Monday 6 February 2017

85. ZEN REMARKS

85. In emptiness there is no coming and going. And yet we do in fact travel from place to place. One day in India, the next in Australia. Does the Zen teaching about emptiness deny the evident fact of movement? A denial of the facts of everyday experience would fly in the face of reality and be at odds with what Zen is on about. Or does Zen take a dualistic view that contrasts an absolute dimension, in which there is neither movement nor plurality, with a relative world of phenomena, plurality, movement? But dualism, according to Zen, is a delusion. Now while it is true that Zen does talk in terms of the absolute and the relative, it does not see these as two different realities. In the words of the 'Heart Sutra' Zen is rooted in the realization that 'emptiness is form and form is emptiness'. Zen acknowledges that there is coming and going while keenly realizing that all coming and going is essentially empty.

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