Joe,

Sadly you don't even understand my point...
:-(

Edgar




On Apr 17, 2013, at 10:54 AM, Joe wrote:

> 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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