A. Master: “How can I explain it better than you?”
Commentary:
Wisdom never scolds or speaks ill of foolishness.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Category: Meditation
Q308. Desire comes from the thoughts we cling to. What is the difference between desire and a goal? Humanity will never progress without having a goal to grow in life, which is the law of nature.
A. A goal comes from desire. It is a concrete expression of your desire. I never tell you not to have desire or a goal in your life. As you said, your desire is the motive to develop the world into a better place to live in. You love your family, and your goal in life is to make enough money to help them to enjoy an easy and comfortable life. Love is also another expression of desire.
The key problem is that we don’t control desire but are controlled by it. And we have seen what miserable and even disastrous things it can lead us to do when our life is run by our desire.
What I mean is not that desire is bad and that you should not have it, but that we should be able to drive our desire instead of being driven by it through realising the root of your desire. When, aware of the root of your desire, you can run your desire instead of being run by it, your desire is called compassion. What Zen says is not that we should not have desire but that you should turn it into compassion, wise desire.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q307. What does the New Testament Matthew 5:29,30 mean?
Matthew 5:29,30: 29) “So if your right eye causes you to sin, take it out and throw it away! It is much better for you to lose a part of your body than to have your whole body thrown into hell. 30) If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away! It is much better for you to lose one of your limbs than to have your whole body go off to hell.”
A. Here your whole body means your true-self or your whole life, and parts of your body such as eyes and hands means illusions. To remove your eyes and hands means to stop following illusions. Having your whole body thrown into hell refers to leaving your true-self lost and living in the world of illusions. So, ‘losing parts of your body is much better than having your whole body thrown into hell’ means that to stop following illusions, although it is not easy, is much better than to live in the world of illusions.
Student: “How do you prevent your eyes and hands from sinning?”
Master: “I don’t have eyes and hands to sin.”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q306. Student: “What happens when a tree withers and all its leaves are fallen?
A. Master: “Its body is revealed.”
Commentary:
Look look. Do you see its body now?
Don’t say that it is beyond words.
Even a child can explain it.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q305. It is said that we should know the mind prior to thinking. How can we know the mind prior to thinking?
A. ‘Have to know the mind prior to a thinking’ is a very common saying in Zen circles. This makes sense. The problem is that people, not grasping the point of the saying, follow the words: They struggle to divide their mind into two, and distinguish the mind prior to thinking from the mind after thinking.
The core teaching of Buddhism is non-duality, oneness. Your mind is not dual or multiple. You should know that the mind which is producing thinking at this moment is not different and separate from the mind prior to thinking, but it is the very mind prior to thinking that you want to know. The mind that is reading this writing at this moment is the mind you should realise. There is no other mind than this.
Student: “What is the mind prior to thinking?”
Master: “Why do you ask me where your tongue is?”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q304. My life is still full of troublesome problems even though I practice Zen meditation. How can I be perfectly free from them?
A. There is no one who has no problems at all in the world. For a joke, it is said that even Buddha and God have a lot of troubles all the time because people don’t follow them and do a lot of bad things against their teachings. If you were perfectly free from troubles, the monotony of life might be your serious trouble.
You should know that Zen practice doesn’t change what happens to you but your view of what happens to you. As mentioned repeatedly earlier, everything is empty and neutral. Whether it is good or bad, useful or harmful, is in the eye of the beholder. Try to see everything as neutral even though you have not realised the truth. Why don’t you see your problems as good omens of good fortune to come? Why don’t you think that you are paying in advance for what you will enjoy later? When your view is changed, your thoughts are changed. When your thoughts are changed, your acts are changed. When your acts are changed, what happens to you will also be changed.
Student: “How can I get rid of enemies?”
Master: “Why don’t you make them your friends?”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q303. Student: “How can we describe the true-self exactly?”
A. Master: “If you describe it, you are wrong.”
Commentary:
If you cannot describe it, you are also wrong.
What he does speaks louder than what he speaks.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q302. Do masters still have the same emotion as we do?
A. They feel things in the same way sentient beings feel: They are hungry when they don’t have food, feel cold in winter and hot in summer. They are angry at the sight of unjust things, feel happy when seeing good things and feel sympathetic with poor people or animals in suffering. Without such feelings, how would they have compassion for sentient beings?
The difference between the enlightened and sentient beings is how to accept or deal with such feelings. Sentient beings are controlled by such feelings because they don’t know the truth that everything is empty, while the enlightened never let such feelings run their life since they are aware of the truth. How the enlightened handle such feelings is compared to a clean mirror. A mirror reflects black colour when a black thing comes and red colour when a red thing comes, but it never becomes black or red. In other words, they can see things as if seeing a movie. While seeing a movie, they feel sad, happy and angry, but they come back to their usual emotion after the movie.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q301. What is the difference between form and emptiness?
A. No difference at all. Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. Whether it is form or emptiness is in the eye of the beholder. The problem is that we are so addicted to seeing things only as form that we can’t see them as emptiness.
It is like seeing a golden lion only as a lion without knowing that it is gold. The purpose of Zen meditation is to be able to see both the lion and gold, or form and emptiness, at the same time and to realise that the essence of the lion is gold, and that the essence, gold, never changes even if the form of the lion is changed into whatever other form.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
Q298. Is enlightenment by Zen esoteric?
A. Some people seem to have such an idea. The reason why it seems esoteric is not that it is hidden and transmitted secretly to only a few chosen people but that it is difficult to grasp through experience, not as knowledge.
From a historical point of view, no masters tried to hide it, but tried to share it with as many people as they could. They didn’t spare their effort to help people attain enlightenment until the last moment of their lives. We can see several cases in which masters gave teaching to their students even at the last moment of their life. To tell the truth, it can be said to be an open secret.
Let me quote a beautiful and holy situation when a master gave his teaching on his deathbed.
The master was about to enter transformation (to die). Sitting, he said: “After my death do not allow my True Dharma Eye to perish.”
Sansho, his student, burst out: “How could your True Dharma Eye perish?”
The master asked: “What then will you say when in future people put questions to you?”
Sansho gave a Katsu.
“Who could know that my True Dharma Eye would perish through this blind ass,” said the master, and revealed his Nirvana.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
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