I've posted a lot of Zen stuff, but wanted to do one of those "loosely related to Zen" posts others do. I had been reading Isaac Asimov's Second Foundation earlier and found it worth dog-earing the page on a particular part which made me ponder posting it, as I think it speaks a lot of the issues we have communicating with each other here.
"Down--down--the results can be followed; and all the suffering that humanity ever knew can be traced to the one fact that no man in the history of the Galaxy[...], could really understand one another. Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed. Occasionally there were the dim signals from deep within the cavern in which another man was located--so that each might grope toward the other. Yet because they did not know one another, and could not understand one another, and dared not trust one another, and felt from infancy the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation--there was the hunted fear of man for man, the savage rapacity of man toward man." - Isaac Asmiov, Second Foundation
A common theme of Zen writings is that the sage is alone, "I alone am the World Honored One". Yet the purpose of these teachings we "study" here is there's a refuge in trust, which is the refuge of the Sangha. There's the refuge of the Buddha, so that we all know that the ultimate attainment of these studies is Buddha's non-duality, the loss of that isolation from being One to being All. That All are One Mind, and each has an inherent pure nature.
I think we lose this in our groping towards one another in our dark caves. Having Zen should be what unites the posters here, whether you stand behind one Zen Master, or the next, they all pointed to the moon. (Interestingly, coincidentally, in Western Qabalah, the moon is the "Foundation"!)
Submitted December 30, 2017 at 04:20AM by Dillon123 http://ift.tt/2CaAwfh
No comments:
Post a Comment