The tree of Chinese Zen
The tree of Zen still grows in Chinas devout soil. Those who have taken the slicing from this tree as well as have tried to swindle it upon to their native tree have not always been successful. While the outdoor form of Zen can be copied by any culture, grafting the living fire of Chinese Zen onto native batch can prove the difficult task.
Two prominent features strike me about the tree of Chinese Zen of which you need to be aware. First, it is unconditionally visionary in which Mind, as pristine spirit, is the alpha as well as the omega of Chinese Zen. Secondly, the try to comprehend Mind, or the practice, is both reflective as well as provisional (S., upaya). These features competence seem simple enough until they become the customary for last Zen heterodoxya heterodoxy which glosses over Mind or just ignores it. Right now you want to dwell upon because the fire from the tree of Chinese Zen competence not make it in the West.
About the initial prominent underline upon the Chinese Zen tree, the Chinese bargain of Mind, upheld upon from India, has no peer in the modern West. The West is still overly fascinated with the life sciences including psychology. Given this roughly determined position, the Mind of Chinese Zen cannot be grafted onto the batch of conventional Western science or psychology. To attempt to do so leads in the citation of heterodoxy. Mind is simply untouched to the butterfly net of Western science as well as Western methods of introspection. Mind is positively not the mental thing. Different batch is required.
With the finish miss of bargain of Mind as well as what is required of the Western Zennist to grasp, intuitively, the Mind of Chinese Zen, the second prominent underline upon the tree, the try to comprehend Mind, seems impossible to do. How can someone strive to reach or comprehend Mind when they havent the slightest clue of what it is they have been pursuing or, upon the same score, they resolutely believe Mind is something psychological?
To give just! the sin gle e.g. of what it equates to to be clueless about the Mind of Chinese Zen is to look during the theme of koans. To be frank, Western Zennists have been simply out to lunch when it comes to bargain koans. And why? Because they have been clueless as to what Mind actually equates to as well as the overarching significance in Zen. Without exception, each koan is an expression of Mind. Mind, also, shuts the doorway to koans. Only the spiritually gifted can open this door.
Make no mistake, koans have been not little moral stories about how to live the happy Zen life. They reveal whether or not you have been guilty of the false bargain of Mind which, incidentally, can be expressed by many terms such as the Mind Ground, Void, Self-Nature, Suchness, or Bodhi. Chang Chung-Yuan is not the single of the clueless when it comes to bargain the significance of Mind in the koan (C., kung-an) in his book, Original Teachings of Chan Buddhism (1969). He writes:
The opening of anothers thoughts through ones own inner light is called the delivery of the lamp, the flare signifying the mind-light, enlightenment, transmitted from generation to generation, is the chief characteristic of the teachings of Chan.
The Transmission of the Lamp, from which the texts in this book have been taken, consists mainly of more than the thousand kung-an, expressions of the inner experience as well as illumination of enlightened men, from the ancient patriarchs as well as masters to the disciple of Fa-yen Wn-i in the tenth century. Compiled by Tao-yan in the year 1004, it is the earliest of the chronological annals of Chan Buddhism as well as is additionally the initial as well as most appropriate source for the study of Chan (p. xiixiii).
In this same section, the writer tells us of Ta-hui Tsung-kao (10891163), when he was the student, who done forty-nine attempts to penetrate the koan: The eastern towering sails upon the river. He afterwards tells another story of an aged priest who, upon his ninety-seventh attempt, p! enetrate d the koan he was given!
The difficulty in answering koans lies not with the koan, itself, though with the incapacity to entirely comprehend Mindwhich Zen is perplexing to get us to see by regulating koans. Pushed to the wits end, though not without meaningful previously which you have been ostensible to have the gnosis of Mind, you have only the single judicious course of action to take in the practice, this being, incite to Mind.
If no the single in the West awakens to true Mind, afterwards the vital fire of Chinese Zen will not take hold upon the Western tree as well as develop as it should. What will be loved as Zen will be the routine branch which will never flowering plant or bear seeds. This same routine branch will teach of the delivery alternative than the devout Mind to Mind transmission.
