William,
The only certainty is through effective practice, learned properly from a good
teacher and practiced face to face with said teacher, and with a group.
I started the conversation, yes, in praise of practice and recovering our full
human inheritance. Not as a long backward look at Human evolution. Practice
is in the present, and there's no time like it. If the moment is not ripe now,
then when?
The discussion of the use of reason and figuring-out as far as awakening is
concerned is already long since settled: it does not enter, and hinders. After
awakening, one uses everything freely, provided one continues to practice. But
for awakening, reason is moot, and instead creates a blockage when invoked.
One must drop it, and one easily does, if one keeps to one's method of practice
and allows the body to save its life. Methods are compassionately passed from
teacher to student: that is the only way to learn.
To borrow a figure from Edgar, our practice is "99 percent" physical.
There is no mind.
The feeling that one is "reasoning", and "figuring-out" in Zen, is engaging in
illusion. One has to drop all such by keeping to one's method of practice.
That method of practice is not "thinking".
But, neither books nor internet Fora, however kindly and caring, can teach how
to practice. Fortunately, there are teachers. They have the bottom line on
the subject, because they embody it, which is what we should do, and can do.
--Joe
> William Rintala <brintala@...> wrote:
>
> And yet you are the one who started this conversation. It has been my
> understanding that the primary message of Buddhism was addressing suffering.
> What it is and how to stop it. The Buddha was not searching or teaching ways
> to survive crises but to end suffering. I can agree that survivability might
> be enhanced by being fully in the moment but I see no certainty of it. In my
> readings of Zen the moment of Death is often addressed with an awareness and
often a smile. The strawberry is so sweet.
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