morning sun
bathed in the smell
of newly mown grass
This haiku came to me in a beautiful morning without thinking but just from my direct experience with nature at that moment. It was triggered by a flash of memory from my childhood spent in the beautiful mountains of Bukovina.
This is the simplest and the most sophisticated form of literature in the world. It is as if it were a work not of art but of nature.
- Alan Watts
Haiku is awakening the anticipation but it's left unfinished. The reader has the same amount of contribution to the poem as the writer. The art is knowing when to stop, when enough have been said.
Everything that is formulated it is as intensity decayed. Emil Cioran
Haiku poems are characterized by simplicity, lack of unessential and directness. It involves no symbolism, the point being more obvious. The thing that we are all looking for is just in front our eyes but we cannot see it because we look in other obscure places.
"Your reverence", asked Huai-jang, "what is the objective of sitting meditation?"
"The objective," answered Ma-tsu, "is to become a Buddha."
Thereupon Huai-jang picked up a floor-tile and began to polish it on a rock.
"What are you doing, master?" asked Ma-tsu.
"I'm polishing it for a mirror", said Huai-jang.
"How could polishing a tile make a mirror?"
"How could sitting in meditation make a Buddha?"
"The perfect Way [Tao] is without difficulty,
Save that it avoids picking and choosing.
Only when you stop liking and disliking
Will all be clearly understood.
A split hair's difference,
And heaven and earth are set apart!
It you want to get the plain truth,
Be not concerned with right and wrong.
The conflict between right and wrong
Is the sickness of the mind." Seng-ts'an
"When everyone recognizes beauty as beautiful,
there is already ugliness;
When everyone recognizes goodness as good,
there is already evil.
"To be" and "not to be" arise mutually;
Difficult and easy are mutually realized;
Long and short are mutually contrasted;
High and low are mutually posited;
Before and after are mutually sequence."
The illusion of significant improvement arises in moments of contrast, as when one turns from the left to right on a hard bed. The position is better so long as the contrast remains, but before long the second position begins to feel like the first. The vacuum arises because the sensation of comfort can be maintained only in relation to the relation of discomfort, just as an image is visible to the eye only by reason of a contrasting the background. The good and evil, the pleasant and the painful are so inseparable, so identical in their difference-like the two sides of a coin. [...]
Zen has no goal. A world which increasingly consists of destinations without journeys between them, a world which values only "getting somewhere" as fast as possible, becomes a world without substance. One can get anywhere and everywhere, and yet the more this is possible, the less is anywhere and everywhere worth getting to. For points of arrival are too abstract, too Euclidean to be enjoyed, and it is as very much like eating the precise ends of a banana without getting what lies in between. [...]
In swordsmanship one must not first decide upon a certain thrust and then attempt to make it since by that time it will be too late. Decision and action must be simultaneous. [...]
In archery, the releasing of the bowstring had to be done "unintentionally", then the arrow would shoot itself." Alan Watts in "The way of zen"
Max Planck said: “Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
"How can one prevent a drop of water from ever drying up ?
By throwing it into the sea." Samsara (2001)
Another path to reach the state of wakefulness is the practice of a Martial Art. Along training your body you are training your mind how to conquer fear and how to act without intention.
Aikidois a Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba (1883 - 1969) and it's title is often translated as "the way of unifying (with) the universal energy". The first goal in Aikido is the spiritual development of the aikidoka (aikido practitioner) however one seeks to control an aggressor without causing harm.
"The primary purpose of Aikido is spiritual development." O Sensei
So basically the practice of Aikido is a path to spirituality through daily practice. O' Sensei was heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism and so its philosophy on Aikido is based mainly on compassion.
To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace.
O Sensei
The philosophy of Aikido goes even further when O Sensei said:
"Attackers confront us continually, but in reality there is no attacker there".
This is an expression of the core idea in Zen Buddhism that one should not make any distinction between the subject and the object.
"The thinker of thoughts is just a thought, the feeler of feelings is just one of the feelings and the experiencer of an experience is part of the experience itself."
Alan Watts
I find the quote from "The Zen Mind" (an Empty Mind film) powerful:
"The search for self realization is powered by our anxiety and our fears which feed our ego causing frustration in our daily life, selfishness, jealousy, anger and hate which unconsciously serve to protect us, and in doing so, set us in opposition to everyone and everything."
So when one awakens to the realization of the illusion of the ego, the dissolution of the self happens spontaneously and thus one is able to reflect any attack as he will be one with the attacker. In fact there will be no attack at all because there will be no attacker and no one attacked.
"No thought, no reflection, no analysis, no cultivation, no intention, Let it settle itself"
from the "Six Percepts" of Tilopa
Another metaphor for the blue mountain and the white cloud is the phenomenon "moon-in-the-water". When there is no water, there is no moon. But when the moon rises the water does not wait to receive its image, and when even the tiniest drop of water is poured out the moon does not wait to cast its reflection. They exist dependent yet independent of each other.
"The search for self-realization is powered by our anxiety and our fear which feed our ego causing frustration in our daily life selfishness, jealousy, anger and hate which unconscious serve to protect us and in doing so set us into opposition to everyone and everything. To awaken to this realization is the practice of Zen."
This is a great excerpt from the EmptyMindFilms's "The Zen Mind" movie and it basically point out the cause of the violence we find it today and give the solutions to it.
Alan Watts gives a better explanation to the Way of Zen.
