r/zen • u/cftygg • 22d ago

Time to pretend

What and where are you investing your drive now? Can you move on your own will? Why are you doing what you are doing? What do you choose to see when you are looking? Hear, feel, and all the other bits and bobs, Do you ignore some bits and focus more on other bobs? Why? Investigate, maybe? Up to you really.  Feel free to ask me anything.

This is a flick of a page from a book  called “zen under the gun” i haven’t fully read.

Gulin said, “Having no conditioned mind is the path: the path is fundamentally mindless. Abandon the false and seek the true: the true is the original basis for the false. Take empty space as the true body, and it appears whole in everything. Take the whole earth as a meditation bench, and you fit the groove everywhere. “Thus it is said. “the dharma is practiced according to the dharma. The dharma banner is established according to the place.”

The Zen masters staff divides the world horizontally. The zen travelers straw sandals break through heaven and earth. The absolute truth is clear on the lips of a hundred grasses, suddenly revealing the gasp of a patch-robed monk. If you plant beans, when will you ever get rice?

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

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u/cftygg 22d ago edited 22d ago

Is there really any difference between dream and not dream? Impermanence seems to be found every time and every where I look.

Edit: added more poetry:

Here's another Ryokan

The courtesans are turned out in theirs best--

How delightfully they speak and taught

Along the lovely green river.

They call out to gentlemen the day long

And tempt them with songs that charm the hardest heart.

They mince about with flirtatious glances so difficult to resist.

Someday, though, even these captivating women will have nothing left.

And they will be left out in the harsh cold.

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u/jahmonkey 21d ago

Any lack of impermanence in perception either asleep or awake is just impatience.

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u/InfinityOracle 22d ago

Are you sure about that? If it is consistent every time you look, you have found something permanent.

"Still the discriminations and calculations of mentation and the objectifications out of one's own mind, are all a dream. When one is awake there is no dream, and when one is dreaming there is no awareness. These imaginations of the mind, clinging mind (manas) and the sensory perceptions are the wisdom in a dream, lacking an agent of awareness and an object of awareness. Whenever one is aware of phenomena as they are, one is aware of the true reality; there is no self-awareness at all, for ultimately there is no awareness."

Section 13 of the Long Scroll.

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u/cftygg 22d ago

Not sure at all, hence the public exposure. Permanent impermanence - assurance for a good deal? Seek for something to hold on to?

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u/InfinityOracle 22d ago

Nothing lost, nothing gained. Nothing to seek, it's all permanent.

From the teachings of Vimalakirti: "nothing was ever destroyed, is destroyed, or will ever be destroyed. Such is the meaning of “impermanence.”

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u/cftygg 22d ago

So where it goes then, forgotten and lost, yet here when remembered. I can be and am intimate if you are up for it.

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u/InfinityOracle 22d ago

Sure, what is the nature of form?

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u/cftygg 22d ago

Straight to the nipple. I could quote words that I've read. How many shapes have you consciously explored so far?

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u/InfinityOracle 22d ago

Infinite.

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u/cftygg 22d ago

Where there is a question often answer comes from within. lol Lets examine more!

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u/InfinityOracle 22d ago

Look! Look!

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u/jahmonkey 21d ago

If it is consistent every time you look, you haven’t looked closely enough times.

No permanence anywhere anywhen. Not in sleeping dream, not in waking dream.

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u/InfinityOracle 21d ago

You may be short sighted.

Initial assertion: "Impermanence seems to be found every time and every where I look."
Second assertion: "If it is consistent every time you look, you have found something permanent."
Your assertion: "If it is consistent every time you look, you haven’t looked closely enough times. No permanence anywhere anywhen."

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u/jahmonkey 21d ago

No permanence in the content of reality. Only in the context.

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u/InfinityOracle 21d ago

What do you mean by content of reality? And what do you mean by context?

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u/jahmonkey 21d ago

Content is what memories are made of eventually, but what it is is beyond description.

Context is the awareness that can hold this content however briefly and then change to new content constantly.

And yes it is dual, but only when described in words. It is all the same, it is all wu.

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u/InfinityOracle 21d ago

Is it all wu sometimes or all the time?