Of Ignorance & Enlightenment ▣

A

A monk asked, "What is ignorance?"

[Zhaozhou] said, "Why don't you ask about enlightenment?"

The monk said, "What is enlightenment?"

[Zhaozhou] said, "It is the very same thing as ignorance."

B

Someone asked, "What is enlightenment?"

[Zhaozhou] said, "This [question] in itself indicates [an ignorant person]."

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• In quote A, he equates (the notion of) enlightenment with ignorance.
• In quote B, he equates wondering about enlightenment with (a state of) ignorance.

​

I'll put forth the following for discussion, each step numbered for ease of reference:

1. Not seeing one's true nature is, by definition, delusion.
2. From a deluded point of view, enlightenment refers to seeing one's true nature.
3. A desire for enlightenment acknowledges the delusion and thus confirms ignorance.
4. For a deluded person, the notion of enlightenment exists as that which is not assumed to be realised yet, making it a goal of realisation or attainment.
   In that made up, provisional sense, it is a thing and can be pursued as the goal of studying zen.
5. Yet it would follow that there is in fact no such thing as enlightenment, precisely because it exists only as a figment of delusion. It can't be separated from ignorance.
   In that not made up, real sense, it is not a thing and thus nothing to attain.

Instead of striving for a concept of enlightenment, which Foyan tells everyone 'takes you further away', it is perhaps a helpful attitude shift to strive for Zhaozhou's stated principal concern for a zen student, being 'not to deceive himself [herself]'. Approaching matters this way, can it do other than take us nearer?

But what is deception? When we talk of enlightenment and suspect deception, we therefore need to see it as a provisional expression from an acknowledgment of delusion as both only exist together, and neither exists apart from the other. From the perspective of a Zen Master, there is no delusion and no enlightenment, because this conceptual duality between oneself and a form of attainment did not survive — but can you dissolve one of the most apparent examples of 'setting things up' through logical conclusion?

To take a step further towards experience, we hear that reality in all facets right before the eyes is it. The artist not different from the artwork. So I ask myself, when, ever, have I been different from it or existed apart from it? Setting up a secondary perspective, as we do, is like breaking up seeing into the eye and the object. Seeing itself is our first hand reality, breaking it up is conceptual. This can be logically understood, but does hardly constitute the experiential dissolution of this concept unless it is embodied. Right now you can get out of your conceptual mind and embody seeing. Just outright awareness of vision bar all else. Then, those prior thoughts of eyes and objects, how do they relate to what was there to begin with, but not consciously embodied as direct experience? Can parallels to this example be drawn on the level of mind and — will that be it? That be that?

Yongjia sees us out with the last word:

"The true nature of ignorance is the very nature of enlightenment; the empty body of illusions and projections is the very body of realities."

Submitted March 16, 2021 at 12:51PM by Coinionaire https://ift.tt/3lloIKp