GENIUS FORUMS

Great Death

When Zen master Sekiso passed away and the brotherhood asked the head monk to succeed him as abbot, Zen master Kyuho, who had previously served as the master's attendant, came and addressed them. He posed a question to the head monk, "The master often told us to `cease all activity,' to `do nothing whatever,' to `become so cold and lifeless the spirits of the dead will come sighing around you,' to `become a bolt of fine white silk,' to `become the dead ashes in a censer left forgotten in an ancient graveyard,' to `become so that the present instant is ten thousand years.'

"What is the meaning of these instructions? If you show that you grasp them, you are the next abbot. If you show that you do not, you aren't the man for the job."

"His words," said the head monk, "refer to the essential oneness of all things."

"You have failed to understand the master's meaning," said Kyuho.

"Get some incense ready," replied the head monk. "If I have terminated my life by the time that incense burns, it will mean I grasped the master's meaning. If I am still living, it will mean I did not."

Kyuho lit a stick of incense. Before it had burned down the head monk had ceased breathing. Kyuho patted the dead man on the back, and said, "Others have died while seated; some have died while standing. But you have just succeeded in proving that you could not have even seen the master's meaning in your dreams."

— Hakuin

Failing to see the Way,
He wants to measure his life,
With an incense stick.

Incense sticks were their timers for meditation periods. He was misspending his meditation time, not because he used incense sticks, but because his ego took comfortable residence in the notion of oneness. So he believed that nirvana could be achieved through death, namely, the dissolution of the bodily organism into that oneness, not realising that he had projected self (ego) outwardly into a external manifestation and was still holding onto that core "life" delusion.

I thought this Koan would be illustrative for Alex, and those who think that the Genius Forum has a "death dogma" promoting the idea that something can actually be destroyed.


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Kelly:

I thought this Koan would be illustrative for Alex, and those who think that the Genius Forum has a "death dogma" promoting the idea that something can actually be destroyed.

Carmel:

Right, and the frauds posing as enlightened people here might want to take this to heart. You can't destroy people by calling them names. That includes you too Kelly. You can't destroy Fromm by pouring acid on him and you can't destroy women by shouting out: whore! It's a transparent act of religious hypocrisy and inner loathing. You expose yourself everytime you engage in this behaviour...You too, are escaping your own freedom.

next.

What are you doing?

Regard the words, "Neti neti". Is it encouragement (ie. positive), or an admonition (ie. negative)?

"Neti neti": a negative or a positive exhortation? Since nothing changes ultimately, and this exhortation has that changeless nature, isn't the exhortation a reasonable correction for the deluded mind that holds to something?

For the mind habitually constructing deluded mirages, something appears to be destroyed by "neti neti". It perceives acid. But the mind freed from such delusions only sees clearly.


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..and you perceive "whores" and "mediocrity" and the "deluded masses"...and jupiviv perceives "stupidity"...

...and Ryan sees "evil"

look in the mirror...

Clearly you find it useful to use labels to criticise me. So aren't you contradicting yourself, there?


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No, I'm calling you out on your hypocrisy, get it?

You seem to be under the delusion that you're immune from judgement. not so.

How is it hypocritical? I realise that you might not be able to perceive how I use words, so I'm not expecting you to stop criticising me falsely anytime soon. Don't worry about it. I'd like to be able to help you understand, but can't expect you to.


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I'd like for you to be able to understand how you're a hypocrite and that you are not immune from judgement, but I don't expect you to.

Oh well.

next.

"The master often told us to `cease all activity,' to `do nothing whatever,' to `become so cold and lifeless the spirits of the dead will come sighing around you,' to `become a bolt of fine white silk,' to `become the dead ashes in a censer left forgotten in an ancient graveyard,' to `become so that the present instant is ten thousand years.'

"What is the meaning of these instructions? If you show that you grasp them, you are the next abbot. If you show that you do not, you aren't the man for the job."

Was Sekiso a hypocrite for giving these instructions, knowing that the nature of their delusion was no different ultimately to the nature of their insight?

Or did he perceive that though all have the same nature, yet there is no homogeneity among things, and delusion is distinct from insight?

You tell me, since you always have a ready answer.


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Sekiso said 'cease all activity'.
That would be activity wouldn't it?

The head monk set his response as a project and was judged wrong.

All we've got is 2 dead guys and no abbot.

Kelly:

For the mind habitually constructing deluded mirages, something appears to be destroyed by "neti neti". It perceives acid. But the mind freed from such delusions only sees clearly.

Carmel:

The heart of your delusion is that you believe that your mind is free. It isn't and that is why you continue to pour acid on everyone who doesn't fit into your narrow, authoritarian and autocratic version of "wisdom". Your bizarre obsession with women's flaws is a form of self hatred. I've explained this to you before, but it falls upon deaf ears. You are half dead.

I'm sorry Kelly, but I can't help you until you acknowledge this and I'm under no delusion that this will happen anytime soon, maybe never.

Kelly:

You tell me, since you always have a ready answer.

Carmel:

case in point. swagger swagger

This reeks of male ego. You demean spirituality trying to reduce it to a competition, as Bob accurately observed.

Sorry, but I'm not interested in engaging in that dynamic.

Kelly Jones wrote:Incense sticks were their timers for meditation periods. He was misspending his meditation time, not because he used incense sticks, but because his ego took comfortable residence in the notion of oneness. So he believed that nirvana could be achieved through death, namely, the dissolution of the bodily organism into that oneness, not realising that he had projected self (ego) outwardly into a external manifestation and was still holding onto that core "life" delusion.

The usefulness of koans are destroyed if you explain them like this, but I'll explain this one anyway.

The head monk hears that he hasn't understood the master's meaning, and in his desperation he decides that if he spends the entire of his remaining life in meditation(the length of the incense stick) then he would be enlightened. If his life exceeds the time he spends in meditation, he would remain ignorant. But meditation has nothing to do with enlightenment. Life and death are not delusions if you don't don't think of them in a deluded way - how you decide to spend the short life you have decides whether you are enlightened or not.

Actually, I didn't know that incense sticks were used to measure meditation times before you said so. But the koan works equally well if you think of the incense sticks as measuring a period of his life rather than as measuring the period of time he spends meditating. I find that genuine koans are like fugues in music - once you understand the logic behind them, you can extend them to be as complex and rich in meaning as you want(and if you don't, you end up creating noise.)

Dennis Mahar wrote:Sekiso said 'cease all activity'.
That would be activity wouldn't it?

Such activity would still be within the processes of causation, and yet what does causation reveal?

If all are causes, and there are no boundaries between causes, then are there causes at all?

If there are no causes, then there are no things to be free or unfree.

Yet a mind stuck in the delusion that there are things, believes that freedom or imprisonment is real.


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Such activity would still be within the processes of causation, and yet what does causation reveal?

If all are causes, and there are no boundaries between causes, then are there causes at all?

If there are no causes, then there are no things to be free or unfree.

Yet a mind stuck in the delusion that there are things, believes that freedom or imprisonment is real.

That in and of itself is a pattern.
Yet points to ultimately all patterns vanish.

Enlightenment doesn't happen by accident. It isn't a random, chance occurrence. It is definitely a pattern in that it comes about through the use of reason, not unreason, and through a very strong and unbending, all-conquering ambition. Only with such a will can one endure the lifelong process of having every aspect of karma, even the slightest emotional bondage, mechanically and systematically banished. Only with that sacrifice of even the subtlest inclination of desire, can one truly learn to live with the Infinite intimately.

It is definitely a pattern, and yet, only with that pattern can there be true freedom.


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