GEGYO O KYU SU: Ceasing Intellectual Work
GON O TAZUNE GO O OU NO GEGYO O KYU SU BESHI.
GON sayings
O [object particle]
TAZUNE investigate, research, study
GO words
O [object particle]
OU chase, chase after
NO [joining particle]
GE understanding
GYO goings on, conduct, work
O [object particle]
KYU, rest, cease
SUBESHI should
"We should cease the intellectual work of studying sayings and chasing words."
In endeavoring to clarify what this sentence means to me, I will draw a distinction between two kinds of thinking.
The first kind is intellectual thinking, abstract thinking, thinking about -- what we usually mean by thinking. This is the kind of thinking Master Dogen is urging us to take a rest from.
The second kind of thinking is not thinking about but thinking itself -- what FM Alexander called "the most mental thing there is." It is to think in a very vital way, and not in an end-gaining way. It is not what we generally understand by the word thinking.
When Master Dogen wrote in Shobogenzo that "to break a sitting-cushion is right thinking," he was describing the second kind of thinking.
I have a very good Alexander student who, when he started lessons two or three years ago, always let me know when he was trying to figure out something I said in an end-gaining way -- he would furrow his brow so that I could see a big fold between his eyebrows. Over the course of our first few lessons we turned this habit into a running joke. Whenever I drew his attention to it, he would laugh and stop thinking like that -- thereby releasing the tension from between his eyebrows.
Alexander work, FM used to say, and Marjory Barlow often reminded everybody, is an exercise in finding out what thinking is -- what the second kind of thinking is. Thinking is the means-whereby. Thinking up, without doing anything at all about it but just thinking up along the spine, is the essence of mental sitting in the full lotus posture. (The big difficulty, for all of us it seems, is in the not doing, in the without.)
The first kind of abstract thinking, trying to solve some problem intellectually, and this second kind of vital thinking are totally different approaches. In fact, they may be seen as mutually exclusive, insofar as end-gaining and attending to the means-whereby may be seen as mutually exclusive activities. As a basic rule, it is one or the other.
This is the reason, as I understand it, that in the preamble to his instructions for how to sit, Master Dogen urged us to take a rest from the first kind of thinking.
Some Zen Masters, who pride themselves on being not thinkers but doers, are fixed in their prejudice against the word "thinking." In the end, that problem is nobody else's problem but their own.
GON sayings
O [object particle]
TAZUNE investigate, research, study
GO words
O [object particle]
OU chase, chase after
NO [joining particle]
GE understanding
GYO goings on, conduct, work
O [object particle]
KYU, rest, cease
SUBESHI should
"We should cease the intellectual work of studying sayings and chasing words."
In endeavoring to clarify what this sentence means to me, I will draw a distinction between two kinds of thinking.
The first kind is intellectual thinking, abstract thinking, thinking about -- what we usually mean by thinking. This is the kind of thinking Master Dogen is urging us to take a rest from.
The second kind of thinking is not thinking about but thinking itself -- what FM Alexander called "the most mental thing there is." It is to think in a very vital way, and not in an end-gaining way. It is not what we generally understand by the word thinking.
When Master Dogen wrote in Shobogenzo that "to break a sitting-cushion is right thinking," he was describing the second kind of thinking.
I have a very good Alexander student who, when he started lessons two or three years ago, always let me know when he was trying to figure out something I said in an end-gaining way -- he would furrow his brow so that I could see a big fold between his eyebrows. Over the course of our first few lessons we turned this habit into a running joke. Whenever I drew his attention to it, he would laugh and stop thinking like that -- thereby releasing the tension from between his eyebrows.
Alexander work, FM used to say, and Marjory Barlow often reminded everybody, is an exercise in finding out what thinking is -- what the second kind of thinking is. Thinking is the means-whereby. Thinking up, without doing anything at all about it but just thinking up along the spine, is the essence of mental sitting in the full lotus posture. (The big difficulty, for all of us it seems, is in the not doing, in the without.)
The first kind of abstract thinking, trying to solve some problem intellectually, and this second kind of vital thinking are totally different approaches. In fact, they may be seen as mutually exclusive, insofar as end-gaining and attending to the means-whereby may be seen as mutually exclusive activities. As a basic rule, it is one or the other.
This is the reason, as I understand it, that in the preamble to his instructions for how to sit, Master Dogen urged us to take a rest from the first kind of thinking.
Some Zen Masters, who pride themselves on being not thinkers but doers, are fixed in their prejudice against the word "thinking." In the end, that problem is nobody else's problem but their own.
posted by Mike Cross at 6:33 AM
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