With palms together,
Good Morning everyone,
As we live our lives, do we live them in Big Mind or Small Mind? If you choose you are incorrect. The Infinite, being Infinite, is everywhere. Yet our brain, wired as it is, creates an "I" and discerns subject from object: always. My post on fear drew some replies. Not so much regarding fear, but as regards hope. Many of you on the Zen Living list rightly point out that hope, like any emotion or thought, is transient. Yet, what does this really mean?
If we think it means that we should not experience it, we are incorrect. Because "Form is emptiness" does not mean form does not exist. As my Zen Teacher has often said, "If I pinch your nose, it will hurt!"
So, in Zen we do not ignore form, nor do we ignore emptiness: we experience both of them directly, respond appropriately, and then let them go.
Many Zen students get stuck in emptiness. They attain a level of awakening that shows them mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers, but then they stop right there. This is incomplete practice.
We must take another step. And then another, and another still. As Master Seung Sahn points out, its a 360 degree Zen.
Salvation is a conceit. Don't get caught in it. We live in a real world with real mountains and real suffering. Though we might see these as impermanent or manifestations of our mind, there they are. They are there for us to engage.
It is here where fear and hope come into play. Use them and let them go. But don't think they do not exist.
Be well.
