One of my favorite stories that Zen Master Seung Sahn used to tell is about a monk in Korea several hundred years ago named Sok Du, which means \u201cRock Head\u201d.\u00a0 Not the shiniest head in the monastery, but he had a very strong question.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t understand sutras so he tried Zen, but even Zen was too difficult for him, so he just practiced working around the monastery.<\/p>\n
One day he told the resident Zen master he was tired of being so dull and confused.\u00a0 The master told him he needed to ask a good question.\u00a0 So Sok Du asked \u201cWhat is Buddha?\u201d\u00a0 The master answered \u201cJuk shim shi bul\u201d which means \u201cBuddha is heart-mind\u201d, but Sok Du heard \u201cJip shin shi bul\u201d which means \u201cBuddha is grass shoes\u201d.<\/p>\n
Huh?\u00a0 Sok Du was stuck.\u00a0 What could this mean?\u00a0 He didn\u2019t understand.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t bother asking the master for any explanation.\u00a0 In his dim-witted sincerity, he only kept this question as he continued working around the monastery.\u00a0 Three years later he had a major breakthrough and returned to his teacher, who verified his experience.<\/p>\n
Zen Master Seung Sahn used this story to demonstrate how little conceptual understanding we need to wake up to our true nature. \u00a0He often said: \u201cUnderstanding cannot help you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I like this story because it demonstrates the non-conceptual nature of paths like Zen.\u00a0 This story would be ridiculous in conceptual schools, which require very meticulous understanding of the finer points of the teaching and very precise instruction on the correct methods of practice, often requiring many years if not decades of careful study.<\/p>\n
Sok Du may not have realized it, but he was practicing the correct method of gong-an\/hua-tou style Zen.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t the same practice as wuweidao \u2013 I don\u2019t want to conflate them, however the view is quite similar even if the qi-posture is quite different.\u00a0 Gong-an practice takes our aggressive energy and re-directs it toward awakening, whereas wuweidao relaxes aggression at the source.\u00a0 But they are both non-conceptual practices that do not rely on a sophisticated understanding of sutras or scriptures.<\/p>\n
Recall that Laozi distinguishes Dao from learning \u2013 they are not the same thing.\u00a0 If our spiritual practice is based on adding layers of understanding, we are not practicing Laozi\u2019s wuweidao.<\/p>\n
I suppose this reads as a sort of manifesto for stupidity.\u00a0 A better word is probably simplicity.\u00a0 Laozi observes that our nature conceals itself from cleverness but reveals itself in simplicity.\u00a0 What are we to do?<\/p>\n
KAAT!<\/p>\n
Eat, breath, move, rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my favorite stories that Zen Master Seung Sahn used to tell is about a monk in Korea several hundred years ago named Sok Du, which means \u201cRock Head\u201d.\u00a0 Not the shiniest head in the monastery, but he had a very strong question.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t understand sutras so he tried Zen, but even Zen … Continue reading ““Buddha is Grass Shoes””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":327,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions\/327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldoakdao.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}