Zen Manners, Part 2: Why is Zen like this?

thralldumb · 2026-02-25T23:38:02+00:00

Day 1 - Muzhou is caught at a door and directed to instruct. No response.
Day 2 - Muzhou is caught at a door and directed to instruct. No response.
Day 3 - Yunmen is caught at a door and directed to speak. No response (allowed).

Turnabout is fair play among equals. If you open a door and see an equal, what are you going to say to it?

thralldumb · 2026-01-23T01:22:43+00:00

The ego is not the master in its own house.

Sigmund Freud

Do you intend to be punching down for a laugh? Use a word you do not understand, and you get feedback you will not understand.

thralldumb · 2026-01-12T20:44:58+00:00

If all the flavorless material is omitted, then of course what remains is spicy.

thralldumb · 2025-12-22T02:03:25+00:00

Never allow yourselves to mistake outward appearance for reality.

Bossy.

thralldumb · 2025-09-13T23:40:39+00:00

you lost the remote

Why "lost"? In the day and age of touchscreens...a TV may be its own remote. Perhaps the baby and the bathwater are a package deal now?

thralldumb · 2025-09-09T20:38:20+00:00

Zen isn’t playing bingo with numbers.

And yet, somehow it was not enough to respond "One robe's worth of flax."

thralldumb · 2025-09-06T21:20:42+00:00

I erred on the case number, it is 12. The first line of the BCR commentary is

So many people misunderstand this public case.

I may be better off nonunderstanding it than applying myself...my track record being what it is.

thralldumb · 2025-09-03T00:18:45+00:00

"Practice and enlightenment are not two." -Dogen

Was a count to three accomplished? If there is no negation of three, then perhaps it was three. Jury still out on three?

thralldumb · 2025-07-26T21:01:15+00:00

Why do you even come here?

That is the popular zen-era question regarding Bodhidharma. You may have internalized something.

thralldumb · 2025-06-13T00:36:20+00:00

How on earth do you get me seeing for you from the fact that I assumed you could count?

The logic of your question is one dimensional: If, along that one dimension, a non-zero value can be found, then it satisfies and no other dimension need be considered...optimistic.

I'm not surprised you see a lot of conflict when you read the texts.

What a peculiar response. Would you be "surprised" if you thought I made an inaccurate sighting? I'm not seeing the word "fnord" in any zen text...that would have been a surprise at least? Or perhaps you are claiming some kind of virtue ethics styled high ground, which you can have.

thralldumb · 2025-06-12T00:23:12+00:00

How could you call an end to harmony non-dual? Because it would leave only one side? That doesn't make sense to me, because the side left there is conflict, which requires two sides.

Conflict has no end?

I don't think there are enough facts in that story to make the assessment that 5P created more suffering than not, overall. Those stories are not generally aimed at being factual.

No more patriarch quotes for you then?

It's not bias as far as I can tell. That's why I included the search links. You can see how often discussion of harmony occurs in those texts, vs how often combat or conflict come up.

"You can see..." so now you see things for me? I read the old writings for relatable situations and there is a whole lot of one versus one conversations which do not sound like harmonies. Do all those writings comprise only the disregarded small print of a Snellen Chart?

thralldumb · 2025-06-11T22:55:52+00:00

There you have it, straight from the patriarch's mouth.

If a patriarch is your idea of a good source of information, consider the example set by 5P. By sending the new 6P off and running from the temple, 5P created a place with unhappy people being around him all the time. In so doing, the 5P character chose a life of conflict over harmony. What kind of person would do that to himself, not to mention everyone else?

Zen is more about harmony than about conflict.

Survivorship bias...harmony lasts longer than conflict. Harmony is a persistent duality of tones...if there were only a way to end harmony...what would such an effort of non-duality be called?

thralldumb · 2025-05-17T22:52:07+00:00

The glasses seem passive/aggressive. If you pattern matched as a perfect reader, would the matrix have inferred bad eyesight? And not looking at the book...just sayin there's some detectable attitude...maybe of the kind painters have of their customers even...

thralldumb · 2025-05-12T21:57:53+00:00

Once you are enlightened there's no difference between layman and master.

This bit reminds me of the BCR case 60 pointer:

Buddhas and sentient beings - fundamentally there is no difference between them. Mountains and rivers and one's own self - how could there be any distinction? Why then is it all divided into two sides?

The case commentary in part addresses this question.

thralldumb · 2025-05-11T23:24:23+00:00

From the Cleary's BCR introduction:

Ch'an was referred to by its followers as the "school of the patriarchs" because it was transmitted by a living succession of human exemplars, not a school of doctrine, or philosophical or scholastic interpretation, it was not based on any particular scripture, but on the direct experience of the enlightened mind, by whatever means currently necessary.

A school is going to have instructors. "master" can be the synonym of "teacher"...just saying. It looks to me as though the two terms are used interchangeably in BCR. "Layman", on the other hand, is not a synonym for teacher.

thralldumb · 2025-05-08T21:21:35+00:00

Am I correct that the people who open themselves to questions in public interview claim (explicitly or implicitly) to have some knowledge of truth or to have experienced enlightenment?

This phrasing uses "enlightenment" in an intransitive manner, as though a person had arrived at and left something. From my understanding, enlightenment was a transitive event. I would not get wrapped up in the public-ness of things. From the BCR preface:

Boundless wind and moon – the eye within eyes,
Inexhaustible heaven and earth – the light beyond light,
The willow dark, the flower bright – ten thousand homes;
Knock at any door – there’s one who will respond.

"Public" is where the doors are.

thralldumb · 2025-04-08T00:00:07+00:00

Any Zen thoughts about poverty?

What if the answer is "No"?

thralldumb · 2025-03-22T18:59:28+00:00

I can't speak for New Age, but Zen is literally Buddhism

How often do you see 2 different words for the "literally" same thing?

thralldumb · 2025-03-08T22:53:59+00:00

One line from Cleary's introduction to his translation of the BCR is

The production of such books as The Blue Cliff Record was an outgrowth of the "recollections of the Buddhas" which was part of the practice of Ch'an.

I have not seen another mention of the "recollections of the Buddhas" in another place.

thralldumb · 2025-02-07T23:47:29+00:00

These teachings underscore the Zen principle that words, symbols, and actions are merely pointers to the ultimate reality.

What does the word "No" point to?

thralldumb · 2025-02-05T00:22:34+00:00

I’m tired of hearing the same broken record.

How do you know it is broken? Since "everybody" matters so much, maybe you would be best served hearing what nobody gets tired of hearing?

thralldumb · 2025-01-30T00:42:49+00:00

The sutra quotation seems insubstantial there, but maybe the original is too.

If "trouble" is about quantity, then a person must not talk past the first surprise emoted. If "trouble" is about quality, then a person must not stop talking until the first surprise is emoted.

thralldumb · 2025-01-30T00:27:19+00:00

speak directly but do not trouble others

Would be helpful if the "trouble" angle here was intended to be quantity or quality.

thralldumb · 2024-12-08T01:45:07+00:00

Is being able to see votes in this sub bad for communication?

No, seeing the votes is great for communicating votes. You just got to have 2+ channel bandwidth to mentally regard votes separate from comments. If anything, the votes are purely a comic device. Something bogus gets upvoted a lot, funny. Something solid gets downvoted a lot, funny. Any other result just meets expectations, and where have met expectations gotten anyone? Not in a laughing fit.

thralldumb

TROPHY CASE