Dualism, again. Mumonkan Case 43.

Shuzan held out his short staff and said: "If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?"

Mumon's comment: If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. It cannot be expressed with words and it cannot be expressed without words. Now say quickly what it is.

Holding out the short staff,

He gave an order of life or death.

Positive and negative interwoven,

Even Buddhas and patriarchs cannot escape this attack.

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Mumonkan Case 43.

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^{Apologies for the upcoming potential word salad}

By now I get the gist of these:

"If you think objects are relative, you are dumb. If you think objects are absolute, you are dumb". He's got you by the balls here, you're in a deadlock. So he throws his staff at your forehead...

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As Mumon's comment suggests, in a life or death scenario, there's action without any deliberation, it comes about spontaneously without any thought as to the staff's absolute or relative nature.

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So as spontaneous nature manifests, 'you' dodge and avoid a bonk on the head.

So who was it that dodged the staff? Who knows that under a pair of horns there's a bull? Or that under a flag there's a temple (or an embassy, I guess?)? Did I have any control of the preceding action?

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If a ZM were to ask me "who was it that dodged?" I would reply "Me, of course!". That's a disappointing answer. If he were to ask me "what is your original face before birth?" I would say "I didn't exist then, How should I know? But I exist now". Honestly none of that strikes me as strange.

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I get that there's no answer to these cases, but there's also no insight. And there's no insight because before and after every action there's a very strong sense of 'I' that's appended. How else could it be? Why would we have an idea of a self in the first place?

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So then, saying all of this, how do I gain... insight? Did I miss something from the case?

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^{OK RANT OVER.}

Submitted May 21, 2020 at 03:56AM by bigjungus11 https://ift.tt/2Tp7lvM