Edgar,
Nope. You've mis-read, there.
I write that in the awakened state, reason can, if desired on some occasion, be
employed, and then allowed to sink or drop again, like a shop-window cover
being raised and lowered (an example is when the awakened person wants to do
some calculation for a tax return entry).
When it's raised, thought operates. When it's lowered, it's all over. It
doesn't keep on spinning its wheels, and spinning off fictions and phantoms and
voices between the ears.
Thus, it's a tool which the awakened person uses just as and when needed. It
does not use the awakened person, and run the gas-tank dry.
I've often written here that the awakened person can "use everything freely".
Every part of our natural, full, Human inheritance. Thought and reason is one
of these things.
By use "freely", I mean use them, and not be over-run and trapped by them.
Just as we use tools.
I do not say, and never did say, that we use reason to become awakened, or
awake. Just as we do not use the strength of our arms to become awakened.
I can't comment on your idea of awakening, but I know when someone is
mis-casting something I have written and expressed. Hence this gentle
correction. About what I've written.
You know I still hold in high regard the experience you gained and effort you
exerted in practice in the old country with good teachers. I don't assess its
outcome. I note however that your expression of your discovery and its natural
history does not match my expression. Usually, this would mean we're talking
about different things.
As you could see in my post with Charles about the possible experience of a
demented person, some of my claims are speculative on my part, so I say such
things as, for example, it may be like a process is stuck in such a person,
like an orphan process, or like the modules that "Dave" had to remove from the
HAL-9000 machine in order to keep that device and process from hijacking the
mission: a HAL on the ground was tied-in remotely to carry on control.
Well, this is part of an ongoing thread, but it does not much concern my
observations about how awakening takes place through Zen training, and how it
does not involve, at all, the use of the faculty of reason, or arm strength.
I note instead that you're still trying to say and to tell others, for some
reason(s), that it DOES involve the use of reason. Now, I doubt that's the way
it happened for you, if it did happen. But I think you're adding-on. You want
to modernize this Zen-training we have, and you've indicated that you think it
needs it.
An effort to "update" may be laudable and the results may be salutary. But you
need a Lab, a laboratory. Not only to test, but to develop, then refine. Try
a Zen practice center. Get a teaching-situation there, and put the new twist
on training to the test. That's the Scientific thing to do! And it may also
be compassionate. Time and training will tell. That's the way it's always
worked. And then there's natural selection: if it's a good viscosity, it will
stick to the wall.
You know what to do.
Have at it, and pls. send a report now and then?
w/ Tnx,
--Joe
> Edgar Owen <edgarowen@...> wrote:
>
> Joe,
>
> Funny!
>
> Practice involves use of the rational mind to achieve the mindless.
>
> Thus the rational mind is necessary to realize Zen...
>
> Which is what I'VE been saying all along and Joe and Bill denying!
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