In the Aitareya Upanishad we are told that there has taken place a kind of cosmic catastrophe. It tells of a separation or division that occurred when individuality asserted itself. It says that this event separated “us” from the ultimate reality and that now we struggle to free ourselves of this catastrophic separation.
In the Torah or Bible we are told in the book of the Genesis of the “fall” of man from the grace or presence of God. In the book of Isaiah it says: “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
The Christian evangelist Billy Graham said that “The only thing I could say for sure is that hell means separation from God. We are separated from his light, from his fellowship. That is going to be hell.
Surely we sit in Zen to deal with separation:
The Four Noble Truths
1. Life means suffering.
2. The origin of suffering is ignorance.
3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.
4. The 8 fold path to the cessation of suffering.
A wonderful Jewish poet and song writer named Leonard Cohen has practiced Zen for most of his life, He wrote:
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
But I think Leonard was wrong, we are ourselves the great crack in reality that lets the light into this universe.
Without us the universe would just be s swirling mass of atoms and energy without meaning of any kind. Grind it all up and you find no art and no beauty. Even in our suffering we give the universe meaning.
C.S. Lewis said, “If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”
Sit and be that crack, without you the sun would just be a ball of burning gases, and a sunset just a meaningless cascade of photons.
In fact the separation we suffer is from our true selves. But what more evidence do you need that we are ignorant and separated from that truth only by a hairs distance. In all our suffering and pain we struggle to end that separation: but can the fact that there is a supreme truth, that every life has meaning that each of us, each life lived, has value be more assured?
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Why the need for meaning? Many years ago I read (I think the author was Abe, but I can't find the book), "Zen is without why." It has resonated ever since. And why do we narrow construe to ourselves the ability to experience the universe? I think it would be quite happy without us.
ReplyDeleteYou rightly ask why the need for meaning. Why the need for self worth or self esteem when we teach the philosophy of no-self. In truth I don’t know the answer to that. Nor do I know exactly why so many of us feel alienated, separated and alone. But I do know that when people come to believe that their life has no meaning and they have no value the results are usually tragic. Those who see themselves as valueless usually end up seeing everyone as valueless. In such a world compassion seldom exists and death camps abound.
ReplyDeleteZen requires both volition and effort. It is surely a paradox that a practice which is without a why requires such effort and will power. In our practice we may lose our need to see meaning or why in our nature as a result of the accumulation of wisdom through the practice of Zen. But those who see themselves as worthless and their lives with out meaning by having it imposed upon them by the circumstances of life are seldom wise or diligent. I am not sure were the difference lies between the two states of no meaning but it dose and it is extreme.
The one leads to enlightenment the other to an epidemic of despair and depression. In 2007 sales of antidepressants in the USA alone exceeded 11.9 Billion dollars. It is the nature of hopelessness to strip a person of the will to do and to strip them of aspirations and hope.
As for the universe it is nothing more than a place to sit. Part of what I was saying is that it has no value other than what we give it.
Flowers bloom and die all unaware of their beauty.
ReplyDeleteIs "Zen is without why" a prescription for practice or a description of awakened practice?
ReplyDelete