--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Robert Gimbel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > SUZANNE SEGAL > > Excerpts from: > "Collision with the Infinite" > > PART I > In the Spring of 1982, Suzanne Segal, pregnant and 27, > was living in Paris and waiting for a bus to take her home > from a birthing class.
I wonder if the complete book says anything about the rest of the pregnancy, the birth, and motherhood in Segal's state of no-self. <snip> > Tenshin Roshi Reb Anderson, of the Green Gulch Zen Center > in San Francisco, helped her loosen a rigidity in the way > her mind was interpreting the experience. He helped her to > see that the experience of emptiness was bliss, but not > relative bliss, rather the bliss of emptiness knowing itself. > He imparted the knowledge that this absolute bliss cannot be > known by the skandhas, thus the loosening of rigidity in her > mind. Similar to what MMY says, "Bliss isn't blissful"? <snip> > "The 'character work' prescribed by psychotherapy, as > well as by some spiritual traditions, including Zen > Buddhism, leads to a similar trap created by not seeing > things to be simply what they are. A relaxation of being > naturally arises if one is not seduced into taking ideas > to be truth. This relaxation is antithetical to > 'character work', with its clear position about how we > would be if our characters were worked on. When we knock > on the door of 'character work', we are invited into the > labyrinth of futurity. It is inherently impossible to > arrive at a goal that is predicated on an 'I' that will > get us there. Character work is based on the same > erroneous belief that there is an individual doer who > runs the show of life and can train itself to be a better 'I'. *Very* interesting.
