(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A Modern Koan [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-25 Everybody has heard some of the Indian and Chinese and Japanese koans, with often bogus explanations, but your koan is where you find it. What have you strained mightily with, and gotten nowhere with so far? Or what have you decided isn’t worth the trouble, and given up on? How do you find yourself these fine spring mornings? Why, I just throw back the covers, and there I am! Do not be fooled by the apparent simplicity and the obviousness of this old joke. When you find yourself on a fine spring morning, what have you found? And what do others think they have found, if they have not gotten anywhere on this? In a word, self. And therefore suffering. We usually talk about Buddhas being Enlightened, but that is not what the title means. Bodhi is Awakening, and a Buddha is therefore Woke. We can translate “Bodhidharma” as The Truth of Awakening. Good man, Bodhidharma. We will have more to say about him and the circle you see him painted in above. Shakyamuni Buddha taught No-Self, which too many scholars try to make into a vast philosophical edifice. No, forget all of that. We are simply talking about unselfishness. My religion is kindness. Dalai Lama To study Buddhism is to study the self. Dogen Zenji Why are people selfish? What have you been taught to be selfish about? To study the self is to forget the self. Ah, yes, so simple to say, but that is the hard part, like not thinking of an elephant. We must talk about how you do that sometime. But the first step is to WANT to do it, and to be willing to fall down and pick ourselves up over and over and over. To forget the self is to be awakened by everything in the universe. All right! Now, without thinking that we are in some way superior (which is, of course, the essence of self, being More Equal than others in your own mind), we need to take stock of the world and the people making a hash of it. They wake up in the morning, and see in themselves fear. Fear of not getting what you want is suffering. Fear of losing what you have (or merely think you have) is suffering. Not actually knowing what you want is suffering. We call those Greed, Aversion, and Delusion, the Three Fires of the mind. Daily Kos is about the problem of politics, so let’s look briefly at that. Well, we have had decades of the terminally greedy leading the terminally fearful, raging haters by the nose to give them unconscionable tax cuts. The excuse has been to Starve the Beast, that is, to bust the budget and engorge the debt with the idea of forcing cuts to social programs that actually help people. This goes all the way up to Social Security and Medicare, which recipients PAY for as insurance, not just to taxes and “spending” (actually investment, with a greater return than any legitimate business). It also means voting against their own economic and other interests, and taking comfort only in the thought of being More Equal than others, that is, that Those People are hurt worse. Now, put that aside. Yes, we know we have work to do, and yes, that is part of your training in compassion and so on, but we are trying not to fall into fear and hatred ourselves. It turns out that our best political strategy is to do the maximum good for everyone, even those who can’t stand it. Thus we can help some of them, or at least millions of their children, to fling back the covers of their fiercely constructed shells, and find their real selves. It is not only in bed that we are all covered over. So remember, on these fine spring mornings, and all of the others, to keep flinging back your own covers and finding yourself. That will do for us to begin with. Please feel free to ask me about any traditional koans that bother you, or any personal koans. The Most Bogus Koan in the World I will just leave you with this. Everybody has heard of The Sound of One Hand Clapping. There is no such thing. It’s the sound of one hand NOT clapping. Hakuin Zenji taught When we clap two hands together, there is a sound; What sound is there in one hand? I must tell you more about that sometime. Me Mokurai is a Soto Zen Buddhist Priest, trained at Shasta Abbey. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/25/2176246/-A-Modern-Koan Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/