Category: Truth

Buddhism, Enlightenment, Meditation, Practice, Truth, Zen

Q63. I once practised Zen for ten days with little sleep, but I only got some problems with my body without getting anything. How hard should I practice?

Zen Fools

A. You seem to be in a hurry. “Don’t make haste where you should take it easy, and don’t be idle where you should be in a hurry.” “Practice just like putting out a fire on your head.” “Practice just like a hen incubates its eggs.” These are very well known maxims in Zen meditation practice.

Don’t make haste where you should take it easy, that is, you should not be impatient for the final goal. The purpose of Zen is to do away with attachment and illusions. To intend to obtain something fast is also a kind of attachment or an illusion that prevents you from concentrating on practice. Be unconcerned about when or how soon you will reach the final goal as if it were none of your business. No one knows when you will reach the final goal. However, when the time is ripe, you will reach it as easily and naturally as you touch your nose while washing your face, and (you will feel) as if it reached you. Leave it alone until the time is ripe of itself just like a hen incubates its eggs. The more impatient you are, the farther you will get away from the final goal.

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However, don’t be idle where you should be in a hurry, that is to say, you should pay all your attention to your question when practising as if you were being chased alone by hungry lions. There is no time to lose in producing an original idea, no one to help you and no shelter to hide yourself. The only way you can avoid being devoured by them is to run faster than them. Don’t try any other way than focusing on your question. Don’t try to have the same experience as you heard from others, or read in books, that seem to be nice or mysterious. Don’t take understanding for the final goal, which is you are serving your enemy as your father or mother. Never try to understand it. It can’t be explained and understood, but must be felt or experienced through the whole body. Don’t care about how far away the final goal is, but care about only whether you can keep your question. The harder you try to find a better way, the farther you will get away from the answer. Focus all your attention to the question just like putting out a fire on your head. You will undergo something new sooner or later. What is important here is that you should never attach yourself to the new experience. Just keep your focus on your question, leaving it alone, however nice or novel it is.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Buddhism, Koan, Meditation, Truth, Zen

Q62. (Master was ill and a student visited him to ask a question.) Student: Sir, what are you when your body is not you?

Zen Fools

A. Master: Not ill.
Q. Student: What is it that is not ill when you are ill?
A. Master: Ouch! Ouch!

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Commentary:
Master reveals himself naked when he who is not ill cries, “Ouch! Ouch!”
Why don’t you see him instead of hearing “Ouch! Ouch!”?
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Meditation, Truth, Zen

Q60. How can I obey the precepts (Buddhist commandments) well?

Zen Fools

A. Once upon a time there lived an old man in a village, who was well known as a good Buddhist and respected by all the people in the village. People often came to him for advice when they had problems in their lives. One day he happened to talk with an old monk.

Monk: I’ve heard that you are much respected as a very good Buddhist. How do you lead your life?
Old man: I always try to obey five precepts.
Monk: (looking surprised) Do you still obey the precepts?
Old man: (looking surprised) Of course, don’t you obey the precepts?
Monk: No, I don’t.
Old man: (looking more surprised) Do you break the precepts then?
Monk: Of course not.
Old man: What do you mean by that?
Monk: I neither break the precepts nor obey them.

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Let me take an example. What do you think is the most important to keep your life? Of course, to be alive we need a lot of things such as food, water, air and so on. However, no one can deny that air is the most essential of all we need to keep our life because we can’t maintain our life even for a few minutes without air though we can stay alive for a few days without water and even for over a month without food. In other words, not a moment can we live without breathing. Then do we feel ourselves breathing every moment we breathe because breathing is very important?
Of course, we don’t feel ourselves breathing as long as we are healthy even though we can feel it if we try to feel it consciously. If someone, feeling himself breathing every moment, tries hard to breathe, he must have a problem in his health, especially in his breathing system of his body. Likewise, if someone, Buddhist or Christian, conscious of the precepts every moment, has to try to obey them, he must have a problem in his life.

How can we obey precepts as naturally as a healthy person breathes? In a word, the precepts should become part of ourselves, and we should be able to obey them so naturally that we can obey them unconsciously just as we breathe.
Only then can we be said to obey the precepts perfectly.
Strictly speaking, to obey precepts perfectly means not that we hold back our desires to break the precepts but that we have no precepts to obey in our mind because we have realised by practising that everything including desires to break the precepts and even the precepts themselves, is an illusion.

I don’t mean that we need not obey the precepts until we realise that everything is an illusion. We should try to obey the precepts consciously because trying to obey the precepts is not only part of practice but also the minimum moral attitude we must take as human beings. Whenever you are tempted to break a precept, trace back the temptation to its root and the temptation will die away before you know it. That is a good Zen practice as well as a way to obey the precepts. With time the precepts will become part of you naturally like breathing.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Buddhism, Mind, mindful, mindfulness, Practice, Truth, Zen

Q57. Do we have to do away with all illusions in order to see the truth?

Zen Fools

A. Absolutely not. You should know that escaping from illusions means not removing or destroying them but realising that all illusions are also the truth. We are apt to judge what seems, or sounds nice or holy, to be the truth and what seems bad or ugly to be an illusion. In fact everything we can see, hear, feel and imagine, whether good or bad and right or wrong, is the truth. There is nothing but the truth, which we can’t escape from even a moment. Not seeing it is much more difficult than seeing it.

Why can’t we see it? It is because our eyes are covered with the truth and not because it is too far away. In other words it is so near us that we don’t recognise it.

Don’t look away from illusions for the truth. That is to go after illusions turning your back on the truth. The truth is not separate from illusions. What you regard as illusions is the truth and what you look upon as the truth is illusions. Don’t try to do away with illusions. You can’t make it because they are not illusions but the truth. People who strive to eliminate illusions are those who don’t know what they are. How can you remove them when you don’t know what they are? Faced with what you think is an illusion, trace back to the root which the idea of the illusion stems from instead of making efforts to get rid of it. That is the very Zen practice.

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Never avoid illusions.
Never go after the truth.
If you stop avoiding and going after,
You will be motionless.
That is the way the truth is.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Buddhism, Enlightenment, Practice, Truth, Zen

Q55. How can I remove my ego?

Zen Fools

A. Don’t try to remove your ego until you know what it is. You are likely to try hard in vain because you strive to eliminate something you don’t know. Though you say that you want to remove your ego, you actually don’t know what your ego is because you can’t see yourself as you are. How could you know what your ego is while not knowing yourself? You had better try to see yourself as you are instead of trying to eliminate your ego. When you can see yourself as you are, your ego will vanish of itself.

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All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Buddhism, Practice, Truth, Zen

Q51. What does it mean when masters say our true-self is holy?

Zen Fools

A. When it is said to be very pure or holy, it means that it is perfectly free of illusions. All words and ideas are illusions, so even the idea of its being pure or holy is an illusion and defiles it. The fact is that it neither pure nor dirty and can’t be dirtied or stained by anything. That is why ancient masters would keep silent as an answer when they were asked what they were when their body was not them.

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All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Enlightenment, Koan, Meditation, Mind, Truth, Zen

Q50. Student: What are you when your body is not you?

Zen Fools

Master: Two plus three is five.
Student: I know that, too.
Master: Then you are a master, too.
Student: I didn’t ask you about numbers.
Master: I didn’t talk about numbers, either.

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Commentary:
Master is pointing to the moon with his finger.
Why aren’t you looking at the moon but the finger?
If I were the student, I would say, “You are wrong, sir. Two plus three is seven.”

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.

Enlightenment, Meditation, Practice, Truth, Zen

Q49. Do we become emotionless, not feeling sad or happy after reaching the final goal?

Zen Fools

A. Many people think we will not have feelings like sad, anger, pride, lust, happiness and so on after reaching the final goal. Some people use being emotionless as a scale to measure how much progress they have made in meditation progress. This is one of the most common wrong ideas about Zen meditation. Why should we continue our life, not to mention practising to reach the final goal, if we become emotionless like a wooden craft? We have the same feelings: feel sad when seeing sad things, angry when encountering unjust situations, and happy when seeing happy things.

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When we’ve reached the final goal, we can see things as they are, which means we can see things as neutral. Then we see things like a movie: we are sad during a sad movie and happy during a comic play. What counts is that we never become frustrated however sad the movie is and never become so attached to the movie as to disturb our life, since we know it is not real. Likewise, when coming upon a sad situation in reality, we feel sad but never feel so frustrated as to damage our life because we know it is neutral in itself. Meeting with a good thing, we feel happy but never become so proud of, or attached to it, as to mess up our life because you know it is also neutral in itself.
In a word, we have the same feelings but in a different dimension.

All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway.