Can you put Zen into words?

Nineteenth Case: Chu Ti's One-Finger Ch'an

What do Zen Masters teach? Do they teach Zen? Let's find out!

Hello.

Case

Whenever anything was asked, Master Chu Ti would just raise one finger.

astrocomments:

-There's a lot of ways I could rationalize this, but every time I try to write it down it just feels incomplete. I guess I don't have the elegancy to answer everything with just one raise of a finger. Right now I'm split between two options. Either there's gonna come a point where I just get all of this and I can put into words why it makes sense, or every way of making sense of it is wrong and putting it into words is useless. But then why read all of this cases and bother having conversations? I'm losing hope this is not just pointless. "Fire god goes looking for fire"? Then once you understand what's underlying all of these cases they are just charming stories about funny people that understood Zen, and my comments are just adding frost to snow. Pointless unless I'm having fun.

-Chu Ti got his one-finger Zen from T'ien Lung and used it all his life without exhausting it. Why then, when a servant boy used it too did he cut his finger off? "Clearly understand one device, and at once you clearly understand a thousand devices, ten thousand devices." It reminds me of when Wumen said that in order to understand Zen you must first pass the barrier of the patriarchs. If the finger is not important, which it feels like it isn't, like it could've just as well been anything else, then lifting the finger is more annoying than helpful. The boy gained insight despite Chu Ti's finger, not because of it.

-It's starting to seem to me that the only way to understand Zen completely is to throw all of this garbage cases into the trash. How can you tell a Zen Master burning the BCR and someone who got exasperated with Zen and just gave up without any understanding? Even if both say they understand it's not like they could prove it to anyone. A mute having night terrors, right? Maybe I should erase all of this and just tell you all I understand. Could you refute me?

Submitted May 05, 2021 at 03:23AM by astroemi https://ift.tt/33hk9Zm