice, you can be caught up in the fascinating history of the tradition, you can be beguiled by the stories and the koans.

But all the booklearning in the world, Zen or other, will probably not bring you to an awareness of your own true being. That must come from you.

Enlightenment is not an end but a beginning. No worthwhile master or teacher would ever say, “You are enlightened.” A master or a teacher might point out one’s keen-sightedness as a step on a path, but that would be all.

That’s why there is no answer to the direct question of “Are you enlightened?”

A typical Zen answer to “Are you enlightened?” would be, “Not yes, not no.”

An even better response would be no answer at all.

Does one gain or lose from Zen practice?

Earnest Zen practice may, and probably will, help you to cut lose from the nasty habit of Western reasoning. That’s a loss, but it’s a worthy loss. Unless you’re a diehard pragmatist or scientist, shucking off analytical thinking and slanted judgements is a gain to your perception of the human condition.

An American Zen scholar who trained in Japan (Bernard Philips, mentioned in Philip Kapleau’s Awakening to Zen) said that Zen, basically, is three things.

1.     Zen is a sect of Buddhism that has its own history and forms.

2.    Zen is the heart and essence of Buddhism that has no doctrine or scripture of its own but points to the absolute source of all Buddhist teaching. This absolute source is the awakening experience of the Buddha. In this regard Zen is a discipline aimed at illumination of mind and freedom of action.

3.    Zen rises above—transcends, to use a favorite Buddhism word—the particulars of Buddhism in that Zen is a life of authentic being in which the self has overcome its alienation from itself and from all other things.

TO READ

TO READ

          Some people read everything they can find on Zen. I’m one of them.

Is this good, or is it bad? Well, like everything in Zen it can be good or it can be bad. It can be both good and bad. And it can be neither.

          You may remember an ad campaign that featured two photographs. The first shot showed a nicely fried egg with the caption, “This is your brain.” The second shot showed a messily scrambled egg, and its caption read, “This is your brain on drugs.”

Reading Suzuki’s essays, or Aitken’s Dharma talks, or the old masters’ koans won’t mess up your brain as long as you don’t take these things as gospel or as spiritual revelations. They may even help you, if you take them as words and ideas that were created by other humans, not by omnipotent beings.

          Still, if you limit your reading to only Zen or Buddhist literature you may allow yourself to be led down a garden path. When it comes to misguiding their readers—innocently or purposely—Zen writers can be as culpable as any other sort of writer whether they be philosophers, medical doctors, self-help artists, or financial advisors.

          So who else might be read without damage to one’s psyche? For starters there is Krishnamurti, who as a fourteen-year-old Indian boy, was designated by the Theosophical Society “World Teacher” and was trained to become a Western Messiah. That didn’t sit well with him, and in later years he denounced his elevated position by stating, “I desire those who seek to understand me to be free, not to follow me, not to make of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect.” 

There’s Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk who was constantly being called on the carpet by his superiors because of his ever-growing interest in Eastern philosophies, especially in the tradition of Zen.

There’s Meister Eckhart, a German Catholic theologian who was excommunicated because of his radical ideas and his thought that rejected authority and dogma.

There’s Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher who developed his then-controversial ethics from a belief that the whole of reality stems from nature. He denounced the supernatural and metaphysics and subscribed to the notion that the ultimate is beyond discovery. In other words, there is no meaning to life.

Then there’s the Scottish thinker David Hume who also was denounced by the Church as a flaming heretic. He stated that reason and rational judgments are merely habitual associations of experiences. This notion comes very close to what Zen individuals want to rid themselves of in order to see their face before they were born.

And so on, and so on.

Krishnamurti repudiated his unwanted blind followers, those people who can’t think for themselves but depend on others to tell them how to behave.

Merton, Eckhart, Hobbes, and Hume were four freethinkers who showed healthy tendencies toward skepticism and for that had their ass busted by organized religion.

I’m fascinated by words and their interpretations, so just for the fun of it I went to a thesaurus and looked up the word freethinker. Here are some synonyms for an individual who uses his or her own mind instead of following someone else’s dictates. Brace yourself.

Heretic, radical, atheist, fanatic, revolutionary, nonbeliever, leftist.

I digress, but I’d like to believe you see my point.

Anyway, by reading Zen material you can certainly be helped to grasp the mechanics of practice, you can be caught up in the fascinating history of the tradition, you can be beguiled by the stories and the koans.

But all the booklearning in the world, Zen or other, will probably not bring you to an awareness of your own true being. That must come from you.

Enlightenment is not an end but a beginning. No worthwhile master or teacher would ever say, “You are enlightened.” A master or a teacher might point out one’s keen-sightedness as a step on a path, but that would be all.

That’s why there is no answer to the direct question of “Are you enlightened?”

A typical Zen answer to “Are you enlightened?” would be, “Not yes, not no.”

An even better response would be no answer at all.

Does one gain or lose from Zen practice?

Earnest Zen practice may, and probably will, help you to cut lose from the nasty habit of Western reasoning. That’s a loss, but it’s a worthy loss. Unless you’re a diehard pragmatist or scientist, shucking off analytical thinking and slanted judgements is a gain to your perception of the human condition.

An American Zen scholar who trained in Japan (Bernard Philips, mentioned in Philip Kapleau’s Awakening to Zen) said that Zen, basically, is three things.

1.     Zen is a sect of Buddhism that has its own history and forms.

2.    Zen is the heart and essence of Buddhism that has no doctrine or scripture of its own but points to the absolute source of all Buddhist teaching. This absolute source is the awakening experience of the Buddha. In this regard Zen is a discipline aimed at illumination of mind and freedom of action.

3.    Zen rises above—transcends, to use a favorite Buddhism word—the particulars of Buddhism in that Zen is a life of authentic being in which the self has overcome its alienation from itself and from all other things.