Hello One way of stepping outside the back and forth dilemma of Zen games is to see it in another system, (as if Zen were not a system?). In the case of Sufism they liberate spirit/self/no self from the tyranny of conditioning. Of course there are those who would even deny that we are conditioned or that conditioning even exists.
As an exercise, should you want to participate, everyone reading this will have an internal response . . . where does that response come from? How did it get there? Did your father react in the way you do? Or a teacher you admired? Were you around someone who thought they knew and when you got older you realized they didn't know much? Who is doing the responding? And why do you internally respond the way you do? Questions of this sort . . . Etc etc . . . so education, life experiences, the theatre of your family dymanics, how short you are, how tall you are, genetics, inflation, damage, were you laughed at, did someone tell you you were smart, dumb, lovalle, unlovable -- and how much attention did you need and how much attention do you need now? -- all this has to do with conditioning. Liberation, in my estimation, has to do with inquiry, not knowing, exploration, and as the Zen Buddhists say, "going beyond." Now we can ask, what are we being liberated from -- not in the general metaphysical one-up-manship sense of what I supposedly know, but taking the humility and courage to look at the false construct of -- you guessedit -- personality/ego . . . to bring ourselves back to "function" and "capacity". Much is made in Zen and Sufism to go beyond the conventionally contrived identification of ego, to go beyond the Ego, or to say in a clever way, it doesn't exist. But who is doing the asserting of that? . . . Depth psychology, while limited, can be useful to shine a light into the dynamics of your Ego and the Self/No Self. In the same way, emphasis on one aspect of so called Zen or Chan etc, the cultural expression, is limited as well . . . what the Traditions provide, along with a good dose of modern pyschology, for secular modern folks, is a whole and holistic encounter with, shall we say, "transcendence." (I realize words like enlightenment, satori, transcendence, etc are nebulous and loaded with all the wrong meanings these days, so I use them with a certain tongue in cheek) I would like to introduce a concept at this point . . . metabolism . . . to metabolize the experience in your life along with the presence of your being, the experience and encounter, not the automatic renderings of conditioned self/ego. To metabolize, and yes in terms of alchemy, the path of no path . . . the path no one takes but "you" -- "no you". (Have to be careful with Zen/zen dudes, they are tricky with language) The Sufis call it the Nafs, and the lowest most base aspect of the Nafs is the Nafs-an-Ammarah . . . the conditioned personality . . . this is "it" of Gurdjieff's reference to man as "machine" -- mechanical, in terms of education of past experiences . . . While some are in the luxury of being fully evolved that they can have discussions of "the end game" -- enlightenment, no enlightenment, who is being enlightened, etc . . . most have to begin where they are, broken, damaged, etc . . . the conditioning of the human being can be used to sell soap products, war, ideologies, mass hysteria, and parochialism of every kind -- like, for instance, my zen is better than your Chan, etc . . . True enough, there are cases of sudden enlightenment, or so the history show us, but in reality, most of this has to do with composting and working the soil with your hands. Of course I am speaking about the raising of awareness of your/our dilemma . . . this post is not for those who already know what zen/Zen/Chan "is". hope all is well best wishes zendervish --- In [email protected], Anthony Wu <wuasg@...> wrote: > > ED, >  > I need liberation from suffering. If I am told there is no such thing as > suffering, and no such thing as me to liberate from, That is just cheating > and playing nonsensical game. >  > Anthony > > --- On Tue, 6/9/11, ED <seacrofter001@...> wrote: > > > From: ED <seacrofter001@...> > Subject: Re: [Zen] Mahayana II - beyond 7th & 8th consciousness > To: [email protected] > Date: Tuesday, 6 September, 2011, 9:42 PM > > >  > > > > > > Mayka and All, > Who on this Forum thinks that they need liberation from anything? > If anyone does, could they tell us what they need liberation from? > --ED >  > --- In [email protected], Maria Lopez <flordeloto@> wrote: > > > > JMJM: > > There is anybody external to us to liberate from, but just ourselves. It > > was very good the teaching from Nishima of sitting down zazen and take the > > lid off from the pot in order to allow all ideas, images...evaporate in > > the sky. There are not boddhisatvas saving the world but each of us > > taking the lid off from ourselves mind pot. The buddha, the dharma and > > the sangha is in each inhalation and exhalation made in awareness. > > Mayka > ------------------------------------ Current Book Discussion: any Zen book that you recently have read or are reading! 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