Monthly archive

8. Both Ox and self transcended
 

 
Whip, rope, person, and Ox -
all merge in No Thing.
This heaven is so vast,
no message can stain it.
How may a snowflake exist
in a raging fire?
Here are the footprints of
the Ancestors.
 
How does one write about what appears to be outside one’s experience?  
 
This verse, we are told, points to the highest states of meditation, where discursive thinking ceases and one awakens to the vast radiance of Conscious Awareness. Many aspire to this state of being, imagining what it might be like, intuiting no-mind from the descriptions of those who have “opened the doors of wisdom.” That we can imagine and intuit begs the questions: Where does imagination arise from? What is the source of intuition? How is it that “I” conjure something, from nothing? Magic?
 
Isn’t magic the ability to create something out of nothing?
 
Nothing or No Thing? 
 
If form emerges out of emptiness, then, by extension, isn’t the reverse also possible? Some-thing (form) vanishes into No-thing (emptiness).
 
If we bring this verse down from the lofty realms of deep meditation into everyday experience, we find many examples of things merging into no-things. In the physical realm, water evaporates, apples are eaten, the moon wanes, muscles atrophy, leaves decay, people die…. In the mental realm, thoughts, emotions and sensations appear and disappear with bewildering rapidity and randomness. Metaphysically speaking, it gets even weirder! As the classic philosophical question poses: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Does something (object) exist if we (subject) are not aware of it? Does what isn’t perceived vanish into the Void? 
 
A perception, sudden as blinking,
that subject and object are one
will lead to a deeply mysterious
wordless understanding.
And by this understanding you
will awake to the truth of Zen.
— Huang Po
 
The blank white wall of a Meditation Hall symbolizes Void, the “vast heaven” of Conscious Awareness. No matter what happens in the mind of the meditator, the wall remains unstained. At some point in a sitting practice, there is awareness of an unchanging context that witnesses what appears and disappears. In a moment of clarity, understanding dawns this is how a snowflake exists in a raging fire. In the realms of dualistic thinking fire dissolves ice, but in the depths of awareness, crystal clarity can remain untouched by the chaos of the mind. That which is perceived in the moment of insight takes expression as words, the very same syllables (footprints) uttered by those Ancestors who were here, now, aware of this: heaven is so vast, no message can stain it.*
 
And so we sit!
 
Gasshō
ashwini  
 
*As always, this is simply one practitioner’s musings.