Welcome to a special edition!
This post is a response to u/astroemi’s from earlier in the week.
Fortuitously, it dovetailed nicely with the case I have been looking at the past many days:
Sayings of Layman P'ang #52: Three—Stanza Poem
At the beginning of the Yuan—he period, the Layman moved into a cottage he built on the north bank of the Hsiang River. He worked with his daughter, Ling—chao, making bamboo baskets. They were together morning and night. The Layman had a verse that went:
The mind is like a reflection in a mirror:
Though it is insubstantial, it is not nonexistent.
What is, we have no control over;
And what isn't, is ephemeral.
Aren't the esteemed sages
Just regular people who've resolved this matter?
There are changes upon changes.
Once the five components are clearly seen,
The diverse things in the world are joined into one.
How can there be two formless dharma bodies?
Once compulsive desires are eliminated and insight comes,
There are no thoughts about where the promised land may lie.
The will to survive must be killed off.
Once it is killed off, there will be peace of mind.
When the mind integrates this,
An iron ship has been made to float.
This…is a fascinating case to me. I love the Layman, and particulalry the cases with his daughter are of utmost interest to me. (More forthcoming in future content.)
But today, I just want to point out the line:
The will to survive must be killed off.
(Firstly, isn’t this interesting that he is saying it to Ling-Chao—who would ultimately die just before he did, in the same case?)
Anyway, this line makes sense to me. I can see exactly what it’s saying and I agree. Does anyone else also like this line about “killing the will to survive” leading to “peace of mind”? I seemed to go through that exact process at one point. It was mostly a performance shift for me, honeslty. But I did start looking at my eating when hungry and sleeping when tired, and put much of the “will to survive” begind me. The body does survive. It’s one thing it does pretty well if you are paying attention. In a lot of ways the will to survive would seem to prevent much of that function—things being as they are.
For one, art itself is pure survival. (Yet it’s hard to deny that actually being an artist is not a good survival tactic in all locations in History.)
So is Ch’an commentary and conversation (are survival–or part of it). And eating and tea. And those things happen very automatically when the body does its thing surviving any day (or an apocalyptical pandemic, as the case may be).
Long story short—as soon as I saw astroemi’s Ithaca reference I knew what film I was going to respond to him using I filmed a short teaser and sent it to him (found: here).
But then when I saw he linked back to a post of mine, I knew I pretty much had the whole story already, knew what the clips would look like.
Then the videos he made—of course they blew me out of the water. 🏴☠️🐬
So this OP is the first part in a series that will comtinue to expand how I use video to discuss Ch’an and Ch’an study here in r/zen.
In this first post, you get:
Ye Olde Fashioned Book Report Shop
Well that took quite a sweeping eye view of my Ch’an study over recent whiles, and if that didn’t represent solid progress in my own study—I don’t know what would. Has been very interesting times. So interesting they seem directly translatable into simple cinema to pass around—as far as my Ch’an study goes.
And boy did astroemi show me how effective that could really be!
Sadly for him, I am a satirist and savage…so my vids come out a little less friendly than his own.
Hopefully they still convey, though
And just wait’ll you see the next ones!
—golden eyebrow
Year of the Tiger
Submitted August 04, 2022 at 09:09AM by golden_eyebrow https://ift.tt/OwElkVY
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