When Queen Ulrica was dead, her corpse was placed in the usual way in an open coffin, in a room hung with black and lighted with numerous wax candles; a company of the king's guards did duty in the ante-room. One afternoon, the carriage of... Read more of Queen Ulrica And The Countess Steenbock at Scary Stories.ca

Privacy

Samurai

Retribution In The Past The Present And The Future Life
Then a question suggests itself: If there be no soul that su...

The Honest Poverty Of The Zen Monk And The Samurai
Secondly, the so-called honest poverty is a characteristic of...

Life And Change
Transformation and change are the essential features of life;...

There Is No Mortal Who Is Purely Moral
By nature man should be either good or bad; or he should be g...

The Progress And Hope Of Life
How many myriads of years have passed since the germs of life...

Idealistic Scepticism Concerning Objective Reality
But extreme Idealism identifies 'to be' with 'to be known,' a...

Man Is Good-natured According To Mencius
Oriental scholars, especially the Chinese men of letters, se...

The Application Of The Law Of Causation To Morals
Although it may be needless to state here the law of causatio...

Life And Change
A peculiar phase of life is change which appears in the form ...

All The Worlds In Ten Directions Are Buddha's Holy Land
We are to resume this problem in the following chapter. Suff...

Real Self
If there be no individual soul either in mind or body, where ...

Pessimistic View Of The Ancient Hindus
In addition to this, the new theory of matter has entirely ov...

Bodhidharma And The Emperor Wu
No sooner had Bodhidharma landed at Kwang Cheu in Southern Ch...

Buddha Dwelling In The Individual Mind
Enlightened Consciousness in the individual mind acquires for...

The Awakening Of The Innermost Wisdom
Having set ourselves free from the misconception of Self, nex...

Nature Is The Mother Of All Things
Furthermore, man has come into existence out of Nature. He i...

Zazen And The Forgetting Of Self
Zazen is a most effectual means of destroying selfishness, th...

Great Men And Nature
All great men, whether they be poets or scientists or religio...

Zen Under The Toku-gana Shogunate
Peace was at last restored by Iye-yasu, the founder of the To...

Wang Yang Ming (o-yo-mei) And A Thief
One evening when Wang was giving a lecture to a number of stu...

The Absolute And Reality Are But An Abstraction

A grain of sand you, trample upon has a deeper significance than a
series of lectures by your verbal philosopher whom you respect. It
contains within itself the whole history of the earth; it tells you
what it has seen since the dawn of time; while your philosopher
simply plays on abstract terms and empty words. What does his
Absolute, or One, or Substance mean? What does his Reality or Truth
imply? Do they denote or connote anything? Mere name! mere
abstraction! One school of philosophy after another has been
established on logical subtleties; thousands of books have been
written on these grand names and fair mirages, which vanish the
moment that your hand of experience reaches after them.

Duke Hwan, says Chwang Tsz,[FN#134] seated above in his hall, was
(once) reading a book, and a wheelwright, Phien, was making a wheel
below it. Laying aside his hammer and chisel, Phien went up the
steps and said: 'I venture to ask your Grace what words you are
reading?' The duke said: 'The words of sages.' 'Are these sages
alive?' Phien continued. 'They are dead,' was the reply. 'Then,'
said the other, 'what you, my Ruler, are reading is only the dregs
and sediments of those old men.' The duke said:

[FN#134] Chwang Tsz, vol. ii., p. 24.

'How should you, a wheelwright, have anything to say about the book
which I am reading? If you can explain yourself, very well; if you
cannot, you shall die.' The wheelwright said: 'Your servant will
look at the thing from the point of view of his own art. In making a
wheel, if I proceed gently, that is pleasant enough, but the
workmanship is not strong; if I proceed violently, that is toilsome
and the joinings do not fit. If the movements of my hand are neither
(too) gentle nor (too) violent, the idea in my mind is realized. But
I cannot tell (how to do this) by word of mouth; there is a knack in
it. I cannot teach the knack to my son, nor can my son learn it from
me. Thus it is that I am in my seventieth year, and am (still)
making wheels in my old age. But these ancients, and what it was not
possible for them to convey, are dead and gone. So then what you, my
Ruler, are reading is but their dregs and sediments. Zen has no
business with the dregs and sediments of sages of yore.

Next: The Sermon Of The Inanimate
Previous: Great Men And Nature

Report
Privacy

SHARE

BOOKMARK

Viewed 553