As going five whole days without blogging is now unthinkable, I knew I better stop into an internet cafe after dinner with a friend. Just a note: No city is truly blessed until you find a Chinese restaurant that makes a good Kung Pao. My absence is somewhat excuseable as I have lent the use of my laptop much to the Indomitable I, former roomate of J the Younger in Vegas, who has temporarily moved into our Seattle household as a waystation. All goes well for the I. I've had a lesson in humility as the Man has watched what is unthinkable money for myself be thrown at some naughty sewage pipes at the bottom of a considerable plumbers' trench in the front yard, and even if it is a materialist crisis, it shames my piddling existential crisis. I offered to pay more rent to help compensate, but the Man doesn't work like that, apparently. But the repair of the lovely wooden floor of my bedroom will probably come out of my own pocket, understandably. As a koan mentioned earlier in this blog goes, I am chopping wood, carrying water.
Speaking of Zen Koans... I just finished The Iron Flute: 100 Zen Koans by Nyogen Senzaki. Honestly, only a handful of those hundred were meaningful to me, but that makes sense, since a Koan is a enigmatic story that only works when the meaning is synchronous to the meaning you seek. That's the problem with reading things that are "profound," that you expect everything in that deep text to be profound, as if the profundity were inherent in the words, not in the immanence of the words in relation reflective to your life. Probably explains why biblethumpers are so impossible to deal with, since the Good Book is so amazingly profound for them, that they can't imagine it not being so for every human being on the face of the earth. But, I digress... so I am going to post a couple of the Koans that I read that I liked best. See if they might be profound for you two, but don't try too hard, then you might be failing to be Zen.
Koan #14: Pai-yun's Black and White
Pai-yun, a Zen master of the Sung Dynasty, wrote a peom:
Where others dwell,
I do not dwell.
Where others go,
I do not go.
This does not mean I refuse
Association with others;
I only want to make
Black and white distinct.
Koan #52: Hua-yen Return to the World of Delusion
A monk asked Hua-yen, "How does an enlightened person return to the world of delusion?" The master replied, "A broken mirror never reflects again, and the fallen flowers never go back to the old branches."
Speaking of Zen Koans... I just finished The Iron Flute: 100 Zen Koans by Nyogen Senzaki. Honestly, only a handful of those hundred were meaningful to me, but that makes sense, since a Koan is a enigmatic story that only works when the meaning is synchronous to the meaning you seek. That's the problem with reading things that are "profound," that you expect everything in that deep text to be profound, as if the profundity were inherent in the words, not in the immanence of the words in relation reflective to your life. Probably explains why biblethumpers are so impossible to deal with, since the Good Book is so amazingly profound for them, that they can't imagine it not being so for every human being on the face of the earth. But, I digress... so I am going to post a couple of the Koans that I read that I liked best. See if they might be profound for you two, but don't try too hard, then you might be failing to be Zen.
Koan #14: Pai-yun's Black and White
Pai-yun, a Zen master of the Sung Dynasty, wrote a peom:
Where others dwell,
I do not dwell.
Where others go,
I do not go.
This does not mean I refuse
Association with others;
I only want to make
Black and white distinct.
Koan #52: Hua-yen Return to the World of Delusion
A monk asked Hua-yen, "How does an enlightened person return to the world of delusion?" The master replied, "A broken mirror never reflects again, and the fallen flowers never go back to the old branches."
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