Rod Scholl
From: mike brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2004 5:35 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Zen] Diving over the bow
Rod Scholl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yeah, Mike.Well at least I know I wasn't the only one who thought this. In fact this thought for me was accompanied by irritation by those ordering the deck-scrubbing since swimming gave me such peace. I saw large vehicle as a tradeoff with small vehicle. Selfishness vs. Selflessness -- where one could be attached to either, and thus i saw one's decision as rooted in Karma.Further, I have found great peace through understanding over the last five years. Thus when i heard "Let it go, scrub the deck" -- I felt, "Easy for you to say, you've visited sirens -- or perhaps never could and now want to bitterly prohibit others, disguised with a noble air". I also saw small vessel's efforts to speed attainment as a natural phenomena, that acted locally to affect globally -- while large vehicle was attainment for everyone and everything (and metaphysically, perhaps a meeting of being/non-being) and acting globally to affect locally (eventually). Two sides of a coin. One needing the other. Neither seemed wholly complete or attractive... and yet I tried to accelerate both!ahh, the irony...However, over the last few days, I am seeing these things quite differently now, and have a much better grasp of small vehicle vs. large vehicle thinking.I have no innate will to go to Nirvana and escape Samsara.I do have a human will to eventually see the nature of the unchanging cycle of samsara (birth/death.) I have a much stronger habit to be goal-oriented, and habitually think that seeing this nature will somehow make the samsara easier to deal with -- perhaps it will, but perhaps it won't -- with practice I suspect this desire will fade. However, I also suspect that just as the "purposeless nature" of the universe is often described in the human's necssarily goal-oriented thinking as "playful nature," we must also describe "seeing the self-annihilating empty nature of samsara" as a human's thinking of "know thyself".Thus, this release from seeking buddhahood for myself (or even other individuals) increases my freedom to act with my inante human nature (however "flawed" it may seem to me). This innate (and empty) nature includes "know thyself", which, after having seen that my individuality is only an illusion creates in me an increased compassion for all things.This free person is personified by the idea of the Bodhisattva living in samsara from The large vehicle school.Make sense?Rod Scholl
-----Original Message-----
From: mike brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 6:34 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Zen] Diving over the bowDear Rod,It seems to me the people who continually advise to just scrub the decks are always the ones who have frolicked with the sirens (or by definition are sirens). Yet this appears to be a paradox because to take this on board is a question of faith and thus in contradiction to the spirit of self-discovery as expounded by the Buddha. Aren`t we always told that you can`t give someone the taste of the ocean by describing it to them - they have to taste it themselves? After all, a little bit of exercise is good for you. (Care for a swim anyone?).Maybe the difference between the small and large vehicles is that after reaching the other shore, the small vehicle drop the raft whereas the large vehicle still carry it and scrub the decks for the benefit of those who follow. Mike.
Rod Scholl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Fudo,
I see better now the relationship of small vehicle/large vehicle subject for which I thank you. It took a lot of hours -- my fiance is ready to disown me for all my spacing out on our weekend camping trip. I am the worst student I ever met -- don't want to be taught anything, but want to jump through hoops anyone sets up. I guess I'm a clown. Thank you for the hoop.
I had let the two branches spill into eachother so much that at times I was confused by feeling of conflict between my small vehicle yearn, and my large vehicle approach. I better see how the small vehicle actually rests inside the large one.
I agreed with most everything you said, but I think you were saying my ship/siren metaphor was in contradiction with the Bodhissatva way. I found it apt that after diving overboard and visiting the sirens, one is washed up on the beach the following day. I do not suggest anyone to try permanently leave the ship behind -- only that they (in a hard- to-describe-fashion) leave the ship behind (via non-attachment) be it by crashing it into the rocks (leaving one's family), diving over the bow (going to a seshin), or forgetting the ship breifly and singing back the siren call (meditation) -- or if they are very wise, to knock off all that singing, and get busy scrubbing the deck ;>
Of course we all return to the world of illusion -- we are human. You were recently chiding a listmember for not being willing to drive/bus/crawl to a master in favor of defending her unsurpassable barriers -- were you not encouraging her to take a swim? There was much talk of the 'worth' of going to the sirens vs. scrubbing the ship. How to break this illusion of seperation without seeming to be encouraging that they are of equal but seperate value? I think many on the list enjoy scrubbing, prideful that they too have once glimpsed a Siren in the fog... (They may even think that their 'soul-self' will be reborn one step closer to being admitted to the sacred order of the sirens. This is small vehicle approach, but I think also it is slow, lazy, scaredy-cat vehicle ;) To these people I say, "Dive off the bow -- you're scrubbing is in vain".
Others -- and i think you were categorizing me this way (perhaps accurately) press against the ship's railing scanning the fog for yet another glimpse of a siren -- after which I dive overboard. Tomorrow I will be, yet again, picked up on the beach (probably covered in stinky sea weed)... To these people I say, "Even if after many visits they allowed you to live among them, you know what they would have you do? They would have you scrub the ghost ship's deck. Your pining is in vain. Forget the Sirens. Scrub the deck."
So here I am... singing away, when I have all that scrubbing to do.
Rod
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