Touzi, "Practicing seated meditation is replicating sadness"

Fu was a contemporary of Bodhidharma; this is the same emperor that he too left dissapointed--no one has received a better teaching since. But without getting carried away, what is the teaching.

Look!!!

When the great man Fu met the emperor of Liang, he didn't get up.

A court minister asked, "Why didn't you get up when you met the emperor?"

The great man said, "If the ground of reality were to move, all would be insecure."

Touzi cited this and said, "Yes, but to stabilize a nation and settle disorder actually depends on someone reliable; to set up the teaching and clarify the source, it is necessary to rely on an adept. But if opportunities are not engaged fittingly, faults fill the sky. If powerful function is incomplete, civilizing influence is reduced by half. If you rely on taking the high to the low, then a withered tree has a powerful pulse. If you keep your legs crossed to the end, then the sadness will be the same over ten thousand miles."

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From Touzi we get...

1. To clarify the meaning of Zen you must encounter and engage with a Zen Master.

2. If you don't meet people where they are, errors abound.

3. Seated meditation is replicating sadness.

The way in which each of these triggers people of different religious persuasians is

The first one idraws blood from all the illiterates and Dogen/Hakuin cultists. Their church has no Zen Masters and 'passing' students for secret answers given behind closed doors is not 'relying on an adept'.

Religions require setting up special places to say special things to people who form a spiritual community of the special. Zen Masters don't. The Buddha, the Law, the community, precepts...all of it...everything that people have opinions on...all of it comes up and is part of ordinary conversation. People who choose not to engage with conversations about their own practice wrt. Zen are 'not engaged.'.

The last one is particularly interesting in that a lot of the times in texts we hear Zen Masters talk about meditation is that it is a waste of time, it won't get you enlightened, or that it can only be done if you are enlightened...but meditative practices as perpetuating one's own sadness...wow Touzi. In addressing the religious crowd that wants to escape ordinary reality by taking sitting cross legged as a 'gate of bliss' we get pretty much the same crowd of dissapointed, lonely, romantically-frustated, and ethically bankrupt men that come to /r/Zen enaging in targeted harassment and religious apologetics. In such a situation, their very attempt to console themselves via. the promise of a meditation high makes them more inept and incapable of dealing with their failures.

Which is just violating the precepts against consuming intoxicants.

Touzi's warnings, like Fu not getting up, are toxic to just about anybody who says the name 'Zen' but can't answer questions about where they stand.

Don't evade your duty.

Submitted June 11, 2022 at 01:04AM by ThatKir https://ift.tt/9CfgakU