“Clouds appear and disappear in disordered order. There is structure in the tumult, patterns in the chaos. Such a principle is the underlying character of Taoism and Zen.” — The Tao of Zen by Ray Grigg
Category Archives: Philosophy
Lesson One: “I give up”
“To know that you can do nothing is the beginning. Just watching, without purpose.”
My favorite excerpts (PDF) from Become What You Are (Alan Watts)
No one can deliberately do it
“When (Zen) is itself, it is so uncontrived and subtle that it goes unnoticed, or it passes for luck or grace or some nameless equivalent. Like Taoism, it happens but few recognize it. And no one can deliberately do it.”
— The Tao of Zen by Ray Grigg
Autumn Leaves
The difference between those who are enlightened and those who are not “is that you don’t know the difference until you realize yourself to be no better than others, then you are better than others. But if you think like this, you are not. Here is the paradox that rules the world.”
— R.H.Blyth (The Tao of Zen by Ray Grigg)
A thousand years is but an instant
“A thousand years is but an instant. There’s nothing new, nothing different; same pattern over and over. The same clouds, same music, the same things I felt an hour or an eternity ago. There’s nothing here for me now, nothing at all. Now I remember, this happened to me before. This is why I left. You have begun to find your answers. Although it will seem difficult the rewards will be great. Exercise your human mind as fully as possible knowing that it is only an exercise. Build beautiful artifacts, solve problems, explore the secrets of the physical universe, savor the input from all the senses, filled with joy and sorrow and laughter, empathy, compassion, and tote the emotional memory in your travel bag. I remember where I came from, and how I became human, why I hung around, and now my final departure’s scheduled. This way out, escaping velocity. Not just eternity, but Infinity.”
From Waking Life by Richard Linklater (IMDb)
Stop talking and thinking
The more you talk and think about it,
the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
From Verses On the Faith Mind (Chien-chih Seng-tsan)
A Path
“Buddhism is not so much a belief system as a path. It is more something we do than something we believe.” — Unknown
Cease to cherish opinions
I first came across the following quote (from a poem by Seng-ts’an) back in 2009:
“Do not seek the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.”
I don’t think old Seng-ts’an was saying you shouldn’t have opinions. Just don’t love them too much. As for “do not seek the truth”… well, that’s harder for me. From the same blog post:
“Get comfortable with the emptiness of no beliefs, no ideas, no concepts, no knowing, no desires, no anticipation, no system, and no future.”
What does that leave? Direct experience. And about the only thing we can be certain of, based on direct experience is: I am. I exist. I find this ever so comforting (when I can remember it). The stress and anxiety of the last year is (for me) the result of beliefs and ideas and concepts and desires and anticipation and what’s gonna happen in the future.
Emptiness. It’s an important concept in most (all?) Eastern philosophies. It doesn’t mean the same thing it does in Western thought. Just saying the word makes me feel lighter. Calmer.
I’ll be on the deck if you need me
The Universe has told me to go sit down and shut the fuck up. So I think I will. For a while at least. Social media is a toxic brew and a break will do me good. When I find something I’d like to share I’ll do that here. Despite my best efforts, I became a little obsessed by the recent political shenanigans and yesterday’s events might just be the icy enema I needed.
TED: What reality are you creating for yourself?
“Awfulizing” – When your fears distort your reality