From the Blythe translation
Daitsu Chisho [meaning: Great-Penetration Wisdom-Winning]:
A monk asked Seijo of Koyo and said, “Daitsu Chisho Buddha did zazen for ten kaplas in a Meditation Hall, and could neither manifest the truth, nor enter the Buddha-Way. Why was this?” Seijo said, “Your question is a very appropriate one.” The monk persisted, “Why did he not attain Buddhahood by doing zazen in the Meditation Hall?” Seijo replied, “Because he didn’t.”
The Commentary:
You may know the Old Indian, but you are not to analyse him psychologically. An ordinary man who really knows him is a sage, but a sage who has merely discursive knowledge of him is only an ordinary man.
The Verse:
Rather than putting the body to rest, rest of heart!
If the mind is at peace, the body knows no grief.
But if both the mind and body are pacified, thoroughly, as one,
This is the life of perfect sainthood, where praise is meaningless.
Me:
I looked up Daitsu Chisho Buddha and found him in the Lotus Sutra.
The story is he sat for 10 kalpas--billions and billions of years if I understand correctly--without attaining buddhahood but successfully fighting off armies of demons and garnering constant unending praise and offerings from kings and gods and such all the while. After that, he did achieve buddhahood and hundreds of millions of divine beings and whatnot spent a million or more times the 10 kalpas throwing flowers at him and things like that. The pile of flowers got to be mountain sized. Daitsu Chisho, if I am reading correctly, sat in silence the whole time, but at the end did deliver a powerful sermon just before dying ("expiring") summarizing the way to enlightenment and advanced the world metaphysically by three stages, getting rid of a bunch of evil paths. Then he died ("expired") and instantly bazillions of rebirths occured.
Then, in the Lotus Sutra, Buddha (i.e. Gautama, the one relaying all the above info) changes to another subject, telling about a group of travellers making their way up a difficult and dangerous mountain. They want to turn back, and their guide transforms the mountain around them into an illusion, convincing them they've come upon a great rich luxurious city. The travellers rest, believing the Transformed City to be real. And having rested, they then go on to work even harder on their way up the mountain.
Buddha then says outright that Nirvana is the Transformed City, an illusion he provides to give people a place to rest, hiding the difficulties and dangers all around from them. After that they can then go on to learn a lot more of the details of Buddhist metaphysics and attain higher and higher states.
I think that in the Lotus Sutra, we're meant to understand all the wild praise coming from billions of kingdoms of gods and other spirits and priests and stuff, as an instance of the Transformed City, the trazillions of years in which he sat in dhyana while all the brahma spirit kings and monks and things praised him and uttered sutras under his inspiration and things were just generally awesome--I think we're meant to understand that as an instance of the Transformed City. Then Great-Penetration Wisdom-Winning Buddha dies ("expires"), instant rebirths happen by the jillions, and... life goes on.
I also feel like it's a safe assumption that Mumon's verse above, being about rest, is a reference to the rest people find in Buddha's story about the Transformed City.
Great-Penetration Wisdom-Winning Buddha sat for a cosmically long time without being able to obtain buddhahood, then sat for a cosmically long time having obtained buddhahood, and both before and after, life went on around him, a lot of attention was paid to him, a ton of import came to weigh on him, all in much the same way. He got to be a bigger and bigger deal to those paying attention but fundamentally it was the same shit going on the whole time.
The Lotus Sutra seems to be positing that enlightenment is an illusion, nothing really changes as a result, and all of the work continues to need to be done.
When Great-Penetration Wisdom-Winning Buddha did attain buddhahood, did anything really happen? Did he change? Did the world change? Where is he now anyway?
What can I do with this? Take the illusion on its own terms, make it my own by letting it be, before the buddha fools me into doing yet more work for him. Don't wait for a moment, don't create a moment--the moments create themselves and they don't wait for me. When I want to make a change, I can change the way I move, or change the way I rest.
That's all to zen-y. If we're resting in zeniness we're moving away from it. By the way we should all be fucking making up words IMO. So, concretely restating what I can do with what is gained from considering this koan:
A personal angle--I'm about to start going to a local zen center where they do sitting meditation, walking meditation, prostrative meditation, and koan teaching. I don't think any of that is necessary. And I actively hate doing some of it. This is more for possible medical benefits (depression and ADHD) and convenient access to personal conversation on a topic I'm interested in, than for anything else. In this way I think I will be taking an illusion on its own terms, and make it my own--by letting it be what it is. An illusion, that I'll voluntarily take seriously. In this way, what I take away from it, will not be an an understanding imposed on me or a conceptualization imposed on them. I'll be intentionally providing my own illusion when the buddha provides this one, and so when I've had this new kind of rest, when the buddha bids me to move forward in a new way, it will be me doing the bidding.
You:
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Submitted January 08, 2020 at 10:17AM by Porn_Steal https://ift.tt/2FwG037
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