Mike,
I was reading over your shoulder, sorry.
There is no "drop attachments" instruction in Zen teaching. Never, ever, ever,
ever. Never!
(Remember, Zen is not "The Teaching School").
The instruction is, instead: "Keep to your method of meditation".
Or, more generally, "Keep to your method of PRACTICE."
Are you scrubbing the Ch'an Hall floor? Well, good, keep to THAT.
Working on "Wu"? Put all you have into WU.
Eating Lunch with all of us on retreat? Just EAT.
Zen is the Dhyana school. That is all. Well, Samadhi, too. ;-)
No fixed teaching! That is Zen-teaching!!
Walk into a Zen center, and you don't WHAT you're going to be hit with. And
that might even mean "literally". In fact, it had better. But only if you
request it: it has a specific application.
No fixed teaching! I want to shout it.
That's what distinguishes Zen teaching. We might also say: no particular
teaching (no teaching about particulars, as in, "Drop attachments". Never!).
Maybe paper-back-writers say that stuff, but it's never so in real life. Ever.
Have I put good emphasis on this?
--Joe
> uerusuboyo@... wrote:
>
Vipassana is very precise in its method of instruction and terminology, whereas
Zen can come across, prima facie, as imprecise and vague. A good example would
be the command to "Drop attachments".
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