Double negatives and Naive Zen
- Thread starter i-am-your-idea
- Start date
max_freakout
Nothing matters
All things are true, nothing is true
i-am-your-idea
pretty vacant
max_freakout said:
No it isn't!
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
Zen image:
But I'm attached to philosophical thinking because it allows me to feel control and at home in a world fundamentally empty of substantiality.if6were9 said:
How did you get started on zen practice? I first got involved with the FWBO when I was 16/17 and have done meditation courses and tried to start a meditation practice a number of times over. It never quite catches: on the FWBO side, even though my head likes it so much, I've never really felt at home there. On my side, meditation just never seems to get anywhere because it's so tied up in the volition to turn my mind off. I've never seemed able to choose to simply be when that choice is so tied up in the idea that I'm doing something. How do you develop a practice which is not a 'thing' but merely your life?
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
nosos said:
If you keep pursuing it hard enough, it might break you, or you'll break yourself, of that bad habit.
nosos said:
Dental problems. Dental problems really freak me out ( Ive just broken another blinking tooth
) and, about 10 years ago I realised this whole mouth nightmare would only get worse with age and that drastic steps might be necessary. It struck me that only buddhism seemed to really want to take on the ( universal ) nature of suffering head on, only exacerberated by my mouth...etc etc. I'd like to say it was out of a genuine heartspring of compassion, but it wouldn't be true. It was primarily 'enlightened self interest."I'd also done a lot of long distance walking, and, I remember telling a friend my experiences of it were that, on the first and second day you're head is just full of so much crap and junk circulating round you can't hear yourself think - you are overwhelmed by a subjectivity that is like a toilet flushing with all the TV, copies of the Sun etc, you are denying yourself. On the third day the crap flushes out and you find yourself moved by the beauty of the landscape. Yet, after a few days, this too disappears, you find yourself in a kind of place between the subjective and objective that has a lot to do with a hightened awareness of body and breath. My friend said, "that sounds like Zen. " And he was absolutely right.
Interesting that you're both so drawn and yet - you say - sort of, 'constitutionally unsuited' to Zen practice, as a young intellectual. Maybe you're just not ready yet. Most of the people I practice with are late middle age and I am considered "young."
The other side to it is that Zen is marvellous, sublime, wonderful and wonderful and wonderful again
Its beyond words. Even though it runs counter to other levels of the teaching I am absolutely convinced that many of the older pratictioners look at those starting out in their 20s with something like jealousy because there is an aspect of Zen that is progressive and culmative, in that something does 'evolve' and that something without a doubt brings great joy and that joy increases and becomes more deeply founded as the years unfold.You've got a good grasp of the problems ( in Zen you always have problems that can seem to be intractable you wrestle with. ) When I started out I really really resisted the idea of "throwing away" my intellect because it was one of the few things I was ever pleased with in myself, but its a kind of psuedo dilemma. I used to try and stop myself reading books (silly ) now I find teachers encouraging me to read all the time when I just want to open myself up to non mediated experience. All these things come and go. they are the bones and marrow of working practice. The most important thing though is always to get yourself onto a cushion and into the habit of a daily practice. And I really hope, with your obvious attraction to Zen you find it. It can be very difficult, but the life that opens up when one begins to seriously start is so rich and deep and so subtly and infinitely textured and layered that you wonder how you ever lived without it.
Sorry if this sounds like prosleytising. There is an old Zen saying that to respond to questions about the practice a bodhisattava should wait until the questioner has asked 3 times to ascertain the degree of sincerity behind the question. But, as most of the time I feel like a beginner myself I guess it doesn't apply.
Try it.
i-am-your-idea
pretty vacant
nosos said:
I don't think its a question of 'how'
Your mind is already zen. You already live in the void. If you try to achieve a zen life, through external means you will fail.
Cohen said in one of his songs-
'I needed so much to have nothing to touch. I've always been greedy that way'
Do you long to be without longing too?
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