Once upon a time there was a fish. And just because it was a fish, it had lived all its life in the water and knew nothing whatever about anything else but water. And one day as it swam about in the lake where all its days had been spent, it happened to meet a turtle of its acquaintance who had just come back from a little excursion on the land.
"Good day, Mr. Turtle!" said the fish. "I have not seen you for a long time. Where have you been?"
"Oh", said the turtle, "I have just been for a trip on dry land."
"On dry land!" exclaimed the fish. "What do you mean by on dry land? There is no dry land. I had never seen such a thing. Dry land is nothing."
"Well," said the turtle good-naturedly. "If you want to think so, of course you may; there is no one who can hinder you. But that's where I've been, all the same."
"Oh, come," said the fish. "Try to talk sense. Just tell me now what is this land of yours like? Is it all wet?"
"No, it is not wet," said the turtle.
"Is it nice and fresh and cool?" asked the fish.
"No, it is not nice and fresh and cool," the trutle replied.
"Is it clear so that light can come through it?"
"No, it is not clear. Light cannot come through it."
"Is it soft and yielding, so that I can move my fins about in it and push my nose through it?"
"No, it is not soft and yielding. You could not swim in it."
"Does it move or flow in streams?"
"No, it neither moves nor flows in streams."
"Does it ever rise up into waves then, with white foams in them?" asked the fish, impatient at this string of Noes.
"No!" replied the turtle, truthfully. "It never rises up into waves that I have seen."
"There now," exclaimed the fish triumphantly. "Didn't I tell you that this land of yours was just nothing? I have just asked, and you have answered me that it is neither wet nor cool, not clear nor soft and that it does not flow in streams nor rise up into waves. And if it isn't a single one of these things what else is it but nothing? Don't tell me."
"Well, well", said the turtle, "If you are determined to think that dry land is nothing, I suppose you must just go on thinking so. But any one who knows what is water and what is land would say you were just a silly fish, for you think that anything you have never known is nothing just because you have never known it."
And with that the turtle turned away and, leaving the fish behind in its little pond of water, set out on another excursion over the dry land that was nothing.
Source: "The Buddha and His Teachings" by Maha thera Narada.
"We are living in a virtual reality game overly attached to our avatar, having forgotten about the player and who this player is."
Indeed. Yet the ramification of this contemporary scientific acknowledgment of what basically has been known by the spiritual sages throughout the history of man is astounding for anyone with little sand in their eyes.
For one, it tells a zen student (and those devoted to martial arts) that true "real-time" is a reality way before your assumed field of sensory perception. Hence the true stream of gnosis (intuitive/spiritual gnosis) antecedes your worldly stream of buffered information via your first obstacle of input (your brain).
Hence the reason true masters of the sword in ancient times taught their disciples to open up to their "Spirit" and let it draw and handle the sword instead of their worldly brain that always produced a stream of distorted information, slowed down by an unceasing stream of thoughts, doubt, and a generally unreal perception of Spatio-temporal actuality.
For the genuine Zennist, the great Chan Masters emphasized the importance of stopping (bypassing) the incessant thought stream as to validate the true nirvanic stream of the Buddha Mind preceding at all times the false self, born out of ignorance and created errors based on following said false self. Expedient means were developed to help their students realize this fact, of which a few are known as Ging-ans (Koans), Dhyana (Jhana), Mondo´s (問答, Chinese: wèndá), Sutra recitations and so on.
In this way, once the seed of enlightenment (Gotra) bloomed, like a sudden flash from seemingly nowhere the disciple would instantly awake to the pure Mind (unbuffered TRUE MIND) permeating all ten directions of the Buddha-field, in which the disciple realizes, now beholding the immense extent of its true body, that he never was separated from this pure Mind but only denied himself its luminous glory by direct and habitual cause of strong worldly desires and the ignorance of habitual interdependent origination binding him towards the false matrix of the brain and its artificial consciousness field distorting the former.
Where the false matrix fooled the Spirit of the disciple to believe in birth, life, and death, the pure Mind displayed a permanent nirvanic reality of deathlessness devoid of the three pains of skandhic existence.
In this field, the disciple, having had his first enlightenment (Kensho) gradually, unlearns the traps and false stream entry of Maras Matrix and awakes to a higher vertical reality of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that goes on ad infinitum and encompasses all sentient minds as ONE MIND.
Posted by: Jung | February 10, 2022 at 04:00 AM
One can learn a lot from a turtle.
Posted by: n. yeti | February 06, 2022 at 10:39 PM
Beautiful words! Sometimes I think the Christian Gnostics and the theme of the Matrix are correct. It's nice to see that I'm not the only one that sees this. We are living in a virtual reality game overly attached to our avatar, having forgotten about the player and who this player really is.
Posted by: TheZennist | February 02, 2022 at 08:54 AM
Failure of a true perception of what constitutes true reality, instead of the filtered artificial reality the skandhas deliver to the entangled Mind isn't such an enigma once you break through the hazing veil of the brain via the first awakening of Kensho.
Certain modern gurus in the west like Depak Chopra, or Eckhart Tolle and his likes has conveyed the importance of "living in the now" is the highest aspiration of the awakened (enlightened) mind.
But in Zen, at its truest core, as well as certain ancient yogic teachings, living in the now is and was seen as anathema when compared to the true spiritual reality behind all phenomena.
You cannot dwell in the "now" of a Spatio-temporal illusion as much as you believe that your true self is contained within the confine of your corporeal matrix.
From contemporary scientific research of the brain and its limited consciousness field, scientists have admitted that perception of a true, real-time world is essentially impossible because the brain as such, shows an audiovisual "environment" that is about 15 seconds "in the past" instead of updating your vision in real-time.
Consequently, most sentients are dwelling in a "buffered" reality that seems smooth and present in a now that in reality isn't true as revealed from a Spatio-temporal perspective.
Professor D. Whitney, being part of these latest study of the neurophysiological constitution of the human brain has said:
'If our brains were always updating in real-time, the world would be a jittery place with constant fluctuations in shadow, light, and movement, and we'd feel like we were hallucinating all the time. Our brain is like a time machine, it keeps sending us back in time. It's like we have an app that consolidates our visual input every 15 seconds into one impression so we can handle everyday life.'
Posted by: Jung | February 02, 2022 at 06:19 AM