If the patient's mind is temporarily clouded through infection or suffering, he may be reacting to a delusion, an obsession, a fixed idea of disability, a terrifying fear. Sometimes he persistently refuses food, and gives no reason for it. The ... Read more of The Deluded Patient at Overcoming Fear.ca

Privacy

Samurai

Life Consists In Conflict
Life consists in conflict. So long as man remains a social a...

Man Is Not Good-natured Nor Bad-natured But Buddha-natured
We have had already occasion to observe that Zen teaches Bud...

Buddha The Universal Life
Zen conceives Buddha as a Being, who moves, stirs, inspires, ...

Poetical Intuition And Zen
Since Universal Life or Spirit permeates the universe, the po...

Zen In The Dark Age
The latter half of the Ashikaga period was the age of arms an...

A Sutra Equal In Size To The Whole World
The holy writ that Zen masters admire is not one of parchment...

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

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

The Irrationality Of The Belief Of Immortality
Occidental minds believe in a mysterious entity under the nam...

Everything Is Living According To Zen
Everything alive has a strong innate tendency to preserve its...

The Establishment Of The Rin Zai School Of Zen In Japan
[FN#67] The Lin Tsi school was started by Nan Yoh, a pr...

Idealistic Scepticism Concerning Religion And Morality
Similarly, it is the case with religion and morality. If we ...

Do Thy Best And Leave The Rest To Providence
There is another point of view which enables us to enjoy life...

The Errors Of Philosophical Pessimists And Religious Optimists
Philosophical pessimists[FN#214] maintain that there are on e...

The Introduction Of The So-to School Of Zen
[FN#75] This school was started by Tsing-Yuen (Sei-gen)...

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

Where Does The Root Of The Illusion Lie?
Now let us examine where illusion lies hidden from the view o...

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

Enlightenment Implies An Insight Into The Nature Of Self
We cannot pass over, however, this weighty problem without sa...

Man Is Both Good-natured And Bad-natured According To Yan Hiung
According to Yang Hiung and his followers, good is no less re...

The Law Of Balance

Nature governs the world with her law of balance. She puts things
ever in pairs,[FN#216] and leaves nothing in isolation. Positives
stand in opposition to negatives, actives to passives, males to
females, and so on. Thus we get the ebb in opposition to the flood
tide; the centrifugal force to the centripetal; attraction to
repulsion; growth to decay; toxin to antitoxin; light to shade;
action to reaction; unity to variety; day to night; the animate to
the inanimate. Look at our own bodies: the right eye is placed side
by side with the left; the left shoulder with the right; the right
lung with the left; the left hemisphere of the brain with that of the
right; and so forth.

[FN#216] Zenists call them 'pairs of opposites.'

It holds good also in human affairs: advantage is always accompanied
by disadvantage; loss by gain; convenience by inconvenience; good by
evil; rise by fall; prosperity by adversity; virtue by vice; beauty
by deformity; pain by pleasure; youth by old age; life by death. 'A
handsome young lady of quality,' a parable in Mahaparinirvana-sutra
tells us, 'who carries with her an immense treasure is ever
accompanied by her sister, an ugly woman in rags, who destroys
everything within her reach. If we win the former, we must also get
the latter.' As pessimists show intense dislike towards the latter
and forget the former, so optimists admire the former so much that
they are indifferent to the latter.

Next: Life Consists In Conflict
Previous: The Errors Of Philosophical Pessimists And Religious Optimists

Report
Privacy

SHARE

BOOKMARK

Viewed 596