The Gateless Gate: Don't you know that the real Zen student commands sounds, controls forms, is clear-sighted at every event and free on every occasion?

The Gateless Gate: When the Bell Sounds [16th Case]

Unmon said, "The world is vast and wide.

Why do you put on your seven-piece robe at the sound of the bell?"

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Mumon's Comment

In studying Zen, you should not be swayed by sounds and forms.

Even though you attain insight when hearing a voice or seeing a form, this is simply the ordinary way of things.

Don't you know that the real Zen student commands sounds, controls forms, is clear-sighted at every event and free on every occasion?

Granted you are free, just tell me: Does the sound come to the ear or does the ear go to the sound?

If both sound and silence die away, at such a juncture how could you talk of Zen?

While listening with you ear, you cannot tell. When hearing with your eye, you are truly intimate.

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Mumon's Verse

With realization, things make one family;

Without realization, things are separated in a thousand ways.

Without realization, things make one family;

With realization, things are separated in a thousand ways.

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Commentary and questions: What is the underlying principle of all things? There is only the Absolute, but awareness of this truth varies from person to person due to the nature of realization and understanding. Within the Absolute, the mind is the subject, and the form is the object.

If one is mired in delusion and has no understanding, then their perception of reality will be based on the false notion of the subject-object split. They are swayed by sounds and forms, cast about here and there at all times by the myriad things. When one constantly makes distinctions such as self and other, how can it be understood that there is no ear and no sound to begin with? It is in this way that delusion extends universally to become 'reality', and this false reality is difficult at best to let fall and at once see beyond.

Submitted January 25, 2020 at 06:52PM by _WanderingRonin_ https://ift.tt/3aKhA4w