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Thread: SPLIT TOPIC: Or I'll Eat My Zafu!

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    SPLIT TOPIC: Or I'll Eat My Zafu!

    SPLIT TOPIC FROM THE FIRE THREAD:
    http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showt...10182-The-fire

    Quote Originally Posted by Jundo View Post
    PS - Chet, almost every Zen Master of old, from Bodhidharma to Huineng to Dogen to Honzhi to Hakuin to everyone in between spoke of "True Self/small self, True Face, Dharmakhaya, Relative/Absolute, Mu, Emptiness, Shobogenzo, Big 'B' Buddha, Mirror Mind, Capital "M" Mind etc. etc." ... although each as "fingers pointing to the moon" (the "moon", by the way, yet another metaphorical finger pointing at the moon of Enlightenment"). This has to be unpierced, realized (made real in living) through sitting and all Practice.

    However, though "fingers pointing at the moon", that does not take away that the central point of their teachings of Zen Practice was not ... to a man ... anything but the need to realize (grock and bring to life) and and break free of the self/other, the Relative/Absolute. Sorry, find me someone through the centuries who taught something else in the classic literature. I will eat my Zafu on toast. Even Dogen was about that through his jazzed up, vibrant vision of how the relative and absolute interpenetrate and totally exert as each other. No exceptions, and the only thing the Soto and Rinzai folks (and other Mahayana Buddhists) really disagree on is the specific methods to do so.
    I would actually like to try to test this bold assertion by me. I'd like to ask two or three of our members (first come first served) to each name any old Zen Ancestor from China or Korea or Japan, Soto or Rinzai, and a totally random book page number. No preparations for this, neither of us check in advance. I will than go to a collection of their writings (not a book about them, but first hand writings) and see whether on that page or somewhere very close by (in case that page is the footnotes or something) they are talking about relative/absolute and getting to "True Self" (not just our small, ignorant little self) or one of its poetic expressions above.

    If not, I am prepared to eat my Zafu stuffing.

    Last edited by Jundo; 10-02-2012 at 05:46 PM.
    ALL OF LIFE IS OUR TEMPLE

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