tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7296606518210633585.post758512203107037383..comments2024-02-06T22:19:13.028-08:00Comments on Mining Aśvaghoṣa's Gold: 2. The Great Wisdom of One Gone to the Far ShoreMike Crosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12712396374023835678noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7296606518210633585.post-54298289307830924442008-06-21T02:30:00.000-07:002008-06-21T02:30:00.000-07:00I like the story of John Hunter, some years after ...I like the story of John Hunter, some years after completing his Alexander teacher training, going to visit infamous Alexander dragon Margaret Goldie. "Now John," MG is reported to have announced during the course of this lesson, "you are going to make a decision" .... "for the first time in your life." <BR/><BR/>MG knew that, liable though we are to bullshit about consciousness and choice, a moment of consciousness is in fact a very rare thing -- a thing like an Udumbara flowering. <BR/><BR/>We just sit according to our old habits, without ever truly stopping for a moment, without ever truly being conscious, and we think this is what Master Dogen meant by SHIKAN TAZA, "just sitting."<BR/><BR/>Reading in old Zen texts the words "emptiness" (KU) or "nothingness" (MU), or hearing today the words "a bit of nothing," we think we understand them on the basis of our own experience, which is always a bit of something. But the truth is always that what we feel and think it is, is always not it. <BR/><BR/>I include myself in this, of course. Notwithstanding my own longstanding egoistic desire to be The One Who Knows, I am not the one who is clear in regard to what it is. I am one for whom it has been clarified, at least a bit, what it is not.Mike Crosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12712396374023835678noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7296606518210633585.post-40443804734098532392008-06-20T20:38:00.000-07:002008-06-20T20:38:00.000-07:00It's as if self-consciousness creates a choice.It's as if self-consciousness creates <A HREF="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/143/349894433_c207812e40.jpg?v=0" REL="nofollow">a choice</A>.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7296606518210633585.post-8290609274500083692008-06-20T10:09:00.000-07:002008-06-20T10:09:00.000-07:00Hi Plato,I think the understanding to avoid about ...Hi Plato,<BR/><BR/>I think the understanding to avoid about feelings is, because they are not reliable, they are inconsequential, unreal, empty. <BR/><BR/>That is an easy idea: "Never mind about feelings. Feelings are not important. Action is important. Actions are real. Feelings are unreal, empty." <BR/><BR/>But when we investigate more deeply what feelings are, they are guided primarily by what is going on in the brainstem, at the level of the vestibular nucleii, and they control us. So unreliable feelings are very real indeed, and very important indeed. <BR/><BR/>Marjory Barlow used to say: "We can't control our feelings. Our feelings control us."<BR/><BR/>So, in this sense, feelings are very real, not empty. And their influence on how we behave is very real, not empty. Feelings truly are a constituent element of our being. Maybe that is why homeopaths, for example, pay more attention to a patient's feelings than other less enlightened, more mechanistic medical practitioners. <BR/><BR/>There are other places in Shobogenzo where Master Dogen explicitly addresses the problem of the limited and unreliable nature of sensory appreciation -- for example, chap. 3, The Real Law of the Universe, and chap. 43, Flowers in the Sky. <BR/><BR/>If I were to relate this chapter we are discussing now to what <BR/>FM Alexander discovered, the turning words I would point to would be those of Marjorie Barstow who often used to talk of "a bit of nothing."<BR/><BR/>"You all want something," she apparently used to say, "And that something is your habit." <BR/><BR/>So "a bit of nothing" might mean a bit of freedom, a bit of freedom from our habit, a bit of freedom from that which ties us to our unreliable feelings. <BR/><BR/>Gudo said to me on a number of occasions: "Buddhism is Buddhism. AT is AT."<BR/><BR/>But I say that there is no such thing as Buddhism. The view that Gudo calls Buddhism is empty, not real. What Alexander discovered is real, not empty. So I am very grateful for the existence of somebody like you, together with one or two others, who, because they truly revere the real truth of Sitting as the paramount thing in their daily life, have ears to listen to, and eyes to look at, what FM Alexander discovered. <BR/><BR/>You know, Plato, people like you and me who are truly devoted to Sitting, unlike those phoneys of fixed views whose ears are closed to what Alexander discovered.....<BR/><BR/>RED FLASHING LIGHTS! ALARM BELLS!! <BR/><BR/>The "We true Buddhists..." mirror principle strikes again.Mike Crosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12712396374023835678noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7296606518210633585.post-47284521034917186852008-06-20T01:52:00.000-07:002008-06-20T01:52:00.000-07:00Hi Mike! "...her whole body reflects the five aggr...Hi Mike!<BR/><BR/> "...her whole body reflects the five aggregates, as totally empty. The five aggregates, the five constituent elements of being, are: material forms; feelings; ideas; doings; and consciousness."<BR/><BR/>Could we say that one aspect of the emptiness of feelings is what FM Alexander discovered, that he could not rely on his feelings about what is right or wrong?<BR/>PlatoGeorgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16906316059002421425noreply@blogger.com