Okay, so I’ve been practicing this Zen thing for a while. And it’s hard to put into words just how difficult it can be to stop being phony about it. Let me explain:
As soon as I begin to do something, and I catch myself thinking “I’m doing this”, it immediately becomes fake. Because now I’m no longer doing it for the sake of doing it, now I have an agenda. I have a concept of what I want the outcome to be, and so I know immediately that I’ve fallen into error.
Ordinary people all indulge in conceptual thought based on environmental phenomena, hence they feel desire and hatred.
John Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Huang-Po
Says Huangbo, and he’s right: now that I have a concept of the outcome, I have a desire to achieve it, and I have a hatred for failing to achieve it. Can it get any phonier than that?
Okay, what’s the solution, Huang bro?
To eliminate environmental phenomena, just put an end to your conceptual thinking.
John Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Huang-Po
Ha! That’s it! Simple as that! Just stop the conceptual thinking! Wait... is there an “off” switch for that? Where is it located, and why did no one ever tell me about that? Surely that must have been mentioned in the owner’s manual somewhere, right?
The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Tao Te Ching, Ch.1, transl. Stephen Mitchell
See, when you start unraveling the ball of yarn, you realize that there is nothing in your life that’s even remotely not phony. You go to work because you need money. You need money because you want to eat. You want to eat because you don’t want to feel hungry.
So, you go to work because you don’t want to go hungry, and not because you want to work. The only place that contains any liberation is the one where you doing things for their doing’s sake, and not because you are seeking an outcome.
Of course, just by reading about that place, you’ve already started beginning to assemble a concept of it, as if that’s going to get you any closer! You haven’t even moved in yet, and you’ve already started to build a fence around it!
There is only the one reality, neither to be realized nor attained. To say ‘I am able to realize something’ or ‘I am able to attain something’ is to place yourself among the arrogant.
John Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Huang-Po
See? You can’t even go to that place, because you’re already there? So why are you still seeking it! Stop it! Don’t you know how phony that is?
Give it up already and let thusness consume you!
Submitted June 19, 2019 at 01:48AM by Joe_DeGrasse_Sagan http://bit.ly/2WSzI92
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