Chapter 2
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THE WAY OF BEING HUMANKIND.
Difficulties and Roots. ____________________________________________
Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards. - S. Kierkegaard.
Beware what you set your heart upon, for surely it will be yours. - R. W. Emerson.
The aspect of things which are most important for us are hidden because of there simplicity and familiarity.
L. Wittgenstein.
Mankind (people) in every generation must rediscover its own nature. It is a process where we uncover the past and accomodate the new. The struggle to satisfy ones life can be a personally created hell. If we are going to take the business of living to task, to approach its challenges seriously, then there is no recourse but to attempt to resolve those daunting and diversely rewarding "difficulties" of Life, Love and the Warfare of our Needs. It matters not whether our concerns are with the issues of life at a personal or societal level, whatever role is played, who ever we have come to be, there can be no escape from this process of transition through the three arenas of difficulty. This struggle, to greet and co habit with difficulty, is one that dominates the outcome of our actions is neither born of fatalism - a passively conditioned to life's orders, or of simple pragmatic acceptance. No, each of us struggle with an inner world revealed by what is not said in the marrow of our everyday conversation. These conversations reflect both the caring concern and the stress of living in a modern driving and expansive world. It is the Way of Man, as Modernities face, that prevents us and instills the need to become a Being of power, grace and integrity. This is no image. Today, there is mass communication without mass appreciation or cooperation.
This is Modernity in its infancy fully mature and yet inept as to not recognise its own absurdity. It is a place where difference fights against difference and indifference becomes a norm. But there is no norm that escapes such attention as our intolerance and abuse of others. Many play a game over others and brilliantly so. This is a world of plenty, that stresses the individual to play the game of winners and losers, of gain and loss at a personal as well as material level. Some also attempt to employ their strategies in their spiritual pursuits and aesthetic relations. Modernity has promoted an inherited call to answer the feelings of minds and hearts which are held fraught with the knowledge of certainty and doubt either suspected or feared. The upshot of this takes form in the common place struggle of self confidence, self esteem, and self estrangement, all bites of the same big apple that city dwellers feel intensely, athough it is struggle not confined to age, location or culture. The struggle materializes in the guise of complex conflicts of identity usually of a perennial form. Such questions of; who and what am I; how do I wish to be; and with what do I wish to be identified; will I be accepted? These are the common foundations of our personal conflicts, socially born positions from the roots of the mind of parts, a western mind. Modern lifestyle is a crisis situation. Each of us struggles through this present age of Man to complete a cycle to maturity, to personal age of Wisdom. To approach Heaven's Being one needs a Dragon's form. The I Ching describes Heaven's principle as Sublime Success. The Dragon, is a celestial creature that provides the prime mover, water, in the form rain, rivers and sea without which nothing can grow or be replensihed. The Dragon dances within the elements and so characterizes this messenger of Heaven's principle. The Dragon rules the four virtues of human kindness, perfect conduct, justice and wisdom. It is the energy of Active Creativity and so it promotes our being of Being. This Dragon flies to fight off evil influences created by the ego and in conflict with the self. Modernity has instilled a powerful influence. It blocks our thinking and reduces true feeling. It is the way of failing inner security that produces the struggle. Such a struggle produces a life in which an individual will suffer distressed values in terms of both needs and wants, identity and tangibility. The self consequently wanders upon a landscape of its own creation speaking aloud a script which feels as though it might have the talismanic powers necessay to protect one from the modern land mines. Many have made a career of this. They have taken peoples sense of ensuing and certain difficulty and sold them something in terms of faith or comforting satisfaction to bring quiet to this inner oratory. The wheels find space to turn only because they mesh so well together. But no matter whether you find the meaning of your life through struggle, hope, faith or by careful analysis of your self in relation to others, you will inevitably find that mind and spirit must come to face original nature of a human hearted existence. This nature is of major concern in the psychology of Oriental thinking. It is freedom to become. Today's forces, limit, shape and mould the outcome of worldly performance and self reflection. They provide both bricks and mortar to build our insecurity. So how may we proceed? To walk on and meet with what is the good in life? To develop "clarity" takes time and careful perceptual understanding and few of us take such time out. It is the question of "how" to approach each moment of our existence that the Way of Man must address itself, or else our life that is born of being of Being will kick back. Many are injured. So to which Gods do we pray and how do they serve our needs? This is the start of Being Man. It is a spiritual quest, to self realize, to self express from a sense of an integrated whole.
A mindfulness that promotes a broad totality within the self. Rarely do we find a position of convenient objectivity in our lives except when we have to take extremist stands. We have all witnessed the absurdity of Punch and Judy styled logic which often takes hold in such circumstances, brandishing an old and well worn mentality of the "big stick". The truncheon is a staff of authority where society may club its problems into a bloody submission. Comply or find that the actions taken at all levels are as horrific as they are diverse. Government today is a modern beast with old habits. Its concern is with issues of training for a better tomorrow. Not surprisingly we find the totality of western appreciation sadly lacking the terms of Wisdom both in education and at the foundation of politics. The processes of Modernity have in sum produced a western mentality that sees it's ability to control as being an attribute of an integrated mind. The Logic of our training has provided the will to aspire, to achieve that which Modernity values. We have adopted the expectations and hopes that the corporate mind has sown to throw away a surplus of humanity surfeit to requirements. But there difficulties abound. The Way of Man has planted through his approach, a bed of "nuclear deterrents" with his personal distrust and absurdity of purpose. As Above so Below. Generally our thoughts and feelings reflect the state of our everyday role playing towards this purposeful reality, without regard for totality. Western historians have usually failed to portray the culture of the Chinese and Japanese effectively. They describe the state of eastern culture to be static as opposed to the dynamic of western progress. Not surprisingly many have missed the ethos of mindfulness. The Oriental mind has appreciated en-mass a unified perspective of being, they have arrived! The west has struggled towards "fulfilment" of personality through vain attempts to grasp the fleeting moments of a "purposeful present". There is a price for our "disregard" of what the ancients would call the eternal past-present-future, -the eternal mindfulness of NOW. Politicians typify this loss in their phraseology. They assert that our difficulties arrive through our differences -an outer separation, although in reality it is the lack of common inner appreciation that is at the root of our difficulties. We create a circle, such that each of us can see how, "at the end of the day" we have again returned to discover anew the crucial difficulty of pain and joy, of judgement and acceptance, of sorrow and isolation, of success and affirmation, of means and ends in our quest for this sense of fulfilment. There we find unease. It is then that our minds reach out for the comfort of beliefs and the hope of ideals. Beliefs are the Gods that no longer serve their masters well, the ethos of Modernity has seen to that. Even the greats of the city leap from their own windows when the big bang of materialism comes crashing down the network lines. Strangely the tigers mind of international corporatism has turned even the liberal images of benevolent capitalism into a mythological beast, slain by the saints of high technology. These saints leave us more lowly creatures in "difficulty" for Modernity's values throw the ego into a morass of expedient actions at such times. We abandon the ship of our beliefs with a turmoil of what to do's and where to sacrifice. How to cope, how to get on and what will make me better. Where to find relief and who will pay. No wonder the hearts become harsh, for if we cannot see how to change our beliefs, or feel free to give them to the winds of change we are compelled to feel lost. Loss is a form of death born of our perceived position. A Zennist might say, if values be the staff of life, then they always must "walk on". But they rarely do as by then we are well sickened. We have need to find Heaven's Way before the Snow Lion is engulfed by topical storms. A moment of rest and preparation can give a year of preservation of our vital energies. Some beliefs, instil an assured feeling of comfort, that both aid and hinder our thinking. Commonly held beliefs are there like the knowledge of how to open a door, to take us from needs to our ends. Life is not so simple. This way of belief holds untold entanglement for with beliefs we see and appreciate serially. Therefore, when we have to relate to another we frequently suffer, or cause suffering because of an unacceptable level of confusion married to a set of bogus judgements, for the knowledge of this supposed state of affairs may just compel us to encompass yet more beliefs, more judgements, to stave off a intolerably suspected sense of inadequacy.
Anxiety is a modern disease. It is not confined to any age but to a sense of pressure to arrive and stay arrived! "Ever said I can't go on",,,,,,,because of ,,,,,. Man's morality and aesthetics has a universal desire to seek out a position for one's doing with being, to be an individual, who reflects honesty, appreciation and clarity. Today's world culture propagates an ideology in which the self is knotted in its dreams, the dreams made by those that are usually asleep to the Way of Heaven. Their dream is to be forever secure and comfortable. To lead that life that is honest, rich and purposeful. Many have taken to heart the dream of a world that offers a rich and rewarding life for all regardless of the innocence of "capability". The dream offers opportunism and enterprise as the new gambit of consumerism, to enter the market situation of the day. Our youth believe that a good living can be had, it is a Bulls market where the utility value of life commands a manipulative fascination. Pluralist interests have not matured to kill this beast of elitism. Modernity schools the heart in gladitorial myths. Each of us hope our beliefs and judgement can bring us enough of these valued things. We wish to be moored to desires that work in the world of circumstance and heritage. Which God will we choose to solve this dilemma of needs? The Taoists felt this knot and offered the spiritual concept of naturalness through effortless achievement. To take no notice of these inner desires but to allow what can come of itself. These are contemporary knife edges. Artists and scientists, great and small struggle with their attempts to produce a performance that can only be obtained when it occurs of itself. A classic Samurai principle of Miyamoto Musashi (1645) illustrates this. He recommended the Ronin, meaning literally, Wave-man, (one of gentle blood who is tossed about having been separated from his feudal lord by whatever circumstance to wander about the country) to practice his inner gaze. The gaze should be large and broad. The gaze is neither attached or detached as it has to cover all things. Musashi stressed that the noble warrior must follow the way of the pen and the sword. He advocated that one should develop perception, for perception is strong while sight is weak. Thus whatever the challenge is to be meet, it best viewed with ones inner gaze. This should be the same for both large and small tasks. One is asked to adopt a self-less and multi- leveled postion here to reach past the obvious and act with a call to Wisdom. One must allow time to pass to encourage the strength of ones highest memories. To embrace the moon of spirtual reflection in harsh times. In a similar way the Confucian would call upon the Doctrine of the Mean to act through an idealized image of "a partner of Heaven" to be a figure of the utmost moral excellence. To follow the Way of a Gentleman and so ensure a mindful strength of perception. However, whether quietist, noble or moral these ancient approaches to action will have to confront today's powerful ideals of success. Today's materialism generates a image of success as if we were soon to become part of the product manufactured by market force predictions. Industrial styled ends bind our human means to produce what is often a degraded human resultant. Such social costing is rarely cited but well remarked upon after the event. Success is a Monster of a God. How has it come to hold a pivotal position for the ethos of Modernity? What personal monster-gods does success bring to shape our identities? To pursue success we need the power to control our lives, it is over control that we struggle. Health and illness is the complex mirror of our struggle, whether of nation, state or individual. The Buddhist mind would say, there is success but no one that achieves it. There are deeds but no doers to be found. A path there is but no one who follows it. Life is a so mortal an event in our minds and hearts that the spirit of growth finds only protectionist dreams to sleep in. When does this process start? The western mind loses its simplicity at the age of three or four years of age as a rule. The mind then asserts through power, as soon as the child asks, "Why?" And on and on the mind of the child pursues its will to power. The need to control is repeated in the questioning like a ball on a mountain stream. Mindfulness cannot be appreciated in this way. Restlessness destroys the spirit and vanquishes the tranquil mind. Ball on a mountain stream. The Shogun Ieyasu, founder of flourishing Tokugawa Shogunate, a period where arts and crafts from 1603 to 1867 reached exceptional heights asserted that,,
Life is like a long journey with a heavy load. Let thy steps be slow and steady that thou stumble not. Persuade thyself that imperfection and inconvenience is the natural lot of mortals and there will be no room for discontent ..... neither for despair. Ieyasu's approach through his maxim of Better the less than the more, encourages to hold hands with the Taoist views of action through non-action. The ancient classical theorists of the three schools knew and felt that the Way of Power presented problems to develop a unified mind, for how can you control the process of unity, -it comes of itself. Power was seen to hold the hand of belief and classical thinkers struggled through the Wisdom of the day to resolve their difficulties. Today, as ever we are bogged down in incongruous sets of beliefs and a struggle to power. The question is not where to search, but when to stop. To arrive at position where we feel that we are Being of being. Modernity perhaps more so than any other age, demands that we take up the quest of a spiritual existence, to place essentiality above belief and truth above expedience. This requires that we must both think and feel the essentialness of existence, for truth can only be taken to task as the individual creates it. It is thinking that is in crisis in this explosively changing world. Science has taught us the necessity of facts, of limits, of costs, of causation, of "the final frontiers" of an empirically defined world, yet this is a demand that sits uncomfortably in our stomachs. To develop thinking as in such a way that it calls our minds to address being of Being, of simple "suchness", as the Zennist would say is to call from a sense of futility, where we are seeking to find the edge that will enable our conflicts to leap past the Way of Man. His roots and our difficulties. Thus, if the future of our thinking is to find any "across the board" humanity in this modern world culture, this Modernity, then there is much to deal with because we have made the error of seeing resolution as a final state a God. What pain this is, what disappointment with destiny is meet! But this sense of feeling connected to Being and accepting it strongly affronts the structurally minded thinker. As Above so Below. Few of us are going to give up the hope of having an edge or finding it. Popularized thinking denigrates Being of being, and tries to dissuade us from our concern by asserting an optimistic turn of phrase, or asking us to make a pray of hope to some distant or personal deity, or to even feel "born again" in some ideology or pursuit, but these are frequently self protecting justifications, supporting the necessity of fantasies in the inhospitable winds of change.The changes of Modernity how they sculpt our identities. History has thrown us on a wheel of ourown making. The question and desire for completeness is at issue here. We take hold with rigid necks and taut stomachs to find a way to complete our transitions, our states. This completeness can best be assured through being humanhearted in the Buddhist sense, but this is no simple task of knowledge. It is a demanding practise which must not demand. Wisdom is a bird in flight, a wave in an ocean, a smile in a crowd. Wisdom is Being. Modernity has offered to us a unpalatable belief apple pie where the most reflective of us find that there is a pressing impetuous to escape, to be free from our own self seeking. Most find tension in their success and isolation from anothers heart. No, there can be little perspective of satisfaction here. If we are to come to grips with our roots and potentials we must go further than this. The Sage must come to endure change by being born of it. To reach in and burn to ash the knowledge that has gripped our being in indifferent materialism and produced a world struggling with unbridled emotional reaction is difficult unless we can love, laugh, cry, forgive and listen. Those of us who see the absurdity of such positions have felt that there must be an escape from the dualistic vacilation of conscious to unconscious which provides a basis of our thinking and feeling. This escape is no mere release, but a difficult process of transition to maturity, in being in the world of within and without, of feeling and knowing without needing to assert the content of our beliefs. Taoism declares that the Way of Heaven is lost in a warfare of words between rival schools of morality; that one should come to accept the fatuity and futility of ones moral judgements. The blind do not fear snakes. Thus in thinking we should not be content to find security in reflective analysis -to grasp at, to assimilate acquired knowledge, to be content to understand an explanation, but rather, we should encourage our consciousness to arrive at a position where the value and integrity of our being and others is not ever in jeopardy. We can apprehend our state of mind without being apprehended by it, --it is a celebration of arrival. The leap of the Sage. The Buddhist schools would call this state as being born of "humanheartedness". The implications of such a leap are much greater than they appear, for the progress of modern man has barely begun to accept it's own roots and difficulties. The power of Modernity is teaching our youth to learn not through the enthusiasm of its teachers but by modules as modules. This promotes insight by reaction for a few, security for industry and inconvenience for the curriculum developers, but it is at root, protection of the Self in distress. It is protectionism as a Monster-God. The inner needs of man are in the face of Modernity reaching out for a new way to proceed. The plight is evidently a perennial one, where there is no resolution by simplematerialistic progressiveness alone. False hopes are designed to fail where there is an excessive eagerness for the establishment of a comfortable means of Life, while being forgetful of Life itself. This is not the picture of life that the cultured Chinese would offer. They advocate "Life" as an Art form, to be savoured with the relish of a fine and precious wine. Chin Shengt'an, an impressionistic critic of the seventeenth century once wrote an account of some happy moments that typify the sensitivity that Chinese culture places on the art of living. I am sitting alone in an empty room and I am just getting annoyed at a mouse at the head of my bed, and wondering what that little rustling sound signifies--what article of mine he is eating up. While I am in this state of mind, and don't know what to do, I suddenly see a ferocious cat, wiggling its tail and staring with its wide open eyes, as it were looking at something. I hold my breath and wait for a moment, keeping perfectly still, and suddenly with a little sound the mouse disappears like a whiff of wind. Ah, is this not happiness ? Chin Shengt'an would like us to consider that there is an Art to Thinking a sense to all being. An Art that can lead to Happiness and ease. This Art is attainable by the loss of expectations. When is it that we do not expect nothing?
Expectations grip our perceptions and impose iron rules on our interpretations of everyday life and then we feel little of lifes creative value or are confused in a variety of emotional dilemmas because we are not getting it. Oriental philosophy asks the self to adopt a radically broader mode of thinking at a grassroots level, which Zen would describe as simple -just -"suchness". This state of "suchness" is a transition from rationality to intuitive wisdom, of being over belief, of fragility to arrive at strength. We will find that such transitions will not always be easy or even enjoyable, but the minimum reward will be to have made a that further step towards developing the versatility of our non-dualistic thinking minds, and this is no small task. When asked how the way of Zen can overcome the nature of personal struggle a certain master replied, ~Boiling water over a blazing fire~. It is character that is cited here. What is important is the manner in which experience is faced, not wrangling out of misplaced dilemmas . Character must embrace the Way of Heaven, for Heaven to embrace us. This new age of world culture drags towards a mindfulness that reminds us of the difficulties of hearing a timbre of thought which overthrows the motivations of our small, everyday, personal worlds. We are well able to reach for totality of our being-minds, to be present in NOW, is to arrive in the fullest sense of being. Frequently we hear of the inability to concentrate, which only points to the strength of our distractions. Distractions are created by our own knowledge sitting in the personal Monster-Gods of our minds. They exist by a lack of mindfulness -bereft of simple integration in the wisest form. Put aside fears of being unable to "make sense" of this or that idea. To capture the meaning of bygone era's or the past few days is as problematic as understanding the present. There are greater battles to be given up than this to meet our being. Logic's power has worn the rocks of our past inventions and beliefs to sand. Questions of what is real, together with subject-object problems of western Philosophy been put to rest. "Universal concepts" and "natural absolutes", have fallen under the axe scientific relativism; one cannot speak of a truth without due regard for the time of the speaker and the impact of their historicism. Culture creates identity by presiding over truth. While memory maintains experience as if humanity is pointer, a sign. We are a sign that is not read,,,,,
We feel no pain, we almost have Lost our tongue in foreign lands. (Hoelderlin's Memory) The Taoist, Lao Tzu travels further than this, by suggesting that if we reject theories, generalizations and classifications, we can only admit to an objective apprehension of a particular experience whereby astonishment is a marker. Thus one welcomes all by believing that one knows nothing; this the seat of enlightenment, the original mind set free; "trueist" knowledge of a superior kind. While knowing little and believing one knows everything, is the common evil of humanity. He who spits at heaven gets it back in his face. The face of Modernity has clearly changed us. Let us examine this state of affairs a little. With reflection we find that meaning no longer falls easily or clearly to our hearts for the content of our "truths" must change no matter what "universal concepts" we cite. History has shown us this. It is an absurd predicament, where within the process of developing beliefs we find it is faith that resovles the difficulty of "truth". We must keep hold of faith to think upon confusing matters more clearly. But the world is transition. All ground is shaky ground. All truth has come to have but nominal value, such a mortally bitter pill that few have the will to swallow. In this process one is charged to maintain this burden of relativity or one uses faith. Often we have to recourse to both. Nature has no need of this. Oriental Wisdom feels that the search for individual enlightenment is thwarted if we expect to find the Way to Heaven by mere adoption of knowledge or belief and hope is as ritualistic an experience as the worst narcotic. We may say we trust in some "God" or rather a particular set of values schematically arranged for our explanations of the world as we find it. Well do we really? The evidence suggests not. We usually only thank God and trust in the hope and validity of our Gods. The utterances of the classical three Oriental schools are brief. This is a deliberate ploy for Wisdom is created in the moment of letting go our rules and circumstances. Within the rationality of traditional teachings there the awareness that we have possess no realistic translation of past works which will resolve Being here and now. There is no word of truth for there can be no faithfully true translation of meaning. There is only allusion to Being where the spirit of Being Man is felt, by allowing a growing insight into a world above and below. The Way of Heaven suggests that our lives can profit by placing all our thinking within being, and further, that Being of being is the ancients' approach. Hakui poetry demonstrates this through its removal of excess. No sky at all; no earth at all - and still the snowflakes fall....... Hashin.
Oriental thought places its emphasis on thinking as being, and that allusion to being is the source of creative and essential acts. It follows that whatever can be the truth, is only that which can bring meaning to your life. Identity evolves. This evolution becomes self evident in the practice and acquisition of any art or skill, but the "Art of Living" and the "Art within the Being of Being" will rest within the philosophical and existential bedrock of an openness to unfoldment. So this is the point of departure. Your departure. The irony of this is that the issues of purpose, of being, for professional, artist, worker, child, family and student alike are rarely, if ever discussed in the social or work situations among peers, but these are issues that are essential to the future quality and form of being. Let us hear this voice! So it is here that the contemporary aspirant to Sagehood will find themselves. Entrenched in the Ways of Man where any thought will come to be a reaction to the arrival of being. It is strangely unkempt this age of man. Each holds a will in which has been positioned by roots and difficulties. Where the concepts that both shape and direct commonplace beliefs constrains the thinker to take up issues on many fronts of everyday thinking and feeling or remain stuck with in the positions of others. This is the beginning of a self realization. To know the Way of Being Man through being neither attached to or detached from a world of being, of thinking that is feeling. This is the unobstructed road to freedom. A path through the politics of enlightenment. Discard "success" for it is said that if a man is great he is likely to drink tea with a fork! The politics of our age can be stifling. There is political power in the nature of all thinking that has not embodied essential being. If we wish to transplant ourselves from the confusions of some modern day monsters which are our also our Gods, Oriental Philosophy and Art can shows us many lucrative insights. The contemporary mind must take up the task of approaching the Way of the Sage to uncover Modernity. Modern man has felt the touch of the eastern mind but it has not yet taken the best of it to heart. The profundity of their perceptions have lain strong foundations which have spread and influenced the world of humanistic thinking to a Way of Being Man. Can we continue to encounter our fellows with such a unconcern to the roots of their being? The power of world culture forces suggests not. There is great Need. It is Being that the Oriental perspective of the ancients' offer, and it is only our roots and difficulties that prevents us from capturing the spirit of the central principles held within Taoism , Confucianism and Chan-Zen Buddhism. These principles form the basis of spiritual and moral knowledge that generate a technique of being-doing without technique and a mind that judges through intuition and rationality. This is the arrival of being, the emergence of the reality of oneself. Consider the difficulty of this arrival.
"What is real?" asked the Rabbit.. "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse, "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child really loves you, then you become a Real". "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are real you don't mind being hurt". "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, "he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once", said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." M. Williams. ~The Velveteen Rabbit~. The unique style of the Oriental arts has developed from a complex set of interactive philosophical and cultural values. We may like to call this the wealth of their heritage. For example, Zen Buddhism in Japan has been largely influential in the practice of many arts forms, from Tea drinking to Poetry, while Taoism is the basis of the art forms renowned for their simplicity and naturalness of form, from Painting to Alchemy. The Arts of Oriental Living have prodigious depths because of the appreciation of the Way of Heaven. Critics point to the failings of Oriental history and it is true that the roots of different Oriental arts of living have an enormous degrees of similarity in form and technique (some people like to chalk up the differences but this takes them only where they wish to stay). This is their strength, while we of the west struggle towards this ideal of selfless creative value, towards an art of living that is not subjected to the stultifying forces of an arid industrial and consumerist landscape. Humanity feels the power base of world culture which has conscripted us into this struggle to fulfilment. Is this true? Too many of us have failed to touch the liberating value of others perspectives, as well as being woefully confused about our own. A technique was developed to overcome this narrowness. A teacher is not supposed to lead but to lead out. An overview is desirable for comfort but is usually reacted against if the values are unresolved in the mind of the aspirant. It is was therefore common practice for an astute teacher of any Oriental practice that approaches life as an Art, to confront the aspirant (within a Zennist style approach usually through the ambiguity and paradox of a Koan system) of fruitlessness of trying to "understand" the nature of the Art (Tao, Mu) practised, for this is the way of illusion. This is done by bringing the ego logic of the self to confront again and again the ABSURDITY OF TRYING to transform mind with the mind; similarly, the self through the motivations of the self, Herein lies the inherent danger of attachment to success, confusion and difficulty. Just "suchness" is to leave the inner Gods at rest, - a Zen/Chan, Taoist maxim that highlights the wisdom and simplicity of Oriental philosophy and characterizes their art. The psychology of this attitude can release us from our many attempts to become unstuck as such attempts through success frequently bring yet further "difficulties". Therefore in a similar vein I feel compelled to advise the reader not to employ reactionary value judgements too readily and preferably not at all. The danger lies in trying to interpret the inherent complexity of Oriental thought through the use of our everyday modern idioms. These unconsciously used idioms can well lead us astray. Hold fast and be patient in life as a study! As the Zen patriarch Seng-ts'an put it: The wise person does not strive; (has no need) The ignorant man ties himself up...(unavoidable) If you work on your mind with your mind, (dualistic) How can you avoid an immense confusion? (always doubt) Zen recommends we should attend to the world as it is, rather than how we would like it to be. This is not passive as it is not active. Faith, also holds little sway in Zen's rejection of rationalism; -hear your thoughts, but do not chase them a way with meaningless difficulties, the mind and heart are still needed, but without the value loaded burden of "my-self". Or perhaps more accessible is the Confucian view, which asserts, that if we fail to take up what is intelligent (TEH), we may well lose what is best. The "middle way' is advocated by the Confucian in the "superior man's" inescapable call to pursue integrity and virtue.
Our personal-Monsters-Gods must meet the insight of Oriental thinking and do battle if our being in the world is to come to fruition. How and why we have come to accept these affronts on our being has the hallmark of both the present and past cultural crises, but the relevance is there for the development of character, virtue and integrity that is the concern of artist, thinker and layperson alike. Appreciation, recognition, acceptance and death are a few of the central personal-monsters-Gods that our ego's strive to know at an intimate level. The Way of Heaven is an introduction to many such problems as faced through the principles of Oriental philosophy and art. As such it is hoped that any "difficulties" be undertaken with a spirit of mind that enjoys the productive challenges we shall meet. We must come to profit in our losses. If you meet the Buddha you must kill it. (don't stop now!)
OR GO BACK
