(© RKP, 1958)Satori - Does it Exist?
On the plane of being everything IS. On the plane of existing everything seems.
There are no living beings (as the Lord Buddha said) because living is a function of Time and exists only on the plane of seeming.
Being IS (even our language makes that conclusion inevitable), but 'living beings' - beings apparently engaged in the process of changing from hour to hour, year to year - are a function of Time and merely (seem to) exist.
Enlightenment IS: it is just the normal state of being (as opposed to existing). Thus it was possible for the Lord Buddha to say that no such thing as 'Enlightenment' exists either - for if it is the state of being it has no need of a name, is nothing separate and nameable, and can only be so called as an estimation regarded from the plane of seeming.
It is clear therefore why the Masters said there was nothing to be attained, that 'there are no such states as before and after attainment', for you cannot attain something you already have, and there can be no states of before and after something that is already there.
But, looked at from the plane of seeming, there 'seems' to be something to be attained, and states of before and after such attainment, and that something is the turning over of the mind - paravritti, liberation, enlightenment, sambodhi, satori - but so to regard it would be deliberately to adopt the false vision of the plane of seeming (or dualism) which it was the aim of the Masters to eradicate.
Applied Zen and Real Zen
Zen that can be taught cannot be real Zen.
Anything obtained by discipline, anything that can be learned, must ipso facto be a fake. Knowledge being intuitive, reasoning or training can only produce a substitute or an imitation.
Zen is not communicable in words: it can only be suggested or pointed at.
Zazen and meditation are disciplines and in the nature of substitutes for satori. As such they should be a barrier to the realisation of what they seek to reveal. They may lead to the experience known as ken-sho - but has not that been found to be just that - a barrier to permanent enlightenment?
Meditation and 'quiet-sitting' have been roundly condemned by some of the greatest Masters.
Zeal was condemned two thousand years before Talleyrand said quietly to an official: 'Et ... surtout pas de zèle!'
The quoted definitions of Huang Po and Hui Hai prove that Dhyana, Ch'an, Zen means Non-attachment, and that Non-attachment means the absence of feelings such as hatred and love. Therefore the use of the word 'meditation' as a translation is quite misleading (see 'What is Zen.1' and 'What is Zen. 3').
However, a state of pellucid-attention-devoid-of-ideation is in accordance with Zen and may also be considered as a form of meditation - thus completing the circle and reconciling the two concepts.
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The Lord Buddha himself, and many Masters after him, stated that there was nothing to be attained and that there are no such states as before and after attainment. This has just been explained in detail.
As long as there remains identification with an imaginary ego the state we describe (from the plane of seeming) as Enlightenment cannot be experienced, but as soon as such identification ceases and dualism can be transcended that state alone remains. For that state alone IS.
Intellectual comprehension is not capable of dispelling this illusory identification - for an eye cannot see itself. Only intuitive comprehension should be capable of producing that apparent turning over of the mind (paravritti) which is realisation. Such a turning-over may be just a turning of our gaze from time to beyond it, from without to within.
Jesus said, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within.' 'Within' is our notion of the invisible dimension. It may be enough to look in the right direction.
What could there be to teach? What result could any technique or discipline be expected to produce that was not a fake?
What is there to do but let our gaze follow the pointing fingers of the Masters? When comprehension follows, the illusion should be dissipated.
Call that satori if you will, or enlightenment, but such words are evaluations of the false vision from the plane of seeming. There is nothing but seeing what is already there.
Wasps
Are we not wasps who spend all day in a fruitless attempt to traverse a window-pane - while the other half of the window is wide open?
Were not the Zen Masters eternally pointing with their finger to the open window, a gesture which we wasps do not seem able to follow?
Wasps seem to lack the sense of one dimension. And we?
Live Thought or Dead? The Zen Point of View
'Ce qui peut etre exprimé ne peut etre vrai.' (Ouspensky)
The Masters of Zen rarely discoursed. Discoursing they regarded as one of the obstacles to enlightenment, for it encouraged and developed the wrong kind of thinking - that 'mentation' or 'intellection' which affirms our false identification with a fictitious ego.
'The ignorant are delighted with discoursing,' the Lankavatara Sutra states, 'discoursing is a source of suffering in the triple world.' We would not doubt it; yes, indeed, but when the Lanka says that discoursing is a source of suffering it means more particularly that it is a hindrance to the removal of ignorance, and so perpetuates our normal state of suffering.
But, nowadays, what was meant by discoursing is chiefly represented by books. In books, as conventionally and commercially produced today, no idea can be conveyed in less than about ten thousand words - with apologies for not making it a hundred thousand, in which form it would have been much 'better'. No chance for anyone to think except the author!
Yet, when ideas are buried in a haystack of verbiage, who remembers them, and, conversely, when ideas are concisely expressed, who pays any attention to them? The most vital statements of the sages and prophets, even of the Buddha and Jesus, are not taken seriously - presumably because they are not served up in a sauce that conceals their flavour and substitutes its own.
Instead of apologising for not burying their ideas even more deeply in verbiage would not modern authors do better to apologise whenever they are unable to express an idea more concisely than in, say, one thousand words? Ideas may vary in the amount of expression they need; for many a hundred words should be ample. After all, the more fully ex-pressed the less juice there remains in them, the more complete the exposition the more dead they are on delivery; ideas mummified in words are only museum specimens.
The ideas of the Masters, expressed in half a dozen words, are still alive after centuries, but they are fingers pointing to intuitional understanding, not fossilised examples of intellection.
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