Rinzai Zen teachers assign koans to students in order to arouse the mind of the student. So we apply logic in order to answer the koan, as if it were a riddle, and the teacher tells us we are getting colder, not warmer. So we switch to non-logic and start giving Zen-like answers to the koan and our teacher says we are getting colder still. The day finally comes when the teacher says: All of your talking, all of your thinking, is just nonsense. Don’t answer the koan with words. Go back to the hara, and show me Mu!
It’s not enough to arouse the mind. As The Diamond Sutra says, the mind must be aroused without allowing it to rest on anything. We can’t have a point of view, a philosophy of life, and apply it to the koan.
But every day I see people proud of the fact that they have no wisdom practice. (I don’t like that expression “spiritual practice.”) A commenter today on a website I visit almost daily (commondreams.org) mentioned God, and I could give no credence to his comments. I remained silent because I knew the other readers would blast him and they did. My favorite was the comment that “Belief in sky-gods is a form of mental illness.” I totally agree. People who think there is somebody out there keeping track of us, judging us for future rewards or punishments, are nuts.
But every meditator soon realizes that we humans are stupid. As the sense of a solid self evaporates with daily cultivation, we begin to chuckle over how stupid we have been. We were so certain that this life is all there is…but then we experience a more subtle mind and realize what idiots we are. We learn that “God” is the law of cause and effect. And the law of cause and effect has no self.
So to my friends who don’t understand why I sit every morning and every night, I can only say that I reject all religious beliefs but I don’t reject the idea that an aroused mind with nothing to support it is better than a settled mind supported firmly by ignorance.
