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2003-01-26 22:54:02 ET koan time, a roshi (zen monk of some rank, and attainment) was speaking with a student one day and said simply, "do you understand that there are two moons" the student was struck and could not understand what the his teacher had ment, the teachers response was "you can not be my dharma heir with out this understanding" thus we have a koan...a riddle to help us focus toward enlightenment... The monk was trying to get the student to understand the basic problems with perception, the fact that what really exists and what we see are two very different things. For what really exists has to be filtered through the mind of the viewer, or in this case the student, so the student has a picture a visualazation of the moon in his head...moon number one...and then there is the real moon free from observance, floating out there caught in earths gravity... the illusion created of the moon as for example is also called by buddhists karma (the true meaning of karma) our karma is our own self obsessed definitions. These definations are created by the EGO in attempt to gather the universe for itself, to replicate what it will lose when we die, a truely useless endeavor...the Ego is pitiful and greedy, its the part of our unconscience mind that is most affected by the nature of the universe, which is impermance. The only absolute of our universe is that nothing is absolute and that all things will pass...faced with this the ego creates all the problems we suffer... again our karma... it creates these problems by its self serving nature. Faced with death we (by guidance of Ego) begin to think we are all that matters. The nature of nihilism and the false nature misunderstood to be existentialism...that since we are the perciever we are all that matters... Again this is illusion; the mind, the ego, and our karma, and all that is what we call, I, do not belong inward to ourselves but are apart of an organism much longer than ourselves, the universe itself. Zazen (literally translates to seated meditation) is the steps taken by a zen student to get closer to the universal conscienceness, an attempt to throw off the ego and literally, just sit and be, with out conception or the little mind decyphering and defining events, which is to mean with out the ego creating division from big mind and little mind...or universal/buddha mind and what we call OUR mind... this is a basic precept of zen buddhism, and if the student could not understand what the teacher was talking about the student was not learning anything from the teacher... all things suffer its a truth of this world deeper than anything its a core of existance, suffering, and we all should come face to face with it and swallow its bitterness, all that is i shall pass one day into nothing, its the nature of the universe...the suffering that is deeper than that created by myself and my ego is a suffering that reflects from deep with in the universal mind itself...sometimes i think this suffering is a core to all existance, the black and the white, the yin and the yang, the good and the bad the very act of this world, the very trigger of the big bang, the cause of all of this unfolding multipling replicating error, is the creation of division. The true aim of zazen is to fully embrace the oneness, the singluar complete existance before any division...to be one with all things.... |
