Welcome to the second post in my series "Flip to a page of Serenity..."
I made you an audio recording of the complete case:
Today my finger landed here:
Master Qishan Zhen’s verse on the case said,
The unconcerned surrenderer seeks a criminal name;
At the moment of his capture, he loses his whole body.
As for those who rush in pursuit before the true facts are called forth,
I don’t know how many are standing outside the gate.
Aha! This one hits home. Are you folks aware that your very own Ch'an literary pirate u/golden_eyebrow actually does posses a "criminal name"? That's right, I'm a technical outlaw—just like one might find in The Outlaws of the Marsh.
This might seem off topic, but it's not: I was made an outlaw by local law enforcement when I identified myself as an Au Ti S Ti C student of Zen, and told them I was being harassed by drunks. I was unaware that I was dealing with a criminal gang posing as law enforcement when I went to them, of course—but when I realized the mistake, there was nothing to do but surrender to the corrupt magistrate, and accept my "criminal name."
I was unconcerned.
"Apparently they didn't hear the part about Ch'an. Maybe I should have said: "I drink a lot of tea and live like Pai Mai in Kill Bill did at the age of 40"—but frankly I suspect the members of the local axe gang still hadn’t seen much Kung Fu cinema in action at that point.1
In any case, while you know that I do not consider myself a teacher of Ch’an (at my age?!?), and particulaly not in r/zen, where there are people better equipped to teach in this medium than I—at least my CV does carry the authentic status of “literati Ch’an outlaw” on its header.
Excuse the diversion, but it is part of my Ch’an study, in these times and seasons, to finally come out of the woodwork and publicly endorse r/zen as an authentic Ch’an community, where everyone who studies Ch’an is welcome—and also one that provides protection for students of Ch’an in a myriad of ways.
Faced with a life of outlawry, what was my response as a student of Ch’an? I stole all of my content from the warlord Exxon, who is currently plundering and burning my state to the ground. [Au Ti s Ti C students of Ch’an included.]
That’s right. Every word of my r/zen content has been straight up theft. The function of “Ch’an outlaw” required that I steal the truth from liars—and share it with any who would listen. This was function of buddha-nature. I watched the entire show with my own eyeballs. It’s what my body, person, sight, hearing, smelling, talking, gripping, and stepping did. Since I was using it, it was not invisible to me.2
r/zen was a part of that function. I saw how it opperated as a Ch’an community, and how I could bring my literary commentary to the platform. This is something that would not have happened when it did if not for the function of Ch’an outlawry..
This is something that enaged automatically after my many years of Ch’an study. Truth be told, the only difference I had to make in my normal day was to take tea at the market in the morning instead of at home. The rest took care of itself. [Being at the market relocated my normal daily study from my table out to my community and r/zen—since I had no library or pets.]
r/zen was the perfect community and technology to facilitate this process. From my point of view, the place was constructed to facilitate this real function of Ch’an study. This did not surprise me at all—it was bound to be the result of real Ch’an study. Even that it was so perfectly timed with history—just another feature of Ch’an study. (This is natural, considering the patchrobed monk’s relationship to the triple world.)
That’s how a Ch’an pirate outlaw uses their own library to hack literary commentary out their own body “at a time before it was intended”—all I had to do was reach out for the proper volume in the morning, and begin applying my daily function of Ch’an literary study in a new manner that still teaches oneself but while also leaving a public record.
Tea drinkers really do have so many advantages when it comes to studying Ch’an. I doubt it is so easy to splice your Ch’an study into that of a Ch’an literary community without tea, frankly.
You know how I’ve always responded to this case, Yunmen’s “Sumeru”?
“A monk asked Yunmen, “When not producing a single thought—is there any fault or not?”
::golden eyebrow snorts tea through his nose”
That’s how. What a dummy, n’est pas?
Yunmen’s “Mount Sumeru” is the act of dropping Mount Sumeru on the dummy’s head. At that point, what else will do?
Which is another function of r/zen I observe and appreciate. This place was built using Mount-Sumeru-throwing catapults. You see how that’s all there is: Mount Sumeru with a bunch of legs and arms sticking out from underneath.
Proper way to go about it, if you ask me.
Dongshan said, “The green mountain is the father of the white clouds, the white clouds are the children of the green mountain—the white clouds hang around all day, the green mountain doesn’t notice at all.”
I won’t lie, zipping around in the r/zen cloudtops is quite the experience.
[Linseed: the kindle version changes “Sumeru to ‘Polar Mountain’.]
Verse:
[format: Tiangtong-Golden Eyebrow-Wansong]3
[Tiantong] Not producing a single thought—the polar mountain;
[Golden Eyebrow] Wuyi Shan oolong, growing on the polar mountain, feeds on no-thought
[Wansong] Finished in one line.
[Tiantong] Yunmen’s gift of teaching is not stingy in intent.
[Golden Eyerbrow] Teach loudly and swing a big staff
[Wansong] Tiantong’s is not little either.
[Tiantong] If you come with acceptance, he imparts with both hands;
[golden eyebrow] The dragon daughter imparted with both hands
[Wansong] I’m only afraid you can’t take it on.
[Tiantong] If you go on doubting, it’s so high you can’t get a hold.
[golden eyebrow] A mother-of-pearl telescope lowers no rope
[Wansong] It’s a wasted effort to shade your eyes and gaze at it.
[Tiantong] The blue ocean is wide,
[golden eyebrow] sharks circle like monks
[Wansong] Flooding the heavens and bathing the sun, it has no shore.
[Tiantong] The white clouds are peaceful;
[golden eyebrow] I’ll imprint my eyebrows here
[Wansong] Following the wind along with the waves, they are free.
[Tiantong] Don’t put so much as a tip of a hair in there.
[golden eyebrow] Even feathers bounce off
[Wansong] Already too much.
[Tiantong] A phony cock crow can hardly fool me—
[golden eyebrow] a filial parrot brings its own pearl
[Wansong] I still won’t agree to let you pass through the gate in the confusion.
Only the adamantine eye can see through it at a glance, whereupon one sees seven openings and eight holes, and straightaway finds that it’s shattered to smithereens. Then after that it’s on the eyebrows and eyelashes, solitary and beyond transcendence, lofty, steep, magnificent.
Mount Sumeru on your eyebrows and eyelashes? That is a great way to describe what it is like to drink tea, if you ask me.
Someone in my last post claimed the post was “superficial” and that it was “too hard to find the points of contention”. I find this lack of education regrettable, but there is little I can do about it other than what I an already doing.
The truth of the matter is, it’s quite possible that only u/astreomi is capable of finding the points of contention in my OPs. Not because he is a “Zen Master”–but because he is possibly the only person here sufficiently literate in literature to unlock it over time.
The trick to this gate is rather simple: literature takes time to unlock. When I write literary commentary as a part of my Ch’an study, it is definitely always chocked to the brim with contentious points—for other Ch’an literati studying in this literary medium to encounter.
Recently, a user here said: “If there is nothing to talk about, there is no conversation.”
I would reply: “That is exactly what I was getting at with my ‘How to Study Chan under a Military Dictatorship’ series of posts—yes.”
This example allows me to illuminate a very useful feature of r/zen for the study of Ch’an. I consider this a literary medium, and as such use it to create literary commentary on Ch’an texts, and also—on top of normal conversations, where what you see is what you get—to hold ongoing literary conversations with other Ch’an literati—no matter where or when they happen to be when they stop by.
That is a very handy tool to have.
For one, it has allowed me to continue my study of Ch’an unabated, never having to stop in order to pick up new language or protocol for communicating in timespans that I am not already trained to communicate in. [Linseed: ie what you get the moment I am typing, or for all moments, being my two manners of being able to present myself in the triple world re: the “time span” of typed conversation. This is also how I speak in real life, it’s either: “Here’s a joke about my parrot”, or “Want to hear a funny story about greek mythology?” kind of thing, pretty much all the time.]
Speaking of funny jokes from greek mythology, did you folks enjoy my application of my theory of the balkanization of the U.S. to the narrative in the Kung Fu Hustle commentary? “Ida Ho”? Do you know who the “Ida Ho” is? The “goddess” who gave birth to Zeus on Mt. Ida. Fuck Zeus. “Ho” indeed! [Linseed: Fortunately, when Athena, Zeus’s daughter, “breaks out of Zeus’s head”—she is born already wearing the Aegis, and “fully armed” with the tools of both civilization and war. Imagine that.]
I have two real true friends I know very well in person currently living in the lower 48. One is a stay at home parent and backyard gardner in Seattle, the other is an outdoor gardener in New England. I receive garden updates, we exchange photos of tea sessions and wares, that sort of thing.
One of those friendships is nearing the 15 year mark, the other has lived in my actual community—and so known me as a neighbor since I have been studying Ch’an openly.
They are two of my readers who will likely not be coming by r/zen for some reading in another decade—possibly two. (It is very vigorous and time consuming to apply so much effort as these two friends, under the yoke of a military dictatorship, I assure you—they only have time for correspondence contemporarily, as is.)
This is another feature of r/zen that is part of the function of studying Ch’an, from my perspective.
The fact of the matter is that the Exxon warlord has probably already shortened my life by a decade or two. There is no way arround it, I can see what’s happening with my own eyes. [Don’t worry—I’m a survivor.]
This ability to still hold conversations about Ch’an with my real true friends 20 or 30 or 40 years down the road, via literary commentary—has been augmented greatly by the existence and function of r/zen.
From my perspective it was a function of studying Ch’an itself: ::shot in the eye with an oil covered arrow:: “Oops—now that’s definitely gonna kill me!” ::looks at r/zen, reaches for cutlass, throws it into the future::
And I have a lot of real true friends in the future who will be stopping by to catch that cutlass, midflight, and continue the literary conversation we have already been carrying on for years and even decades.
More importantly for r/zen, it functions that way with real true friends in here, too.
For most of you that only means read my posts once, and thanks for talking. For some of you, like u/astroemi and u/sje397,4 it can work differently. Theoretically, my written literary content should always follow the times and seasons—ie: as time passes, they should be able to come back to my commentary and find that is has stayed apace of their Ch’an study.
This is only a theory, of course. In practice, maybe there’s an asteroid on the way. But some of us have been working on it for a while now.
Which is why Wansong is so fun to have conversations with. “This is why you study Chinese literature in order to study Ch’an!” one can’t help but observe. “Wansong is right here in Golden Eyebrow’s cabin…doing the exact same thing Golden Eyebrow is doing!”
How a Ch’an pirate pirate’s history:
The warlord Exxon is a conqueror sent by the Empire. The Great Bear is my regional warlord. In 2019, I talked to a local Alaska Native. He told me he was a member of the Raven clan. I asked: “The Ravens are the storytellers?” He said, “Yes.” I told him: “Do you know Japanese Zen buddhists that teach sitting mediation?” He nodded. “That isn’t real Zen. They tell gullible Americans not to read the teachings of the Chinese Zen Masters—and then they sell them a meditation product the Chinese Zen Masters warned people away from.” “No shit, he replied. Then: “That makes sense.”
“Have you seen Kill Bill?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied. “The Japanese Zen buddhists in America are Oren-Ishi and her crazy 88s, the Chinese Ch’an masters are Pai Mai—and people who truly study the Ch’an masters teachings are the Bride.” He thought about it and looked at me completely differently. “I’ve been studying Ch’an here for almost ten years,” I told him. I’m going to begin writing literary commentary online. I will study Ch’an openly as an Alaskan, and tell people that the only reason I am safe to study Ch’an openly here is because of the civilization of Alaska Natives that was already here making it possible for me to do so.” “Aweseome,” he said.
Anyway—I wasn’t lying to that Raven at all.
—Golden Eyebrow
Year of the Tiger
PS: Join me for instruction in Genshin Impact this fall, when the new region Sumeru is launched! [Linseed: ie How Golden Eyebrow Takes a Stage).
1 In the original version of this cinematic shindig, which I made for the poetry slam, the third Kung Fu fighter–who reaches for his collection of staffs—was named “Linseed.” This is the version I made to distribute locally and regionally. It has been seen by many officials who have the power and conduct to protect minorities and Alaskans. Insight into the discipline of Ch’an outlawry? Maybe we’d better not go that far. More like: “Even Guanyin can’t see through Mt. Sumeru.” [Linseed: I will stick by this allusion for all time—but don’t ask what it means!]
2 These comments harken back to the case from my last post, Treasury Eye of the True Teaching #192.
3 Golden Eyebrow’s patented literary technique, the “Wansong Spot Check”.]
4 u/sje397 is the hidden, “secret third literati of r/zen”, by the way—were the rest of you aware of that? I’m a technologist literati myself—so perhaps it is easier for me to see. But the diamond eye can see zenmarrow’s marrow–and that’s a fact.
Submitted July 23, 2022 at 04:37AM by golden_eyebrow https://ift.tt/jS5ZsB9
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