Pursue not the outer entanglements, dwell not in the inner void,
— From On Believing in Mind, by Sosan Ganchi Zenji, 3rd Zen Patriarch
be serene in the oneness of things,
and dualism vanishes by itself.
When you strive to gain quiescence by stopping motion,
The quiescence thus gained is ever in motion,
As long as you tarry in dualism,
How can you realize oneness?
And when oneness is not thoroughly understood,
In two ways loss is sustained:
The denying of reality is the asserting of it; and,
The asserting of emptiness is the denying of it.
Thinking hard about this hurts my head! The phrase, When you strive to gain quiescence by stopping motion, The quiescence thus gained is ever in motion, reminds me of this famous scene from the I Love Lucy TV show:
The funny part is that Lucy and Ethel’s attempts to stop motion have the opposite effect. Their supervisor speeds up the conveyor!
Can you imagine the result if Buster Keaton’s character attempts to stop the motion in this scene?
In Buster Keaton’s scene, his character’s ignorance saves him. He neither denies nor asserts the reality of the falling wall. And he neither asserts nor denies emptiness of mind because he simply does not know that the wall is falling toward him until it hits the ground.
So without resorting to ignorance or simply “sticking our head in the sand”, how can we find the middle ground between the inner void and the outer entanglements? Let’s not think about it. That hurts my head! How ’bout we just sit and breathe into it?