Zen Sayings

Gary Childress

Student for and of life
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I recently bought "The Mind's I" by Hofstadter and Dennett.

In one of the essays on page 45 there is a reference to the following Zen riddle:

Zen is like a man hanging in a tree by his teeth over a precipice. His hands grasp no branch, his feet rest on no limb, and under the tree another person asks him: "Why did Bodhidharma come to China From India?" If the man in the tree does not answer, he fails; and if he does answer, he falls and loses his life. Now what shall he do?

In the final analysis the whole point of Zen seems to me to be to say as little as you possibly can and yet at the same time teach others something (not sure what but something). But why? If the analogy above is any indication, then perhaps the very act of my asking this question puts the Zen master in the predicament of either failing to answer my question or "losing his life"? I guess all I can say is if you are a Zen master then please DO NOT POST IN THIS THREAD. Let us little munchkins work it out for ourselves.

So what is your personal take on Zen? What do you think it's "all about"? Feel free to post your own favorite Zen sayings and try to analyze them. :cool:

EDIT: Also feel free to offer your interpretation of the riddle above

EDIT 2:
Spoiler :
OR conversely, when I say the whole point of Zen seems to be to say as little as you can, perhaps it is the inverse. Perhaps the point of Zen is to teach by saying as much as you are able about the subject. The only problem being that there isn't much that can be said about the subject. Already I think I'm going crosseye!


EDIT 3:
Spoiler :
OK. Trying to take apart the riddle above...

1. Does the Zen master know the answer to the question about Bodhidharma or does he not?

2. When it is said he would "lose his life", what is meant by that? If he answers the question will he "die"? Or by "lose life" does he mean lose a "way" of life?

3. Or is the riddle simply to say that when you are a Zen master and someone asks you a question it is a "lose-lose" situation for the master?


EDIT 4:
Spoiler :
Looking further at the riddle. Who is the man in the tree? Is it the Zen master? Or is this to say that all of us are in the same predicament as the "man in the tree"?


EDIT 5:
Spoiler :
This seems like a rather "campy" Zen quote almost too "new age" to be from a true master I would think, or else perhaps it is a fragment to something more profound?
This is the Zen approach: nothing is there to be done. There is nothing to do. One has just to be. Have a rest and be ordinary and be natural.
I found it here:

http://www.squidoo.com/zen-quotes
 
My reading of that riddle is very similar to yours:

By not answering the question - and the specific nature of the question seems to be beside the point here - the other person is just as ignorant as they were before and free to dream up their own speculations which they will likely become attached to, and thus not be able to directly perceive reality. By answering the question, the man in the tree gives a conceptual answer (which may well be wrong) that both the questioner and the answerer himself might become attached to and this could hinder the ability of both to perceive reality directly. Perhaps the best response of the man in the tree is to clap? That way, he does not lose his grip but he does respond in a way which doesn't promote attachment to concepts.
 
This is a bit hokie maybe but sometimes I wonder if a part of the point of Zen isn't that you have a person asking a question and you have a person answering the question. The person asking the question doesn't know the answer and the person being asked doesn't really, truly know the answer. So what if the two people switched positions? What if the Zen master played the student and the student played the master?

On the one hand you have the guy who more or less runs the temple. Someone comes in from the outside and you immediately have the following situation: Why are you master of the temple and I am the interloper? Why is it not the other way around? It's really a social convention that makes this so. There are no bars preventing you the interloper from walking right up and taking the master's seat. The only thing preventing you from doing so is your own inhibitions. To which the Zen master may say, "here, have my temple" and you feel sort of stupid because you have no place being the master of the temple, you haven't earned it so to speak, and you know it. Still, what separates you tangibly from the master of the temple other than you are the interloper and he is the master? Does anything else extraordinary separate the two of you as radically different people with differnent stations in life?

I went to a Catholic wedding once where the priest, in part of his sermon, mentioned that since people were at "our" place (the cathedral we were in, refering to the clergy and everyone who lived and worked there I assume) it would be appreciated if they acted politely or whatever his exact words were I don't remember. I sort of thought to myself, "their place"? This huge building is "theirs"? Did they build it with their own hands? Did they personally purchase the land from the previous owners and if so where did that money come from? It seemed to me that the place was more or less built for them by others and quite a long time ago before anyone currently in it was alive. It was purchased for them with other people's money (the parishioners). It sort of struck me as odd that the priests thought they had some claim to it as "theirs". But then again I nor any other stranger there had any right to claim it as ours. It sort of made me feel like an outsider, like a "guest" at their church. It's brash of me to think that, I know, but those were the thoughts that came to my mind. Who's church was it really? I guess the socialist or communist in me came out at that moment to speculate on all sorts of things.

However, if you think of it, what's to stop me from walking up on the pulpit, grabbing the bible and start lecturing the people inside the cathedral about what is in the book in front of me? It's like one of those surreal moments when someone does something that is just way off the meter and it exposes a kind of fragility in our institutions. You see how fragile our institutions are by the fact that people act and are expected to act in a certain way. But there is nothing tangible preventing someone from breaking the norm, like standing up in a courtroom in the middle of session and yelling to the Judge, "here comes the judge...da do da do... It's just unexpected and it reveals that we humans are creatures who are tamed by nothing more than our own inhibitions and beliefs about the institutions we assemble in.

What if I were a professor of a classroom and one day all the students got together and decided to do something totally off the wall like get up in the middle of a lecture and take me out of my seat and sit me in the class seat while they all stood up on the lecture podium reading me the class text. Suddenly the rules have been violated in a radical way. Again, there is nothing physically preventing us from doing radical things other than our inhibitions and expectations of how we are supposed to act. Such actions sort of stun us, don't they? We are taken back when the rules are radically transgressed because it doesn't happen very often and we are not accustomed to how to respond. If people start doing it alot then there would fall into place a procedure for responding to the situation but if something is radically off the wall, we suddenly become stupified.

Just some random thoughts about religious people and their "domains" as it were.
 
Zen is a failure?
 
Please remember this forum is supposed to be the one for civil discussion. Vague one word replies don't lend much to a discussion, even when it comes to one about Zen. If you want to post please do so with something more substantial.
 
I thought he was asking if, by "zen sayings", you meant koans. That shouldn't be vague to the guy that posted the thread. :confused:
 
I thought he was asking if, by "zen sayings", you meant koans. That shouldn't be vague to the guy that posted the thread. :confused:

You say you "think" that is what he meant? So you're not sure either. How am I supposed to know what he means by "koans?" Maybe he should have replied "by Zen sayings, do you mean koans?"
 
the zen master does not care about the fact that he "fails".
 
the zen master does not care about the fact that he "fails".

Interesting interpretation I had not thought of. So the koan in the OP doesn't necessarily mean the dilemma is an impossible one for the Zen master. It could equally be the case that the Zen master doesn't really care if he fails his interlocutor but that life is much more important. I was thinking in terms of a dilemma that was a lose-lose situation. But perhaps it's simply to say that if the Zen master doesn't answer your question it's because he has more pressing matters at hand.
 
I don't know what you mean by "zen saying".

By "saying" I mean something along the lines of a short phrase containing advice or wisdom. Like when someone asks, "do you know any Christian sayings". Are all short phrases of advice or wisdom given by Zen masters considered Koans?
 
I don't think so.

Merriam-Webster's definition of koan: a paradox to be meditated upon that is used to train Zen Buddhist monks to abandon ultimate dependence on reason and to force them into gaining sudden intuitive enlightenment

That's much more specific. I'm glad madviking's post brought this to the thread. :)
 
Found this at the following website: http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/44thethiefwhobecameadisciple.html

One evening as Shichiri Kojun was reciting sutras a thief with a sharp sword entered, demanding wither his money or his life.

Shichiri told him: "Do not disturb me. You can find the money in that drawer." Then he resumed his recitation.

A little while afterwards he stopped and called: "Don't take it all. I need some to pay taxes with tomorrow."

The intruder gathered up most of the money and started to leave. "Thank a person when you receive a gift," Shichiri added. The man thanked him and made off.

A few days afterwards the fellow was caught and confessed, among others, the offense against Shichiri. When Shichiri was called as a witness he said: "This man is no thief, at least as far as I am concerned. I gave him the money and he thanked me for it."

After he had finished his prison term, the man went to Shichiri and became his disciple.

My Interpretation:
Spoiler :
It's like there are things to learn in this passage but it's somewhat difficult to put them into other words. In a sense, perhaps, after giving the thief the money, the thief later came back and gave Shichiri his devotion in return. So he ended up not being a thief to Shichiri. Could it be said that Shichiri, in a sense at least, foresaw the Thief would return as a disciple and therefore gave him the money ahead of time in the manner a parent gives it to their children? In a sense didn't Sichiri pay the Thief so the Thief would repay him with the Thief's devotion in return?

On another level: I read this passage and feel myself drawn into the realm of the Zen master. The Zen master gives me a piece of his wisdom and in return I give him a piece of my devotion when I treat the Zen master as a master. I come like a thief seeking what Zen is about without paying the Zen master anything for his wisdom. But in thoughtfully reading this Koan I in a sense also become his disciple and therefore repay a bit of what I take from the master.


Additional interpretation:
Spoiler :
Note that it is explicitly stated in the Koan that the thief had robbed others too. What is the significance of this? I notice he did not become their disciple (Or at least I make the assumption reading the passage). In a sense he didn't need to because when they (presumably) testified against him (which is why he went to prison) he repayed them with his detention. But he didn't serve detention for taking the money from Shichiri, so in a sense he still owed Shichiri for the money he had taken from him when he got out of detention. This further validates Shichiri's statement on the stand that "as far as he was concerned" the stranger was no thief because he gave him the money and he thanked him for it. I note also that Shichiri explicitly states: "as far as I am concerned". So he does not speak for the other people and therefore acknowledges that he is only speaking for his own relationship with the thief.


@Lucy Duke: I wasn't sure if all Zen wisdom and advice were strictly considered koans either. So "Sayings" sounded to me like a better term to use to encompass more phrases. Perhaps someone more familiar with Zen could answer whether or not all Zen wisdom and advice is considered a "koan". :confused:
 
the zen master does not care about the fact that he "fails".

Does the Zen master conversely fear death to the degree that he would rather live than enlighten someone who asks him a question? I had it in my understanding that Zen Masters are not per se too afraid of death either and that enlightening others was something they cared greatly about. And in the passage cited the question is asked, "Now what shall he do?" As though the Zen master is in a difficult dilemma.

On a side note: The passage in the OP sort of reminds me of when I visit the dentist and the dentist is sitting there talking to me and asking me questions while he's working with sharp objects in my mouth. :lol:
 
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