THIS existence

To experience Bodhidharma's zen, there is no need to destroy THIS existence---YOU ARE FACING EVERYTHING....you suddenly realize that THIS existence, "I and that," are your original nature and that you cannot say a word about it, cannot divide THIS existence into two pieces (mind and matter). Of course in that moment, all color, all sound, everything together, disappears [as such]. This is what is known as sudden enlightenment, Bodhidharma's zen.


---from "The Zen Eye" by Sokei-an

'Ocean' and 'wave'

Nonduality does not mean 'not-duality'---that would be completely dualistic! In reality, nonduality includes (the appearance of) duality because it is everything. It is nothing (no-thing) and it is everything.

Ultimately, nonduality appears as duality. They are one and the same. Then you can't even speak of 'nonduality.'

In other words, the appearance of the wave is not a problem for the Ocean. The appearance of your life story is itself a perfect expression of Being. In this unconditional love, nothing is denied.


--- Jeff Foster

Adaptability

Day by day, moment by moment, intrinsic adaptability in accordance with circumstances reveals itself.

When you hear the Buddha's teaching , it is the voice of the soul whispering. You call it "conscience." It does not always work by itself; we may have to dig it out to use it. Sometimes we listen; but it is very hard to take its orders---"Don't eat any more sausage!" But you have already decided---"Just a little more."

It is the sorrow of the human being that we know the "law" but cannot obey it. "Well," some old monk says laughingly, "perhaps that IS adaptability." I think I agree. After all, adaptability is not always as cold as ice.

When you understand adaptability in accordance with circumstances, you will understand the unity of all existence---the unity between this and that, you and me, the entire world. All is just one soul working by the same law of adaptability. We understand the law of society, of the human being, and of nature, the law of everything. The same law works in the human heart, in the tree, and in the weeds. When I was studying painting, I understood this very clearly. Now it works in Sokei-an in New York. Giving lectures in this terrible language is the position he must accept. We accept everything.


From the "Zen Eye" by Sokei-an

ch.32 The Disappearance of Subject

The reason why ignorance and knowledge are identical is because all concepts are objectivisations; enlightenment and ignorance are also identical, for both are objective concepts.

He who has lost his objective self thereby loses his subjective self, and has found his non-objectivity---which is the absence of subject and object.

Objects are neither 'empty' nor 'non-empty', not because they are or are not this or that, but because, of themselves, they are no 'thing' whatever BUT THEIR SOURCE ONLY.

The reason for comprehending the emptiness of objects is the abolition thereby of their subject, an abolition which remains impossible as long as the objects are perceived as real (since the one is the counterpart of the other, they have no independent identity). Phenomenally, therefore, they are one concept that has a dual aspect, and noumenon is its source.

Since subject can never be abolished directly via itself, the recognition of its objects as appearance only, results in the dis-appearance of itself as a supposed object functioning as their subject.

from "Open Secret" by Wei Wu Wei

I am Not, but the Universe is my Self --- Shih T'ou, A.D. 700-790

In other words,

I am not any thing, but the apparent universe is my self.

Interpenetration of Self and Other

Towards the end of his book "In Over Our Heads," Robert Kegan mentions some features of what he describes as the post
"self-authoring" order of consciousness, two of which I found particularly interesting.

1) the sense of our relationships and connections
as prior to and constitutive of the individual self

2) an identification with the transformative process of our being
rather than the formative products of our becoming

structures of knowing

One pattern is forever repeated in the evolution of our structures of knowing, whether we are looking at mental development in infancy or the highly elaborated order of consciousness that underlies postmodernism. That pattern can be described like this: DIFFERENTIATION ALWAYS PRECEDES INTEGRATION. How could it be otherwise? Before we can reconnect to, internalize, or integrate something with which we were originally fused, we must first distinguish ourselves from it.


--- Robert Kegan

Organisms organize, and human organisms organize meaning.--- William Perry

[My notion] that a given individual may over time come to organize her experience according to a higher order principle suggests that what we take as subject and what we take as object are not necessarily fixed for us. They are not permanent. They can change.

In fact, transforming our epistemologies, liberating ourselves from that in which we are embedded, making what was subject into object so that we can "have it" rather than "be had" by it---this is the most powerful way I know to conceptualize the growth of the mind.

It is a way of conceptualizing the growth of the mind that is as faithful to the self-psychology of the West as it is to the "wisdom literature" of the East. The roshis and lamas speak to the growth of the mind in terms of our developing ability to relate to what we were formerly attached to.


---from "In Over Our Heads, The Mental Demands of Modern Life" by Robert Kegan

a bit more on faith

Only knowing is believing,

and such believing is being;

such "being" is another kind of faith,

the kind to cherish.


--- Wei Wu Wei

unfettered

[To] "let your mind take its rise without fixing it anywhere"

means to be perfect master of oneself,

[not] dependent on anything,

perfectly free.


--- D. T. Suzuki

a bit more on Prajna

Prajna, in many cases, can safely be [translated as] 'faith': not a belief in revealed truths, but a sort of immediate knowledge gained by intuitive intelligence. [Moreover] Prajna corresponds in some respects to 'wisdom': meaning the foundation of all reasonings and experiences.

--- from "Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism" by D. T. Suzuki