(A GreenSage post)
I was recently served the following on-topic challenge by a resident troll:
1) Make an OP about how freedom arising from seeing self nature is bondage.
2) Make an OP about how there is no enlightenment.
I’m talking about a specific point in time where an event happened to a person. No such point you say.
The rest is nonsensical to argue against if you don’t think is a thing so I’m not gonna bother until that’s settled.
I’ll make op about form and freedom and how enlightenment is a one done deal no foggettaboutit. Enjoy.
This silly meltdown is rooted in a misunderstanding about enlightenment being a "set you free" kind of attainment with magical "non-causal" properties.
The weird fugazi-speak at the end is a reference to this guy's claim that enlightenment is permanent and unforgettable.
And it all started with a post about ZhaoZhou:
Someone asked, "When the world of forms is no longer seen, how is it then?"
ZhaoZhou said, "Why should it be that way?"
The particular troll in question, "JohnJacobJingleheimerSchmidt", responded as follows:
His questioner doesn’t experience [the world beyond forms] because he’s still bound by form. It’s enough to look at the question to see how he can’t escape the form of “the world”. Joshu directly point this out to him by asking why it should be that way. That “should” is the implied should of the questioner.
When questioned about why the monk questioning ZhaoZhou should even try to be free in the first place (the point ZhaoZhou himself makes), our troll here began, well ... trolling ... but in his flurry of internet bravado, he eventually sputtered out a position:
first you say true freedom can be bound, now you’re saying why be free? When you’re free, you can’t be bound. You can’t choose to be bound and unsee your freedom, can’t unenlighten yourself. Zen masters are clear on that one. Freedom in zen is being free in reality, not being forced to act according to fixed form. Already said why the monk should: he wants the freedom. It’s like someone telling you they want to swim over the lake and asks you what to do. Well you’re gonna say first you have to learn how to swim, not why swim over the lake? What are you, socrates? Not zen, rphilosophy.
Choosing is not a form, choosing enlightenment is choosing a form. If you choose enlightenment you choose an idea, it’s not real. Hence “in reality there is no enlightenment”. The realization of this in all things is enlightenment. But that’s sudden and non-causal .
And thus we arrive at the challenge of the OP.
Let's start with the first part: How can freedom "arising from seeing self nature" be bondage?
Example 1:
HuangBo:
If you now set about using your minds to seek Mind, listening to the teaching of others, and hoping to reach the goal through mere learning, when will you ever succeed? Some of the ancients had sharp minds; they no sooner heard the Doctrine proclaimed than they hastened to discard all learning. So they were called ‘Sages who, abandoning learning, have come to rest in spontaneity'.
In these days people only seek to stuff themselves with knowledge and deductions, seeking everywhere for book-knowledge and calling this ‘Dharma-practice'. They do not know that so much knowledge and deduction have just the contrary effect of piling up obstacles. Merely acquiring a lot of knowledge makes you like a child who gives himself indigestion by gobbling too much curds. Those who study the Way according to the Three Vehicles are all like this.
Superficial students of Zen tend to pick up doctrines and rules from what they read.
In my experience, one of the low-hanging fruits for trolls is citing the "Four Statements of Zen".
They love to say that you shouldn't read a book because "zEn Is OuTsIdE oF tHe WrItTeN rEcOrdS!"
They love saying that their meditation/LSD/internet-trolling is Zen because they are "pointing at the mind".
Likewise, people read about a "seeing your own nature" and they start dreaming up things about it. Like, for example that a "freedom" "arises" from it.
As HuangBo points out, when you go out seeking a "freedom from forms" which "arises" from some magical "seeing self nature", you are gobbling up knowledge and fantastical concepts like a cow eating grass or a child gorging on curds.
According to Mr. "JohnJacob", "freedom" is like a lake that you need to learn to swim across. And once you make it across the lake, you never have to swim again.
Not only is this ridiculous; it has nothing to do with Zen.
Zen is walking out onto the hot sand, because the lake was a mirage.
What good will those swimming lessons do you now, Mr. Freedom?
Let's turn back to HuangBo (and it looks like that's all I may need for this particular pwning):
One day, after taking his seat in the great hall, the Master began as follows: "Since Mind is the Buddha, it embraces all things, from the Buddhas at one extreme to the meanest of belly-crawling reptiles or insects at the other.
All these alike share the Buddha-Nature and all are of the substance of the One Mind.
So, after his arrival from the West, Bodhidharma transmitted naught but the Dharma of the One Mind. He pointed directly to the truth that all sentient beings have always been of one substance with the Buddha.
He did not follow any of those mistaken ‘methods of attainment'.
And if you could only achieve this comprehension of your own Mind, thereby discovering your real nature, there would assuredly be nothing for you to seek, either."
Q: How, then, does a man accomplish this comprehension of his own Mind?
A: That which asked the question is your own Mind; but if you were to remain quiescent and to refrain from the smallest mental activity, its substance would be seen as a void--you would find it formless, occupying no point in space and falling neither into the category of existence nor into that of non-existence.
Because it is imperceptible, Bodhidharma said: ‘Mind, which is our real nature, is the unbegotten and indestructible Womb; in response to circumstances, it transforms itself into phenomena.'
For the sake of convenience, we speak of Mind as the intelligence; but when it does not respond to circumstances, it cannot be spoken of in such dualistic terms as existence or nonexistence. Besides, even when engaged in creating objects in response to causality, it is still imperceptible.
If you know this and rest tranquilly in nothingness--then you are indeed following the Way of the Buddhas.
Therefore does the Sūtra say: ‘Develop a mind which rests on no thing whatever.'
Every one of the sentient beings bound to the wheel of alternating life and death is re-created from the karma of his own desires! Endlessly their hearts remain bound to the six states of existence, thereby involving them in all sorts of sorrow and pain. Ch‘ing Ming says: ‘There are people with minds like those of apes who are very hard to teach; people who need all sorts of precepts and doctrines with which to force their hearts into submission.'
And so when thoughts arise, all sorts of dharmas follow, but they vanish with thought's cessation. We can see from this that every sort of dharma is but a creation of Mind. And all kinds of beings—humans, devas, sufferers in hell, asuras and all comprised within the six forms of life--each one of them is Mind-created.
If only you would learn how to achieve a state of non-intellection, immediately the chain of causation would snap.
Give up those erroneous thoughts leading to false distinctions!
There is no ‘self' and no ‘other'. There is no ‘wrong desire', no ‘anger', no ‘hatred', no ‘love', no ‘victory', no ‘failure'.
Only renounce the error of intellectual or conceptual thought-processes and your nature will exhibit its pristine purity--for this alone is the way to attain Enlightenment, to observe the Dharma, to become a Buddha and all the rest.
Unless you understand this, the whole of your great learning, your painful efforts to advance, your austerities of diet and clothing, will not help you to a knowledge of your own Mind.
All such practices must be termed fallacious, for any of them will lead to your rebirth among ‘demons'—enemies of the truth—or among the crude nature spirits.
What end is served by pursuits like those?
Chih Kung says: ‘Our bodies are the creations of our own minds.' But how can one expect to gain such knowledge from books?
If only you could comprehend the nature of your own Mind and put an end to discriminatory thought, there would naturally be no room for even a grain of error to arise.
"Nothing to attain" is real freedom.
Real freedom is not bound by forms, so there is no "experiencing the world beyond forms" ... the world of forms is a 'world beyond forms'!
When you seek freedom, you will be bound by that freedom.
When you seek transcendence, you will be sunk.
Only by resting on nothing whatsoever, will you be able to understand your mind, and thus the mind of the Buddhas.
To attain "freedom" is to be bound by a freedom of forms; to attain a permanent enlightenment is to be bound by a fake enlightenment of ignorance.
Otherwise, enlightenment would be an enlightenment of signs and attainment. All those who showed signs of attaining "seeing beyond forms" would be enlightened.
But that's not how it is. (Otherwise, show me ONE PERSON who sees beyond forms! .. Where are they? Where are the Buddhas?)
Which starts to segue us into "there is no enlightenment".
If there were an "enlightenment", then it would be an enlightenment of form, and it would bind you.
"A monk bound by ignorance" and "a Zen Master liberated by enlightenment", is a pit of false distinctions which will never lead you to the Way and it is the sort of crap that lying trolls spew on the internet in order to try and convince themselves and others that there is something special about some bogus concept.
That's exactly how you end up in the sorry state of being a fraudulent troll on the internet, and yet publicly pitying a questioning monk from a Zen case.
HuangBo again:
Anything possessing any signs is illusory.
It is by perceiving that all signs are no signs that you perceive the Tathāgata.
‘Buddha' and ‘sentient beings' are both your own false conceptions.
It is because you do not know real Mind that you delude yourselves with such objective concepts.
If you will conceive of a Buddha, you will be obstructed by that Buddha!
And when you conceive of sentient beings, you will be obstructed by those beings.
All such dualistic concepts as ‘ignorant' and ‘Enlightened', ‘pure' and ‘impure', are obstructions.
It is because your minds are hindered by them that the Wheel of the Law must be turned.
There is no enlightenment.
But only because people are confused by this, is there such a thing called "enlightenment."
It's not that "enlightenment is sudden and non-causal", it's that you're a poor student if you claim to have redd the Zen texts and still think that enlightenment is a special understanding that you obtain.
And if you pretend that such an enlightenment as this--which you've never experienced--is legit and that people who don't agree with you are unenlightened, then you're a lying troll and you deserve to be publicly rebuked by everyone until you stop lying.
But for those who are interested in studying Zen while they're here, let's continue on as to why there is no enlightenment, and why what is called "enlightenment" is not a permanent superpower that you can keep in a locket by your heart to kiss at night and treasure forever.
HuangBo:
Q: The Sixth Patriarch was illiterate. How is it that he was handed the robe which elevated him to that office? Elder Shên Hsiu ( a rival candidate ) occupied a position above five hundred others and, as a teaching monk, he was able to expound thirty-two volumes of Sūtras. Why did he not receive the robe?
A: Because he still indulged in conceptual thought—-in a dharma of activity.
To him ‘as you practice, so shall you attain' was a reality.
So the Fifth Patriarch made the transmission to Hui Nêng. At that very moment, the latter attained a tacit understanding and received in silence the profoundest thought of the Tathāgata. That is why the Dharma was transmitted to him.
You do not see that the fundamental doctrine of the Dharma is that there are no dharmas, yet that this doctrine of no-dharma is in itself a dharma; and now that the No-Dharma Doctrine has been transmitted, how can the doctrine of the Dharma be a dharma?
Whoever understands the meaning of this deserves to be called a monk, one skilled at "Dharma-practice".
Do you understand?
The "dharma of no-dharma" is itself a dharma ... so there is no "dharma of no-dharma"!
That's the dharma!
XD
The moment of realization is causal: it does not ignore cause and effect.
What is realized is non-causal: it is not anything.
This is the profoundest thought of the Tathagata.
I think it would be fitting to end with HuiNeng:
[A young monk] said, "Previously you forgave me; now, though I've become a monk and have been practicing intensely, I can hardly repay your kindness. It seems that would only be transmission of the teaching to liberate people. I've read the Nirvana scripture but still don't understand the meanings of permanence and impermanence; I beg your kindness and compassion to expound them summarily for me."
The patriarch said, "The impermanent is Buddha nature, the permanent is the mind that discriminates all things good and bad."
[The monk] said, "What you say is very different from the doctrines of the scripture."
The patriarch said, "I transmit the seal of the Buddha-mind; how dare I deviate from Buddhist scripture?"
He said, "The scripture says Buddha-nature is permanent, while you say it is impermanent. All things good and bad, including the will for enlightenment, are impermanent, yet you say they are permanent. This contradiction confuses me all the more."
The patriarch said, "I heard the nun Wujinzang recite the Nirvana scripture a long time ago, and I explained it to her without a single word or single meaning failing to accord with the scripture. Now what I am telling you is no different."
He said, "My intellectual capacity is shallow and benighted; please explain in detail."
The patriarch said, "Whether you know it or not, if the Buddha-nature were permanent, what good or bad would still be spoken of? No one would ever awaken the will for enlightenment. Therefore the impermanence I speak of is precisely the way to true permanence expounded by the Buddha.
Also, if all phenomena were impermanent, then every thing would have its own nature subject to birth and death, and real permanent nature would not be universal.
Therefore the permanence I speak of is precisely the meaning of true impermanence spoken of by the Buddha.
Buddha compared the grasping of false permanence by ordinary people and outsiders with the notion of people of two vehicles that the permanent is impermanent to collectively constitute eight inversions [of perception].
Therefore in the complete teaching of the Nirvana scripture he refuted those biased views and revealed real permanence, real bliss, real self, and real purity.
Now you are going by the words but against the meaning, misinterpreting the Buddha's complete sublime final subtle words in terms of nihilistic impermanence and fixed stagnant permanence.
Even if you read them a thousand times, what is the use?"
In the Lankavatara Sutra Buddha says that the words in his teachings are merely expedients, and not to be followed literally or congruently.
His teaching, he says, lies in the meaning; not the words.
This is what it means to say that the true teaching is "outside of words" ... but it is not separate from words.
The idea that "enlightenment" grants you a "no-backsies-fuggedaboutit" "liberation" is a fever dream at best, and a dishonest grift at worst.
Enlightenment is impermanent; reality (and all its illusions) is permanent.
The mind is the only truth.
If you are setting out seeking swimming lessons to cross an illusory lake in the desert and then berating people online about their lack of swimming talent and bragging about how much water you have in your private lake ... you just might be a troll.
Why should it be that way?
Why not just study Zen while you're here instead?
Why lie about an enlightenment and a freedom that you haven’t experienced and which you can’t prove exists?
Are you not free to be honest?
(And if you are, then good for you; throw your honest 2 cents into the comments)
Submitted July 19, 2022 at 08:03AM by -AeonicFire- https://ift.tt/fcJvMKU
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