Merry Christmas. A conversation with a Christian + Zen (Sanbo Kyodan) practitioner.

Also see Eat God, Sleep God, Use God, Sit God


Mr. M
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Rising Star
  · tnnSp9onsorehtd  ·
With your realizations have you realized where fire comes from and where it goes when it goes off? Do you know where the color green of leaves  came from? I think even scientific minds has not notice it.
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Soh Wei Yu
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Realizing source is just Thusness Stage 1. One can get there by asking before birth, who am I? Keep inquiring into the source until one realizes source.
At later phases the paradigm is replaced by penetrating into anatta, emptiness and dependent origination.

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Mr. M
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Soh Wei Yu
the fire is observable.. can you observe anatta .. or can you observe the source?

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Mr. M
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So if you can observe the fire you can also observe its source.

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Soh Wei Yu
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Mr. M
The problem is understanding Source as background. After I AM the understanding of Source is like an infinite background or container or ground of being out of which all phenomena emerge from and subside to while the background remains intact and unchanged and unaffected.
Anatta sees through the illusion of a background so that one constantly tastes, sees, hears, smells, eats, touch Source as the full embodiment of manifestation alone. This is how one can “eat God, sleep God” etc
Then one sees why zen is become one with action is because of the realization that source is not necessary. Otherwise just abiding as Self or Source will do.
“(7:53 PM) Thusness: XX Rinpoche makes a good statement but that is before understanding stage 5 and 6. That is, without the source, nothing happens. However in Buddhism, insight is to see, penetrate and investigate and become thoroughly clear that the idea of a source, an essence is unnecessary. Once you experience and arise the insight of anatta, you begin open to happening without source, without the need of an essence. This is then the beginning of Buddhism.” - John Tan, 2009
Maybe this sounds scary to you due to Christian background, but nothing is lost. Luminosity is not denied. Its nature is just seen as it is.
Source/Consciousness does not exist in and of itself, it is empty of itself and thus found in all manifestation.

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Soh Wei Yu
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Mr. M
At stage 6, one realises that burning fire dependently originates based on conditions and does not originate or truly arise. No where can an origin, destination or place of abiding be found.

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Mr. M
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Soh Wei Yu
so you dont know your original face before your parent were born?

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Soh Wei Yu
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Mr. M
Those are stage 1 stuff. That koan “before birth, who am I” is the koan that led to my stage 1 realisation back in february 2010 after two years of self enquiry.
I am telling you how not to get stuck there and move forward. I realised anatta in october 2010.

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Soh Wei Yu
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If you want to progress to oxherding 9, you must realise anatta. Otherwise you just get stuck at the lower oxherding phases.

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Mr. M
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But you said you cannot see the source so how can you return to the source..

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Soh Wei Yu
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Mr. M
It is not you cannot see the source. It is that the source is empty of itself, and is just the mere phenomena rolling on.
John Tan, 2006:
Yes LongChen, very very well said. What you described is very true about the experience of non-duality and no-self is really referring to the illusionary view of a subject-object split. In actual case, there is no such split and like what you said, there are varying depths and degrees to this experience of non-duality. It will be good to find out more about the 7 factors of enlightenments and five wisdoms in Buddhism.
Sensation is just a word. However when we named it as ‘sensation’, there are whole lots of imprints and definitions that come along with it and that makes seeing it in ‘raw’ difficult. So what is ‘sensation’ in its raw state? It is what we called Presence, our Pristine Awareness. And yes they are all just THAT, that ‘sensation in raw’ and the purpose of why Buddha taught mindfulness will become clear; it is to experience “all is just that”, the One Reality. This has to be experienced intuitively and directly. There is no other way.
Next, we must experience more clearly about its emptiness nature. Awareness is a luminous presence with emptiness as its nature. Its nature is empty in the sense that there is no way you can point to a who, or a place or a moment in time and say “here it is”. It subsides as it arises and never remains. It is symbol-less and therefore we should not rest ourselves in either form or formless. It is neither this nor that and not even an ‘IT’. Simply empty of a ‘self’! A Source that cannot be pinned down is purely an ever manifestation of phenomena that rolls on. Its arising and ceasing is best described in the following:
When there is this, that is.
With the arising of this, that arises.
When this is not, neither is that.
With the cessation of this, that ceases.
(Dependent Origination – DO)
Do not even ask where it comes from and where it goes. To ask is to satisfy our cognitive thirst. In actual case it is no where to be found, only mere arising and ceasing in raw. The profundity of DO has no depth, zoom deeply into it. Sense the entirety of the moment, the manifolds of Presence, the vividness, texture and fabric of the raw, experience earnestly the luminous and emptiness truth of our nature.
The experience of this is the awakening of the mirror-like wisdom. This is important because it is the base that prevents us from falling into lower realm. But contrary to what that is being commonly explained as a clear mirror reflecting the phenomenon which is again dualistic (by now u will not be able to accept such view ), it is a wisdom that transformed totally the wrong view of phenomena as “out there or in here” to all as the manifestation of our pristine awareness due its emptiness nature. It is the experience of Dharmakaya.
(Source: https://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2013/12/part-2-of-early-forum-posts-by-thusness_3.html)

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Soh Wei Yu
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You see even though the ninth oxherding picture is titled “returning to the source” it is nothing about a background or formless invisible atman.
Here is the description of 9th oxherding picture again:
Ten Ox-herding Pictures
Stage 9
RETURNING
TO THE SOURCE
Introduction
It is originally pure and clean without a speck of dust clinging.
He observes the flourishing and dying of form while remaining in the silence of no-action.
This is not the same as illusion; what need is there for striving or planning?
The water is blue and the mountains green; he sits and watches phenomena take form and decay.
Verse
Having come back to the origin and returned to the source, you see that you have expended efforts in vain.
What could be superior to becoming blind and deaf in this very moment?
Inside the hermitage, you do not see what is in front of the hermitage.
The water flows of itself and the flowers are naturally red.
How much time and pain it took to come to the eighth stage of "Person and Ox Both Forgotten"! Now you have reached at last the stage where you realize the fact of "Person is empty, so is the dharma," that is, the subject (person) and the object (dharma) are both totally empty. Since this is the fruit of extremely long and hard labor, you tend to stick to this stage and to cherish it endlessly - the last residue of enlightenment. If you succeed in washing it away by constant and persistent sitting, you come to a state of realization that the fact of "Person is empty, so is the dharma" is the essential state of human beings, signifying nothing special at all. Through this realization you return to your original starting point. This is the stage of "Returning to the source," where not a trace of such things as "Buddhism" or "Tathagata" is found anywhere. It is true that "the state after enlightenment is exactly the same as that of before enlightenment." It is the state of mind of "a leisurely person of the Way, who, having finished learning, has nothing more to do."
At this stage you can observe that all the highs and lows and vacillations of this world are, as they are, void of substance and are manifestations of the world of perfect stillness and non-being. Expressed in these terms it sounds as if there were two things - being and non-being. But in fact, being is non-being; the aspect of being is, as it is, non-being itself. There is no distinction between the two at all.
This proposition "Being is non-being" is a crude fact, not a temporary illusion or a dream. At this point you can realize and affirm that it has been entirely unnecessary to be consciously engaged in practicing the way or trying to attain enlightenment. This is a very important point: you start with the first stage of "Searching the Ox," and, spending many years in practice, you come at last to the ninth level of "Returning to the Source," and as a result of this entire process you can say that practice and enlightenment were unnecessary. It is totally wrong to maintain from the very beginning that practice and enlightenment are of no use. Such an attitude is called "inactive zen" [buji-zen] . Today, almost all Zen schools in Japan have degenerated to this "inactive zen." They maintain that just sitting is enough, not appreciating the experience of enlightenment or even ignoring it. On the other hand, you must bear in mind: No matter how strongly you argue that enlightenment is important, if it's nothing more than just propagating a conceptional zen or if you take pride in your experience (if it was an authentic experience), you are only mid-way. There is no other way than to sit and sit and sit, until you can very clearly say that practice and enlightenment were intrinsically unnecessary.
Let's now appreciate the verse by Master Kakuan:
Having come back to the origin and returned to the source,
you see that you have expended efforts in vain.
You are now back to your starting point. How much effort you needed for that! Occasionally you encouraged yourself washing your face with the ice-chilly basin water, or you sank into desperation listening to frogs croaking in the dusk outside, or you kept sitting in defiance of the pains in the legs or of unbearable fatigue. Many times you have felt, "Now, this time I've come to a true experience!" but soon that experience is covered with anxiety and discontent. How many times you have determined to stop doing zazen altogether!.
What could be superior to becoming blind and deaf
in this very moment?
Come to think of it now, why didn't I become like a blind and deaf person right away? "Blind and deaf" here means a state of mind where there is nothing to see and nothing to hear. When you see, there's only the seeing, and the subject that sees doesn't exist. When you hear, there's only the hearing, and the subject that hears doesn't exist. The objects which are seen or heard are, just as they are, without substance. But understanding the logic of this will not do. When this is realized as a fact, you become like a "blind and deaf" person.
Inside the hermitage,
you do not see what is in front of the hermitage.
The late YAMADA Kôun Roshi comments that this line comes from a dialogue between Unmon [864-949] and Master Kempô [dates unknown]: Unmon visited Master Kempô and asked, "Why doesn't a person inside the hermitage know anything outside the hermitage?" To this, Kempô burst out into laughter. The point is why the person inside the hermitage (subject) cannot see the things "in front of the hermitage" (object). That's because there isn't anything in front of the hermitage. You may say that there is only the subject, there being no object at all. Yet, in actual truth, that "subject" doesn't exist either.
The water flows of itself and the flowers are naturally red.
The water runs smoothly, the flowers are colored scarlet. This line seems to imply that there are only the objects and there's no subject at all. However, as a matter of fact, those objects do not exist at all. It's simply that the water is running smoothly, and flowers are scarlet. Everything is just as it is [tada korekore], and everything is void as it is now [arugamama no aritsubure]. The fact that there is no distinction between self and others simply continues without end - "The water flows of itself and the flowers are naturally red.".
- https://terebess.hu/english/oxherding.html
The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, painted by Tatsuhiko YOKOO, Teisho by KUBOTA Ji'un, Terebess Asia Online (TAO)
TEREBESS.HU
The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, painted by Tatsuhiko YOKOO, Teisho by KUBOTA Ji'un, Terebess Asia Online (TAO)
The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, painted by Tatsuhiko YOKOO, Teisho by KUBOTA Ji'un, Terebess Asia Online (TAO)

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Mr. M
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Then you return to the marketplace where everything is doable..
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