Chris,
> Chris Austin-Lane <chris@...> wrote:
>
> That reluctance to challenge the prevailing conditions is why human history
> has been so awful until so recently, and is only now slightly better.
"You" -- yes, and even You -- have to look at it with the eyes of Compassion
and Wisdom, not with the calculating and critical eye you're looking at it now.
True compassion is nothing you can fake. The historical Buddha is not the
first person who comes to mind when I think of folks who have let humanity
down, and let their own humanity down.
> If you think that racism and sexism have become untenable to praise in our
> world without people fighting, tooth and nail, to change their conditions,
> establishing their right to autonomy, to their own head, against intimates
> and strangers alike, then you should talk to more people involved in the
> changes.
Some of that is surely garbled; are you usually up so late at night? Chris, I
think we're all involved in the changes, there's no two ways about it. You're
free to establish yourself at the level of intensity that you like. And it's
one reason why we practice.
> > I think too that an awakened person does not break Precepts: Their
> > maintenance goes with the territory. To act otherwise is to go
> > deliberately against our nature. When we're awake, there is just our
> > nature, and nothing and no one to go against; and, one cannot be deliberate.
> >
>
> Didn't we just go through this with the NYT/zen abuse thread? Awakening
> doesn't change all the neural systems in the head, and those things have
> effects. To believe otherwise is to be condemned to 500 births as a fox.
You're momentarily again mixing up "Karma" and awakening. You're remembering a
koan case involving a legend in which the question was asked about whether an
awakened person escapes karma. I'm saying that an awakened person will not
break Precepts. If our nature becomes covered again somehow -- say, by
sickness, or old age, or by an accident, or lack of practice -- then newly
formed karma can deflect our straight behavior, and we are then subject to THAT
new karma, and in the confusion, we do neglect our nature at that time, because
we can. This is called "vexation", and it's said that vexation arises
endlessly. Well, it arises endless only if we are not awake. When we are
awake, there is no vexation.
>
>
> > We continue to practice in order to remain awake, and thus to keep
> > "studying" the Precepts, as is said well.
> >
> Since you enjoy recommending books, I'll recommend one for you - "After the
> ecstasy, the laundry." Not, what the title suggests, a tale of
> child-rearing, it is a series of interviews with the baby-boomer and other
> early generations to study in meditation in its various forms in the East
> rather intensively and how what seems like a perfectly enlightened mind set
> in one situation, say a forest in Thailand, can be seen to be limited and
> flawed in another situation, say with a nagging family and a busy
> techno-civilization. It is good to read because it clarifies that we
> aren't about perfection here in zen training, we are about continually
> doing whatever we are as well as we can, with attention and without self.
> Sometimes, in some situations, depending on the conditions, as well as we
> can isn't as well as we do later. That's why people need art lessons and
> psychotherapy (depending on those conditions) even if they have a lot of
> zen training.
Thanks, the book sounds good. I am still working on your Red Pine.
Keep up your practice! And I hope you can attend some more very long sesshin
regularly.
--Joe
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