The Self
You say it is certainly a tremendous sickness to mount a donkey and then go looking for the donkey. I tell you that one need not find a spiritually sharp person to recognize this right away and get rid of the sickness of seeking, so the mad mind stops. – Instant Zen (Foyan) #2: Zen Sicknesses
The saying is like this: “To ride a donkey in search of an Ass”. It is meant to be an oxymoron, a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction.
Zen training so often reveals people’s absurdness, especially when it comes to narcissism and sociopathy that is so rampant. This ‘self’ is the absurdness that people get suckered into believing is real, and this belief creates delusions that absurd people abide in, in where only suffering is known.
Long ago, like back in the 80s, when I started my Zen training, asked a lot of redundant questions and said a lot of absurd things. One day a senior student turned to me and blasted out:
“You Sir, are an absurd person, abiding in absurd views and creating nothing but torment and suffering for everyone around you”
I pondered, how to not be an absurd person?
I asked the teacher, Gary Carlson, back then about this. He simply said to let my questions cook a lot more, and perhaps to listen more than talk.
There is a BIG LIE out there that the absurd selfish narcissist self falls for and that is this concept of ‘Happiness’. We absurd people living in absurd views, and suffering, get suckered into schemes about ‘how to be happy’. We buy into them with money and time, only to realize that the scheme does not work and we are no happier than when we started, and off to the next scheme! Because, in our absurd mentally-ill thinking if the last scheme did not work, surely the next scheme will! and on and on it goes like this.
You come here seeking expedient techniques, seeking doctrines, seeking peace and happiness. I have no expedient techniques to give people, no doctrine, no method of peace and happiness. Why? If there is any “expedient technique,” it has the contrary effect of burying you and trapping you. – Instant Zen (Foyan) #33
You see, Zen is sold as a gimmick! The Zazen is a ‘expedient techniques’ sold to those who are seeking happiness – for if they were happy would they even seek ‘expedient techniques’?
Foyan and other Ch’an masters just bury Modern Zen in the ashtray of absurdity from where it rose from. Yet, here you all are, still seeking ‘expedient techniques’. How absurd!
