Why Zen?
I think that what is uniquely Zen about Zen (as opposed to other equally rich but different flavours of Buddhism), is its stubborn insistence that everything is innately perfect, without need for adornment or improvement.
Those stock images of a rock, a stalk of bamboo, a dew drop on a leaf…they are clichés of course, but they tell the story. The story is of what makes the rock worthy: not its roundness or gloss or smoothness, not its symbolic patience or solidity or charming asymmetry. What makes the rock beautiful and worthy, is its rockness – and even to say rockness is to make an adjective out of a noun, thereby missing the point. The point is, that words and concepts cannot describe what is already perfect beyond words.
This deep respect for the innate nature of all things applies equally to people: what makes us buddhas is not our kindness or intelligence or learnedness or beauty, nor our skills or accomplishments. We can relax: there is nothing we need to do or be. What makes us buddhas is just the fact that we are—and that, in itself, is awesome and complete and totally deliciously delightfully Zen.
January 4th, 2013 at 1:05 am
Indeed, this rock rocks!
January 4th, 2013 at 1:42 am
ojisan grasshoper, you understand the blanket (as explained by Dustin Hoffman): everything you want and want to be, you already have and are. gassho.
February 9th, 2013 at 1:56 pm
In playing around with words, i like to make verbs out of nouns. So i would praise the “rockingness” of the rock. This reminds me that even a rock is a doing, a process, if rather a slow one from my perspective.
But in my wordplay i refuse to make Huckabees references!
February 9th, 2013 at 5:11 pm
I can’t help it, it always comes back to Huckabees!