Alex Bunard wrote: > How about this: > > I'm trying to illustrate to my students the concept of > sudden awakening. There are many analogies and so on, > but one just (re)ocurred to me -- do you recall those > computer-generated blurred patterns that, if you look > at them in a certain special way, a full-blown shape > suddenly emerges before your eyes?
Dear Alex, I see one problem with with your example, unfortunately it is a fundamental one. This assumes what we are seeing in our every day experience is "reality" and some new or extra dimension is added. Try this one. Imagine yourself as a Dad taking his family on vacation. Mom gave him a video camera to "record" the trip. So Dad has a purpose and an agenda for the trip and spends the vacation with the video camera in front of his eyes. It is a fancy camera, he can add filters, change the focus, open or close the aperture, and zoom and pan, and even alter the color of the whole image, add special effects and really have a fine video. Dad Spends the trip looking through the camera trying to accomplish the task he has set out for himself. (I am sorry Jody, I hope this example is not impossible for you to grasp..but imagine a unidirectional mike attached to a sound recording device with earphones ....which only picks up sound from one direction instead of a video camera....this does make the point that I am making here. Jody, your experience of the world is different then mine..we have different limited equipment with which to understand what is.) Then, because he was only focused on what he could see in his lens, he turns around in a pan and knocks the lens off the camera, and the camera is broken. Now what dad sees is no longer framed by the now broken camera, his vision is not limited to what is just in the frame, or just in focus,and is no longer seen as only two dimensional. Dad can now see the world as it is, not as it was in his limited camera contained view. From the first we begin to frame our world. We build the camera. We are taught language (language does effect how we frame the world..there are lots of words for snow in Inuit..snow is a real and subtle concept to them. There are languages in the world where there is no word for snow....in Dakota and old Japanese blue and black were the same color). This is also a function of our limited experience, in Alaska you know snow intimately, in southern Texas, you may have never seen snow. We have experiences, and are taught concepts and history in school, and to the extent that we can we build a more complex and subtle camera with which to view the world. We end up with this camera always between us and what we are seeing. We end up viewing the world only through the lens. Since from the time we began to acquire language, our view has been limited we are not even aware that it is a limited view. Kensho is the camera being shattered. We now look on the world as it is, without filter and frame. We cannot function long without the camera, we need a camera to capture and process the image. Once we have had our camera broken, we will never again mistake what is in the frame for what really is. We have a frame, and a focus, but we are intimately aware it is only a limited view. One can disassemble the camera deliberately and slowly. Removing a part here and a part there until the camera no longer filters what we see (gradual), Or we can have our camera suddenly destroyed by our clumsiness, or by a "natural" disaster. It can be shattered by a fist, a staff or a shout. It can be shattered by the sound of a rock hitting bamboo. Sudden is having our camera shattered. The view we then see is a result of our breaking the frame, or the camera and filters that create the frame. It is this breaking of the camera and its limiting frame that is the awakening. What we then can for a moment or two see is the result of having the frame broken. Once we are aware of the camera, we can use it, or put it down as needed. We can then choose to see though the filter and frame, or learn to put the camera down from time to time and see what is really there as it truly is. We must then pick up the camera again to eat, or go to the store, or to sweep the walk. We use the camera as a tool to accomplish what we need to do, but we never mistake ourselves for the camera again, and we never mistake what is in the frame of our perception for the whole of what is. Hope this is helpful, Fudo ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/S27xlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Noble Eightfold Path: Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration, Right Livelihood Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZenForum/ <*> 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/
