Merle,
quoting
"> so... now we know i have soul.."
There was never a doubt.
And, now we know that your profession of soul is along the lines of James
Brown's profession of soul; and not that of Aquinas, Augustine, or Socrates.
As you found last week in your reading, Merle, Original Buddhadharma notes
"Three Marks of Existence", shown by all things:
Impermanence; Suffering; No-Self.
Everything changes; nothing "lasts".
Things are ultimately unsatisfactory; we suffer.
There's no self, either (again, nothing lasts).
Zen Buddhism does not teach these things explicitly. It teaches methods of
practice, and Zen practice-places compassionately set up a safe environment in
which to learn the practice(s) together. But Zen Buddhism is built on the
early Buddhist teachings and realizations, and is formed by them.
We can leave aside the "Buddhism" of Zen Buddhism if we please, as everyone on
this forum knows and admits. And we can practice.
When we practice, what we will re-discover ourselves, and come to embody in our
awakening, are the clear and basic discoveries and realizations of the Buddha,
which are also known as the Teachings, the Dharma. For example, the teaching
above of the Three Marks of Existence.
The self-lessness or soul-lessness is like the "Inter-Being" taught by Thich
Nhat Hanh. A flower is made of non-flower elements: water, sunshine, air, and
earth. A flower has no self. No soul. When I compost it, it goes back to
earth, even if I've kept a photo of the flower, made a drawing of it, or, in my
case, a painting. The photo is not the flower, nor the essence of the flower.
There is nothing to hold onto, and nowhere to go, nowhere to stay. Form morphs
endlessly, that's what it's good at and what it does. It's the exemplar of
shape-shifting.
That's my soulful presentation of Soul-lessness.
Now, to listen to James Brown's "Popcorn".
--Joe
> Merle Lester <merlewiitpom@...> wrote:
>
> so... now we know i have soul..
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