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Posted by Butcho
on 4/10/2009, 10:15 pm, in reply to "Re: Wu-Wei or the Highway Map."
162.40.48.X
--Previous Message--
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: --Previous Message--
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: josef,
:
: I quite agree. Words are symbols. They
: represent something other than themselves.
: To the degree that we are caught up in them
: we are caught up in a symbolic world, not
: the world as it is. A map rather than what
: the map is a map of.
:
: Such is the nature of words if carried to
: extreme. They are useful, but they are most
: useful when we realize they are essentially
: superfluous in and of themselves.
:
: Nothing wrong with a map as long as we
: remember it is just a model and not the
: reality it represents.
:
: All of our concepts are models.
:
: Butcho
:
: Because we both understand this clearly, not
: mistaking the map for the territory, I can
: speak to about something that intrigures me.
: The very curious question of what actual
: reality the model/concept represents in
: words such as god or love. Don't we presume,
: as a result of our conditioning/taught
: beliefs a reality that may or may not even
: exist? Here's where Mystery lives for me.
: Detaching from conceptual, reified givens,
: assumptions fall away in all directions.
: Mystery remains. Interest.
: Then...indifference to the concepts, and
: engagement with what is as it is without
: interpretation or assumptions. A radically
: different life, something like divorced from
: context while still understanding and
: appreciating the context others live in.
:
: Does this make any sense to you?
:
josef,
I can see how someone might live in total silence. Someone so in tune with reality as it is as to find words pointless. We are told that the Buddha never wrote anything down himself. That the words of the Buddha that have been passed down to us were recorded by others. It is also said that Zen was born when the Buddha said nothing but smiled as he held up a lotus flower and a kindred spirit in the crowd smiled in return. Laughed even. Thus the transmission of that which cannot be said in words began. The transference of the key without scripture to the first key holder. Mahakashyap.
The key to all the teachings, all the words that are pointing at the moon--be they the words of the Buddha, of Lao Tzu, or Jesus, cannot itself be communicated through words to the person that has not experienced reality as it is for themselves. Reality is not what we 'think' it is, or what we have been told it is. The key cannot be delivered through the ordinary mind, the conditioned mind, the egoistic mind. And with that said the more that is said the more difficult it becomes to be understood. Thus it is said that the Buddha spent the last forty years of his life talking about not talking.
Two truly enlightened people, two sages, have nothing to say to each other. This though only a Buddha can understand what it is a Buddha is saying. Unenlightened people talk all of the time... Be nice. But such is the path of the Bodhicitta. The path of words. The path of pointing with words at the moon to those that have not seen the moon for themselves in the hope that something that is said might gestate an ephiphany in another. In one that has not directly experienced the unitive nature of existence for oneself. For the self that has experienced the Self that is not a self in the normative sense of a separate existential self. The selfless self.
We are each a part of that which has no parts. Not one, but a unitive one. Not monolithic but manifold. More than one, but less than two. Undivided. Nondual. Whole. A reality greater than the sum of its parts. A Whole so full that it is even full of emptiness. An Emptiness that is empty of full and empty, of dualistic concepts. Of words. Of division.
Thus the Zen masters speak of the transference of the key without scripture. Beyond scripture. Beyond words. Beyond discursive intellection. Beyond mind in the normative or conditioned sense.
Talk to the trees, to the flowers, to the animals, for they will truly listen. And truly speak.
We are not our thoughts for they come and go as do all things. We are not a thing. We are no thing. Pure awareness, spirit, is not a thing. Brain waves can be measured for they have a material reality. Spirit comes before thought. Mind over matter so to speak. We are not evolving nearly so much as we are unfolding.
The conditioned mind has its rules. This is this, that is that. So on and so on and so forth. The mystic heart has only one rule. "From the first totality is a unitive one." Hui-Neng.
Silence within, laughter without. The greatest joke being, "We are reality in search of reality." Ramana Maharshi.
We are not alone. We are all-one. The game being played by existence is not Solitaire. It is a game of Hearts. Or in Christian vernacular the Kingdom of God is not a person, it is a family.
I AM THAT I AM. Or you can just call me Popeye like my friend assinity likes to do.
Namaste,
Butcho
138
"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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