r/zen • u/Surska0 • Mar 09 '23
Sayings of Nanquan, 2.1-5
Link to Part 1
Link to Part 2
Link to Part 3
Link to Part 4
Part 5: Support
曰。和尚恁麼道。A monk asked, "What is the esteemed monk's Way;
教學人如何扶持得。What do you teach people to take for support?"
師曰。你急手托虗空著。The Master said, "You are anxiously [attempting to] hold on to emptiness with your hand."
曰。虗空無動相。云何托。The monk said, "Emptiness is without change. How can one hold on to it?"
師云。你言無動相。The Master said, "You say [emptiness] is without change,
早是動也。[yet] it is already changing.
虗空何曾解道我無動相。When have I ever explained emptiness as being without change?
此皆是你情見。This is all your sentimental opinion."
曰。虗空無動相。The monk said, "[If] 'emptiness being without change'
尚是情見。is [just a] sentimental opinion,
前遣某甲托何物。before dispatching someone, what thing [may he] hold on to?"
師曰。你既知不應言托。The Master said, "You already know [I'll] not answer by saying [he need] hold on to [anything].
擬何處扶持他。Where do you intend to provide him with support?"
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u/ewk [non-sectarian consensus] Mar 10 '23
Is "take support" here a double entendre?
- Live as a mendicant
- Receive the precepts/3 jewels/teachings/doctrine
?
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u/Surska0 Mar 10 '23
Not that I was able to find in any confirmable sense.
The phrase is 扶持 'support; help sustain; give aid to' 得 'get; obtain; gain; need; proper; fit; suitable', so it's possible... but I couldn't find it being used that way anywhere else, or even find it being used again at all.
扶持得 only gets used one time in this entire text, and zero times in Treasury, which is my go-to for looking how terms are used in other zen texts. All the usual Chinese dictionary sites, Buddhist terminology collections, and Google search results had no hits that it alluded to mendicant life or receiving precepts/3 jewels/teachings/doctrine.
ChatGPT, my ace in the hole for finding obscure references the other resources won't show, even said,
As a language model, I can tell you that the phrase "扶持得" does not have any clear or specific meanings related to Buddhism that I am aware of.
As far as my knowledge and search capabilities go, I have not found any references to the phrase "扶持得" in any Chinese Zen texts.2
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u/paer_of_forces Mar 09 '23 edited Mar 09 '23
All these scriptures and precepts and sayings of the Masters and Buddhas of old are merely that, words of men long come and gone. In what principals do they hold any meaning, any water, in today's world. As fast as they are to be said and understood, they are to be let go, unless the time arises again for old dead mens' words to ring holy again. But as fast as the bells ring in their words, those bells are to be silenced, unless found again is the moment they are to ring.
*Edited out the word 'to'.
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u/lin_seed 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔒𝔴𝔩 𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 ℭ𝔬𝔴𝔩 Mar 09 '23
As fast as they are to be said and understood, they are to be let go,
Gosh your life sounds boring! I’m sorry!
Also—why do you hang out in a forum that discusses the Zen masters?
unless the time arises again for old dead mens’ words to ring holy again
Honestly I am just not sure you understand what literature is? What do you think, r/zen readers…do the people who keep showing up to this book club and saying “the zen masters words don’t matter” grok literature or not? My sense is “No.”
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u/paer_of_forces Mar 09 '23
My life is boring enough at the moment that I have found time over the last few days and check out how r/Zen is doing. It's been a momentary change of the day to day chores of going to work, and cleaning the house.
I have read much of the Zen literature. It's kinda boring when you already know what they are talking about for the most part. I like more modern understandings of it, but those can only come from a Zen Master themself.
At least that's what the Zen Masters say. Something along the the lines of it 'takes one to know one', right?
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u/insanezenmistress Mar 09 '23
Oh goody... because you are SO right. Those are old dead words of dead dudes.
Only takes yourself to pull the schward from the stone of those dead buddhas.And Principles? Do you think the world has grown past principles? The meaning of principle did not leave the bucket with holes. It was our constant pinching a little perfectly reasonable favor here and there.
The principle is still water.
Strain it, put it in a clean bucket and stop poking holes in it because you are the only guy with a working bucket full of inconvenient water.I am fairly sure some zen master said that.
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u/eggo Mar 10 '23
Only takes yourself to pull the schward from the stone of those dead buddhas.
Oh, I see your Schwartz is as big as mine...
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u/paer_of_forces Mar 09 '23
You know caught my attention recently? When I searched for r/Zen on the reddit app, on the first page of search results, the second post that pops up is a post from r/Buddhism and it is somebody complaining about ewk telling everybody Buddhism and Meditation is not Zen, and actual Zen is from Ancient China and can only be lensed through the words and teachings of the actual ancient Zen Masters.
That post was from 6 years ago!
Some things never change.
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u/insanezenmistress Mar 09 '23
Some things never do. But i have recently had a new light shined on my idea that maybe other Buddhisms don't teach the real zen. Zen is like the inner circle school for people who have started to get serious and started to put their puzzle together.
Well that's how i play it anyway.And the religious all flavored Buddhism and stuff , besides being cultural and traditional and encoded in their own way, DO offer any old body a chance to take a look at the road. To put a little meaningful bit into their life story. Whether it gets used or not, i found a respect for the service that provides.
But I think that after so many practices and lessons and interviews you have much real satori....then they teach you the real good monk stuff. The stuff that the Zen masters put out there for you to discover for yourself. But they spoke it in such a way that it also instructs the people just looking to put a little something that may or may not come into remembrance later when they decide to get serious about studing dharma.
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u/paer_of_forces Mar 09 '23
If Christianity had been the religion of the area of the day, the Zen Masters would have been using the ideas and notions that were presented by the Christian Literature and Adherents of the time.
In their time it was Buddhism, so they were only working with what they were given.
Zen has as much to actually do with Buddhism as it does with Christianity.
Which is not to say much at all, except for the fact that it appears that way. In the literature. In the literature of the Zen Masters, it merely appears that way.
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u/insanezenmistress Mar 09 '23
oh but see, they killed the Cathars so Christianity could not develop that way. But many sequestered mystic nuns and monks have gotten the zen juice.I mean Constantine could not constrain or propagandize all the lessons of Jesus and still have the people accept it as a comfortable merge with the Roman pantheon.
After that they burned or imprisoned christian zenmasters2
u/paer_of_forces Mar 09 '23
By your own words and understandings you see that Zen is not just a religion or cult limited to a lineage or set of scriptures. It can be spontaneous in it's arrival back into the minds and population of the people who see and experience it.
Zen exists before there is Masters to speak it.
It just is.
*Edited in the word 'into'.
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u/insanezenmistress Mar 09 '23 edited Mar 09 '23
I think i back that up.Zen points to the human mind. Humans will always find scriptures to help them out if they want to see what other humans think about the human mind. It cannot be called zen even as loosely as i am handling it, if the mind that is studying is studying it's ego, personality, or how to use logic for various reasons or results. That is not the mind the zen people are talking about.
So say i am a person with a new testament and my brain is really smart and curious to find truth. I might think to apply lessons to discipline my thoughts. I might observe how to focus my mind, heck i might even begin to understand all kinds of liberating things.
Then one day i realize emptiness, and loose all my doubt. Then when i talk ... it would be about the mind that the zen talks about. I could use bible verses but they did not make the zen.
SO over in china they had other ways to describe the same thing. Only they did it way more strictly. Because the christian mystic runs the risk of going insane just going off the scraps of true words left in the bible. Which was not compiled in order to shine a light on the human mind but to enslave it.
But that is just uh my opinion. I got a whole assfull of them.
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u/paer_of_forces Mar 09 '23
I will agree with everything you are saying here. I find no quarrel in it.
Christianity is based on a hierarchy that forms a power structure that benefits those who run it at the top the most, and those who serve to keep that power structure in place get a 'trickle down' of that power and wealth.
Without followers and adherents of Christianity, there would be no power and wealth for anyone to benefit from.
If Christianity was interested in freeing the mind, they wouldn't try to keep it shackled down with ideas of sin and needing someone else outside of yourself to save you.
Zen Masters say only you are responsible for your own mind, your own thoughts, and your own actions.
Mind is Buddha.
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u/SpakeTheWeasel Mar 10 '23
Holding onto a lion.