{"id":61955,"date":"2015-08-03T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=61955"},"modified":"2015-08-03T09:13:52","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T08:13:52","slug":"a-zen-master-explains-death-and-the-life-force-to-a-child-and-outlines-the-three-essential-principles-of-zen-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/08\/a-zen-master-explains-death-and-the-life-force-to-a-child-and-outlines-the-three-essential-principles-of-zen-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"A Zen Master Explains Death and the Life-Force to a Child and Outlines the Three Essential Principles of Zen Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cZen practice \u2026 requires great faith, great courage, and great questioning.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"droppingashesonthebuddha<\/a>If death is so enormous a mystery that we remain unable to wrap our grownup minds around it, despite comfort from our great poets<\/a> and consolation from our great philosophers<\/a>, how are tiny humans to make sense of it all? Although there exist some exceptional children\u2019s books about loss and grief<\/a>, explaining death to a child remains one of the most challenging tasks for a human being to undertake.<\/p>\n

Because the language of Zen, holding great complexity of experience in great simplicity of expression, is so organically suited to the child \u2014 children, after all, have a way of leaning their minds toward the profound by way of the simple<\/a> \u2014 it is perhaps the best language we have in offering a befitting explanation, as much to ourselves as to our young ones.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what the great Korean-born Zen teacher Seung Sahn Soen-sa<\/strong> (August 1, 1927\u2013November 30, 2004) offers in one of the chapters in Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 a tiny treasure of a book originally published in 1976, irreverent yet immensely spiritually invigorating, collecting his correspondence and conversations with Zen students in the West.<\/p>\n

\"seungsahn<\/a><\/p>\n

Soen-sa recounts his conversation with Gita, the seven-year-old daughter of one of his students at the Cambridge Zen Center, after the death of the center\u2019s beloved cat, cleverly named Katz. (\u201cKATZ!\u201d is the transcription of the famous Buddhist belly-shout, used as a way of focusing energy and intention during Zen practice.) Katz had died after a long illness and was given a traditional Buddhist burial, but the little girl remained troubled by his death. One day after practice, she came to the great Zen teacher for an explanation. He relays the exchange:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened to Katzie? Where did he go?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Soen-sa said, \u201cWhere do you come from?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFrom my mother\u2019s belly.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere does your mother come from?\u201d Gita was silent. <\/em><\/p>\n

Soen-sa said, \u201cEverything in the world comes from the same one thing. It is like in a cookie factory. Many different kinds of cookies are made \u2014 lions, tigers, elephants, houses, people. They all have different shapes and different names, but they are all made from the same dough and they all taste the same. So all the different things that you see \u2014 a cat, a person, a tree, the sun, this floor \u2014 all these things are really the same.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are they?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/a>

Illustration by Edward Gorey from ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ by T.S. Eliot.<\/p><\/div>\n

With an eye to our tendency to mistake a thing\u2019s name for its thingness<\/a>, Soen-sa answers by urging the little girl to contact the universal life-force of the metaphorical cookie dough:<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople give them many different names. But in themselves, they have no names. When you are thinking, all things have different names and different shapes. But when you are not thinking, all things are the same. There are no words for them. People make the words. A cat doesn\u2019t say, \u2018I am a cat.\u2019 People say, \u2018This is a cat.\u2019 The sun doesn\u2019t say, \u2018My name is sun.\u2019 People say, \u2018This is the sun.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

So when someone asks you, \u2018What is this?\u2019, how should you answer?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI shouldn\u2019t use words.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Soen-sa said, \u201cVery good! You shouldn\u2019t use words. So if someone asks you, \u2018What is Buddha?\u2019, what would be a good answer?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Gita was silent. <\/em><\/p>\n

Soen-sa said, \u201cNow you ask me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is Buddha?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Soen-sa hit the floor. <\/em><\/p>\n

Gita laughed. <\/em><\/p>\n

Soen-sa said, \u201cNow I ask you: What is Buddha?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Gita hit the floor. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is God?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Gita hit the floor. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is your mother?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Gita hit the floor. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Gita hit the floor. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cVery good! This is what all things in the world are made of. You and Buddha and God and your mother and the whole world are the same.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Gita smiled.<\/em><\/p>\n

Soen-sa said, \u201cDo you have any more questions?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou still haven\u2019t told me where Katz went.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Soen-sa leaned over, looked into her eyes, and said, \u201cYou already understand.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Gita said, \u201cOh!\u201d and hit the floor very hard. Then she laughed.<\/em><\/p>\n

Soen-sa ends the anecdote with an exchange intended to be funny, but in fact a tragic testament to contemporary Western education being a force of industrialized specialization<\/a>, deliberately fragmenting the unity of all things and deconditioning our inner wholeness<\/a>:<\/p>\n

As she was opening the door, she turned to Soen-sa and said, \u201cBut I\u2019m not going to answer that way when I\u2019m in school. I\u2019m going to give regular answers!\u201d Soen-sa laughed.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/a>

Illustration from ‘The Book of Memory Gaps’ by Cecilia Ruiz. Click image for more.<\/p><\/div>\n

In another section of the book, Soen-sa examines the principles and practices that help us cultivate the pre-thinking mind necessary for truly tasting the metaphorical cookie dough of the universal life-force. Responding to a letter from a Zen beginner, a young woman named Patricia who had trouble grasping the value and very notion of \u201cdon\u2019t-know mind,\u201d he writes:<\/p>\n

Throw away all opinions, all likes and dislikes, and only keep the mind that doesn\u2019t know\u2026 Your before-thinking mind, my before-thinking mind, all people\u2019s before-thinking minds are the same. This is your substance. Your substance, my substance, and the substance of the whole universe become one. So the tree, the mountain, the cloud, and you become one\u2026 The mind that becomes one with the universe is before thinking. Before thinking there are no words. \u201cSame\u201d and \u201cdifferent\u201d are opposites words; they are from the mind that separates all things.<\/em><\/p>\n

A few months later, in another letter to Patricia, he explores the three pillars of Zen\u2019s don\u2019t-know mind:<\/p>\n

Zen practice \u2026 requires great faith, great courage, and great questioning.<\/em><\/p>\n

What is great faith? Great faith means that at all times you keep the mind which decided to practice, no matter what. It is like a hen sitting on her eggs. She sits on them constantly, caring for them and giving them warmth, so that they will hatch. If she becomes careless or negligent, the eggs will not hatch and become chicks. So Zen mind means always and everywhere believing in myself\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Great courage \u2026 means bringing all your energy to one point. It is like a cat hunting a mouse. The mouse has retreated into its hole, but the cat waits outside the hole for hours on end without the slightest movement. It is totally concentrated on the mouse-hole. This is Zen mind \u2014 cutting off all thinking and directing all your energy to one point. <\/em><\/p>\n

Next \u2014 great questioning\u2026 If you question with great sincerity, there will only be don\u2019t-know mind.<\/em><\/p>\n

Complement Dropping Ashes on the Buddha<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, indispensable in its entirety, with the great D.T. Suzuki on how Zen can help us cultivate our character<\/a>, Alan Watts on death<\/a>, and beloved Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hahn on how to do \u201chugging meditation.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Brain Pickings<\/em> is the brain child of Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large obsessed with combinatorial creativity who also writes for <\/em>Wired<\/em> UK and <\/em>The Atlantic<\/em>, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. She has gotten occasional help from a handful of guest contributors<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 brainpickings.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cZen practice \u2026 requires great faith, great courage, and great questioning.\u201d If death is so enormous a mystery that we remain unable to wrap our grownup minds around it, despite comfort from our great poets and consolation from our great philosophers, how are tiny humans to make sense of it all?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}