With palms together,
Good Afternoon All,
What is our relationship to the Infinite? Can we have such a relationship? And if so, on what basis does it exist?
In Zen we talk of Big Mind. By this we mean the Infinite, the Absolute. Some may understand this Big Mind as God.
Others need a much more anthropomorphic understanding and so deny that the Absolute or the Infinite is God. They want a God that suits them and their sensibilities, a God they can wrap their arms around.
In Zen, its all about our practice. True, but our practice has an aim. That aim is awakening or "enlightenment." So, while we practice to practice and actually understand true practice as realization itself, we might not see a personal, relational "God" or "Big Mind" in this aim.
No worries. The Universal is big enough to handle a multiplicity of levels and understandings.
Just today I read an article about two people who might shed some light here. These two thinkers, theologians or philosophers in their own right, were both products of the 20th century. Both lived through the theological upheaval of the holocaust.
Martin Buber was a Hasidic Master (in my opinion) who taught us about the nature of relationships. He suggested there were two essential types, the "I-It" and the "I-Thou". The I-It relationship is a relative, small mind, relationship. It is founded in object relations and suggests a duality between subject and object. In this sense, we enter into I-it relationships for essentially utilitarian reasons.
An I-Thou relationship is a relationship in Big Mind. It is essentially non-dualistic where there is only the word pair as a single word or entity. Our relationship with the Infinite is just that. As the Buddha pointed out about the morning star, there is no difference between you and me. We are one. The universe and me are one; God and me are one. and as the Torah alludes, everything, the I Am, is One.
Our approach to Big Mind is the same approach as Martin Buber's to his relationship with God. It is an immanent and intensely personal one. As we begin to relate to the universe as ourselves with no real or symbolic separation, we are one with the Infinite.
Abraham Heschel, on the other hand had a different idea. He taught that person and God were essentially separate, but that we could come together. From his point of view God revealed the way to Him at Sinai, He taught us how through the Torah. He argued that we join God through the commandments. Keeping the commandments as God outlined them was a righteous activity. So, essentially Heschel begins with Small Mind. He is precept driven. Through the practice of the precepts we come to God.
The Buddha was precept driven as well. The Buddha recognized that we all need to live together in a community, a "sangha" if you will. In this living together our Buddha Nature had an opportunity to emerge, like fire from flint-stone. The precepts, like the commandments, are the Universe's reality. Just as Dharma is both Teaching and that which is taught, so to Torah is both an instruction and that which is instructed. Both are reality itself.
The Zen of God is the Zen of the Now. It is a Zen of both action and union. We come to Big Mind through our practice and through our practice, come to know that our practice is God Himself making Himself known here and now. through our practice.
Both of these are correct. We can begin at Small Mind or at Big Mind. Yet in both cases we must eventually realize they are one in the same.
Be well.
