Mathematician Mitchell Feigenbaum, who was one of the founders of the theory of chaos, once said, “What artists have accomplished is realizing that there's only a small amount of stuff that's important, and then seeing what it was.” I agree. I found this to be true especially with Zen; that it was not necessary to read the entire Buddhist section in an academic library to awaken. In my case, a half dozen books maybe.
Buddhism developed and spread throughout the world from the simple insight that Gautama had whereby he became awakened to ultimate reality. What he beheld, although simple, was most primordial and fundamental to every conditioned thing. More importantly, it was unconditioned. If you took it away, conditioned things would cease to exist. And because things have an existence, albeit a changing and impermanent existence, they are dependent upon the unconditioned. See it, and you are master of the universe.
To awaken to what Gautama saw is to become, first, a spiritual artist during our spiritual journey, realizing that a very small about of stuff is necessary. In Zen it is only to see our true nature, or the same, pure Mind when suddenly the stirrings of our mind just stop for a split second. In this brief moment, the mystery of the universe is unlocked.
Of all the things in the world worth doing, seeing our true nature is one of the most important. Then comes the hard spiritual work of actually seeing it. Having said that, I don’t expect anyone to take my words seriously except a handful of people.
I realize that the huge bulk of mankind are not spiritual artists. A lot of things are important to them, just not awakening. They want as much as they can get out of life and as fast as they can. To use that line from the old Schlitz beer commercial, people want to “go for the gusto.” They are what I call “enjoyers” who are enslaved to their senses. The world is their toy store—a world of delights. It is useless trying to convince them that Zen Buddhism has better treasures. They are too deluded.
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