Is meditation zen? This comes up as a point of contention. Some say meditation is essential to zen and others say it's a form of religious prayer. Perhaps each position is correct at times, though not simultaneously.
Yung-Ming False Cults1
It's important to note that Yung-Ming is deriding cults which branched out from the "true source."
Some cling to universal principle and immediately abandon adornment. Some misunderstand gradual teaching and become fanatical activists.
"Gradual teaching?"
Some cling to noncultivation and thus dismiss the ranks of sages. Some say there is realization, and thus turn away from natural reality.
Here Yung-Ming drops a hint about the nature of insight he expounds upon later. If rejecting cultivation is indicative of a cult, what does it mean to cultivate anyway?
Some are devoted to doctrinal methods and disdain spontaneous meditation. Some promote meditative contemplations and repudiate the measuring devices of the complete teaching.
Here we have 'spontaneous meditation' pitted against what seems to be formal meditative practice. Does this imply that formal meditative practice is wholly wrong?
Yung-Ming The Cooperation of Concentration and Insight 2
In Zen and the Teachings there are two methods, most honored of the myriad practices of ten perfections. At first they are called stopping and seeing, to help new learners; later they become concentration and wisdom, roots of enlightenment.
Stopping and seeing. Is this the "spontaneous meditation" Yung-Ming mentioned before?
These are only one reality, which seems to have two parts. In the silence of the essence of reality is stopping by comprehending truth; when silent yet ever aware, subtle seeing is there.
Concentration is the father, insight is the mother; they can conceive the thousand sages, developing their faculties and powers, nurturing their sacred potential, giving birth to buddhas and Zen masters in every moment of thought.
Concentration is the general; insight is the minister; they can assist the mind monarch in attaining the unexcelled, providing forever means for all to realize the Way, in the manner of the enlightenment of the ancient buddhas.
Concentration is like the moonlight shining so brightly that the stars of errant falsehood vanish. If you can hold up the torch of knowledge, so much the clearer. Irrigating the sprouts of enlightenment, it removes emotional bondage.
Insight is like the sun shining, breaking up the darkness of ignorance. It is able to cause the Zen of the ignorant with false views to turn into transcendent wisdom.
A brief time of silence, a moment of stillness, gradually build up into correct concentration. The sages, making comparatively little effort, ultimately saw the subtle essence of the pedestal of the spirit.
So here the process of 'cultivation' is revealed. Can formal meditation be the brief time of silence, a moment of stillness gradually building into correct concentration? Is it only spontaneous meditation which is effective to the exclusion of the formal? But then if one clings intentionally to a moment of spontaneous meditation, it thereby becomes formal meditation! A single instant of insight into the moment of meditation transforms liberation into grasping.
As soon as you hear even a little bit of the Teaching, it can influence your subconscious such that seeds of awakening develop. The moment you turn the light of awareness around, accurate cognition opens up; in an instant you can accomplish Buddha's teaching like this.
The power of meditative concentration is inconceivable; it changes the ordinary into sages instantly. Boundless birth and death is thereby severed at the root; the nest of accumulated ages of mundane toils is destroyed. This is the water that stills the mind, the pearl that purifies the will; its light engulfs myriad forms, lighting a thousand roads.
When you open your own eyes, there are no obstructions; originally there is nothing in the world that constrains. When thieves of attention and reflection are quelled in a timely manner, then the sickness of obsession with objects suddenly clears up.
Washing away the dirt of thought and cleaning away the dust of confusion reveals the body of reality and strengthens the life of wisdom. Like an immutable mountain, like a still sea, even if the sky should flip and the earth overturn, you would not be changed. Bright as crystal imbued with moonlight, serene and unbound, you are independent.
So the perennial argument over "is meditation Zen" - yes and no. There's room for cultivation of insight and concentration once the nature of mind has been realized. The watered sprout does indeed grow. However, meditation itself as an act of seeking - what a prison! What a trap!
Cleary, Thomas. The Five Houses of Zen. Boston: Shambhala, 1997.
1 pp. 145 - 151
2 pp. 151 - 155
Submitted September 10, 2017 at 03:11AM by OnceNamed http://ift.tt/2faOvnM
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