I'm making my way through Foyan's Instant Zen after having skimmed through it a month or two ago. This is the first chapter, "Freedom and Independence."
Foyan says... "One who is not a companion of myriad things has departed the toils of materialism. The mind does not recognize the mind, the eye does not see the eye; since there is no opposition, when you see forms there are no forms there to be seen, and when you hear sounds there are no sounds there to be heard. Is this not departing the toils of materialism?"
The enlightened person can see everything as One where the unenlightened person sees multiple forms -- that's what I'm getting from Foyan. But why does he say, "The mind does not recognize the mind, the eye does not see the eye"? If the mind does not recognize mind, then the thought that it in fact does is illusory. And it is illusory because it supposes that the subject cannot possibly be the object of itself, just as an eye cannot see itself or the tip of a finger can't point to itself. (This can lead me to a tangent: Take psychology. I take it to be a science in which the object of study is the studying subject itself. If Foyan's right, then psychology cannot be such a science.) The subject-object duality is the "opposition" Foyan's talking about. So, if that's gone, then so is seeing forms as distinct from oneself -- but... then I guess so is seeing, as an action of some thing, and so is oneself, since that concept presumes an other. (Is this the conundrum which renders any talk of Dao and Zen self-defeating? Grammar and its implicit subject-object duality?)
Foyan says... "There is no particular pathway into it, no gap through which to see it: Buddhism has no East or West, South or North; one does not say, 'You are the disciple, I am the teacher.'"
"No particular pathway into" Zen, meaning no specific practices and rituals to 'enter' Zen? That makes extra sense when Foyan says 'no teacher, no student' -- what's there to teach? But what's Foyan teaching? I think he's teaching us that teachers aren't necessary.
Foyan says... "If your own self is clear and everything is It..."
By "clear" does Foyan mean empty, as in sunyata? How I understand sunyata is this: everything is empty, which means to be without a self or essence. And everything is without a self, because everything is composed of things that are not-self. (Side question here: Is this an ontological statement, or an epistemological statement? Is there even such a difference for Foyan?) So far, this paragraph pertains to the proposition "your own self is clear," but what about "everything is It"?
Here is my biggest holdup with Zen (and really any school that talks of a God, a Dao, a Dharmakaya, a Brahman, and so on -- any Absolute under which all things are said to be immanent forms of): I have yet to find a reason to accept such a concept, and have reason to not to. I have to bring up what Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of the Idols since it gets at the root of what I'm expressing: "The other idiosyncrasy of the philosophers is no less dangerous; it consists in confusing the last and the first. They place that which comes at the end--unfortunately! for it ought not to come at all!--namely, the 'highest concepts,' which means the most general, the emptiest concepts, the last smoke of evaporating reality, in the beginning, as the beginning... Thus they arrive at their stupendous concept, 'God.' That which is last, thinnest, and emptiest is put first, as the cause, as ens realissimum." If Nietzsche were instead in China, he would've replaced God with Mind -- the rest remains topical. It's simple: Why the jump in conceptualizing from myriad things to One Absolute?
Foyan says... "... when you visit a teacher you do not see that there is a teacher; when you inquire of yourself, you do not see that you have a self. When you read scripture, you do not see that there is scripture there. When you eat, you do not see that there is a meal there. When you sit and meditate, you do not see that there is any sitting.You do not slip up in your everyday tasks, yet you cannot lay hold of anything at all. When you see in this way, are you not independent and free?"
What does leaving samsara and entering nirvana mean to Foyan? Is to fully see 'no samsara, no nirvana' being in nirvana? Heaven is seeing no heaven and no hell, hell is seeing heaven and hell?
Moving on, let me sit down with Foyan. There is a bowl of apples in front of us. Foyan asks me what I see, and I tell him, "I see a bowl of apples." He replies, "I see a bowl of apples." -- What makes me ignorant and Foyan "independent and free" here?
Submitted December 18, 2019 at 12:10AM by 25point8069758011279 https://ift.tt/2PyXvG9
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