To: alt.zen
From: tyagI@houseofkaos.Abyss.coM (Hsi Wang Mu)
Subject: Zen Questions
Date: 49941121
Quoting: |meissner@space.bu.edu (Karl Meissner) writes:

|I have been reading some books on Zen but they confuse me a bit. 

Books do not confuse people.  People confuse themselves over books.


|They leave a lot of unanswered questions for me.  

Wonderful!  Then the books are serving wonderful purposes!


|	One of the corner stones of Zen philosophy 

Zen philosophy is a circular building.  See the Ox Series of drawings.


|To Zen all of perception has be divided up into artificial categories 
|when we assign words and concepts to the world.  

To some Zen Buddhists who like to think alot, yes.  To the simple, life
is just life.  Watch it and see what happens.


|The books talks about these filtering concepts as ``illusions''.  
|They are opinions and prejudices which distort our senses in unnatural ways.

All ways are natural.  Everything, seen in some other way, is an 'illusion'.

  
|The book, (and I understand it
|most of Zen) advocates an attempt somehow to get rid of these filtering 
|mechanisms.

Sometimes attempting the impossible or unintelligible is very important.


|these ``illusions'' are natural parts of our minds. 

Correct.


|I do not understand why these illusions should be meditated away in
|favor of a state which the book refers to as ``enlightened'' or 
|a completely nonjudgemental state.  

They cannot be.  That is a figment of imagination.  We can watch them
and become less agitated about them, however.  We may see something
happen to them when that agitation dissipates.


|catagorizations are poor, and we get bad results such as prejudice
|or fanatics, who ignore any evidence that contradict their world view.

No result is 'bad', but we may not like some of them.


|The points is, expectations, desires and words are normal.  

Yes.  Very important.


|...Our ``Self''s are merely ideas which are used to parse the
|world into things such as ``I like that'', ``I am no good, I can not
|do that'', ``He insulted me. I am angry at him''.  It is indeed a filtering
|and categorizing mechanism, or in Zen terms an illusion.  And the self
|concept also can lead to certain kinds of trouble such as poor self
|-image leading to lack of confidence.  

Yes, our self lacks 'own-being'.  It does not exist apart from all else.


|But... having a Self is a very important and natural thing.  It gives 
|humans motivation to act in response to things that affect us.  

There is no 'self' to have, though we may act as if there is.  Motivation
need not come from conceptualizations of the self.  It can come from
deep within us in response to subtle currents of the Way.  A tree does
not need a 'self' to grow.


|A being without a Self would not act to protect itself and further its 
|own interests.

A being without attachment to a self-concept might act in wholly self-
interested ways.  It may also act in wholly unself-interested ways.
A being without attachment to a self-concept still feels pain and can be 
compassionate.


|Evolution gave us a Self to get things done and so we would want to
|satisfy our desires and to kick butt if obstacles stop us. 

Then Evolution is the Creator-God for you.


|We are striving to reach goals which are constantly receding from us and 
|this means that we will never be content.  

Abandon those goals.  Reject enlightenment.  They are the real 'illusions'.


|Pain is ever present due to the nature of reality.  We suffer because
|we do not have ...

Dissatisfaction is ever-present due to the nature of craving and our
reaction to it (attachment).  It is not what we have or do not have
which leads to our suffering.  It is our response to presences and
states of mind (i.e. whether we grasp at things which are constantly
changing and moving away from us) which determines our level of
dissatisfaction.


|The pain in your finger makes you pull it out of the fire.  

Pain is not dukkha.  Craving for cessation of physical pain would lead
to dukkha, dissatisfaction -- deep disease.


|A perfectly content being would be catatonic, and not even come in, 
|out of the rain.  It would attach no misery to being wet.

Preference, body-protection and misery are different things.  A perfectly
content being would come in out of the rain if it were time to come in
out of the rain.  The flow of the Dharma permeates all of buddha-nature
and there is no need of a 'self' for this flow to be entered.


|the world persistently does things which I did not expect, to the point
|where I count on it do so.  

Knowledge due to interrelatedness and concentrism is not the kind which
may be built up in the intellect.  It is a deep connection that enables
us to become familiar and compassionate with that other-being-that-is-
not-other.


|I am so small and the world is so big.  Why is the world partially 
|amenable to conceptualization and symbolic representation? 

See Lao Tse.  The small creates the big, the big the small.  As we
fabricate the notion of beauty, so also is ugliness created.


|All three positions are internally self consistent but mutually exclude
|each other.  On what basis should a system of thought such as Zen, 
|Rationalism or a religion be accepted?  

Zen is not a system of thought.  Thought-systems and religions should
be accepted as they feel right for you.  My own bias is that I accept
all of them and indulge them to their fullest, see how useful they are
in showing me more about myself and my world.


|Is it simply a matter of what ever "feels good to you" or "my parents 
|believed it so I will too"?

For some the former works best.  For some the latter.  Worldviews are
incomplete by their very nature and attachment to temporary things
will eventually lead to further suffering.

Hsi Wang Mu
nagasiva@yronwode.com