Hi Marsha, I've read Steve Hagen too. It is plain and simple, in fact I found reading him to be very repetitive, which turned out to be his point. Almost the whole of his ...
"Buddhism is not what you think" ... simply restates that over and over again in different phrasing. The whole is in fact in that koan of a title. Ian On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 6:28 AM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote: > > > "While I am thinking about it there is a very good book on Buddhism recently > out called 'Buddhism, Plain and Simple', by Steve Hagen and published by > Tuttle Publishing. I recommend you get it because it shows the similarities, > between the MOQ and Zen Buddhism more clearly than any other I have seen." > > (Pirsig to McWatt, May 6th 1998.) > > > When the Buddha spoke of individuals, he often used a different term > “stream.” Imagine a stream flowing --- constantly moving and changing, > always different from one moment to the next. Most of us see ourselves as > corks floating in a stream, persisting things moving along in the stream of > time. But this is yet another frozen view. According to this view. > everything in the stream changes except the cork. While we generally admit > to changes in our body, our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, our > understandings, and our beliefs, we still believe, “I myself don’t change. > I’m still me. I’m an unchanging cork in an ever-changing stream.” This is > precisely what we believe the self to be --- something that doesn’t change. > > The fact is, however, that there are no corks in the stream. There is only > stream. What we conceptualize as “cork” is also stream. We are like music. > Music, after all, is a type of stream. Music exists only in constant flow > and flux and change. Once the movement stops, the music is no more. It > exists not as a particular thing, but as pure coming and going with no thing > that comes or goes. > > Look at this carefully. If this is true --- how a stream exists, how > music exists, and how we exist --- see how it is that when we insert the > notion of “I” we’re posited some little, solid entity that floats along, not > as stream, but like a cork in a stream. We see ourselves as solid corks, not > as the actual stream we are. > > If we are the stream, what is it that experiences the flux, the flow, the > change? The Buddha saw that there is no particular thing that is having an > experience. There is experience, but no experiencer. There is perception, > but no perceiver. This is consciousness, but no self that can be located or > identified. > > > (Hagen, Steve, ‘Buddhism: Plain and Simple’, p.128) > > > > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
