Decipher This Which Seems Like Gobbledygoop/k?
JaySon
Florida Veteran
@seeker242 said:
"To see nothing is to perceive the Way, and to understand nothing is to know the Dharma, because seeing is neither seeing nor not seeing and because understanding is neither understanding nor not understanding. Seeing without seeing is true vision. Understanding without understanding is true understanding.""Only when you understand nothing is it true understanding"
~Bodhidharma
I'd like to try to decipher this with you guys and gals if you're up for it.
I guess I'll take a shot at it first.
I think he's talking about understanding and viewing everything exactly how it is, without conceptual elaboration. With our minds we project mistaken reality onto reality. We add mistaken reality where there is none. If you strip away all these conceptual elaborations we project onto reality, there's only the emptiness of inherent existence left. Which is simply suchness.
Methinks.
Comments
Keep a don't know mind.
https://zenawakened.com/dont-know-mind/
@JaySon, It's not gobbledygoop/k. It's actually quite simple in its complexity, and complex in its simplicity.
But it's not gobbledygoop/k.
it merely means take everything you think you know; that you have studied; that you have learnt; that you have taken on board; that you have absorbed; - take it all, use it as a raft. then, abandon it. Let it go. Reside in emptiness and in the Now.
There is no better place, no better time.
I asked my teacher a similar question once and he just picked up the cup of tea and took a sip. And that was it! Ha!
Hehe!
I think this is accurate although I think of all the teachings in terms of karma. The teachings exist to create all the various causes of liberation and full enlightenment. It's not that you abandon any teaching. It's that, once that teaching has created a particular cause then it's no longer needed and you move on to the next and create the next cause, and so on, and finally there's no more learning because you have created all the causes of liberation and enlightened.
It seems to me that it's referring to the experience and intuitive understanding of emptiness.
Maybe it means something like 'understanding neither appears nor ceases'. My actual experience I do seem to have aha moments like aha... then fades away.
Means Mind my/your own business
Yes, as others have mentioned I think it is pointing to Emptiness. Go beyond the conceptual and see there is nothing there to be found.
Well, I mean if we are just kicking the ball around, I think there is a little something lost in translation when people talk about emptiness as if it were nothingness. There is really no such thing as nothing and there never was because then there would be no potential for anything. But here we are now so... I mean for an illusion to work there must be reality being misunderstood.
For myself it would ring more true if worded a bit different. To see or sense no things rather than nothing at all since it is all the same process. To separate one aspect from the rest is to imply a border where none truly exist and to define it is to be ignorant to change. Better to stay open.
Once you have it all wrapped up, you put it out of reach.
@David
The culture baggage and language may need to be updated as you say ...
For example the ten ox herding pics of zen ... may become more than nothing and less than everything ... or vice versa
http://www.buddhanet.net/oxherd1.htm
... and now back to the unseemly ...
I have a kind of pet peeve when it comes to the word "nothing" being used in regards to dharma or scientific theories. I thought I did a thread here a few years back called Hawkings coin but I must have written it somewhere else. Hawking likened the cause of this universe to positive and negative forces wiping each other out. A constant cycle of creation and annihilation which could mean there is no energy or work being done in the mathematical sense. He illustrates this with the analogy of digging a hole. The positive (pile) will be equal to the negative (hole) so no actual work is getting done.
But what about the ground itself, Stephen? That isn't nothing.
Sometimes the math doesn't fit the reality. That is why to make math work, we had to invent zero.
In regards to the dharma, nothing lends credence to the nihilist view like paying homage to the concept of nothing when we are talking about the nature of emptiness.
I don't think he's doing that here. But rather speaking about neither nothingness, nor not nothingness.
That's why I get frustrated with Zen. I started with Zen long ago, but, because of its style of language, I found it too technically imprecise for my low intellect.
If I hadn't already studied Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti, the word "nothing" would have thrown me into nihilism.
Why not say "emptiness of inherent existence" instead of "nothing"?
Emptiness should be explained with precision for stupid folk such as myself.
I don't know if this is correct and/or a matter of semantics but in this case of using the word nothing, I change it to be "no thing". As in no thing that is in my mind. It's difficult for me to grasp understanding nothing. But it's not difficult for me to grasp understanding no thing. The thing to which I refer is what my mind creates.
To put it this way makes better sense to me but is it correct?
When I see a tree, do I see just that or do I see the thing my mind calls tree?
What I think he is saying is to leave thinking out of it.
And by the way, how is it possible to understand emptiness? I can understand the concept of emptiness but that is not the same.
Could this be the answer to every koan?
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It helps to understand in theory exactly what emptiness is so that you have confidence that it's true. Once you feel certain about it logically and rationally, you can practice space-like meditative equipoise on emptiness.
First you identify inherent existence, your sense of I that arises when you're jealous or angry for instance, then meditate on the absence of that sense of I.
Then self-grasping begins to weaken and you get happier and wiser.
Check out The Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness book and start off with Shravaka meditation. You should be able to access emptiness directly through space-like meditative equipoise. Then self-grasping begins to weaken.
This is just general advice that works for me. I'm sure you have your own tradition and I mean no disrespect toward it in any way nor toward you or the wisdom you already have. Just trying to help
Thank you @JaySon. I will check this out.
For emptiness I read something today from philosophy that is similar. It is called the ship of Theseus problem. You can read about it on Wikipedia
You are probably right but the way it is translated doesn't make that clear and it is that clarity that is needed to avoid the idea that emptiness denotes a lack of being.
Emptiness is often misinterpreted as not existing, whereas what it really means is empty or free of an independent existence. Nothing exists without dependence on everything else. Understanding the interdependence of everything is to know the Dharma.
Exactly @Lee82
@Jason also mentions this fundamental Buddhist teaching
https://www.thoughtco.com/sunyata-or-emptiness-450191
Son-Yeti, sun-cod, I think, therefore I yam - not. That sort of thingee ...
Exactly. And it also means to be subject to change according to conditions.
I am not a Zen, but it is a way of saying that all you now is based upon preconceptions. you must ditch those preconceptions or your understanding will prove so much smoke in the wind. the emptiness then is the emptiness of preconception, the emptiness of judgement. from that come motion and action without expectation though not necessarily without hope.