Zen Moments
anataman
Who needs a title?Where am I? Veteran
Despite having had a good sitting meditation this morning, I had a zen moment, just after I submitted my last post.
Throughout composing the last post, there was a blue bottle flying around my room, buzzing incessantly, although I did not register anything like annoyance or irritation, it may well have been registering so in my subconscious.
It suddenly was in front of me and clap, I just stopped it instantly being an annoyance, between the palms of my two hands. The room was immediately silent apart from the rapidly fading echo of the clap. I was stunned into a state of stillness unable to move by what had just happened; then the image of the fly on the blank page of Suzuki Roshi's book Zen Mimd Beginners Mind came to mind.
p69 http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/zenmind.pdf
I picked the dead fly up of the floor and reflected on what I had just done, and realised I had not been consciously in control of my actions, it was not my conscious intention or desire to kill the fly. It just happened.
So, and this is a rhetorical question btw (not meant to be a discussion of free will), how much of what you do are you really in control of? I am talking about what you consciously think you are doing? Just something to reflect on!
I'd be interested in any other Zen moments others may have had that shocked you into a state of silence and stillness.
Mettha
Comments
A act of killing you call a Zen moment, not that I disagree with the assessment.
Thought that might provoke someone to question the act. Of course I instantly regretted it, said a little prayer that the fly would attain a higher rebirth.
The fact is the Zen moment was at the start of the clap, as the fly died in my hands, that I did it in the knowledge that there was no conscious intention on my behalf to kill the fly. Sometimes when I do a lot of meditation, I have similar realisations about other, albeit less violent actions.
The first thing I point out was that it made me realise something fundamental about how we act, and that is sometimes there is no one at home directing the action. That was what the OP was about. And it also served as a poignant reminder that at any time clap my life may end in such an instantaneous way.
I was also startled by the speed of my reflexes. I've never been able to swat a fly when I have consciously tried to. lol
@anataman
A lot of Zen ritual is about being mindful. I remember looking in disdain at a Zen Monk who had his hands in gassho at a time in a ceremony when it was not required. What's more, he was even looking kindly at me, instead of his own place within it..
Then I realized my hands were also in gassho and he was just trying to quietly indicate that to me.
Mindfulness often gets associated with concentration for how much easier it is to notice such a focus, but for me, it is how widely I can attend to all incoming phenomena without resorting to my habituated impulses to control them..
The Zen moment is an action or event that shocks the mind into simply experiencing the moment and comprehending what all those words are pointing to without comment. But then our little monkey minds say, "Wow! But what does this mean?" The moment is gone, but not without leaving behind a footprint in your mind.
Basho was meditating near a pond and heard something in the night. He immortalized his moment in a famous poem:
"A still pond. A frog jumps in. Kerplop!"
This is a Zen moment. But what does it mean? Just like this.
"A buzzing bluebottle fly. Slap! Blissful silence."
Gassho, my friend.
Exactly @Cinorjer Exactly!
And like the page of Roshi's book, even though it was written by his followers (lol), the fly lives on immortalised.
Gassho
I haven't killed anything that I know of recently, so no zen moments for me, I guess.
No you are just slowly going to kill this thread. lol
Ridiculous.
You portray mindless instinctual murder as if awareness.
An anti-zen moment more like . . .
To give an extent of the possibilities of awareness, it is possible to be aware of each eye blink, the movement of ants across your path and the pause between life and the death of our little lost friend. Yes I speak from experience.
For those going fly fishing, be mindful and enjoy your catch.
In Nansen's "Cutting a kitten in half" koan, it's hard to look past the dead kitten cut in half to understand the Zen point behind it. I've had many interesting conversations with people who recoil in horror at the thought of the Master killing the cat and that gets in the way of comprehending what the koan is trying to say. It's not saying it is all right for the Master to kill the kitten. My saying this is an example of a Zen moment is not saying it's all right for the person to kill the fly. Neither am I saying it's wrong to kill the fly. I'm not saying this is an example of enlightened behavior. I'm saying a man killed a fly.
Make of it what you will. A moment of clarity is a moment of clarity, no more or less. It's a Zen tool for learning about our minds, or not.
Yes, a Zen moment can be holding your baby for the first time, or seeing a beautiful sunrise. A Zen moment can also be seeing a dead bug you slapped without thinking, or seeing a hole where a storm took away a house with the people in it.
No there was no awareness until that little fly died in my hands and the awareness came with a realisation of what I had just done. That was the moment when my mind clarified into a knowing awareness, before that there had been an unknowing awareness.
But that moment has gone, and now there is just me and no fly to irritate and annoy my unknowing awareness.
I miss that fly... :bawl: ...
Understood.
Me too and I did not even know him, except through reputation. In a similar way we 'kill' people's good, nascent intentions. We give them support beyond their capacity etc. Intellectual clarity, emotional empathy for a dead fly, very simple steps on the path, deepen or perhaps we could say clarify.
You didn't say whether or not is was wrong to kill the kitten.
Because that's not the point of the koan. The kitten was cut in half when the monks starting arguing about it. The kitten exists only as metaphor. The fact that actually killing is wrong is obvious and irrelevant except for motivating the mind to find an answer. The koan asks you "What is the final word of Zen to stop this cat from being cut in half?"
So what is the final world of Zen? You don't want the man to kill the cat. What can you say or do? None of the monks had an answer. Can you find one?
The cat was already cut in half by the monks before Nansen ever arrived. Do you understand? What is the cat a metaphor for in this case?
It's a bit like Shroedingers cat. You don't know if the cat in the box is dead or alive. Only when you open the box and observe it's state, it's either dead or alive, don't open the box and it's both dead and alive. lol
Nansen presents a whole cat and a divided cat.
Our aversion to the callous idiocy in this story is one half of that cat while our ruminating over the possible Dharma within is the other half.
Whether whole or divided into thousands of pieces, that cat represented our own ego/identity and **all of our clinging to or aversion to this story **is supposed to point that out.
The question is "Whole or in pieces, how is the ego to be addressed?"
The answer in this story is always a practitioner simply walking away from it.
I did not suggest that it was.
Okay?
A zen master kills an innocent cat and in Zen this is an acceptable metaphor, if indeed it is a metaphor. You claim it's a metaphor but you don't actually know if it is. In any case, a metaphor is a representation of something. That doesn't change the dynamic that it's okay in Zen to kill small animals to merely make a point. The values expressed in this are not metaphorical.
I don't want the Zen master to kill the cat, yes.
Kick the murdering freaks ass so he may not be as inclined to do it again.
An small innocent creature.
And that's exactly how Zen masters get away with murder, metaphorically speaking of course.
You are stuck in the little picture @nevermind, so the greater mind doesn't care how you break his bigger picture into smaller parts, they all come together in the bigger picture, and the little picture never gets noticed. clap clap clap Oh never mind.
Mettha ha ha
I suppose in some cases, yes. Probably no more or less than any school of Buddhism. Even Theravada schools get into their share of trouble from time to time.