Note
Our minds are storytelling minds, constantly creating personal and cultural narratives that may not reflect reality. Through Zen practice, we can clarify our thinking, problem solve more effectively, and use concepts constructively without being controlled by them. Zen training helps us see that all language and concepts are insubstantial, leading to a transformation where we carry them lightly.
Highlights
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2024-12-30 12:04 So it’s by Les Murray, and it’s called the Meaning of Existence. It’s just a short poem. Everything except language knows the meaning of existence. Trees, planets, rivers, time know nothing else. They express it moment by moment as the universe.
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2024-12-30 12:04 And they may be of the progressive left kind, or they might be the conservative right kind, but we believe them to be true. They’re just concepts that people made up in just having recently written a book and having published it. I’m a writer and I make up stories as well. And when you’re actually the writer of books, I mean, you know that you’re kind of like a storyteller, like, kind of like the wizard of Oz, you know, you’re just making this stuff up, you know, of course my book is true.
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2024-12-28 13:33 All of that is adding extra thinking on top of what needs to be done and then it becomes a muddle. Right?
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2024-12-30 12:05 But to use in the spirit of Zen, if you’re going to think and problem solve, well, just think, just problem solve and don’t add anything else onto it. So Zen is not anti thinking, but in the words of Robert Aitken, who was one of my teachers and quite a very scholarly man and loved literature and so on. His words really ring in my ears. He said once Zen practice is about using concepts, not being used by them. And there’s a big difference between the two.
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2024-12-30 12:05 We can use language in a very constructive kind of way. We have the potential to do that, and we also have the potential to misuse it and create separation. But the note to end on is really to put it in everyday language is that through Zen training and looking into the content of what we think and the stories we generate is that we see that all language and concepts is just insubstantial. And when we see that they’re insubstantial, the transformation that occurs is that we carry them lightly. But every philosophy, every political idea you’ve got, every idea about yourself, if there’s a transformation that happens in Zen practice, you carry it lightly.