So it’s Thursday, and I had a sandwich for lunch. At a desk in front of the daily news: secret prisons in Beijing, oil profiteering in Iraq, U.S. Marines on Okinawa, Obama, Bush, John Kenneth Galbraith, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Shiites in Iran, Maoists in Nepal, heavy snow in northern China…
Not bound by a notion of what this is or that, or what this or that is not, I deal with this or that directly. Except when I don’t. Which of course sometimes I don’t.
And as Bernie Glassman says: « Seeing notions for what they are, use them as devices; don’t be used by them. »
A sandwich for lunch
About the Author: zenscribe
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
The other "notions" are in fact created as a negative to confirm "me"?
I confirm myself by creating a solid "other"?
Nothing wrong with the "other" being the "other" ? And with me being me?
But why do we have to identify with this "me"? why can’t we just be it?
And yet if we crack that one notion (me), the other notions are all gone, too.
“The trouble is that we tend to be "used" by our notions, to become limited by them.”
This is true for all notions.
But it gets interesting with notions I have strong feelings about.
Like “me”!
I noticed that today, when I felt underappreciated.
(How on earth can anyone ever sufficiently appreciate “me” ?)
I was upset.
Knowing how stupid it was to be upset about it didn’t really help.
I suppose this notion of “me” is deep, ha-ha.
the word egg has nothing to do with an egg –
still we call it an egg –
and that’s exactly what it is: an egg.
even the mystic has his shoppinglist……
but what i this: a mystic?
bad joke.
but franckly – are we happy "to be used by them"!!!!???
i guess in this first milion of a second after opening ourselves to something – it is rather us that’s using them – "to save us" from going into the unknown…
Aren’t we – by our very own brain-nature – all word/concept-addicted?
As Kant told us it is impossible (make it: hard) to see? (read to be???) without the categorical "imperatif" comming in between …
Let’s watch ourself doing this over and over again.
Let us accept.
Let us find our fears which make us do this – and embrace them.
Let’s be born over and over again into the unknown…
yes we can!
Look at a door. Or a window. Or a pen. Or your knowledge of English or of the city where you live. You have notions about all those things: This is a door, this a window, this a pen, this is English, this is the way from my office to my home. These notions are both limiting and useful: You don’t use the pen to eat and you don’t go in and out the window, etc.
The trouble is that we tend to be "used" by our notions, to become limited by them.
Dear Sensei,
I dont understand what BG said. Can you give another example?