Everything written symbols can say has already passed by. They are like tracks left by animals. That is why the masters of meditation refuse to accept that writings are final. The aim is to reach true being by means of those tracks, those letters, those signs - but reality itself is not a sign, and it leaves no tracks. It doesn't come to us by the way of letters or words. We can go toward it, by following those words and letters back to what they came from. But so long as we are preoccupied with symbols, theories and opinions, we will fail to reach the principle.
But when we give up symbols and opinions, are we left in the utter nothingness of being?
Yes.
Kimura Kyuho,
Kenjutsu Fushigi Hen [
On the Mysteries of Swordsmanship], 1768
(H)
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ReplyDeleteI completely agree.
ReplyDelete"The conventional 'self' or 'person' is composed mainly of a history consisting of selected memories, and beginning from the moment of parturition. According to convention, I am not simply what I am doing now. I am also what I have done, and my conventionally edited version of my past is made to seem almost the more real 'me' than what I am at this moment. For what I am seems so fleeting and intangible, but what I was is fixed and final. It is the firm basis for predictions of what I will be in the future, and so it comes about that I am more closely identified with what no longer exists than with what actually is!"
--Alan Watts, The Way of Zen (1957)
(J)