A Zen master said to a monk

[FearlessFreep]

OK, I'll bite. I think the Zen Master was a con.

It reminded me of half the dialog from the two Matrix sequals. "I am here because here is where I'm destined to be" What I call 'fortune cookie philosophy' It sounds really clever and profound at first blush but if you really stop to think about it either a) you realize it means nothing or b) you think it means something but you don't "get it" so you applaud the speaker for their wisdom and doubt your own and go off to discover what it means and when you finally put meaning to nonsense you feel proud for your enlightenment and the speaker feels smug for putting one over on you.

Because let's look at the orignal premise. The Universe is *NOT* in a cup, any more than the cup is made of the same electrons, protons, etc...as everything else so that is technicaly true but pretty useless a level to be concerned with so let's not bother. Above and beyond that, the universe is full of majesty and beauty and tragedy and betrayal and loyalty and triump and loss and life and death, and stars and galaxies and rivers and flowers. You will not see that by navel gacing into a tea cup and if you find it there, that's because you brought it with you, in which case the cup really didn't matter. If you didn't have it to begin with, you will not find it in the cup.

So the real meaning of the story is that the Zen Master is a fraud and the Monk realized it, which is why he threw the cup away.

 

[Shaderon]

Freep I think you are on to something there. If the universe is in the cup, then it's everywhere else, we don't need the cup. It's part of the universe, but so is the monk himself. Everything is... so the cup is no more important than anything else.

Maybe the Zen Master wasn't a con though, he didn't say the monk was wrong, what the was said was the the monk didn't see the universe in the cup. If the monk was really thinking, he'd have seen the universe, but he'd have seen it everywhere, not just in the cup. The monk was closed minded, the zen master saw that.

 

[Obliquity]

Not seeing the universe doesn't mean it is there. Perhaps the monk was not so pretentious as the master.

Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps I had better go meditate in worship with a fine, imported tobacco product and a diet coke.

 

[Sukerkin]

Fearless, that's a good step-to-the-left interpretation there. Certainly one that I would not have thought up :tup:.

For myself, my response is somewhat akin to Exile's in that my reaction was that the cup was a metaphor for the mind.

Throwing away the cup is symbolic of the prosaic becoming the master of the exquisite (or the Inifinite, to be pompous about it ).

The monk saw only the cup, a cheap, ceramic artifact which had no value to him. So he discarded any possibility that it may mean more because he had not learned to lift his spiritual eyes up, from the mundane cares that fill everyday life, to see that the universe is reflected in everything.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

If you cannot find the truth right where you are where else do you expect to find it?
-Dogen Zenji

 

[Blotan Hunka]

Heres the one that strikes right to the heart of Zen. For me at least.

"Show me your original face, the face you had before your parents were born."

"You cannot describe it or draw it. You cannot praise it enough or perceive it. No place can be found in which to put the Original Face; it will not disappear even when the universe is destroyed...."

-Zen Quotes by Mumon.

 

[Last Fearner]

A Zen master said to a monk....”

Interesting thing about koans is that they are not designed to directly answer a question, or impart wisdom from the master to the disciple. They are intended to lead the student to self discovery - - enlightenment.

The Zen master is not a con. The master sees something within the student which is either blocking the student's path to enlightenment, or missing from the student's understanding which might help lead to enlightenment. In some cases, a koan is a mystifying riddle that has no correct answer, but is intended to provoke deep thought by anyone who hears it, in order to gain an enlightened state.

Other times, the koan is specifically directed at one person; "A Zen master said to a monk...." In this case, the master has realized that the monk needs awareness, but rather than force-feeding lessons, the Zen master uses everyday life experience to lead the student to their own realizations.

There are those who have heard about koans and attempt to duplicate them by spouting unconnected riddles at indiscriminate times with no real purpose or understanding of what the koan should be there to accomplish. It is like a doctor being in a room full of sick people, and switching the medicine, giving the wrong medicine to each person, or only one person in the room is sick, and the doctor gives the right medicine to everyone in the room but the only sick person. It could also be compared to the doctor giving the right medicine, to the right person by applying some kind of healing salve to the wrong part of their body.

Who knows why this monk needed that lesson at that particular time, or what the monk had said or done to provoke the Zen Master's use of the Koan (or even if this was a real scenario or not). It is like the tea pouring lesson that is common among all Martial Art philosophy (which Bruce Lee made more famous). The student rambles on about their own knowledge, and continuously challenges the knowledge of the Master. Therefore, the Master begins to pour some tea into the students cup. When the cup overflows, the student calls for the Master to stop pouring - - his cup is too full and will hold no more tea.

I think we all know the lesson of "empty your cup," but the reason I mention it here is that the pouring of tea into the cup by the Master was done at a specific time to a specific student who needed that lesson. The Master could have just said, "shut up, you arrogant fool, and listen to someone who has something to teach you!" However, students often learn best with visual aides, self discovery, and through personal experience.

On the other hand, it would make little sense to go up to a complete stranger in a coffee-house and begin pouring coffee into their cup until it over flows and tell them to "empty their cup," so they can learn more. The lesson does not apply unless the student was at that juncture, and needed to learn that lesson. A Zen master is not a con for helping to guide the student in such a way, but the fool who imitates a Zen master by spouting "wisdom" at the drop of a hat probably does not understand the purpose of the koan, and is seldom doing anyone much good.

CM D.J. Eisenhart

 

[The Master]

If I am holding a cup of water and I ask you, "is the cup empty?" you will say "No, it is full of water." But if i pour out the water and I ask you again, you may say, "yes, it is empty." but, empty of what?....My cup is empty of water, but it is not empty of air. To be empty is to be empty of something..... When Avalokita [Kuan-Yin, or Kannon, the bodhisattva who embodies Compassion] says [in the Heart Sutra] that the five skandas are equally empty, to help him be precise, we must ask "Mr. Avolikta, empty of what?" The five Skandas, which may be translated into english as the five heaps, or five aggregates, are the five elements of that comprise the human being.....In fact, these are really five rivers flowing together in us: the river of form, which means our body, the river of mental formations, the river of feelings, the river of perceptions and the river of consciousness. They are always flowing within us... Arvalokit looked deeply into the five skhandas... and discovered none of them can be by itself alone....Form is empty of a separate self, but it is full of everything else in the cosmos. The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
---- Thich Nat Hanh The Heart of Understanding

 

[Yari]

If I am holding a cup of water and I ask you, "is the cup empty?" you will say "No, it is full of water." But if i pour out the water and I ask you again, you may say, "yes, it is empty." but, empty of what?....My cup is empty of water, but it is not empty of air. To be empty is to be empty of something..... snip....Form is empty of a separate self, but it is full of everything else in the cosmos. The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
---- Thich Nat Hanh The Heart of Understanding

I probably started the offset of this thread by joking, sorry for that. Didn't know it was a discussion of the koan.

I think it says things are relative, and remember that the view you have isn't unique. There will always be another way of seeing it.

/yari

 

[Shaderon]

I think it says different things to different people depending on their perception and readiness for lessons.

 

[Yari]

I think it says different things to different people depending on their perception and readiness for lessons.

That is probably true, since each person is on his/her level, and have different experience. But it shouldn't differ that much for 2 reasons. 1) We can understand each other, and there for have to have a certain level of the same understanding/experience 2) There is a reason for the "lesson", which means there is a path/way/answer, in such deciding a certain groth in a certain way.

/yari

 

[Captain Harlock]

A Zen master said to a monk, “You must see the universe in your cup.”

The monk looked into his cup, but didn’t see the universe, so he threw the cup away.

The Zen master said, “Oh, poor cup. We think the cup is too small to hold the universe. Intellectually, we can’t see how it could fit. But wherever we go, the whole universe always appears--in a cup, a window, in a smile, in a word.”

If I am holding a cup of water and I ask you, "is the cup empty?" you will say "No, it is full of water." But if i pour out the water and I ask you again, you may say, "yes, it is empty." but, empty of what?....My cup is empty of water, but it is not empty of air. To be empty is to be empty of something..... When Avalokita [Kuan-Yin, or Kannon, the bodhisattva who embodies Compassion] says [in the Heart Sutra] that the five skandas are equally empty, to help him be precise, we must ask "Mr. Avolikta, empty of what?" The five Skandas, which may be translated into english as the five heaps, or five aggregates, are the five elements of that comprise the human being.....In fact, these are really five rivers flowing together in us: the river of form, which means our body, the river of mental formations, the river of feelings, the river of perceptions and the river of consciousness. They are always flowing within us... Arvalokit looked deeply into the five skhandas... and discovered none of them can be by itself alone....Form is empty of a separate self, but it is full of everything else in the cosmos. The same is true with feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
---- Thich Nat Hanh The Heart of Understanding

When is a cup not a cup but instead something else?

 

[CuongNhuka]

OK, I'll bite. I think the Zen Master was a con.

It reminded me of half the dialog from the two Matrix sequals. "I am here because here is where I'm destined to be" What I call 'fortune cookie philosophy' It sounds really clever and profound at first blush but if you really stop to think about it either a) you realize it means nothing or b) you think it means something but you don't "get it" so you applaud the speaker for their wisdom and doubt your own and go off to discover what it means and when you finally put meaning to nonsense you feel proud for your enlightenment and the speaker feels smug for putting one over on you.

Because let's look at the orignal premise. The Universe is *NOT* in a cup, any more than the cup is made of the same electrons, protons, etc...as everything else so that is technicaly true but pretty useless a level to be concerned with so let's not bother. Above and beyond that, the universe is full of majesty and beauty and tragedy and betrayal and loyalty and triump and loss and life and death, and stars and galaxies and rivers and flowers. You will not see that by navel gacing into a tea cup and if you find it there, that's because you brought it with you, in which case the cup really didn't matter. If you didn't have it to begin with, you will not find it in the cup.

So the real meaning of the story is that the Zen Master is a fraud and the Monk realized it, which is why he threw the cup away.

Me thinks you don't care much for Eastern religions, no? Much of Eastern Faith is based on the idea of logical contradictions, which are metaphores/similies for somthing else. Like in the Daoist saying "form within formlessness, formlessness within form". Thats right, Bruce Lee apartnly read (and semi-ignored) Daoist theology.

How would you answer this basic Zen riddle (if you don't mind): "1,000 lions instantly apeared on the end of a piece of hair, how is this possible?"

 

[jim777]

I have one!

.....
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is to enter the kingdom of heaven, yet through faith all things are possible.

The 'eye of a needle' refers to a particular guarded entrance in the walled city of Jerusalem. A rich man would have to get down, unload the camels (as the Needle was not wide enough to allow for packed camels), pass through the Needle's eye, and repack. The quote was meant to imply some difficulty, not impossibility.