Posts filed under ‘Ancient wisdom’
The Holy Man – Naked and Unarmed
There is a famous story about a saddhu, an Indian holy man, who wandered the country without possessions. When he was hungry people fed him; when he was tired he lay down to sleep. He was as naked as the day he was born.
One day the Saddhu made a terrible error by wandering into the tent of a Muslim Chieftain. Two of the women screamed and the Chieftain picked up his sword and slashed at the Saddhu, cutting off his arm. The Saddhu, bleeding heavily, calmly turned and walked away.
The Chieftain, shocked at what he had done, picked up the arm and took it outside to find the Saddhu. When he caught up to him the Saddhu stuck his arm back into place and turned away. But the Chieftain said, “Before you go, please give me some words of wisdom.”
The Saddhu said,
If you do not do what you want to do,
You may get to do what you like.
When the Chieftain heard these words, he left his home and followed the Saddhu as a disciple.
What did he mean by this saying? Is there an important difference between doing what we want to do (our desires) and what we like (what is good for us)? And if this difference is significant, then how can we make sure we know how to tell this difference?
As the Tao te Ching says,
Desiring,
See only the surface.
Desireless,
See the essence
To get to the bottom of things, to really experience the profound, we need to gain control of our desires. Without this, by blindly following our desires, we only scratch the surface of life. This is not an easy lesson to learn; in fact, it’s one of the most difficult.
There is Nothing In The World That Is Hidden
Studying ancient writings means to study our lives.
Thomas Wright
I’ve just been reading a wonderful book called How to Cook Your Life. It’s not a cook book, although it does deal with the job of a cook in Zen temples, a job called the Tenzo. The book is made up of a short essay called Instructions For The Zen Cook by the great Japanese Zen master Eihei Dogen Zenji (1200- 1253) and a commentary on that work by a contemporary Zen master Kosho Uchiyama Roshi (1912-1998). Uchiyama wrote an excellent book about zazen (zen meditation) called Opening The Hand Of Thought.
What is so great about this book? What’s great about it is how it deals with the levels of life and practice, and manages to show how the obvious and the subtle are both existing and interpenetrating each other at the same time. So on the surface the book may describe how the Tenzo manages his task of feeding the Zen Community, while at the same time the book explains how by viewing these tasks in the right way they become the essence of the Tenzo’s practice of Buddhism. He feeds and nourishes the bodies of others while he spiritually feeds himself.
When he was a young monk, Dogen went to China to study Ch’an (Japanese: Zen) Buddhism. He arrived in China in April 1223, but couldn’t disembark immediately so had to stay on the ship. One day in May an elderly monk came on board to buy mushrooms from Japanese merchants on board. Dogen invited him to tea, and the two talked.
The monk explained that he was 61 years old, and had been a monk for 40 years. He had recently been made Tenzo at his monastery, and wanted to make a noodle soup to celebrate May 5th, a festival day. However, he had no mushrooms for the soup and so had walked the 14 miles to the port to buy them. Dogen asked him to stay and continue talking, but the Tenzo insisted that he had to go back that night to prepare the soup for tomorrow. A 28 mile walk to buy mushrooms.
Dogen asked, “Why, when you are so old, do you do the hard work of a Tenzo? Why don’t you spend your time practicing zazen (meditation) or studying koans? Is there something special to be gained from working particularly as a Tenzo?”
The old man laughed and remarked, “My good friend from abroad! You do not yet understand what practise is all about, nor do you know the meaning of characters (Chinese writing).”
When Dogen heard these words he was taken aback and felt greatly ashamed. So he asked, “What are characters and what is practice? “
The monk replied, “ If you do not deceive yourself about this problem, you will be a man of the Way. “ Dogen admits that he had no idea what the monk was talking about.
In July Dogen was at Mt. Ayuwang, and the Tenzo came to visit him. Dogen asked him about their earlier discussion. The Tenzo said,
“A person who studies characters must know just what characters are, and one intending to practice the Way must understand what practice is.”
Dogen asked, “What are characters?”
The monk said, “one, two, three, four, five.”
“And what is practice?”
“There is nothing in the world that is hidden.”
Kosho Uchiyama in his commentary on this story, gives us a version in contemporary dialogue:
What are characters?
This, that and the other; in other words- everything!
What is practice?
Everything you encounter in your life is practice.
He then explains what the old monk was conveying to young Dogen:
In living this life day by day, we encounter innumerable things and situations, and when we try to search for some fixed truth about them, we always fail. This is because the truth of life is found in each and every activity. Life is not a thing which is substantial or fixed; rather, it is our everyday activity. There is no way to see life outside of the vivid functioning of our every activity.
Meaning does not lie in any particular thing or in any particular practice, but in everything we do and everything that happens to us. This is our life. It is what we do and what happens to us. This was how the Tenzo looked on his life and how he fulfilled his job.
Kosho Uchiyama adds that the spirit running through Dogen’s text is that we must function with a clear mind and true sincerity in the actual situation in which we find ourselves, and not in one we have fabricated in our minds.
Chuang Tzu
Do not open your door to fame.
Don’t make plans.
Don’t be taken by activities.
Don’t acknowledge a master
Keep your body whole without tiring it.
Wander where there is no path.
Be all that you have received from Heaven,
Without being aware of it.
Just be empty, that’s all.
The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror,
Not following after, not welcoming.
He responds without holding onto his response.
Thus he can win things over without effort.
Chuang Tzu
The great Taoist writer, philosopher and practitioner;
Funny and spiritual, wise and full of humour,
He wrote ‘Bank on the Tao’.
This is the only bank you can trust
The Blog That Fell From The Sky
In 2003/4 the British Library put on an exhibition called Chinese Printmaking Today. It featured a dazzling array of printmaking skills, but to me the most impressive piece was a collection of four traditionally-bound Chinese books, printed on rice paper with indigo covers, string binding, and held in beautiful walnut boxes. They looked like beautifully preserved examples of 15th and 16th century volumes. The work was called Tianshu (Book From The Sky) and what was remarkable was that it was all an elaborate cultural joke. All of the 12,000 elaborately carved Chinese characters that made up the content of the book were all invented by the artist, Xu Bing, and they had no meaning at all. The books looked like the real thing, but were just elaborate nonsense.
It got me thinking what a real book that fell from the sky might reveal to us. The sky (tian) is Heaven for the ancient Chinese, and it’s where the ancestors, with all their accumulated wisdom and knowledge go after they have died. What would all our ancestors, looking down on our puny efforts, have to tell us about how we are living our lives. They must have made similar mistakes to us, but now they are unaffected by them, whereas we still have to live out the karma of our days contending with the results that we have caused. Perhaps such a book, told from this elevated POV, could give us guidance about how to conduct ourselves, how to avoid or at least deal with pain, troubles, and problems. This would be a great book to have in your library. I decided (this is a joke) to translate this book, since it is the only Chinese book I am capable of translating. I actually wrote to the artist asking him for the right to translate the book. He never wrote back. He must have thought I was mad. Maybe I am.
That’s how I got the idea of The Book That Fell From The Sky, a users guide for earthlings, full of advice from the past and the present, from the dead and the living, about how to look after your body, mind and spirit in this lifetime. Of course I haven’t gotten around to writing this book yet, so perhaps I should re-title it The Blog That Fell From The Sky.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
There is a famous story about a saddhu, an Indian holy man, who wandered the country without possessions. When he was hungry people fed him; when he was tired he lay down to sleep. He was as naked as the day he was born.
One day the Saddhu made a terrible error by wandering into the tent of a Muslim Chieftain. Two of the women screamed and the Chieftain picked up his sword and slashed at the Saddhu, cutting off his arm. The Saddhu, bleeding heavily, calmly turned and walked away.
The Chieftain, shocked at what he had done, picked up the arm and took it outside to find the Saddhu. When he caught up to him the Saddhu stuck his arm back into place and turned away. But the Chieftain said, “Before you go, please give me some words of wisdom.”
The Saddhu said,
If you do not do what you want to do,
You may get to do what you like.
When the Chieftain heard these words, he left his home and followed the Saddhu as a disciple.
What did he mean by this saying? Is there an important difference between doing what we want to do (our desires) and what we like (what is good for us)? And if this difference is significant, then how can we make sure we know how to tell this difference?
As the Tao te Ching says,
Always desiring,
See only the surface.
Desireless,
See the essence.
To get to the bottom of things, to really experience the profound, we need to gain control of our desires. Without this, by blindly following our desires, we only scratch the surface of life. We need to learn how to gain control of our desires and so learn a more meaningful and deeper relationship to life. And in doing so, we learn how to live healthier and longer.
Inner Truth – A Bit More about Seneca
In the book The Spiritual Teachings Of Seneca I wrote:
Seneca observed that most people are seduced by the glittering appeal of life’s material awards- houses, possessions, money- into holding an irrational attitude to the world. When we are elated by gain and depressed by loss, our values become distorted and we begin to live a life of illusion, losing sight of the distinction between the true and the false.
In alienating ourselves from inner truth, our identities become tentative and uncertain, and we are easily swayed by the examples of others. We follow majority opinions and tastes rather than our deepest convictions. Many of us waste much of our time scrabbling to make money and achieve high status, failing to fulfil our potential for happiness. As we mistake the false for the true, attaching ourselves slavishly to material objects, our judgements about the world become suspect and we stray further and further from the truth. Increasingly confused and perplexed about what life means and how to get the best out of it, we often feel lost.
Seneca followed a philosophy- Stoicism- that altered his attitude to life and enabled him to react to loss in a different way to other people. Stoicism helped him to acquire an inner state of freedom and peace that was intended to leave him untroubled and detached from pain, disappointment or failure. His mission was to create a practical, down-to-earth recipe for living that could alleviate symptoms of spiritual illness and be applied in all circumstances.
Seneca on Adversity and Fortune
Seneca, the Roman philosopher and statesman, had a lot to say about adversity and how to deal with the strange twists of Fate. This wasn’t just philosophical musings either, because Seneca’s life was full of extreme highs and lows of fortune. He experienced times of debilitating loss as well as periods of great power and wealth. As a young lawyer he was exiled from Rome by the Emperor Claudius because of his skill at oratory- Claudius was envious of his eloquence. He sent him to Corsica, then a barren, barely populated island, for 8 years. Just before he was taken away, his young son died and while in exile his wife also died. Seneca’s life was at its lowest ebb.
When Claudius married Agrippina, she convinced the Emperor to bring Seneca back to Rome to become tutor to her son Nero. She eventually made him a Consul, a powerful political position. When Nero finally became Emperor, Seneca found himself at the centre of Roman power and he parlayed that into the amassing of great wealth, becoming one of the richest men in the Empire.
This life of extreme ups and downs gave Seneca plenty of material for his writings. He was always wary of Fortuna, the God who was behind the changes of fate. He believed you always had to look at the dark side of possible events (the bottom line). This was his reality principle:
Never give in to adversity
Don’t dare trust prosperity.
The blow you’ve anticipated
Will do the least harm.
And:
None of us can make promises about what is to come. Even what we hold slips through our fingers; and accident cuts short the very hour we have in our grasp. Fear keeps pace with hope, like a prisoner and his escort
He claimed to have welcomed poverty when he was in exile:
Those of us who are on good terms with poverty can count ourselves rich.
The person who is truly impoverished is not the one who has little but the one who yearns after more.
Of course as a rich man he was accused of being a hypocrite for writing lines like this:
Society is unanimous on the subject of Greed- it wallows in it. People look up to money, they pray for it for themselves. They offer it up as if it were the noblest profession they could possibly have.
But Seneca the philosopher also talked about the value and importance of the soul:
Riches are not where we pile them up. It is the soul, not the safe, that we need to fill.
Seneca’s life, with its rollercoaster highs and lows, its grandeur jutted next to fears and anxieties feels very modern to me, even though he lived 2000 years ago. He is an example of how we can fall abruptly from high position and status but also can rise again from the ashes. There is hope in this. Things continually change. Nothing stays static.
But in the end, Nero forced Seneca to commit suicide, because he knew too much about Nero’s transgressions. However Seneca went down in history as having a ‘good’ philosophical death.
(Quotations from The Spiritual Teachings of Seneca by Mark Forstater and Victoria Radin)
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