Zen Buddhism

SR No.: 011121
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Christmas Humphereys
Publisher: William Heinemann LTD
Total Pages: 278
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 258

INSTEAD OF CONCLUSION 225 sounds admittedly like the drunkard's "certainty". “S’all right osman; everything s’all right.” Well, perhaps there is an element of spiritual inebriety in the "divine afflatus”. One certainly sings for joy.
There is a sense of Now and Here and This, which is the heart of Zen. Wherever I go I am here, for I cannot go anywhere else. Wherever I move my conscience in time, it is now. Whatever I handle or hold, it is this. "There” becomes “here” when I get there. “Then” becomes "now" when it is. “That becomes "this” when I look at it. There is neither divine nor human, holy nor profane. Have you seen the huge metal sports-wheel, for use on a beach or lawn, like a magnified stand for a garden hose in which the player in a bathing dress stands with feet and hands gripping the inside of the outer frame and makes it revolve with muscular effort of alternate pushing and pulling (the opposites in full play)? When the wheel is in motion there is neither up nor down; head (spirit) and feet (of clay) are alternately on top-for both are one in motion (life). And how does it begin to move? By deliberately turning oneself upside down with vaunted head below and despised feet in the sky. Verb. sap.!
I have now written over 50,000 words on Zen and have said less than Gerald Gould has said in a line and a half of poetry, when he speaks of "A careless trust in the divine occasion of our dust”.
Read that again. Can the late author have realised the world-philosophy which he packed into ten English words? The satori lies in "careless". The rest is merely genius.
Satori means selflessness, which is neither being a prig nor a bore. It is a realisation that "man stands in his own light and wonders why it is dark". The Self has