The Book of Inter-religious Peace

Dr. Dorit Kedar

The Museum of the World Religions, Taipei

Curator: Michal Gamzou

Computer Presentation: Ayelet Payento

Zen Insights Works and Texts

The Void

Nine years had passed and he Bodhidharma) now wished to return westward to India. He called his disciples and said: “The time has now come. Why does not each of you say what you have attained?” The disciple Tao-fu replied: “As I see it, (the truth) neither adheres to words or letters nor is it separate from them. Yet it functions as the Way”. The Master said: “you have attained my skin”. Then a nun, Tsung-chih, spoke: “As I understand it, (the truth) is like the auspicious glimpse of the Buddha land of Akssobhya; it is seen once, but not a second time”. The Master replied: “You have attained my flesh”. Tao-yu said: “The four great elements are originally empty; the five skandhas (aggregates) have no existence. According to my belief, there is no Dharma to be grasped”. To him the Master replied: “You have attained my bones”. Finally, there was Hi-k’e. He bowed respectfully and stood silent. The Master said: “You have attained my marrow”.

H. Dumoulin, Zen ENLIGHTMENT – ORIGINS AND MEANING, Weatherhill, N.Y. & Tokyo, 1989. Inner silence, formless, soundless, chaotic to enable Creation

The Loosening “The first step along this road had already been taken. It had led to a loosening of the body, without which the bow cannot be properly drawn. If the shot is to be loosed right, the physical loosening must now be continued in a mental and spiritual loosening, so as to make the mind not only agile, but free; agile because of its freedom, and the free because of its original agility; and the original agility is essentially different from everything that is usually understood by mental agility. Thus between these two states of bodily relaxedness on the one hand and spiritual freedom on the other there is a difference of level which cannot be overcome by breath-control alone, but only by withdrawing from all attachments whatsoever, by becoming utterly egoless: so that the soul, sunk within itself, stands in the plentitude of its nameless origin”. E. Herrigel, ZEN IN THE ART OF ARCHERY, Vintage, N.Y. 1981, p. 35. Devoid of planning, stress, marking targets.

Attuned When Lin-chi went to take his leave of the Master, Huang Po said: “There is no need to travel far. Just go to Master Ta Yu. He will teach you what it meant”. So Lin-chi went to Ta Yu’s monastery and with great hope told him all that had happened. Ta Yu said: “Why, Huang Po was as kind to you as your own grandmother. Why have you come here, asking me about your faults?” At these words, enlightenment burst upon Lin-chi and suddenly he felt as though his eyes were fully open. Up till then he had always thought of Buddhism as a powerful teaching separate from himself. Now he saw that is was only an idea in his mind.” Bancroft, ZEN DIRECT POINTING TO REALITY, Thames & Hudson, Lancashire, 1979, p. 17. Aware to alternatives.

The power of needing less Which is dearer Name or life? Which means more, Life or wealth? Which is worse Gain or loss? The stronger the attachments, The greater the cost. The more that is hoarded, The deeper the loss. Know what is enough; Be without disgrace. Know when to stop; Be without danger. In this way one lasts for a very long time. Lao Tzu, THE TAO OF POWER (Transl. R.L.Wing, Aquarian, Northampshire, 1986, p. 44.) Maximal Experience in minimal expression.

Simplicity I like to wash, By way of experiment, The dust of this world In the droplets of dew. The weedy grass called reminiscence Reminiscent of the bygone days In front of the Mausoleum. M. Basho, THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH AND OTHER TRAVEL SKETCHES, ( Transl. and introd. N. Yuasa), Penguin, London, 1966, pp. 56-57.

Simplicity as the optimal vehicle for Plenitude

Turn the Head Turn the head of your horse Sideways across the field, To let me hear The cry of a cukoo.

Basho, OP.CIT, p. 105.

Adopting a non-hierarchical way to be all including.

Preferences "After I had served him… for the space of three years, my mind did not venture to reflect on right and wrong, my lips did not venture to speak of profit and loss. Then, for the first time, my Master bestowed one glance upon me – and that was all. At the end of five years a change had taken place; my mind was reflecting on right and wrong and my lips were speaking of profit and loss. Then, for the first time, my Master relaxed his countenance and smiled. At the end of seven years, there was another change. I let my mind reflect on what I would, but it no longer occupied itself with right and wrong. I let my lips utter whatsoever they pleased, but they no longer spoke of profit and loss. Then, at last, my Master led me in to sit on the mat beside me. At the end of nine years, my mind gave free rein to its reflections, my mouth free passage to its speech. Of right and wrong, profit and loss, I had no knowledge, either as touching myself or others… internal and external were blended into unity. After that there was no distinction between eye and ear, ear and nose, nose and mouth: all were the same. My mind was frozen; my body was in dissolution, my flesh and bones all melted together. I was wholly unconscious of what my body was resting on, or what was under my feet. I was borne this way and that on the wind, like dry chaff or leaves falling from a tree. In fact, I knew not whether the wind was riding on me or I on the wind.“

Watts in THE WAY OF ZEN quotes L.Giles, TAOIST TEACHING, murray, London, 1925, pp. 40-42.

Dissolution of fixations, prejudices or preconcepts.

Fixations "The Taoist perception of the real world differs essentially from our usual Western one. We tend to think, diagrammatically, of a world of separate things – some of them alive – arranged in an independent space. We take it for granted that these lumps of independent "things" cause each other, "act on" each other as they "move about" in empty space and pass through a series of static states of change… change happens, as assume, by one "thing" turning into "something else". The way we experience and measure time is by dividing it up into countable moments, each of which is separate and, in an abstract way, identical to all others, however large or infinitely small we may choose to make them. Taoism sees all this schematic, vulgar and absurd. It recognizes that, though fixed concepts referring to things and states can be extracted by human thought from the mobile reality, and can be useful, there is actually no way of reconstructing the mobility of the real by adding up fixed concepts… the Tao which Taoism knows, and with which its art is concerned, is a seamless web of unbroken movement and change, filled with undulations, waves, patterns of ripples and temporary "standing waves" like a river."

P.Rawson & L.legeza, TAO THE CHINESE PHILOSOPHY OF TIME AND CHANGE, Thames & Hudson, London, 1984, pp.9-10.

Instead of conceiving Reality as the agglomeration of separate things – finding the infinite interlinking among all things.

Imperfection “In whatever you do, if you leave a sense of incompleteness, then Creation cannot resent you, ghosts and spirits cannot harm you. If you insist on fulfillment in your work and perfection in achievement, you will become inwardly deranged or outwardly unsettled.” “Be pure yet tolerant, benevolent yet decisive, observant yet not intrusive, straightforward yet not stiff. As it said, the best candy is not too sweet; the best seafood is not too salty.”

H. Daoren, BACK TO THE BEGINNINGS. REFLECTIONS ON THE TAO (trans. –T. Cleary), shambhala, Boston & London, 1990, p. 32.

Perfection is illusory in the Infinity of finite transient phenomena of Being

Opinions “Don’t let the doubts of the crowd interfere with an individual view, but don’t reject the words of others because of faith in your own opinion. Don’t miss the larger reality by taking a little kindness personally; don’t use public opinion to please yourself.”

Daoren, OP. CIT, p. 52.

Grasping outer collective Reality as the source of constant enrichment while gradually developing the quality of Individuation.

The Essence “The eye’s normal field of vision is limited. But contemplative vision is of a particularly intense order, since it is directed towards the essence of form. This interdependence of form and that which generates form is seen to be the ultimate configuration, one that subsumes our world of phenomena, this normally nexus of overlapping patterns.” “The yogi artist’s perception of form is grounded in his process of symbolization. The function of the symbol is unique for the yogi artist in that it operates as the link between observation of the outer world and a very precise extraction of its essence.”

A. Mookerjee, YOGA ART, Thames & Hudson, London, 1975, p. 25.

The focused Mind is apt to absorb pluralism

Synchronizing “Synchronizing mind and body is also connected with how we synchronize or connect with the world, how we work with the world altogether. This process has two stages, which we could call looking and seeing. We might also speak of listening and hearing, or touching and then feeling, but it is somewhat easier to explain this process of synchronization in terms of visual perception. Looking is your first projection, and if you have any doubt, then it might have a quality tremor or shakiness. You begin to look, and then you feel shaky or anxious because you don’t trust your vision. So sometimes you want to close your eyes. You don’t want to look any more. But the point is to look properly. See the colors: white, black, blue, yellow, red, green, purple. Look. This is your world, you can’t not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited this world of color. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look doesn't hesitate – look. Open your eyes. Don’t blink, and look, look – look further. Then you might SEE something, which is the second stage. The more you look, the more inquisitive you are, the more you are bound to see… Synchronizing mind and body is looking and seeing directly beyond language.”

B. Trungpa, SHAMBHALA THE SACRED PATH OF THE WARRIOR, Bantam, Boston, 1986.

The more one looks, the more one sees the ever transient here and now.

Practice “After you have practiced for a while, you will realize that it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, the progress you make is always little by little. It is not like going out in a shower in which you know when you get wet. In a fog, you do not know you are getting wet, but as you keep walking you get wet little by little. If your mind has ideas of progress, you may say, “Oh this pace is terrible” but actually it is not. When you get wet in a fog it is very difficult to dry yourself. So there is no need to worry about progress.” “If you continue this simple practice every day you will obtain a wonderful power. Before you attain it, it is something wonderful, but after you obtain it, it is nothing special. It is just you, yourself, nothing special.”

S. Suzuki, ZEN MIND, BEGINNER’S MIND, Weatherhill, N.Y & Tokyo, 1982, p. 46. Ibid. p. 47.

The target is the Way and the way is the Target

Beyond Concepts “Zen consists entirely of transcending or moving beyond all conventional ideas, concepts and words.” “Religion implies a faith in the beyond that is in another reality, philosophy – a faith in concepts and abstractions.” “The real you is just the things that your mind is aware of. Accordingly there is no distinction between knower and known in that you are precisely what you know or feel.”

B. Redcliff & A. Redcliff, UNDERSTANDING ZEN, Boston, 1993, p. 5. Ibid. p. 13. Ibid. p. 47.

Keeping the mind soul and spirit in movement to avoid delay between the knowing ability and the actual knowing of the world.

More on concepts “When one tries to get at, it lies one thousand miles away. What can one do with it?” “One thousand miles” “What shall I do when the ancient frontier gate does not turn?” “Has it turned yet, or not?” “No turning yet” “Better have it turned” “The past is past, and the future is not yet here. The line is the absolute line of the Present, altogether timeless, as a spatial, geometrical line has no width. But, existentially speaking, the absolute “fifteenth day” is not empty and or lacks content; in it indeed are hoarded up all the past deeds or achievements already taking effect, and alas all the possibilities that are to materialize in time to come. How would the Zen Master give expression to this fact? He is not a dialectician, not a metaphysician; he is not used to subtleties of intellection. He is a most practical man, in the sense of a radical empiricist; he does not conceptualize. Hence Ummon’s utterance, “Every day is a fine day”.”

D. T. Suzuki, LIVING BY ZEN, (ED. C. Humphreys) Rider, London, 1986, p. 84. Ibid. p.p. 57-8. Every day is a fine day to be challenged by the ever unknown , which is Life.

Tolerance “Nous avons dit plus haut que nous n’avons pas besoin d’etre present a quelque chose ou de connaitre quelque chose pour etre, ni besoin d’etre quelque chose pour connaitre. Notre vraie nature est de connaitre – connaitre c’est etre- et d’etre, qui est connaitre. C’est precisement la separation illusoire de ces deux etats – connaitre et etre – qui est a la racine de nos malheurs.”

Low, LE REVE DU PAPILLON – UNE PLONGEE AU COEUR DU ZEN, Expression, Montreal, 1992, p. 156.

What we know is what we actually are. If knowledge is practiced as continuity– we live the actual. But if knowledge is based on past experience - we repeat an inner pattern, forcefully static and therefore - illusory .

The Irrational “A newcomer asked to be shown the way to the monastery, and Chao-cho replied: “Have you finished eating your rice?... Then go wash your bowl” Thereupon the monk gained instant enlightenment” “A monk came from Ting-chou’s assembly to Wu-chiu, who said to him, ‘What do you find in Ting-chou’s teaching? Is there anything different from what you find here?’ The monk said, ‘Nothing different’ Wu-chiu said, ‘If there is nothing different, why don’t you go back there?’ and he hit him with his stick. The monk said, ‘If your stick had eyes to see, you would not strike me like that.’ Wu-chiu said, ‘Today I have come across a monk and he gave him more blows. The monk went out. Wu-chiu called after him and said, ‘One may receive unfair blows’. The monk turned back and said, ‘To my regret the stick is in your hand’. Wu-chiu said, ‘If you need it I will let you have it’. The monk went up to Wu-chiu, seized his stick and gave him three blows with it. Wu-chiu said, ‘Unfair blows unfair blows’. The monk said, ‘One may receive them’. Wu-chiu said, ‘I hit this one too casually’. The monk made bows. Wu-chiu said, ‘Monk is that how you take leave?’. The monk laughed aloud and went out. Wu-chiu said, ‘That’s it That’s it’.

Ibid. pp. 54-55 Also Osho, THIS. THIS. A THOUSAND TIMES THIS, Rebel Publishing House, Cologne, 1988. The assumingly rational depends on the analytic ability of the specific thinker and thus it is always relative linear and limited. Existence is ever expanding and thus can never be rationalized.

Te “Emptiness, silence, is not nothingness, but fullness, your fullness.” “For the artist-priests who painted them, they represented acts of intense contemplation, attempts to comprehend the essential nature of the universe and to penetrate to the very core of individual existence. The author’s commentaries and the translated poems accompanying the paintings are designed to work at the nonverbal level, stimulating readers to similar ‘transactions with the universe’. “

S. W Holmes & C. Horioka, ZEN ART FOR MEDITATION, Charles E. Tuttle, Vermont & Tokyo, 1984, p. 1.

The past is remembrance, the future is fantasy. The present is the passage between remembrance and fantasy. If we live devoid of memory or fantasy- we experience Void. In other words: an awareness entirely detached ,able to fully experience Transience.