When we become interested in Zen it is through the prism of our culture. This includes our language and ideas that we use to try and get a working impression of Zen. Each culture offers, let’s say, different colors from that prism’s spectrum. But not one goes back to the original clear light before it enters the prism. This includes the very universe itself.
Before I forget, I used the word ‘prism’ in a metaphorical sense to refer to the conversion of the original one into many.
To repeat myself somewhat, the source of our cultural reality in which I include the universe is something closed off to us. We don't have the Buddha eyes to see the clear light before it goes through the prism. Only a precious few manage to see what the Buddha saw. The problem that we face in Zen is how to switch back to the original one (it is also called the One Mind) before it is conditioned by the prism.
The Buddha and the Zen masters try to teach us that our human reality is not real (it is only relatively real). In fact, a strong case in some scientific circles is developing against reality (Dr. Donald Hoffman). It only seems as if everything around us is real. As mere humans this means that we are imperfect representations of the original one just like all the rest of the creatures on this planet who are also imperfect representations. Still, we do not behold the one reality directly. We have no direct intuition of it yet. But this is what Zen wants to teach us as impossible as this sounds.
Unfortunately, the Zen practiced today seems almost incapable of accomplishing this task. Looking through the prism of our culture we have swung too far to the left hemisphere of the brain (I mentioned this in a previous blog). Our intuitional abilities that are necessary for Zen are rapidly declining—we can't see the forest for the trees anymore (understand koans). And what we deem and defend to be real is not really real at all. We imagine to have found an island of reality in this world. But we are deceived. We have found no such thing. Again, the Buddha and the Zen masters are trying to teach us that our human reality is not real; at least not the way we imagine it to be. Again, the only reality is the original one.
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