Wumen's Warnings and Objectivity.

From: https://reddit.com/r/zen/wiki/warnings

Wumen's Warnings:   1. To follow the compass and keep to the rule is to tie oneself without a rope. 2. Doing what you like in every way is heresy and being among the devil's army. 3. To unify and pacify the mind is quietism and false Zen. 4. Subjectivity and forgetting the objective world is just falling into a deep hole. 5. To be absolutely clear about everything and never to allow oneself to be deceived is to wear chains and a cangue. 6. To Think to good and evil is to be in Heaven-and-Hell. 7. Looking for Buddha, looking for Truth outside oneself is being confined in two iron Cakravala. 8. One who thinks he is enlightened by raising thoughts is just playing with ghosts. 9. Sitting blankly in Zen practice is the condition of a dead man. 10. Making progress is an intellectual illusion. 11. Retrogression is to go against our religion. 12. Neither to progress nor retrogress is to be merely a dead man breathing. 13. Tell me now, what are you going to do? 14. You must make the utmost effort to accomplish you enlightenment in this life, and not to postpone it into eternity, reincarnating throughout the three worlds.  

-R.H. Blyth

Let's talk about #4 for a minute here.

Subjectivity and forgetting the objective world is just falling into a deep hole.

Is there objectivity? Is not everything subjective based on one's perception?

Wumen says there is an objective world, though. This, to me, is much harder to grasp than the idea that reality is subjective. I think that most people already understand that reality is subjective.

But what about objective? Is the objective world simply Joshu's "I call this a staff, what do you call it?" Is the objective world that there is an oak tree on Joshu's front lawn?

Does that mean the objective world is only objective if more than one person agrees on its existence? Does our collective subjectivity make up objectivity, then?

Submitted May 29, 2019 at 11:24PM by McNubbitz http://bit.ly/2YVBv9Y