this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
12 points (92.9% liked)

Buddhism

844 readers
3 users here now

A community for Buddhism.

  1. Stay on topic.

  2. Be nice.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
ComradeMiao
[email protected]
[email protected]
12
Nothing Exists (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/buddhism
5 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.

Desiring to show his attainment, he said: "The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received."

Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry.

"If nothing exists," inquired Dokuon, "where did this anger come from?"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm fixated on the smoking Zen master. Tobacco was not known in China until the seventeenth century. The koans are much older than that. Opium was used in China by the seventh century, so there's that.

I've never seen any mention of smoking or any other drugs in other koans.

Anger is a source of delusion. But it sure is real. As an addiction/attachment, to truly divest myself of all anger would, I think, be harder than kicking any habit. Anger seems like a reflexive response that rises immediately in the mind.

I really want to know what was in that bamboo pipe.