Huang Po’s Four Instructions - can you do it?

From Blofeld’s “The Zen Teaching of Huang Po”

“First, learn how to be entirely unreceptive to sensations arising from external forms, thereby purging your bodies of receptivity to externals.”

Who can do this? I return to the analogy of the stubbed toe. Even if you have no particular thoughts about, that’s going to hurt. You will feel it, you will notice it, how can you purge your body of receptivity?

“Second, learn not to pay attention to any distinctions between this and that arising from your sensations, thereby purging your bodies of useless discernments between one phenomenon and another.”

Certainly one could attempt to pay no attention to the stubbing of a toe, and though it be distinct from a bit of dandelion fluff against the cheek, perhaps with effort or a special sort of equanimity it’d be internalized as just so much sensory input, but is the means to that just not paying attention? How does one purge the body of such discernment of an only natural process?

“Third, take great care to avoid discriminating in terms of pleasant and unpleasant sensations, thereby purging your bodies of vain discriminations.”

This one seems to imply specific cognitive effort, taking great care. What we perceive as pleasant and unpleasant sensations, the dandelion fluff vs. the toe stub, would seem an automatic and unthinking discrimination. How would one purge this kind of discrimination from their very body? Maybe affixing that mental label of pleasant and unpleasant is the extra step he is admonishing to avoid?

“Fourth, avoid pondering things in your mind, thereby purging your bodies of discriminatory cognition.”

Again, who can do this? If you read posts on this forum, if you post, if you comment, if you do a small percentage of the cognitive processes humans have to do to get dressed, eat, bathe, etc. every day, aren’t you pondering things in your mind? Is this referring to another sort of thought than just “getting down to business”? Discriminatory cognition might refer more to value judgements or attachment vs. aversion, but the foregoing instructions seem to refer to more basic reactions that we can’t help but have.

I enjoy this particular translation and have read it over maybe once or thrice in full, and most likely I don’t understand it in context of other Zen works or even certain passages within the context of the others, or within the context of its time and culture, but as an admittedly shallow critique of those instructions, are my questions meaningful? What do you think about these 4 instructions? Do they mean more than what I glean or do I glean more than what they mean?

I’m pondering things in my mind. :)

Submitted October 31, 2018 at 11:08AM by huanchodaoren https://ift.tt/2Q6rGSD