Joe, Whether Sheng Yen ever said 'sit down and shut up', I am not sure. Like you say, he proposed silence during zazen. But that all is not my question. You often here zen does not differerentiate between 'good' and 'evil'. Does that mean there is no compassion? Buddhism always makes a difference between 'wholesome' and unwholesome, which is compatible with compassion. Anthony
________________________________ From: Joe <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, 13 June 2012, 8:58 Subject: [Zen] Re: The Self Illusion Anthony, Good thoughts. When the practitioner becomes truly human, there is only compassion, and wisdom. Those two are not separable. And they are never absent. Now, there may be certain PRACTICES in which a person is engaged in a kind of intentional, deliberate, compassion. But this is not true compassion. The true compassion is what arises along with wisdom in the practitioner who has sunken further, and who has no mind. I don't know about the sit down and shut up admonition. I never heard that in 33 years with him (well, 30 years). When he was young, he was good with the shiang ban (kyosaku; the stick). Sheng Yen's whole number was to get us to practice correctly. Sometimes that required us to use words, but when it came to "zazen", or t'san ch'an, that was silent, of course. Unless we couldn't help it, and moaned, or cried or laughed a bit, or a lot, at important times. ;-) --Joe > Anthony Wu <wuasg@...> wrote: > > Sheng Yen was a great monk. His word about compassion brings the question of > the results of zen practice. Does it bring about inhuman characteristics of > no compassion? He also said, 'sit down and shut up'. But that does not rule > out the ensuing compassion.
