If one denies existence to things in order to grant more reality to the All - and that is, in fact, what you are doing - then one believes that the All is deficient. And he who thinks the All is deficient is himself completely deficient.Russell wrote:I didn't say that you've applied the concept of existence to the Tao, but as I plainly state, nor do I.jupiviv wrote:I haven't applied the concept of existence to the Tao. It is, in fact, you who are doing this. If you don't realise that then there is little I can do except to advise you to think about this matter in greater depth.My motive, with my statements above, is you get you to see what the existence of things mean in context of what is absolute, i.e. that things are ultimately empty of existence, there is only the Tao, or the Infinite, to which the concept of existence cannot apply.
The stages in that story are meant to be a joke. Unless you get the joke, you won't understand the meaning behind it. The third and final stage, in the context of seeking truth, is the *true* stage. It follows then that the preceding two stages are false, so nobody should be bothered about them. The reason why Zen students tried to make sense of them is precisely *because* they were deluded. Their deluded minds bestowed upon the "third stage" an elusiveness which it didn't really have, because it is the only way reality can appear (even to a deluded mind, to the degree it's not deluded).Both statements are correct under different contexts. Mine was made in consideration of the fact that the infinitude of causality reduces the perceptions of finitudes to a conventional sense, whereas the Infinite is absolute. I.e., the second stage of the Zen story: things don't exist.Consciousness conceives of things existing before and after it, and beyond its immediate environment. I thought we'd agreed about this.To put it another way, things exist by way of contrast to what they are not. Contrasts don't exist except by way of perception. Where there is no perception, there's no contrasts, and therefore no existence.
That which makes a finite thing finite does not change with a change in context from conventionality to absoluteness. If it did, then there would be an absolute distinction between the relation of one thing to everything else, and of one thing to the All.
The bastard son of a despised woman who fancies herself a virgin, spit on by all decent folk and revered amongst madmen, criminals and lepers, remains eternally just that. The Son of Man is also the Son of God.
You're betraying an egotistical clinging to actions and thoughts just by making such an understanding (which doesn't exist) the condition for enlightenment. Personally, I think it comes from understanding why balls are oval.What Hakuin was essentially saying was to cease any egotistical clinging to our actions. Again, this can't be done without understanding the concept of emptiness, and how it applies to existence.If he was in agreement with you he wouldn't call a dying man who also said this incapable of understanding the meaning of those words even in his dreams.