HI-SHIRYO: Are There Any Answers?
HI non-, anti-, against
SHIRYO thinking
HI-SHIRYO
“non-thinking”
Yakusan was asked by a monk, while sitting in lotus, “What are you thinking?”
Yakusan said, “Thinking that state beyond thinking.”
The monk said, “How can the state beyond thinking be thought?”
Yakusan said, “Non-thinking.”
Fukan-zazengi says:
KONO FU-SHIRYO TEI O SHIRYO SE YO.
“Think that state beyond thinking!”
FU-SHIRYO TEI IKAN GA SHIRYO SEN.
“How can the state beyond thinking be thought?”
HI-SHIRYO.
“Non-thinking”
Now, in this phrase, HI-SHIRYO, HI expresses antagonism between what and what?
Gudo taught me his interpretation that doing/action is antagonistic to intellectual thinking/worrying.
Following that interpretation as obediently as I was able, I spent 15 years finishing Gudo’s Shobogenzo translation for him, telling myself every fearful step of the way, “Just fucking do it.” Just fucking do it -- like a big dumb bulldozer.
But nowadays I see doing and worrying as two faces of one coin, which is fear. When the two extreme fear respones of fear paralysis and fight/flight are battling each other for dominance, worrying and doing is what you get. That being so, is there anything that can be practiced and experienced as antagonistic to both fearful worrying and fearful doing?
Jesus taught his followers to pray: Thy will be done. While I bow to anybody who truly follows that teaching, the teaching of Jesus, which I investigated whole-heartedly at the age of around 4 or 5, seemed to me then and still seems to me now to lack something.
The teaching of Mohammed, also, seems to be based primarily on the principle of submission to the will of the other.
This principle of submission evidently works in relieving the fears of many millions of people. To the extent that it works, I revere the principle as true. But neither kneeling and praying, nor bowing to Mecca, are my thing. My thing is the teaching of the buddha-ancestors: sitting-zen.
So my question is this: when the ancestor Yakusan answered HI-SHIRYO, and when the ancestor Dogen said that HI-SHIRYO was the vital art of sitting-zen, what were they saying was antagonistic to what?
Are there any answers?
SHIRYO thinking
HI-SHIRYO
“non-thinking”
Yakusan was asked by a monk, while sitting in lotus, “What are you thinking?”
Yakusan said, “Thinking that state beyond thinking.”
The monk said, “How can the state beyond thinking be thought?”
Yakusan said, “Non-thinking.”
Fukan-zazengi says:
KONO FU-SHIRYO TEI O SHIRYO SE YO.
“Think that state beyond thinking!”
FU-SHIRYO TEI IKAN GA SHIRYO SEN.
“How can the state beyond thinking be thought?”
HI-SHIRYO.
“Non-thinking”
Now, in this phrase, HI-SHIRYO, HI expresses antagonism between what and what?
Gudo taught me his interpretation that doing/action is antagonistic to intellectual thinking/worrying.
Following that interpretation as obediently as I was able, I spent 15 years finishing Gudo’s Shobogenzo translation for him, telling myself every fearful step of the way, “Just fucking do it.” Just fucking do it -- like a big dumb bulldozer.
But nowadays I see doing and worrying as two faces of one coin, which is fear. When the two extreme fear respones of fear paralysis and fight/flight are battling each other for dominance, worrying and doing is what you get. That being so, is there anything that can be practiced and experienced as antagonistic to both fearful worrying and fearful doing?
Jesus taught his followers to pray: Thy will be done. While I bow to anybody who truly follows that teaching, the teaching of Jesus, which I investigated whole-heartedly at the age of around 4 or 5, seemed to me then and still seems to me now to lack something.
The teaching of Mohammed, also, seems to be based primarily on the principle of submission to the will of the other.
This principle of submission evidently works in relieving the fears of many millions of people. To the extent that it works, I revere the principle as true. But neither kneeling and praying, nor bowing to Mecca, are my thing. My thing is the teaching of the buddha-ancestors: sitting-zen.
So my question is this: when the ancestor Yakusan answered HI-SHIRYO, and when the ancestor Dogen said that HI-SHIRYO was the vital art of sitting-zen, what were they saying was antagonistic to what?
Are there any answers?
posted by Mike Cross at 9:37 AM
9 Comments:
Yakusan says "Thinking that state beyond thinking."
He says 'Thinking.' But he doesn't mean abstract, intellectual, constructive thought.
He means the activity of the whole psychophysical being expressing its sincere wish to spring free. This does not mean thinking of a wish, it means a true expression of zazen which is itself that wish.
This activity includes the use of what we call 'the mind' and it includes the use of what we call 'the body' but in truth, there is no separation. And the realisation of that wish is the revelation of another truth, that there never was separation between the sitter and his or her context (the universe for want of a better concept.)
Yakusan expresses it as best he can and amazingly, he did it bloody well.
That's the best I can do today.
Sorry, re-reading your original post, you want to know what is antagonistic to what.
Not antagonistic-to but dropping-off or passing-away of the conceptual framework that imprisons us mentally/physically.
We don't understand the kind of 'thinking' that imprisons us or the kind that frees us but we do both.
I have found zazen to be a revelator of both this kind of thinking but I feel like a water spider barely skating the surface of a deep pond.
Brave try, MT. But no, it is not that.
You have expressed only a cheap view.
We can never free ourselves from views by relying on a cheap view like that. If we could, I would have attained complete liberation long ago.
Never mind. Sitting-zen is the practice-and-experience that gets right to the bottom of the Buddha’s enlightenment (BODAI O GUJIN SURU SHUSHO NARI) -- notwithstanding our own tendency to lose, almost completely, the vigorous road of getting the body out (HOTONDO SHUSSHIN NO KATSURO O KIKETSU SU). Proceed enthusiastically!
You dismiss a sincere attempt to describe 'non-thinking' with the word 'cheap.'An unusual word to use and your criticism is also unusually not constructive.
I look forward to your answer to your own question.
A cheap view is like green grass. A view is always cheap.
To sit in the lotus posture is consciously to do something. To allow body and mind spontaneously to drop off is consciously not to do anything.
The greater difficulty is in the decision not to do.
This is what I struggle with.
Could it be that Master Yakusan knew that this puzzle could never be solved? Pursuing an answer we become confused, stimied, stumped, frustrated. Is it that abandoning the pursuit of an answer and abandoning opinions about thinking and nonthinking allows us to sit at ease in lotus? Or on the other hand could it be…
Pete
'To sit in the lotus posture is consciously to do something. To allow body and mind spontaneously to drop off is consciously not to do anything.'
I have no answers, just a few questions on spontaniety.
Is the conscious effort required to sit in lotus in a sense premeditated (excuse the non-pun) i.e. non-spontaneous?
My dictionary tells me that the word 'spontaneous' comes from the latin "(sua) sponte 'of one's own accord, willingly'". Is to be spontaneous to relinquish our views willingly, of our own accord, as opposed to forcing ourselves, against our will, into such an action?
Hi Pete,
I think that what the buddha-ancestors call on us to abandon in our sitting-zen is not only the pursuit of an answer, and not only opinions about thinking and nonthinking. They call upon us to abandon all views, to drop off body and mind.
I think that in the questions and answers between Master Yakusan and the monk, this is already understood. Having understood this already, the monk was asking: How?
The monk was asking: What is the conscious means-whereby?
Hi Drew,
To deepen your understanding of non-spontaneity and spontaneity, I strongly recommend you to read Frank Lambert’s brilliant introductions to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. See for example www.entropysimple.com, or www.shakespeare2ndlaw.com.
My understanding is that spontaneous relinquishment of views, or body and mind spontaneously dropping off, is an effortless flow of energy like a fire burning or like a boulder rolling down hill. Physical and mental effort to sit in the lotus posture are our effort to remove the activation energy barrier -- like struggling to get the fire lit or like dislodging the boulder.
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