According to Ch'ing-yüan, also called Fo-yen, there are two diseases in connection with the practice of Zen. "The first is to ride an ass in search of the ass. The second is to ride the ass and refuse to dismount." It is easy to see the silliness of seeking the ass you are riding. As your attention is turned outwards, you will never look inside, and all your search will be so much ado about nothing. The kingdom of God is within you, but you seek it outside. There is no telling how many troubles in the world have had their origin just in this wrong orientation.
As Ma-tsu has said, "You are the treasure of your own house." To seek it outside is a pathetic endeavor, because you will always be disappointed. For, at the bottom of your heart, you are seeking the real treasure. Although you may be satisfied for a few moments with faked substitutes, in the depths of your subconsciousness, you can never deceive yourself. Léon Bloy has uttered a profound insight when he said, "There is but one sorrow, and that is to have lost the Garden of Delights, and there is but one hope and one desire, to recover it. The poet seeks it in his own way, and the filthiest profligate seeks it in his. It is the only goal." But the tragedy is that, not realizing that the Garden of Delights is within us, we seek it by flying away from it with an ever-increasing speed.
The second disease is even more subtle and difficult to cure. This time, you are no longer seeking outside. You know that you are riding your own ass. You have already tasted an interior peace infinitely sweeter than any pleasures you can get from the external things. But the great danger is that you become so attached to it that you are bound to lose it altogether. This is what Ch'ing-yüan meant by "riding the ass and refusing to dismount." This disease is common to contemplative souls in all religions. In his Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton has uttered a salutary warning against precisely the same pitfall:
Within the simplicity of this armed and walled and undivided interior peace is an infinite unction which, as soon as it is grasped, loses its savor. You must not try to reach out and possess it altogether. You must not touch it, or try to seize it. You must not try to make it sweeter or try to keep it from wasting away …
The situation of the soul in contemplation is something like the situation of Adam and Eve in Paradise. Everything is yours, but on one infinitely important condition: that it is all given.
There is nothing that you can claim, nothing that you can demand, nothing that you can take. And as soon as you try to fake something as if it were your own—you lose your Eden.
In this light, you can appreciate the profound insight of Lung-t'an that the priceless pearl can only be kept by one who does not fondle it.
Ch'ing-yüan's final counsel is, "Do not ride at all. For you yourself are the ass, and the whole world is the ass. You have no way to ride it… If you don't ride at all the whole universe will be your playground."
Riding an Ass: excerpt from The Golden Age of Zen, by John C. H. Wu, 1967 [source: Terebess]
Submitted June 06, 2019 at 06:55PM by WanderingRoninXIII http://bit.ly/2MvvfEI
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