Zen Stories
nkanaev.github.io
nkanaev.github.io
> Modern Zen teachers in Japan spring from the lineage of a famous master who was the successor of Gudo. His name was Mu-nan, the man who never returned back.
What happened to his family? It's great that he achieved enlightenment and all, if that's what actually happened, but it's very curious that an epiphany centered around his failure to uphold his responsibilities to his loved ones resulted in his abandoning said loved ones for the remainder of his life.
I hesitate to say this makes a good example of the essential self-absorption I've observed in a lot of Zen philosophy, but this makes a good example of the essential self-absorption I've observed in a lot of Zen philosophy. What good are you, what worth have you, if you spend all your energy making yourself precious and ignore the world as it crumbles to dust around you?
I, too, used to think meditation and zen philosophy were particularly solipsistic, and only about improving oneself, and then I read enough studies to convince myself that "improving oneself" is actually a laudable goal that involves becoming a better person for the rest of the world.
In one classic study, participants randomly assigned to learn meditation vs unrelated cognitive skills were significantly more likely to offer their seat when a disabled person walked into the lab weeks later. Other studies have shown similar effects.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/mindfulnes... (Opinion)
https://static.squarespace.com/static/52853b8ae4b0a6c35d3f8e... [Psychological Science]
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/52853b8ae4b0a6c35d3f8... [PLOS one]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3156028/
http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/09/28/scan...
Does either obsession make him a good husband or father?
Perhaps he will return one day, fully present.
you can try to hold the world upright, but it's still crumbling. your self is a part of the world you exercise some control over. anyway, the point isn't to make yourself precious, that would really be self-absorption. i consider this account of shunryu suzuki to be more the aim:
"I went to see him after he'd been in the hospital a couple of days. When I got to his room the doctor and a couple of specialists had just left and he motioned me in and asked me to sit down on the bed next to him. He said, 'I have cancer.' He just mouthed the words as if he was telling me some good thing in a whisper. His lunch had just been brought in ‑‑ it was on a table by his bed. He patted the seat next to him and said, 'Now we can eat off the same plate,' and he began to feed me some of his lunch. He'd have a bite, then I'd have a bite ‑‑ which of course is what we couldn't do as long as we thought he had hepatitis. And he said, 'This cancer is my friend, and my practice will be to take care of this sickness.'"
The Buddha himself, who was a prince from the Shakya clan, has been criticized for leaving his wife and family behind to begin the life of an ascetic.
However I wonder if we would be criticizing him as much if he had left for war, since his clan was a warrior clan.
Who criticizes any great general or conqueror in history for leaving his family behind, and why not?
Many people (mainly pacifists) criticize such great generals for being war-thirsty or violent.
I think, Buddha is rightly criticized for not performing his duty towards his family and then going on preaching other people to care for all other people.
Other point, I think, Buddha is rightly criticized for is to do with non-violence: too much insistence on non-violence actually resulted in tolerance of even the intolerants and which is not good.
It reminds me what Obama rightly said while receiving Noble peace prize: "But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason." [1]
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-presiden...
It shouldn't be surprising that religion will, on the one hand, pay lip service regarding familial obligations, while ultimately emphasize attending to the community's needs and propagation of the religion. Often times the latter (community and religion) will be defined in terms of familial obligations. And familial obligations (especially filial obligations, e.g. obeying your parents) serve to prime people's acceptance of external authority, such as adoption of framing devices and conceptual models.
I'm not trying to be cynical. The tensions are obvious and must be resolved somehow. Sometimes inevitable contradictions must be swept under the rug or explained away. And often times one role serves multiple, seemingly contradictory functions. The complexity is compounded as the self-identifying community grows larger and deeper.
Religion is hardly the only area of social life that must handle these issues, and I don't mean to bash religion or to circumscribe the roles and functions of religion. Similar tensions and contradictions can be found _within_ family life.
In any event, like a Zen Koan if you think to literally about the problem--filial vs individual vs community obligations--you'll miss the forest for the trees. I don't think there's an answer except to accept the contradiction and attempt to maximize service to your obligations (in as much as you accept them). Obviously how you qualitatively and quantitatively measure things will strongly dictate where the optimum is, and different religions will counsel different equilibriums for identical circumstances.
Can you elaborate a bit on framing devices and conceptual models? I didn't quite get it.
>>In any event, like a Zen Koan if you think to literally about the problem--filial vs individual vs community obligations--you'll miss the forest for the trees.
By forest exactly what are you referring to? BTW, we must not miss the parental and other familial obligations too.
>>Obviously how you qualitatively and quantitatively measure things will strongly dictate where the optimum is, and different religions will counsel different equilibriums for identical circumstances.
Very well said. I liked this very much. So much for the people (especially some religion apologists) who insist that all religions are equal as their core messages are same.
But also, for example, devices that teach you to think of the good of the community as a good accruing directly to you. In other words, a hijacking of selfishness. Many religions teach that good deeds and sacrifice will accrue a benefit to you in an afterlife.
I just didn't want to suggest that religion necessarily turns people into sheeple, to be inevitably abused by elites. That's often a consequence, but that's hardly always the case. And that's a possible consequence of culture more generally, not just religion. In this sense I think of culture as the underlying phenomenon that makes religion and other forms of complex social organization possible in the face of the counter-veiling Darwinian genetic forces; as opposed to culture referring to the beliefs and habits of a particular community. And I usually distinguish religion from other social structures by reliance on magical thinking, though magical thinking is hardly exclusive to religion.
I don't have a degree in psychology or anthropology or anything, so my personal models and definitions aren't academically rigorous. Though I studied international relations in undergraduate school, and I ended up reading quite a lot of economic, sociologic, and anthropologic literature on these issues.
The way I understand it now is: people are good when their minds asses that they have what they need. Importantly, it's necessary to take a broad view of 'what one needs' here: resources in this sense range from tangible things like food and rest, to self determined personal inadequacies (that drive people to attempt making others feel inferior etc.).
When peoples' minds determine resources are lacking, people are in a very different mental mode; their strategies are biased to take from others (whether the resource is tangible or not).
So, the idea is that feeling you have everything you need is a prerequisite for true goodwill toward others; and, 'feeling you have everything you need' or rather believing, 'nothing needs changing,' is a common characterization of the sought after mental state in meditation.
I've observed the difference in character of thoughts that emerge in myself personally when I'm relaxed and content versus the opposite, and I'd bet there's something to this Buddhist idea.
Another feeling I had after reading this story: when you pass some stage in your life, leave it behind completely, don't stick to your past.
Mu-nan's wife became a successful sandal merchant. Or maybe she opened and inn, or got remarried to someone more reliable. Or maybe they starved to death when he didn't return.
"spend all your energy making yourself precious and ignore the world as it crumbles to dust around you" is not Zen.
this is not what zen is about. the man was incapable of being a good husband and father before he met Gudo. he could not accept that life-style and so he turned to drink and gambling to avoid it.
after he met Gudo he became aware of his failings and his destructive behavior. he changed his ways. he did not fulfill what you perceive his duty to be.
does that mean he did the wrong thing? did his family suffer more with him present (and drunk and broke) or absent? if he had returned to his family would he have been able to remain sober and dutiful? can any of us claim to know the likely outcomes of what didn't happen to another person?
Is it better to be trapped in a miserable existence, drowning your sorrows in gambling and alcohol, or take the one chance to reach the ultimate?
My family failed me, that is why I am not Steve Jobs.
In the story, at least as I read it, Mu-nan was already headed for ruin. Gudo, the teacher, warned him: "If you keep on gambling and drinking you will have no time left to accomplish anything else, and you will cause your family to suffer too."
In a sense, Mu-nan was as good as dead already. If Gudo hadn't shown up, Mu-nan would have just kept on drinking and failing his family anyway. So from that point of view, I think he may have left his family better off by departing forever. He saw that following his teacher was the only path left for him, so that's what he did. If he had stayed with his family, his karma would have just taken him back into the place he had been before.
Most of the great Buddhist stories I've read fit this archetype: the hero has reached a point of no return, they've done terrible things, or they're stuck in a situation where there's no way out. At that point all they can do is find a teacher and follow their instructions. That usually means leaving everything and everyone behind, for better or for worse.
> What good are you, what worth have you, if you spend all your energy making yourself precious and ignore the world as it crumbles to dust around you?
I think this is a common misunderstanding of Eastern philosophy. I used to feel the same way too - it would make me angry because it seemed so passive, like just giving up.
But there's actually a lot of wisdom to the approach. If you haven't worked it out for yourself first, how can you ever be of service to anyone else?
* "1" for "l" (http://nkanaev.github.io/zen101/en/009/)
* Unmatched quotation marks or differing symbols (‘ vs ') (http://nkanaev.github.io/zen101/en/002/)
* Several times I've seen "yon" for "you" (http://nkanaev.github.io/zen101/en/004/)
* "l" for "r" (loom/room) (http://nkanaev.github.io/zen101/en/099/)
If so, what's the original source for these stories? I don't see credits anywhere, though I am probably just missing them.
he used to travel done as a wandering mendicant
[0] https://archive.org/stream/ZenFleshZenBones/zen_djvu.txt
http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/zenindex.html
That ashida kim zen koan site has been on the interwebs for a long time. The story order is the same, and the names look the same too.
The Christian then reads the Beatitudes, and Gasan exclaims "whoever spoke those words is radiant with divinity!". The overjoyed man rushes to the church, faces the altar, and cries out "Jesus! I got that Buddhist to confess that you were divine!". And from the heavens a loving voice replies "And other than inflating your ego, what good did it do?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Flesh,_Zen_Bones (which includes 101 zen stories) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Mind,_Beginner%27s_Mind
> ‘I will help him,’ said Gudo.
Zen master's actions had the opposite effect. The drunk man's wife was precisely worried about her husband going one day and never coming back.
> Sometimes when becomes thoroughly drunk he does not come home at all. What can I do?
After Gudo's lesson, he left his family forever.
No, the Zen master's actions had the intended effect. He said "I will help him" and he did exactly that.
TIA,
Apparently the author of the blog only focused on japanese zen stories, which is unfortunate, as the stories of chinese zen masters — where zen as a school of buddhism was founded — are as truthful, if not more original, than the japanese stories the author selected.
Don't Read The Zen Stories
- Zen-sama