A Comedy of Flowers

With "Brexit Day" fast approaching I feel the need for some form of diversion. Throwing off the shackles of Brussels, being rid of the EU Bullies and finally getting our country back undoubtably needs the backdrop of a calm and measured mind.

Again, I heard this morning of the various online threats to our Banking Cyberworld, of networks going down and folk left without cash or the various other means to pay for their Costa coffee. Apparently the advice of our experts is to "diversify our portfolios", which I must say sounds rather painful. I will put that on hold at the moment and rest content with my current set.

Well, I mentioned diversion and have found it in the "Flower Ornament Scripture", otherwise known as the Avatamsaka Sutra, a mighty work of over 1500 pages, as translated by Thomas Cleary. It truly offers a counterpoint to the "Divine Comedy", a book I find less and less comical as I progress through Dante's vision of the Inferno and its various occupants. Dante's depiction comes across as soul destroying in an unintended way; this to apparently merely observe dispassionately the writhing people there, all allotted their various circles, each awaiting the knell of doom of the Final Judgement when their current placement will be confirmed for all eternity. 

(Reflecting upon this I think of some lines of Walt Whitman, from his "Song of Myself":-

"Agonies are one of my changes of garments, 

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person,

My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe." )

Walt Whitman

Dante and Virgil exchange the odd comment about what they witness, each secure in the knowledge that they at least are still capable of moving on. Of course, Virgil himself, as previously noted in another blog, can progress only so far, having unfortunately been born before the full revelation of "Christian Truth", which Dante himself has the opportunity of embracing. Not forgetting "grace" of course, as lip service must be offered to such a concept.

I must say the ideas presented in the Flower Ornament Scripture seem a welcome alternative, if not a diversion. In this scripture, Time, more circular than linear,  embraces rather than ticks away our chances. Again, other paths - even Dantes - are presented as just that, "Other", all part of "convenient means", apaya, all of which can be seen and known as the working of Reality-as-is in ways unique to each human heart and life, part of the liberative qualities of spatiality and temporality.  

Is Dante's vision ahead or behind my own? Better or worse? Or simply "other", asking for no judgement, asking only for what empathy I have for another on the road I would call "home"? We each have our time and place. 

Whatever, other "teachings" tumble out from the various floral adornments of the Buddhist scripture, such as "original enlightenment" and universal liberation.

I have always loved the word "universal", a word that if reflected upon and contemplated deeply, negates all judgement of others. More, compels the heart/mind to see that whatever "enlightenment" is, it can never be anything other than gift, free of any sense of having "earned" a place among the elect; even by "choosing" to "believe". All such sense of "entitlement" is precluded by an all embracing Reality. 

On this same subject, as far as our relationship with others is concerned, there are the words of the so called "Founder of Zen", Bodhidharma, who recognised and taught various modes of entry into the "way". 

Two depictions of Bodhidharma (why did he come from the west?)

One of those modes, the entry by principle, he spoke of as follows:-  

.....entry by principle is when you realize the source by way of the teachings and deeply believe that all living beings have the same real essential nature, but this is veiled by outside elements and false ideas and cannot manifest completely. If you abandon falsehood and return to reality, abiding stably in impassive observation, with no self and no other, regarding ordinary and holy as equal, persisting firmly, immovable, not following other persuasions, then you deeply harmonize with the principle.

Yet I think that we do need "experience". It is not that we simply return to a prior state, or simply "recognise" it. We must move on from our own time and place, even if in circles, or spirals, throughout our lives. If experience were bypassed, not needed, or even inherently pointless, then the possibility of any genuine Theodicy becomes totally tangled and any logical "justification" of Reality/God impossible. When looking at our world, at its pain and anguish, both of others and in experiencing our own, the heart - at least mine - cries out for a "meaning", a quality of Reality that opens to the suffering of each, even shares it, and offers to transform it. 

Meaning in suffering?

In Buddhism, this transformation is the "work" of the bodhisattvas. These are often dismissed as mythical creatures by some religionists. While angels might well "exist" - and I must not forget that William Blake claimed to converse with them - the bodhisattvas are sometimes asserted to be purely a product of the over imaginative "eastern" mind. Well, that may be, but given the Flower Ornament teaching as a whole it becomes obvious that the "work" of a bodhisattva is in fact any act of compassion towards another, any act that shows empathy towards others, irrespective of their colour or creed. Acts as much in time/space reality, and thus as "real", as any other. As it is said in the Introduction:-

 "Just as the scripture points out that there are lands and beings who are a mixture of impurity and purity, there are untold incipient enlightening beings always becoming manifest in every thought, word, and deed of compassion."

All in all, as I understand it, it is just one of the ways that teach and reveal that samsara and nirvana are "one"; that leads to recognising that often much religion is simply the betrayal of this world for some imagined other.

 

The Wheel of Life

Again from the introduction to the "Flower Ornament Scripture", and relevant here:-

In this scripture the term “Buddha” is commonly used for thusness or reality itself; in this book it is pointed out that Buddha, as reality, appears everywhere to all beings, but it is seen in accord with their perceptive capacities. It conveys the parallel messages that all experience reality according to their faculties and predilections, and that correlative to this, enlightened guides present various teachings to people in accord with their needs, potentials, and conditions. This accounts for the wide variety of doctrines in Buddhism, some of which may on the surface seem so different as to be even mutually opposed; underlying this variety is the fact that diverse aspects of a situation or levels of truth may be discussed separately, and that different ways of seeing, thinking, and acting may be recommended to different people, depending on the time and circumstances......this principle of adaptation and specific prescription is known as “skill in means” and is so basic and pervasive that it is impossible to understand Buddhism without a thorough appreciation of its premises, its purpose and implications. 

Possibly a bodhisattva plotting his next move

Well, maybe enough for now. Except to add I now often experience a dissatisfaction with words; with the words above, beyond any failure of style! There is a felt need to "say everything at once", to say more, the mind making associations that seek to expand upon what has been explicitly said. Or, alternatively, to set limits to the applicability. Though possibly a slight tangent, this seems associated with the observation of John Keats, mentioned before in my blogs, that he had "never been able to conceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning." Again, how ultimately life can only be lived, never thought or explained; the Living Word as opposed to the written text. Extending these thoughts, they are, I think, all applicable to what James Joyce sought to create in Finnegans Wake, seeking to use language, the written word, to get as close to reality as was possible. Each word a microcosm of all others. Indra's Net. His words throw you out of the book into life itself. Every religion, every creed, perhaps every word, needs its "ejector seat."

Related Quotes:- 

 ".....those who are within a fixed system have not the slightest inkling of the scope of consciousness that lies beyond the bounds of their perceptions as conditioned by their training and development. It suggests that all views that are conditioned by cultural and personal history are by definition limiting, and there is a potential awareness that cuts through the boundaries imposed by conventional description based on accumulated mental habit."

 (From the Introduction to the Flower Ornament Scripture, Thomas Cleary)

From Thomas Cleary's commentary on the Dhammapada:- 

"The Buddhist Sandhinirmocana Sutra explains that delusion arises from clinging to an imaginary reality formulated under the influence of the 'lull of words,' the habit-forming influence that repetition of mental talk has on the state of the perceiving and thinking mind." 

Thomas Cleary then adds a Zen Buddhist proverb: - "The arousal of thoughts is sickness; not continuing them is medicine." 

Postscript:- a short excerpt from the Flower Ornament Scripture.

The Buddha-body is pure and always tranquil; 

The radiance of its light extends throughout the worlds; 

Signless, patternless, without images, 

Like clouds in the sky, thus is it seen. 

This realm of concentration of the Buddha-body 

Cannot be assessed by any sentient being; 

It shows them inconceivable expedient doors: 

This is the enlightenment of Wisdom Light.

 The ocean of teachings, numerous as atoms in a buddha-land,

 Are expounded in a single word—all without remainder. 

They can be expounded this way for oceans of eons without ever being exhausted: 

This is the liberation of Light of Beneficent Wisdom. 

The complete sound of the Buddhas is equal to the worlds; 

Sentient beings each obtain understanding according to their kind, 

Yet there is no difference in the sound:

 Such is the understanding of the brahma king Universal Sound. 

The methods for entering enlightenment 

Of the Buddhas of all times 

Are all apparent in the Buddha-body:

 This is the liberation of Sound of Freedom. 

The activities of all sentient beings are different;

 According to the causes, the effects are various. 

In this way do the Buddhas appear in the world: 

Silent Light can understand this. 

Master of countless media of teaching, 

Civilizing sentient beings everywhere in all quarters,

 Yet not making distinctions therein:

 Such is the realm of Universal Light. 

The Buddha-body is like space, inexhaustible— 

Formless, unhindered, it pervades the ten directions. 

All of its accommodational manifestations are like conjurations: 

Sound of Magical Displays understands this way. 

The appearances of the Buddha-body are boundless, 

And so are the knowledge, wisdom, and voice— 

Being in the world, manifesting form, yet without attachment: 

Shining Light has entered this door.

 The King of Truth reposes in the Palace of Sublime Reality— 

The light of the reality-body illumines everything.

 The nature of reality is incomparable and has no marks: 

This is the liberation of king Ocean Sound.

The Rose

The Rose - Salvadore Dali

Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender reed
Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves your soul to bleed
Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need
I say love, it is a flower, and you, its only seed

It's the heart afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance
It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose

I was just listening to the song "The Rose", lyrics above. By the Dubliner's, it was a big hit some time ago in Ireland. I have always loved the words, partly some would say because of my over sentimental way of looking at the world, of living in it, or trying to. My "sentimentality" was attacked during my early days on Discussion Forums, particularly by one ardent zen guy intent upon his own road to enlightenment. I wonder just where he is now? Wherever and whatever, time moves on. Maybe he became more sentimental. Is it all a question of balance? 

Views of sentimentality

Moving on, I continue with the "Divine Comedy". The edition I have is certainly a beautifully produced book, with gold leaf and illustrations. The actual text is another matter. 

Reading up on this, Dante invented a new rhyming scheme (Terza rima) for his book - obviously first written in Italian - which cannot be easily replicated in translation, if at all. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow uses blank verse and his is a noble effort. Quite dated now but all the better for it as the awkward, even unknown, words slow my reading and makes for a more contemplative read. 

However, I have to wonder just what it is that can be "contemplated" and the thought raises again the question as to whether genuine appreciation can be given to a world view now so vastly different from our own. 

Reading through, Dante at first expresses pity for the inhabitants of the Inferno. "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" as the inscription above the giant chasm reads. Sadly, further along, meeting a man who he knew in life, Dante then appears to relish the thought of the man's suffering, even going so far as to wish it increased. What to make of this? Dante, his text would have us believe, is on his way to Heaven. Well, maybe as things unfold, as his path opens to new ideas and learning, all will be revealed.

Dante's guide through the Inferno and purgatory is the Roman poet Virgil, he of "classical antiquity", this giving birth to yet another mode of thought, one that Dante understands as having been supplanted by Christian Truth. Later on in the Divine Comedy Virgil is left behind, unable to progress to the final beatific vision (like Dante himself), having lived prior to the advent of Christ and the full revelation of God. Apparently Virgil is good enough for a certain degree of illumination and able to avoid eternal punishment, but can advance so far and no further. Much like unbaptised infants in Dante's scheme of things. To my mind, all rather questionable as "final" Truth. 

Virgil has a word in Dante's ear

Did Dante really believe all this? Where does reality and poetic fancy meet? If ever. 

Another observation is that the number of illustrations become sparser as the "comedy" progresses. The illustrator, Gustave Dore, maybe like most, appears to find hell more easy to depict than the joys of heaven. This would seem to be representative of the nature of our reality. What exactly is "perfection", the "final" vision? Can we only visualise what we have known? 

Well, all in all I find a growing call to return to "The Flower Ornament Scripture" of Mahayana Buddhism, which offers another "world-view". When I consider Dante I think of "consistency" and of "justice". His poetically created world is a system, constructed by thought, a system that encloses all things beyond the true touch of Love, at least as I see it. As Thomas Merton once wrote of consistency and justice, as opposed to mercy:-

The world of consistency is the world of justice, but justice is not the final word. 

There is, above the consistent and logical world of justice, an inconsistent illogical world where nothing "hangs together," where justice no longer damns each to their own darkness. This inconsistent world is the realm of mercy.

The Flower Ornament Scripture has no such consistency and therefore can offer what Merton would call the "unexpected gifts of God." Merton speaks also of freedom, of the "indeterminateness of salvation" when speaking of grace in relation to zen, this in a letter to D T Suzuki. World-views are just that, "views", and according to the Buddha are finally to be abandoned. Yet for now they remain "rafts" for crossing over, not for grasping; and some, I think, are better than others, given time and place. Give me the bodhisattvas, of infinite variety, give me the multiple paths that others have followed, give me the journey that is itself home, give me the circle whose circumference is everywhere and centre nowhere. 

At the centre of Dante's hell is Satan - frozen, congealed, king and lord of his realm. A good image. Suitable to describe a "self" that we often imagine ourselves to be. 

Satan frozen in ice - Dante and Virgil look on

Related Quotes:- 

Man's general way of thinking of the totality, i.e. his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken and without border (for every border is a division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole. 

(David Bohm)


Deconstruction is the theory that all our beliefs and practices are constructions, and that whatever is constructed is de-constructible, and that whatever is de-constructible is also re-constructible, which would mean that all our beliefs and practices are reinterpretable. So, deconstruction backs up the idea of endless reinterpretation and rejects the idea of ready-made truths that drop from the sky........deconstructors are disposed to dissent, to point out alternative explanations, to bring up anomalies, to question received interpretations, to suspect unquestioned assumptions......Deconstructors cultivate a congenital disposition to look at things otherwise, to pick up views that have fallen out of favour or dropped through the cracks of the tradition.......Hermeneutics provides our best  protection against the threat of tyranny, totalitarianism and terror in politics, and of dogmatism and authoritarianism in ethics and religion. Indeed, these threats can be found anywhere – including in the sciences, the art world or that of economics – anywhere that the quiet dictatorship of a rigid orthodoxy takes root. Orthodoxy discourages dissent (alternative interpretations) and tries to impose a privileged interpretation.

(John Caputo, from "Hermeneutics - Meaning in a World Without Facts")



A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

(Final lines from "Four Quartets", "Little Gidding", by T S Eliot)

Praise Be To God That I Am Not Good

"Praise be to God that I am not good" was the little phrase quoted by Thomas Merton to D T Suzuki very close to their parting, this after a meeting in New York. Suzuki was much taken by the words, saying that they were "so important". How strange it must be for the doctrinaire to hear a Buddhist respond in such a way to any mention of God at all. Maybe they would suspect him of being a closet Christian, that "the Lord" had reached another heathen heart! But the meeting of minds and hearts that Suzuki's response witnesses to speaks of a greater depth, where the true "work of Christ" is found. 

Who could be meeting now?

Merton had arrived at those words, and his appreciation of their depth, via the Catholic Faith; Suzuki via Buddhism, both Shin and Zen. Merton by seeking salvation for his "self", Suzuki by the teaching and expression of anatta, no-self. As I have mentioned before, a well known Buddhist Dictionary says that if "anatta" is not understood then Buddhism will remain largely incomprehensible. Given that the no-self teaching is often equated to getting rid of the ego, to New Age cries of "living in the Now", such a claim is well put. 

There is no-self, but here we are! Or, perhaps, there is no- self, so here we are!

The path to the end of suffering beckons, salvation, redemption, the unshakeable deliverance of mind spoken of in the Theravada Texts as the true goal of the holy life. So let us gird our loins and become "good"; create a being fit for heaven, one in whom we can be proud, to be admired by the watching crowd, possibly even become a "saint" and enter the record books. Others will then seek to emulate us as beacons of righteousness.

Some would seem to seek the full depth of not being "good" by resorting to sack-cloth and ashes, beating the breast, seeking for themselves a total sense of inadequacy in the face of the Almighty, One who demands nothing less than perfection. The slightest sense of moral rectitude is thrown out as the mode of the Pharisee. "I am nothing!" is the cry, and others, less understanding perhaps but higher up the pecking order, look on and exclaim: - "Bah! Look who thinks he's nothing!"

Look who thinks he's something?

I have found that "suffering" - dukkha, anquish - comes in infinite guises. All relate to a "self" that suffers, that is identified with, and which seeks to avoid the moments of dukkha. Alas, dukkha is life itself, not a part of life, not an opposite to joy, peace, happiness. Dealing with it must morph into a situation much like our seeing of a red hot-plate. No one need tell us not to touch. Our hand will instinctively not go near, will recoil from any thought of contact. More and more the ways of suffering are seen, known, recognised, and we instinctively recoil. Not to reach another world, not to "make progress" or please a Deity, but to know this world in a new way. To live and act in this world in a new way.

All things made new

I wish I could describe, even prescribe, a path towards this way of being. But alas, no, there is no one "key". The true path is unique to each. Each is on their path already. Perhaps each is their path.

"Protecting oneself one protects others, protecting others one protects oneself"

I simply know that thinking oneself "good" is a mode of suffering, a state of mind that, like the hot-plate, we must recoil from. Instinctively.

"Paths" are another matter entirely and I think it is better to feel lost rather than to think we are ever walking straight and true. Perhaps we can look back and discern some sort of direction, unknown to us at the time. Certainly I have long treated, or tried to treat, all truly valueable things - life itself - as pure gift. Always given, never earned, to be realised, not brought into being either by believing or plotting. Giving thanks becomes a way of life, even giving thanks in the bad times, in moments of suffering. Which is the poor persons way of not seeking to make distinctions, the "way" of the Hsin Hsin Ming, the way that is not difficult, only cease to cherish opinions. It is the Pure Land way, where the dojo/monastery is simply our life as we live it.

Thinking ourselves "good" seems to me a trap. More, it separates us from others, implying judgement.

It is identification with relative truth, justifying ourselves by what is essentially non-existent. This is to be truly lost. But "empty", we can continue on the journey that is itself "home".

Related Quotes:- 

 "For Chuang Tzu, as for the Gospel, to lose one’s life is to save it, and to seek to save it for one’s own sake is to lose it. There is an affirmation of the world that is nothing but ruin and loss. There is a renunciation of the world that finds and saves man in his own home, which is God’s world. In any event, the “way” of Chuang Tzu is mysterious because it is so simple that it can get along without being a way at all. Least of all is it a “way out.” Chuang Tzu would have agreed with St. John of the Cross, that you enter upon this kind of way when you leave all ways and, in some sense, get lost."

 (Thomas Merton, from a Note to the Reader in "The Way of Chuang Tzu")

"Do not seek for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions."

 (From the Hsin Hsin Ming)

When studying in this way, evils are manifest as a continuum of being ever not done. Inspired by this manifestation, seeing through to the fact that evils are not done, one settles it finally. At precisely such a time, as the beginning, middle, and end manifest as evils not done, evils are not born from conditions, they are only not done; evils do not perish through conditions, they are only not done. 

(Zen master Caoshan) 

"Do not see yourself as above others. Do not see yourself as below others. Do not see yourself as the equal of others."

(The Buddha)

On Zombies and Suchlike

Zombies  -  Dead or alive?

Whiling away a few moments I came across talk of Zombies. Being "undead" , or at least not quite dead but certainly not alive, they raised questions of "both/and" as opposed to "either/or", and even, by devious routes, to the Two Truths of Mahayana Buddhism.

Well, all this can be confusing at times and in the past some good souls have given me the advice to stick to following just one expression of "The Truth", one path toward it, even suggesting that there is just one entrance anyway and heaven help anyone attempting to sneak in by the back door.

One truth - but many songs

But I stumble on, and changing track again, at the moment I am reducing my reading to just two books, "The Divine Comedy" and my very own self produced blook (sic) on Pure Land Buddhism.

This last contains the beautiful "Hymn to True Faith" (the Shoshinge), various Hymns to Amida, Shinran's Tannisho and a glossary of Pure Land terms - all nicely illustrated.

Do the two books clash? Well, in a way, yes. The copy of the Divine Comedy mentioned is the translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and includes all of Gustave Dore's illustrations. Longfellow's slightly archaic English keeps me on my toes or, perhaps better put, slows me down, making for a more contemplative read. Some of the words he uses seem to have fallen away from common usage and I find myself looking them up...."Pelf" for instance, this being "money gained in a dishonest way" - which I must say makes me wonder why such a word has indeed fallen away from common usage! Then "dolent", which is "sad or sorrowful".

A scene from the Divine Comedy - William Blake style

 But Mr Longfellow sometimes has a way with words, as in:-

Even as the flowerets, by nocturnal chill, 

Bowed down and closed, when the sun whitens them,

Uplift themselves all open on their stems"

A lovely image, suggesting how any sentient being will unfold and respond to the infinite light and touch of love. Which image brings me back to my Pure Land book, to the heart of its message, a message contained in the Name, the Word made Flesh in eastern guise.

Well, yes, the books do clash just a bit. The apparent "either/or" world of Dante, where one is either saved or lost, forever, having abandoned all hope. In Dante's book the whole idea of being "on the way", in a reality of "both/and", many ways for all of us, is nowhere to be found. Nowhere in Dante's hell is the lamp of the Buddha, lighting the darkness, causing those who dwell there to exclaim:- "ah, there are others here besides myself!" No, each is lost in his or her own eternal darkness, their personal self, congealed and chained forever, beyond all hope of mercy.

Beyond hope?

Can it be read in any other way? Perhaps it can, just as the "Pilgrims Progress" can offer succour not only to conservative Protestant Christians. Yet I think of readers of the Bible, especially the New Testament. Some seem always to come away with creed comfirmed, the One Way of their own minds again beyond all dispute, and the ways of others cast out to the realms where the gnashing of teeth is the only sound. While others read and find an eternal love proclaimed, all embracing, where all find a home. Is the text necessarily one or the other, one reading of it right and one wrong? Maybe there is in fact some form of judgement in our reading, our interpretations and assertions?

Either/or? Or could it be "both/and", a living word, part of all becoming?  

I seem to have drifted from zombies, and I am trying to recover again the thoughts that led me to them. It was in fact reading a little book on Derrida (he of deconstruction) by Jeff Collins. I lost my way in this particular book, unable to follow what logic there was, but perked up when Mr Collins began to speak of zombies. It was the idea of a zombie being neither dead nor alive and thus possibly both that led me off along my own path.

Mr Collins finally asked "What if the western rationalist distinction between life and death doesn't hold?" Without being able now to remember just how I made the transition, I thought of the correspondence between deconstruction and the spiritual path, the negative way, the via negativa. In this "way", rather than plotting a positive path that anticipates a place of arrival for a redeemed self, we simply seek to see that which is false, strip ourselves of  it, this then leaving us as that which necessarily remains. 

There would seem to be some need for trust, trust in there being some reality beyond any false constructions, possibly even a faith that "truth" is infinite compassion, infinite wisdom, infinite potential. Otherwise there is fear that stripping away could be the stripping of that which can be the only reality, the only truth - a relative one. With nothing beyond. 

Infinite compassion

My musings led to the following four brief notes:- 

1. Eastern emptiness has nothing to do with such a "nothing" but is a "fullness", not a nihilism. 

2. Decidability (Derrida) must be momentary, otherwise it creates a path, forward and back. Which leads to judgement of the path of others. A "self" congeals, seeking to justify itself. Back therefore to trust/faith.

3. Our identification with our "selves" shows a lack of faith yet "unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies".......The total separation of life and death in our consciousness makes us fear the emptiness of "no self", such is identified with death, of becoming a zombie! The living dead! Duality again rears its head. 

4. Like Schrodinger's Cat, difficult to know if we are "alive" or "dead" until the moment comes to act; if we act as empathic beings, compassionately, or defensively, or not at all, letting the moment slip by. Thus Faith and act become "one" - or not.

After those four undigested notes I will now get back to Jeff Collins, who writes:- 

"True life must preclude true death. The zombie short-circuits the usual logic of distinction. Having both states, it has neither. It belongs to a different order of things: in terms of life and death, it cannot be decided."

John Keats

"Either/or" establishes conceptual order/meaning but I would tend to agree with John Keats who has written in one of his letters:- "I have never yet been able to conceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning........." 

"Both/and" would for some appear to threaten. Threatens chaos. Yet on the other hand, when "either/or" becomes absolute, when imposed by authority, we have the Inquisition (Yet just maybe, if only momentary - the response of faith in the moment, when "God has entered in" - there is that total freedom of mind that is the goal of the Holy Life)  

Add caption

Related Quotes:- 

"When we go out of ourselves through obedience and strip ourselves of what is ours, then God must enter into us; for when someone wills nothing for themselves, then God must will on their behalf just as he does for himself."

(Meister Eckhart, from the "Talks of Instruction" on True Obedience)

In addition to the above quote, more from the book "Realizing Genjokoan" by Shohaku Okumura. I find the following quotations relevant to this blog, but am unable to digest/assimilate them at this moment, so will merely post them without comment. Here they are:-

......... the word kōan expresses the reality of our own lives; we are the intersection of equality (universality, unity, oneness of all beings) and inequality (difference, uniqueness, particularity, individuality). Reality, or emptiness, includes both unity and difference......

......Each one of us can be viewed in the same way. We are both universal and individual, and this universality and individuality are not two separate aspects of our being; each of them is absolute. One hand is 100 percent one hand. Five fingers are 100 percent five fingers. This whole universe is one universe; there is no separation within it. And yet, this universe is a collection of unique individual beings. These beings cannot be the same because each has its own particular time, position, and causal history. We cannot alter this reality because each and every thing is completely independent. And yet this whole world, this whole universe, and all of time from beginningless beginning to endless end, are one. We cannot separate ourselves or anything else from this unity; we really all exist in only one time and one space......

......So we may view reality as a collection of independent things or we may view it as one vast seamless whole. The fact of these two ways of viewing reality is important in Buddhist philosophy. In Mahayana Buddhist philosophy these two aspects of the reality of life are called the Two Truths: absolute truth and relative or conventional truth........

.....In Zen these two realities are called sabetsu (distinction, inequality) and byōdō (equality)........

..........Viewed from one side everything is different, and viewed from another side everything is the same. To see one reality from both sides is the basic viewpoint of Mahayana Buddhism, including Zen. This is expressed, for example, in the Heart Sutra as “form is emptiness and emptiness is form.” As form, everything is different, and yet these forms are empty. “Empty” means there is no difference, and yet this emptiness is form. In this way we see one reality as an intersecting or merging of oneness and uniqueness.......

......In the famous piece called Sandōkai (Merging of Difference and Unity), a traditional Zen poem composed by Zen master Shitou Xiqian (Jap.: Sekitō Kisen; 700-790), the author refers to these two sides of reality as difference and unity. In that poem, the true nature of reality is described as the merging of these two sides, with darkness representing unity and light representing discrimination. Light represents discrimination because when it is bright outside we can see that things have different forms, colors, names, and functions. But when it’s completely dark, even though things still exist, we cannot distinguish between them, just as we cannot distinguish between beings when we see them from the viewpoint of unity. So light and darkness are two aspects of one reality, as difference and unity are two aspects of one reality. This view of reality is basic to Buddhism and Zen, and understanding it is essential to a study of Zen literature or Buddhist philosophy......

.....Dōgen, however, said that to see one reality from two sides is not enough; he said we should also express these two sides in one action........

.........In the Heart Sutra, for example, these two sides of reality are expressed as “form is emptiness and emptiness is form.” But in Shōbōgenzō Maka Hannya Haramitsu, Dōgen writes, “Form is form. Emptiness is emptiness.” In other words, when we say “form is emptiness and emptiness is form” there is still a separation of form and emptiness because of the dualistic nature of language. If form really is emptiness and emptiness really is form, we can only say “form is form and emptiness is emptiness.” This is so because when we say “form,” emptiness is already there, and when we say “emptiness,” form is already there.......

........So, how can we actualize both sides of our lives within one action? This is really the basic point of our lives....... 

.....The most important teaching of the Buddha is that we must find the middle way; so we must avoid the extremes of egoism or collectivism and practice with reality as the middle way. We have to create our own way; there is no fixed middle way in every situation. We must try to see the whole of every situation and find the healthiest, happiest way of life in each circumstance. This is the essential point of both Buddha’s and Dōgen’s teachings......

.......each and every activity we perform in our daily lives is an opportunity to practice and awaken to the reality of the individual and the universal........

........In my understanding, this teaching of individuality and universality is the essence of the title Genjōkōan. Genjō is nothing other than kōan, and kōan is nothing other than genjō: Genjō means “reality actually and presently taking place,” and kōan means “absolute truth that embraces relative truth” or “a question that true reality asks of us.” So we can say that genjōkōan means “to answer the question from true reality through the practice of our everyday activity.

Dogen