For me, minimally Buddhist'y Zen is one of my foraging spots when I feel the need to feast on some "spiritual but not religious" food.
Seven years ago I bought "The Zen Koan as a means of Attaining Enlightenment," by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, a.k.a. D.T. Suzuki. (Check here for a recent update on my enlightenment; in brief, it's going great.)
Many books come and go in my meditation area. A few are permanent residents. D.T. Suzuki's is one of them.
Parts of it are so steeped in Zen lore/tradition, I don't resonate with them. But otherwise I can usually turn to a page and find something there to invigorate my churchless non-soul.
The past few days I've been re-reading an introductory section. Even though I'd already pondered these passages several times, Suzuki's prose continues to surprise me with fresh insights.
His words in the book obviously don't change. Must be me. Here's some sharings.
...in satori there is always what we may call a sense of the Beyond; the experience indeed is my own but I feel it to be rooted elsewhere. The individual shell in which my personality is so solidly encased explodes at the moment of satori.
Not, necessarily, that I get unified with a being greater than myself or absorbed in it, but that my individuality, which I found rigidly held together and definitely kept separate from other individual existences, becomes loosened somehow from its tightening grip and melts away into something indescribable, something which is of quite a different order from what I am accustomed to.
The feeling that follows is that of a complete release or a complete rest -- the feeling that one has arrived finally at the destination. 'Coming home and quietly resting' is the expression generally used by Zen followers.
...As far as the psychology of satori is considered, a sense of the Beyond is all we can say about it; to call this the Beyond, the Absolute, or God, or a Person is to go further than the experience itself and to plunge into a theology or metaphysics. Even the 'Beyond' is saying a little too much.
...Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Zen experience is that it has no personal note in it as is observable in Christian mystic experiences. There is no reference whatever in Buddhist satori to such personal and frequently sexual feelings and experiences as are to be gleaned from these terms: flame of love, a wonderful love shed in the heart, embrace, the beloved, bride, bridegroom, spiritual matrimony, Father, God, the Son of God, God's child, etc.
We may say that all these terms are interpretations based on a definite system of thought and really have nothing to do with the experience itself. At any rate, alike in India, China, and Japan, satori has remained thoroughly impersonal, or rather highly intellectual.
...Not only satori itself is such a prosaic and non-glorious event, but the occasion that inspires it also seems to be unromantic and altogether lacking in super-sensuality. Satori is experienced in connection with any ordinary occurrence in one's daily life.
...There is no romance of love-making, no voice of the Holy Ghost, no plenitude of Divine Grace, no glorification of any sort. Here is nothing painted in high colours, all is grey and extremely unobtrusive and unattractive.
...He [Hui-neng] must have worked very hard while cleaning rice to have delved so successfully into the secrets of his own mind.
...Is it not illuminating to note that Hui-neng passed his life in a most prosaic and apparently non-religious employment while in the monastery, working up his mind to develop into the state of satori?
He did not repeat the name of the Buddha, he did not worship the Buddha according to the prescribed rules of the monastery life, he did not confess his sins and ask for pardon through the grace of God, he did not throw himself down before a Buddha and offer most ardent prayers to be relieved of the eternal bond of transmigration. He simply pounded his rice so that it could be ready for his Brotherhood's consumption.
This ultra commonplaceness of Hui-neng's role in the monastery life is the beginning of the Zen discipline which distinguishes itself remarkably from that of other Buddhist communities.
Brian,
I resonate with the non-freewill post.
Its comfortable to me too.
I also resonate with the Zen as precribed here.
Its the simpleness and nothing else-ness..that I adore..
Posted by: Sita | November 06, 2012 at 12:06 AM