Mike, And what I am saying (and IMO) is perception should NOT be used to illustrate Buddha Nature.
Perceptions are creations of the intellect (Human Nature). [The awareness of sensual]experience is Buddha Nature. (The qualifiers in [brackets] should be unnecessary but I know many do not share my definition of 'experience'.) Here is another zen story that I think I posted just recently that perhaps better illustrates my point: "This is a story about Won Hyo, who is a famous Korean monk. He wanted to travel to China to meet a master that would teach him Buddhism. One evening as Won Hyo was crossing the desert, he stopped at a small patch of green, where there were a few trees and some water, and went to sleep. Towards midnight he awoke, thirsty--it was pitch-dark. He groped along on all fours, searching for water. At last his hand touched a cup on the ground. He picked it up and drank. Ah, how delicious! Then he bowed deeply, in gratitude, to the Buddha for the gift of water. The next morning, Won Hyo woke up and saw besides him what he had taken for a cup (during the night). It was a shattered skull, blood-caked and with shreds of flesh still stuck to the cheek-bones. Strange insects crawled or floated on the surface of the filthy rainwater inside it. Won Hyo looked at the skull and felt a great wave of nausea. He opened his mouth. As soon as the vomit poured out, his mind opened and he understood. Last night, since he hadn't seen and hadn't thought, the water was delicious. This morning, seeing and thinking had made him vomit. Ah, he said to himself, thinking makes good and bad, life and death. And without thinking these is no universe, no Buddha, no Dharma. All is one, and this one is empty. There was no need now to find a master. Won Hyo already understood life and death. What more was there to learn? So he turned and started back across the desert to Korea." -From the book entitled, "Thousand Peaks" by Mu Soeng Sunim Now, IMO Buddha Nature is pure experience, like Won Hyo's experience of drinking the water. It would be like the 'Ah!' I recommended in the strawberry story. Both his initial perception of 'delicious' and his later perception which caused him to be nauseous is like the 'sweet' exclamation in the strawberry story. So unless you want to interpret 'sweet' to just be a spontaneous, non-judgmental exclamation IMO it is not an appropriate representation of Buddha Nature. I'd also think that is shown by all the confusion and dialog it has caused on just this thread. But, as usual, all this is CAVEAT EMPTOR and IMO only...Bill! --- In [email protected], uerusuboyo@... wrote: > > Bill!,<br/><br/>You could well be correct about the story not being used as a > recognised koan. But I'm sure I've come across it being used as such a couple > of times. <br/><br/>I can see how "Ah!" could be used as you say, but it > isn't. The point I'm arguing here is that in the story - a Zen teaching > 'device'- a perception was used by the man to illustrate Buddha Nature. The > man didn't just say "Sweet!" as a passive description - he exclaimed his > perception positively.<br/><br/>Mike<br/><br/><br/>Sent from Yahoo! Mail for > iPad > ------------------------------------ Current Book Discussion: any Zen book that you recently have read or are reading! Talk about it today!Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zen_Forum/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zen_Forum/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
