Exhortations for Those Who Don't Rouse Doubt
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The Disease of the Intellect
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If you're unable to rouse doubt when practicing Zen, you may seek intellectual understanding through the written word. Stringing together with a single thread the various phrases and teachings of buddhas and patriarchs, you stamp them all with one seal. If a koan is brought up, you are quick to give your interpretation. Unable to rouse your own doubt concerning the koan, you don't like it when someone probes you with serious questions. All this is simply your wavering mind; it is not Zen.
You may respond at once to questions by raising a finger or showing a fist. Taking up an ink brush, you promptly pen a verse to show off, hoping to guide unwitting students to your level. Fascinated with all this, you refer to it as the gate of enlightenment. You don't realize that such karmic consciousness is precisely what prevents this doubt from arising. If only you would straight off see the error of your ways, then you should once and for all let go of all and seek out a good teacher or Dharma friend to help you find an entrance. If not, your wavering mind will prevail, you'll become as if demon-possessed, and release will be very difficult.
--Boshan, opening passage to "Great Doubt: Practicing Zen in the World", translation by Jeff Shore
Jungle_Toad's commentary:
Whoever comments on this passage fastest understands it least. (Oops. I just lost. Haha. Now you can win!)
Can spontaneity and great doubt coincide? Have I lied? Can I abide? When I pen a verse, what is hidden beneath the inky blackness of my answers, deep inside? Is doubt not simply the less attractive cousin of awe and wonder? Where does doubt reside? Are there answers to be found in the form of questions? Why must they always hide? How did I end up with this box of baby chicks? Will they ever fly? Goodbye?
Submitted November 12, 2019 at 12:45AM by jungle_toad https://ift.tt/2qJCEWi
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