Zen and materialism: It is said that things coming in through the gate can never be your own treasures.

Mumon's Preface to The Gateless Gate [excerpt]

Buddhism makes mind its foundation and no-gate its gate.

Now, how do you pass through this no-gate?

It is said that things coming in through the gate can never be your own treasures. What is gained from external circumstances will perish in the end.

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materialism [noun]: 1. a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values. example: "They hated the sinful materialism of the wicked city." 2. PHILOSOPHY: the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.

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Wandering Ronin commentary: If we are to speak of phenomena, conceptual thinking and the myriad things often spoken of in Zen, then we should also at one point discuss the subject of materialism. All across the world and even among the very people we deal with in day-to-day life, this is a pervasive and important issue. From what I've seen, there seems to be a a distinct and levered balance regarding how materialistic a person is and how spiritual they are. The clichéd example is the greedy executive or businessman, who wouldn't even consider the possibility of a higher path other than the idolatry of financial gain. The inverse example could be the poor Buddhist monk, rejecting the trappings of the world and going about through the streets with his begging bowl for alms.

I've forgotten the source, but a while back I remember reading something regarding spirituality which proposed how people in general are subconsciously trying to 'accumulate' things in one way or another. This can manifest itself in distinct ways: the smaller-minded and less spiritual person tends to take on the Sisyphean task of gaining physical objects or wealth, attempting to selfishly 'collect' the material of the universe one piece at a time. The spiritual person, perhaps realizing the folly of mere materialism, tends to take ownership of the entirety of the universe all at once, which puts them at psychological ease and allows greater freedom and peace.

In the preface to The Gateless Gate, Mumon says: It is said that things coming in through the gate can never be your own treasures. What is gained from external circumstances will perish in the end. This of course is a crucial teaching to understand in Zen, but it also applies quite directly to the layperson who doesn't follow Zen whatsoever. You can't take it with you, the old saying goes. Even in the Ten Bull-herding Pictures, there is a point along the path where "Gain and loss no longer affect him" that is quite profound and instructional when it comes to living among the myriad things. In your opinion, is there a correlation between the rejection of binding materialism and following the path of Zen?

Submitted May 13, 2019 at 07:32PM by WanderingRoninXIII http://bit.ly/2Vzj8KU