Insight into the great matter, sometimes reverently called
the The
Great Matter of Birth and Death, has likely been pursued for millennia,
ever since humans became self-aware.
Enlightenment, satori, kensho, seeing into one's own nature,
self-realization, illumination, awakening, seeing one's original face,
epiphany, reaching God-consciousness, or, as Robert Aitken Roshi put it,
noticing something important.
It can be a gradual shift in perception spanning decades or
a sudden realization as quick as the opening of an eye. It can follow years of
diligent meditation / zazen / mindfulness, or it can happen for no apparent reason
at all.
Although much sought after, it is not infrequently, I
suspect, the elephant in the room. After all, “Whoever knows does not speak;
whoever speaks does not know.”
Which means whoever spoke those words (Lao Tsu) obviously
didn’t know (?)
Which means the statement might be false. Which means … hmmm
… entering a place where words fall apart.
On March 15, 1958 In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and
Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, Thomas Merton was
suddenly overwhelmed with a realization “like waking from a dream of
separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of
renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy
existence is a dream.”
Over at Monkey Mind in his post A
Bit of What Kensho is and A Bit More of What it Isn’t, James Ford Roshi
wrote, “…what we get is a discovery of our ordinariness. And, like for Father
Merton, finding our deepest connection.”
Bodhidharma’s answer in the first koan of the Blue Cliff Record to the emperor’s question, “What is the first principle of the holy teaching?”
was, “Vast emptiness, nothing holy.”
The oxymoron ‘profound ordinariness’ might have been used by
St. Augustine. (I’m flitting about here, fearful that this piece may descend
into rational analysis in a place where rational analysis has no business
being.)
His
particular usage of oxymoron, found in the prayer to God, is as follows:
"(You are) deeply hidden yet most intimately present, ... immutable and
yet changing all things, ... always active, always in repose, ... you love
without burning, ... you are wrathful and remain tranquil. You will change
without any change in your design” (Conf., 1,4,4) …
Augustine
uses the oxymoron for glorifying God. The phrase "(You) deeply hidden yet
most intimately present" contains contradictory and incompatible words.
Yet it is with these contradictory words that he was able to express God. God
is absolutely ineffable. Nevertheless, "if that is ineffable which cannot
be spoken, then that is not ineffable which can be called ineffable."
(Doct.Christ., 1,6,6)
Hikasa Katsushi – Augustine
on the Aesthetics of Ambivalence
Speaking about shift in perception, here is an autostereogram (remember
them?) The slightest change in view brings alive a vivid three-dimensional
image from a bunch of coloured dots.
Hint: enlarge the image and experiment gazing at it
slightly cross-eyed.
[Spoiler alert: It’s the image of a shark, cut into, not
standing out from, the flat surface.]
Perhaps here might be a good place to mention, for those
interested but who haven’t read it yet, The Book of Mu – Essential
Writings on Zen’s Most Important Koan by James Ford Roshi and Melissa
Myozen Blacker – a collection of over 40 wonderful essays, each pointing at the
moon.
And finally, another grateful nod to James for introducing
me to Peter Mayer’s Holy Now.
