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JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
This morning as I woke, I vowed to see the world clearly, to end violence, and to bring compassion to all beings. What's this?
My morning coffee is on my desk before me, what's this? My alter candle just went out, what's this?
When we see with a clear mind, we see not the thing as a notion, but rather its function. Function brings us always to relation, to interdependence. We are all in this universe together, and much like that theological position, panantheism, each of us is the whole and part of that whole, simultaneously.
Hence we do what is there before us to do. What is the question? From where does it arise? "What's this" becomes a clarifying question, a smackdown question. It is so because the answer is never about the thing, its shape, size, color or texture.
We Americans are very quick to know something in terms of its appearance, but we are often completely in the dark about its deep function. We see independence. We see heroes. We see individuals. We see past, present, and future. And thus we see with very substantial filters covering our eyes. So we do not see clearly. We are in a fog of our own making.
But this was not always so. Early Americans were much more deeply connected to the cycle of nature. Early Americans even gave rise to a form of Zen called Transcendentalism. This is, in a very real sense, a purely American Zen. But with the age of industrialization and mechanization, there arose a serious threat to this practice: bureaucratization. Everything is a thing and in its box. It is defined by its box, so its shape, size, and color become very important. Function is only in relation to the whole, hence our diminuation as a "cog in the wheel" of things. We removed ourselves from nature and lost our deep connection to natural cycles, rhythms, as well as the various subtle and majestic manifestations of God.
When we moved deep into the mountains and lived without electricity, function and the cycles of the natural world were made very clear to me. Wood was heat and heat was life. Roofs were water collectors and they were life. The world of instant was gone, the world of TV and other "Matters of Consequence" (to quote the Little Prince) were rendered and what was left was something without a name. In Zen we call it practice realization,
Be well.
Good Morning All,
This morning as I woke, I vowed to see the world clearly, to end violence, and to bring compassion to all beings. What's this?
My morning coffee is on my desk before me, what's this? My alter candle just went out, what's this?
When we see with a clear mind, we see not the thing as a notion, but rather its function. Function brings us always to relation, to interdependence. We are all in this universe together, and much like that theological position, panantheism, each of us is the whole and part of that whole, simultaneously.
Hence we do what is there before us to do. What is the question? From where does it arise? "What's this" becomes a clarifying question, a smackdown question. It is so because the answer is never about the thing, its shape, size, color or texture.
We Americans are very quick to know something in terms of its appearance, but we are often completely in the dark about its deep function. We see independence. We see heroes. We see individuals. We see past, present, and future. And thus we see with very substantial filters covering our eyes. So we do not see clearly. We are in a fog of our own making.
But this was not always so. Early Americans were much more deeply connected to the cycle of nature. Early Americans even gave rise to a form of Zen called Transcendentalism. This is, in a very real sense, a purely American Zen. But with the age of industrialization and mechanization, there arose a serious threat to this practice: bureaucratization. Everything is a thing and in its box. It is defined by its box, so its shape, size, and color become very important. Function is only in relation to the whole, hence our diminuation as a "cog in the wheel" of things. We removed ourselves from nature and lost our deep connection to natural cycles, rhythms, as well as the various subtle and majestic manifestations of God.
When we moved deep into the mountains and lived without electricity, function and the cycles of the natural world were made very clear to me. Wood was heat and heat was life. Roofs were water collectors and they were life. The world of instant was gone, the world of TV and other "Matters of Consequence" (to quote the Little Prince) were rendered and what was left was something without a name. In Zen we call it practice realization,
Be well.