With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,
Yesterday’s Zen Group discussion was interesting less for its content than for the challenges of what the content points to. We addressed the 12 Links in the Chain of Dependent Origination, a necessary step to grasping the Four Noble Truths, Karma, and all the rest of the early teachings of the Buddha. I think the whole point of the thing can be summarized as the Buddha himself did: this is because that is. Should we really care about what gives rise to what, especially when we realize everything is empty of permanence, is one, and is seamless?
The most important point in this teaching is that everything is conditioned and at the very same time conditioning. Nothing conditioned is static, nothing conditioned is, at root, a noun. Once again, when we look deeply into anything we can see everything else.
Our food, for example, is not just our food, but our food, as well as, the many hands and many lives that brought our food into existence. On a macro level, the entire universe and all of time is in our food. So what? In my view, the so what is unification.
The source of our cross cultural, cross religious, “Golden Rule” is in our realization of our unified, interdependent existence. Hence, the importance of compassion, care, tenderness, and love and the avoidance of behavior that is toxic to life on the one hand, and behavior derived from being “born,” which is to say, separated, on the other hand. From this separation, all of the dependent “links” in the chain arise. Realize this and the chain collapses.
Zen practice, then, is the practice of birthless and deathless being.
Be well.
Good Morning Everyone,
Yesterday’s Zen Group discussion was interesting less for its content than for the challenges of what the content points to. We addressed the 12 Links in the Chain of Dependent Origination, a necessary step to grasping the Four Noble Truths, Karma, and all the rest of the early teachings of the Buddha. I think the whole point of the thing can be summarized as the Buddha himself did: this is because that is. Should we really care about what gives rise to what, especially when we realize everything is empty of permanence, is one, and is seamless?
The most important point in this teaching is that everything is conditioned and at the very same time conditioning. Nothing conditioned is static, nothing conditioned is, at root, a noun. Once again, when we look deeply into anything we can see everything else.
Our food, for example, is not just our food, but our food, as well as, the many hands and many lives that brought our food into existence. On a macro level, the entire universe and all of time is in our food. So what? In my view, the so what is unification.
The source of our cross cultural, cross religious, “Golden Rule” is in our realization of our unified, interdependent existence. Hence, the importance of compassion, care, tenderness, and love and the avoidance of behavior that is toxic to life on the one hand, and behavior derived from being “born,” which is to say, separated, on the other hand. From this separation, all of the dependent “links” in the chain arise. Realize this and the chain collapses.
Zen practice, then, is the practice of birthless and deathless being.
Be well.
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