Can we see or at least intuit true reality when we seem to be lost in illusory existence, including this body that came through our mother's birth canal? Materialist say no but the Buddhas say yes.
According to the materialists we only have sensory knowledge to rely on. But according to the Buddhists sensory knowledge, which includes mentation which is the 6th sense, can be transcended.
However mankind's science also falls within mentation, this includes his imagination, his fantasies, even his dreams. From the six sense arise all kinds of fictions many of which are useful for staying alive in an illusory world in an illusory body. Still, all sensory knowledge is relative knowledge not absolute.
Said differently, as we participate more and more in the illusory world through our illusory body we acquire relative knowledge. But what lies beyond illusion and the relative knowledge that we depend upon? We do not know because we have rejected absolute knowledge or the same, transcendent knowledge.
Man (S., manu) is a thinking creature who is immersed in a relativistic or illusory existence. For man to transcend man requires that he go beyond himself: beyond subject and object, beyond perceiver and perceiving, beyond thinker and thought, etc. Transcendence itself cannot be imagined, to do so is to fall into the barrier of Mumon.
祖關不透心路不絶、盡是依草附木精靈。
If you do not pass the barrier, and do not cut off the way of thinking [all ways of knowing], then you will be like a ghost clinging to the bushes and weeds. (Brackets are mine.)
Foremost, Zen is about transcending this temporal life, intuiting at once the absolute before it is transformed into this illusory existence. Echoing the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, we are absolute spirit having a human life.
But to go back to spirit we must transcend all that is human. As the reader may have noticed there is a subtle difference between letting go and transcendence. Knowing this difference is crucial.
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