One thing I stink at is anticipatory empathy. As in, "people aren't going to like that". If you tell me "I blew out a glute at the gym", I feel you... If you tell me "my wife left me for a Portuguese sailing magnet" I'm right there with you... but ask whether somebody is going to like something tomorrow? No idea. Plus, and this makes it way worse, I don't care. I'll just ask them tomorrow.
Also let me say that I think the big reason people don't study Zen is because there is so much study... BCR is looong... like 550 pages, and that's not mostly pictures, either. It's not like reading the Little Engine that Couldn't. So if somebody quotes BCR and I don't recognize it I am never surprised. And I've missed LOTS of big deal quotes in that book... so many I can ever remember two of them.
Here's where Brian pulled that trick on me:
"In reality this matter does not lie in words; that is why Yun Men said, "If this matter were in words, are there no words in the twelve part canon of the three vehicles? What need would there have been for Bodhidharma's coming from the West?"
Brian was going chronologically, and I had my doubts about how long that would last, and it turns out these doubts were well founded because he already had to jump forward to Case 8 and then jump back.
But here's what got me:
[If sutras were all that mattered] what need would there have been for Bodhidharma's coming from the West? - Yunmen
Ow.
Even I can see it when you put it that way... yeah... that's not going to go over well.
Think about that means to sutra worshipers...
Bodhidharma: They sent me instead of the sutras.
or
Zen Masters: They sent us instead of Buddha
wow.
That won't go over well.
Brian concludes all this with:
"Any actual history or verifiable facts are irrelevant to Bodhidharma's inclusion in the canon..."
Huh. I guess we don't need Buddha either?
Submitted February 13, 2022 at 06:21AM by ewk https://ift.tt/2T9UaHP
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