Now You're Living

The superior man says, “Every man dies, but not every man lives.”

The baby thinks “when I can walk, that’s when I’ll start really living.”
The child says “when I get in high school and have a car, then I’ll be living.”
The teen says “when I get to college, that’s when I’ll start living.”
The college student says “when I get a job and make some money, then I can start living.”
The worker says “when I get enough vacation time to go to Costa Rica, then I will really be living.”
The vacationer says “when I retire and can always be on vacation, now that will be the life.
The retiree says “if only I were younger I could really be living.”
The dead man’s skull says “I was once like you and you will soon be like me.”

When will you start living?

 

Rain Check

Ah, I once wrote of how you make me feel,
and how I love to make you feel.
Words danced as lovers do,
atop a bed of roses.
Rhymes hit their sensual noses,
like the aroma of strawberries lightly dipped in whipped cream.
The symphony of moans creates a
crescendo in a heart bending climax.

 

Ah I exhale and think of these musings,
as they spark a flame in my heart that burns my entire body.
After spontaneously combusting I contemplate
and I realize that I haven’t wrote
simple words for you,
pressed together in a sardine-can-like-fashion.

I write to you this rain check.
As my awareness of true love deepens
and we watch the years pass,
I run short of words.
The reason isn’t my limited vocabulary,
or a lack of eternal devotion to you.

Let me pose this to you:
The botanist can easily explain to you
the seed of a beautiful flower.
It is oval in shape and greenish brown in color.
Now require the botanist to explain the blooming flower.
How does one explain this?
It sprouts open with a violent desire to color the world
and bathe in the sun’s warm rays.
The colors slowly bleed into the pedals
as it is pollinated by fat buzzing honey bees.
Does this do the flower justice?
No, I say.

Now that our seed is blooming
I am charged with that question:
Can you explain the blossom of True Love?
The abstraction hits me.
My mind turns into a tornado of devotion
out of this tornado my words are muddled and short of brutish grunts.

So I will patiently wait,
until the tornado is a soft spring wind,
kissing the lips of a peaceful brook,
elegantly framed by two knotty oak trees,
one tree with an old rope swing,
where you glide through the air of my heart .

Childish

The Father above,
looks below.
The Mother below,
looks above.
Man is what they imagine together.

The Father being a prime creative force,
Lends us his infinite breath.
By which we get the soul.
The Mother being the nurturer,
Holds us in her womb and feeds us from her breast.
By which we get the body.

Man at one time loved the Father and respected the Mother.
Now man only loves himself.
His eyes were pointed up in awe of the Father
And his heart was filled with the Mother.
Now his eyes are straight ahead,
and his heart is nowhere to be found.

Man creates and takes as if he were the Father
and pillages and burns the Mother.
Technology outgrew man’s wisdom,
now the Mother is saying,
“I brought you in, I can take you out.”

The Father by nature is patient,
the Mother can’t afford to be.
For when we have eaten the womb and dried the breast,
enough will be enough.

The Mother will scratch the itch that man has become.
When the winds come, the oceans rise, and the sky falls,
Man will look back to the Father and beg him to stop the Mother.
The Father in his infinite wisdom will shrug,
and say “maybe the next time around.”

Thus our epoch ends,
So that a new one may begin.

Meaning in the Meaningless: Zen

 

A. Siddhartha Gautama transformed into Buddha—the enlightened one—after 49 days of intense meditations and the battle against Mara the Evil One. Once he achieved enlightenment, his first sermon explained the Four Noble Truths: life is dukkha (suffering), the root of all suffering is tanha (desire), to defeat dukkha one must destroy tanha, and to destroy tanha one must follow the Eightfold Path. Buddha did not speak of suffering in the physical sense, such as pain, hunger, and sickness. There is no way of escaping these human conditions. If there is no escape from these sufferings, then the last two Noble Truths are fallacies, because following the Eightfold Path does not prevent hunger. The dukkha Buddha refers to is suffering upon suffering, or suffering of the spirit. This pain roots from tanha, or desire. Here, desire means to fulfill the ego’s needs. The quest for personal fulfillment causes dukkha, because one sees the world in his or her own projections and not what is the case. If we only seek the satisfaction of our egos, we will suffer. This behavior will create a rift between the interconnectedness of the world and our own egos. To be content, one must seek and act as if one is connected to all others and one must work with compassion. Acting in compassion and not personal desire will limit material feelings and suffering will subside. In order to defeat the ego’s embellishment of desire or anger, one can look at his or her psyche objectively. This will put the mind and heart ahead of the ego so that it can be analyzed. Thus, one will learn to free themselves from the confinements of desire.

“Trading Dialogue for Lodging” in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones illustrates a case of someone living with tanha and experiencing dukkha.[i] A dumb, one-eyed monk has a wordless argument with a wandering monk over lodging. The wanderer held up one finger signifying the Buddha, and the one-eyed idiot—not able to think beyond his own perceptions—thought that the one finger signified his one eye. The one-eyed man holds up two fingers to signify the wanderer has two eyes; the wandering man thinks he is signifying Buddha and his teachings. So the wanderer holds up three to show Buddha, his teachings, and his followers. Of course, the not- too-bright monk believes the fingers represent that they have only three eyes between them. Offended, he gets ready to punch the wanderer. The clenched fist shows the wanderer that the Buddha, the teachings, and the followers are all one. He feels that he lost the argument and departs. This story juxtaposes an individual who is able to look past his ego and who is not seething in suffering with someone who does live in suffering as a result of allowing a handicap to dictate how he perceives the world. The one-eyed monk is so caught up in his handicap, he become spiritually handicapped and limits his mind to the material. He cannot step back and think of himself objectively; he only lives within his perceptions.

B. A common method of Zen Buddhism is the use of koans. A koan is an absurdity with no apparent trick. This definition only scratches the surface. In practice, it is a way to exhaust rational thought or shock the mind out of the rational level. A Zen master will ask a student to explain the sound of one hand clapping. The mind has no rational answer for this and there never will be. However, through the deep act of trying to rationalize it, one will exhaust the rational. This opens the mind to a revelation. This revelation is satori, a flicker of enlightenment. This differs from the traditional emphasis Buddhism had on sutras. Sutras were studied scriptures that held guidelines on how to live life, commentary on reaching enlightenment, and other factors that provided organization for Buddhism. Sutras are on the side of learning about enlightenment and past Buddhas, which Zen dissented from. Zen held that there was no specific path to enlightenment and each person had to reach it by themselves via knowing through being. Zen’s goal was to bring Buddhism back to its original purpose, a therapeutic way to shed desire and suffering.

Satori is an ongoing quest—one that will not end until death. It can be described as a light bulb flickering: when it is off the rational mind blinds you, when it is on the light hits you and you attain satori for that instance, until the light is turned off again. In Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, the story “Three Days More” describes a student who returns to his master upset that he cannot answer what the sound of a hand is.[ii] The master sends him back to keep meditating on the matter, but the student still cannot attain enlightenment. Finally, the master tells him that if he doesn’t have an answer after three more days, he should commit suicide. The student becomes enlightened on the second day. The impending doom of suicide shocked the student’s mind into letting go of the rational and finding the truth, leading to satori.

C Satori is a flicker of enlightenment, where one sees beyond the rational and material. After the mind loses its rational thought process, a door is opened to a room where a Zen student can find the true answer which he seeks. Satori sheds the illusion of the moment so one can see what is the case. One opens to satori only for an instant and the more instances of occurrence, the more a person is free from illusions. Just because a person reaches satori once, this does not mean that he or she is enlightened. This would be in the realm of moksha, which is a termination of the world upon awakening. Satori for the Zen Buddhist does not terminate a person’s current understanding of things, but allows him or her to see clear for an instance by quieting one’s mental chatter. In no way does a moment of satori create a comprehension of the infinite; it simply clears up the finite for an objective view.

An example of satori is the Zen Flesh, Zen Bones story, “A Parable”.[iii] In this story, a man is travelling across a field and is chased by a tiger until he reaches a cliff where he grabs some roots and jumps off the edge. As he is hanging, the man notices another tiger is at the bottom of the ledge waiting for him to fall. Soon some mice come and start gnawing at the root. Amidst his apparent doom, he sees a strawberry and plucks it with his free hand. Without waving away the mice or trying to save his skin, he eats the strawberry and it is delicious. This illustrates satori, because every moment has a strawberry, and satori is this strawberry. A flash of truth is just as delicious as the last strawberry one will ever taste. The man with the strawberry was a man of quality over quantity. The situation destroyed his rational and emotional mind so that he may see what was in front of him. Two tigers, one above and one below, spells certain death, so why wrap yourself up in living minutes long by struggling when there is a strawberry in reach?

Critique

First of all, my critique of Zen is no way derived from knowing through being. When most people think of Zen, they think of a temple in the middle of the forest with a rock garden sitting in recently raked sand. This is because Zen has a tendency to leave the world behind. They remove themselves from—or perhaps transcend—the social world. By removing themselves from the world, they fall into their own world of absurdities. They call satori a flicker of enlightenment or truth, which may be correct, but when they induce it by stick beating or by cutting pinkies off it seems to fall into subjectivity. The world of truth doesn’t exist to them, because they trap themselves in the absurd, so that satori can be anything. There is a story in where a Zen master cuts a cat in half because two students can’t answer a question. Later, another student goes to his master and puts a sandal on his head. The master explains that his action would have saved that cat. Either the master is beyond any understanding I’ve attained or he is putting his own projections of absurd truth out on the world, so that a sandal on a head suffices as an answer.

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[i] Reps, Paul and Nyogen Senzaki. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 1985. Pg. 46

[ii] Reps, Paul and Nyogen Senzaki. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 1985. Pg. 45

[iii] Reps, Paul and Nyogen Senzaki. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 1985. Pg. 38-39

No-Thing-Ness

 

A    Chuang-tzu’s critique of Confucian ju philosophy was that it dealt only with the world of the lesser Tao. Ju is the ability to be compassionate to others by practicing empathy. To live by this Tao, one must be able to do “good” without any selfish inclinations. The philosophy of Confucius is based in the world of objects. To follow the ju philosophy, “goodness” is turned into an object of desire. A man of the lesser Tao completely ignores the goodness in himself, which can operate through the greater Tao, and only looks to the external norms and laws to find the good. Chuang-tzu contends the man of greater Tao will see that goodness is endowed with existence and cannot be cultivated or taught by external norms. The pursuit of the lesser Tao leads to reducing goodness into something that is attainable. The more it is treated as an end, the less real it becomes through defining and training. This is because the greater Tao cannot be defined or trained. The greater Tao Chuang-tzu uses to critique Confucian ju philosophy is the infinite void around and in everything that exists. It cannot be taught, defined, or seen. If one has guidelines or ideals of doing the “good.” he or she will be acting according to their own consciousness, which is grounded in the lesser Tao. To let go of the want to do “good,” one must give no definition of “good” and simply wait for the time to act with spontaneity. The way to finding the good is to stop looking for it.

In the allegory of the bell a monk rings a bell for some bystanders and asks if the music of the bell came from the metal casting or the non-being inside the bell. Chuang-tzu would expect the Confucian to say that the sound came from the monk hitting it or the acoustics of the casting. Any answer they would come up with would be due to a science based in the world of objects or lesser Tao. Their methods of finding the “sound” would even be a fallacy because they would be using the rules of what constitutes a sound. They would desire to find “sound;” thus turning it into an object for attainment, which then renders any search for the real sound of the bell dead. Chuang-tzu, on the other hand, would not deny the phenomenal truths of the bell, but he would not hold that to be the standard of the bell’s music. He would contend that both the casting and the non-being (greater Tao) within the bell created the sound together. The bell would not be the bell if it did not have both non-being and casting together in the embodiment of a bell.

B Loa-tzu believed that to become a sage one must return to non-being, from whence all things came from. To do this, one must first take a step outside of one’s own subjectivity to realize there are other principles at work in the world. This would put a person among the world of being and recapture the self from the me. From here, the person must return themselves to non-being, or the greater Tao. Lao-tzu believes that with each person’s presence in being there is an essence that is a union of the finite and infinite. This essence can be called the I and is on the side of form, while our material or biological selves is the me. The me is on the side of matter and only exists in this world. A byproduct of its creaturely existence is that it cannot look back or comprehend the infinite. The I, on the other hand, can look into the infinite. Imagine the I tip-toeing on the small wall between non-being and being. It can turn its head towards the me or look back into the infinite. This is where the problem occurs. Given the me is the I’s way of being for a lifetime, the I will begin to identify with and collapse into the me. This stems from the I having preferences for the me’s career in the world. The I also understands that the me is a reflection of it as it undergoes change, so it has the tendency to say the me is the true self. This is a total collapse into the me. This fall of the I causes immense spiritual suffering, because the I gives the me imagined importance in the world, which puts the me at odds with anything that gets in the way of its wants. Lao-tzu saw this as the fall and contended that man’s I must return to its essential relationship with the me. This relationship is an objective observer with non-attached spiritual attention. The sages would be able to check their I’s so they don’t collapse in the existential. This way of living frees the I from the finite, which is the main goal of Lao-tzu’s teachings.

A cross has a vertical and a horizontal line intersecting. On this vertical axis is the I watching the me, which is walking along the horizontal part the of cross. This puts the I and me embodiment on the intersection of the cross. Soon the I wants the me to walk on the horizontal faster than the other me’s and it collapses into the me. Now, the only dimension to the embodiment is on the horizontal. Our original condition is to be on the intersection of the cross so the I and the me can be raised to heaven. Loa-tzu believes we must return to the cross by keeping the I out of the horizontal and by the I objectively willing the good of the me. This in turn will raise you to heaven or the greater Tao, which is non-being.

C Wei wu wei literally means action with no action. It is the way of life for people whom embody the greater Tao, without needing to embody anything. By letting Tao work in a person, wei wu wei happens without effort or any set goals. It is the essence of wei wu wei to be on the side of the offered destiny of a situation. Every moment requires an action, which can either be seethed in personal desire or be of spontaneity and singleness of attention. It may seem to the lay person that the Taoist is a pacifist even in the face of evil. The champion of wei wu wei sees the truth of the situation, while objectively discerning what moral action should be done. Therefore wei wu wei is to negate the refusal to attend to the need of the other or the situation. To do this, the Taoist first needs to accept the truth of the situation by looking at it with spiritual attention, which is in no way attached to the social or the self. After this, he or she will become alert to the situation and the consequences of acting. Without being alert to the situation, one may act rashly or with some sort of desire, which undermines the singleness. After the need is discerned, one will act according to the situation. The Taoist must act, because he or she knows that moments never come twice. With no goals in mind and the self pulsating with the greater Tao, the good of the situation will be met through wei wu wei.

An example of a man operating with wei wu wei is the parable of the Good Samaritan. A man on his way to Jericho was beaten near death and robbed. He lay in the street and a priest walked by him and instead of helping, he crossed to the other side. Then a Levite comes across the same beaten man and does the same as the priest. Finally, the Good Samaritan sees the man and bandages him up, then takes him to an inn, where he pays the innkeeper to bring him to good health. The Good Samaritan saw the man that people had avoided and accepted the truth of the situation, which was that without help, this man would die. After that, he becomes alert to the situation’s consequences, which without action would most defiantly scar his soul with bad karma. Lastly, he acted according to the need of the situation and the latent good was brought out of the situation. Jesus tells this parable to illustrate when to act as a neighbor should. Jesus was illustrating that one has to work on kairos time, which is how one must embody wei wu wei, to see past the chronologically mundane and see what needs to be done at that moment.

Critique on A

Chuang-tzu’s critique on Confucian ideals of virtue leaves out the fact that the heart of Confucianism is sincerity. In the Five Relations, one must sincerely be a father to a son, and husband to a wife, or a ruler to a subject. Before any liturgy or laws are followed, a person must already have the good working through them with sincerity. Confucians thought the laws would help people become sincere. Chuang-tzu’s critique of the Confucians isn’t fair because it ignores that Confucius saw good coming from sincerity, which was helped along by different Tao’s depending on one’s lot in life. Just because Confucius didn’t give sincerity some abstract and metaphysical source like non-being, doesn’t mean it does not come from the same place. The so-called hero of virtue could very well be operating on the greater Tao, because they are sincere in their dealings, which would transcend any ideals of the good, because sincerity creates these ideals.