Five Zen Koans (Feb '12)

A compilation of five beautiful Zen koans and parables.

1. Finding a Piece of the Truth: One day Mara, the Evil One, was travelling through the villages of India with his attendants. He saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up on wonder. The man had just discovered something on the ground in front of him. Mara’s attendant asked what that was and Mara replied,

"A piece of truth."
"Doesn’t this bother you when someone finds a piece of truth, O Evil One?" his attendant asked.
"No," Mara replied. "Right after this, they usually make a belief out of it." 

❦

2. A Cup of Tea: Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), was part of the Hakuin branch of Rinzai Zen in Japan (try here). Nannin received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea.
He poured his visitor’s cup until full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself:

"It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?" 

❦

3. Is That So? The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was bearing a child. This made her parents very upset. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last the girl named master Hakuin. In great anger the parents went to the master and confronted him.

"Is that so?" was all he would say. 

When the child was born, the parents brought it to the Hakuin, who now was viewed as a pariah by the whole village. They demanded that he take care of the child since it was his responsibility.

“Is that so?” master Hakuin said calmly as he accepted the child. 

A year later the young mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth–that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fish market. The mother and father of the girl at once went to Zen master Hakuin to seek his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.

Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said, "Is that so?"

❦

4. Until Sunyata: Two monks were returning to the monastery in the evening. It had rained and there were puddles of water on the road sides.

At one place a beautiful young woman was standing, unable to walk across because of a puddle on the road. The elder of the two monks went up to her, lifted her, and put her down on the other side of the road before he continued his way to the monastery. In the evening the younger monk came to the elder monk and said,

"Sir, as monks, we cannot touch a woman?"
The elder monk answered "yes, brother".
Then the younger monk asks again, "but then Sir, how is that you lifted that woman on the roadside?"
The elder monk smiled at him and told him," I left her on the other side of the road, but you are still carrying her." 

❦

5. The Other Side: One day a young monk on his way home came to the banks of a wide river. Staring hopelessly at the great obstacle in front of him, he pondered for hours on just how to cross such a wide barrier. Just as he was about to give up his pursuit to continue his journey he saw a great teacher on the other side of the river. The young Buddhist yells over to the teacher,

"Oh wise one, can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river?"
The teacher ponders for a moment, looks up and down the river, and yells back, "My son, but you are on the other side". 

J Krishnamurti - On Collective Consciousness and Individuality

J Krishnamurti
["The Only Video You Need To See" at YouTube]

Transcript:

Mind Matter(s)

Excerpt via Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists blog: How Universal Is The Mind? (try here)

If someone asked you to describe the psychological aspects of personhood, what would you say? Chances are, you'd describe things like thought, memory, problem-solving, reasoning, maybe emotion. In other words, you probably list the major headings of a cognitive psychology text-book. In cognitive psychology, we seem to take it for granted that these are, objectively, the primary components of "the mind" (even if you reject a mind/body dualism, you probably accept some notion that there are psychological processes similar to the ones listed above). I've posted previously about whether the distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive even makes sense. But, here, I want to think about the universality of the "mind" concept and its relationship to the modern view of cognition.

In fact, this conception of the mind is heavily influenced by a particular (Western) cultural background. Other cultures assign different characteristics and abilities to the psychological aspects of personhood. Wierzbicka (2005) delves into this problem in detail. She argues that speakers of a particular language make assumptions about what must be universal based on their own ability to imagine doing without a certain concept. Important cross-cultural differences in meaning become lost in translation. [...]

Generalisations about cognition must be made in some language, but, language is specific to particular cultures. Our choice of language, then, inevitably will bias how we talk about cognition across cultures. [...]

Cross-linguistic research shows that, generally speaking, every culture has a folk model of a person consisting of visible and invisible (psychological) aspects. While there is agreement that the visible part of the person refers to the body, there is considerable variation in how different cultures think about the invisible (psychological) part. In the West, and, specifically, in the English-speaking West, the psychological aspect of personhood is closely related to the concept of "the mind" and the modern view of cognition.But, how universal is this conception? How do speakers of other languages think about the psychological aspect of personhood?

In Korean, the concept "maum" replaces the concept "mind". "Maum" has no English counterpart, but is sometimes translated as "heart". Apparently, "maum" is the "seat of emotions, motivation, and "goodness" in a human being". Intellect and cognitive functions are captured by the Korean "meli" (head). [...]

The Japanese have yet another concept for the invisible part of the person - "kokoro". "Kokoro" is a "seat of emotion, and also, a source of culturally valued attention to, and empathy with, other people". To illustrate the contrast between "kokoro" and "mind", Wierzbicka gives the following example: A Japanese television programme proclaims, "The 21st century should be the age of kokoro. Let's make a point of meeting with other people". If an English speaker declared the 21st century to be "the age of the mind" then "meeting with other people" probably would not be a priority - thinking and knowing would be.

(image via The Union Jack Library [1894]).

Yours Professionally Socially Professional (Part 2)

This is Part 2 of a two-part post on the title. Go here for Part 1.

Giggle twins: When it comes to explaining personality, it is always true that nature and nurture work together. But it is also true that nature plays a bigger role than most people realize. Consider the identical twin sisters Daphne and Barbara. Raised outside London they both left school at the age of fourteen, went to work for local government, met their future husbands at the age of sixteen at local town hall dances, suffered miscarriage at the same time, and then each gave birth to two boys and a girl. They feared many of the same things (blood and heights) and exhibited unusual habits (each drank her coffee cold, each developed a habit of pushing up her nose with the palm of the hand, a gesture they both happened to call 'squidging'). None of these would surprise you as much until you learn that separate families had adopted Daphne and Barbara as infants; neither knew of each others existence until they were reunited at the age of 40. When they finally did meet, they were wearing almost identical clothing.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, may be tempted to dismiss the above as one fine striking coincidence, and continue to argue that "You are what you learn" (try here. A compelling argument which he would then conclude in his characteristic tongue-in-cheek manner by suggesting to his readers not to take phycology advices from a cartoonist).

Who Am I?: Identity crisis is an old problem. Perhaps as old as the identification of individual personalities within mankind itself; though it is only in recent times, and with modernity, that it has almost become a crisis --in the sense of an epidemic. More so for the younger generation, the attention economy, and social media as the primary social interaction channel. (Modern) Profession as a role, acquired through skills and practice, is a different scenario from that of being born into a (older) profession. As the social structures mature, stabilize and become more risk-free, people get the option of starting from scratch and choosing a profession that does not have the support and benefits of the inheritance or direct descendance and lineage. Also in the eastern society, where one identifies one's (current, and hopefully last!) 'incarnation' as a function of the role that comes along with the circumstance (or accident) of birth, the identity crisis transforms from being a crisis to becoming an obligation - ideally, a humble service to the society. Furthermore, it can further be seen as an opportunity of performing the role at one's best capacity, and thus better the chances of fairing well at the final goal of attaining release from the whole cycle of samsara. The question such as Who Am I? here mostly has a very different context, and hence people end up figuring out for themselves even more varied answers (Aham Brahmasmi / Tat Tvam Asi / om manipadme hum / Shivohm).

[Reproduction] Aryan Mystery: Romila Thapar's Interpretation

Blog admin's note: The following undated article is unavailable on the internet since Indoaryans.org servers went offline (try here). This post is a reproduction from the Google cache pages, primarily for the purpose of readability - with very minor editing by the way of Italicising the Indic terms. There doesn't seem to be any apparent means of reaching out to the website owners for permission etc. in this catch-22 kind of a situation. Kindly leave a comment if you have any observations around the matter.

Since this is apparently a transcript of a lecture with no indications towards the use of support material such as pictures, maps, slides and other media, the article remains text-heavy. Though it seems some of my personal contributions at Wikipedia on the subject, and also those of the other colleagues and editors, mainly in terms of geographical maps and time-scales would be a good value add to this post. Time permitting, it shall be taken up. If the idea excites you as well where you too would like to contribute, you are welcome; please drop a note in the comments section.

With respect to the author per say, note that this blog does not endorse anything and everything, controversial or otherwise, that Romila Thapar may have said or done elsewhere. Other commentaries suggest to have found Tapar's position on the subject as "evolving" over time -- in a way, which may show an open mind towards new evidence on the scholar's part. Since this lecture and the original post are undated, it may fall anywhere within this spectrum between aeys and neys. It is left to the reader to affirm the (preferred) conclusion.

What follows next is the as-is reproduction.

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Aryan Mystery: Romila Thapar's Interpretation

Excerpts from the lecture: It is tough to get credible information from the maze of political interpretations that exist on the net about Aryans and who they are. Here is a lecture by none other than famed historian Romila Thapar at JNU (Jawahalral Nehru Universiry, New Delhi)

How Do you Physically Search A Certain Text In A Book?

SURELY, THERE ARE PEOPLE, BOOKWORMS IN THIS CASE, who may do this better than others. And while I won't qualify myself as one, it may be interesting to share an experience of being a 'human google' to find something in a physical book.

While I started searching for that "giggle twin" example cited in Haidt's book for the other post, my reading in the book had already advanced to about 100th page. Looking at the chapter index for clues didn't help. The references section was the next place to look up in hopes for a title that might just give away the citation, but references were done rather lazily. So it came to visually locating a paragraph that I had read amongst 100 odd pages. My previous experience with this kind of needle-in-haystack qualified it to be a "patience test", where higher the patience, and slower the pace, usually meant better success rate during the first scan. (Though I like to think that I'm getting better at this, I tend to give up somewhere during or after the 3rd scan unless it is really critical to justify the effort and, more importantly perhaps, to fight against frustration.)

As the scanning began from the Introduction pages onwards, the mind was looking for clues such as the recollection of the physical location of the paragraph on the page layout. This usually serves an important visual markup that accompanies the memory of information in the brain. (e.g. on the left side page, bottom half, second to last para. Or, just after the section title, in the second line.) However, there were no such visual clues -or mental bookmarks- coming to recollection for this search. Though apparently, apart from the eyes, there were other processing faculties also that were 'looking' for any visual patterns that may correlate with the information of interest; mainly the three keywords- twins, ~40 years, same blue dress (incidentally, 'giggle' wasn't a part of it).

About four minutes into the physical scanning, somewhere on page 31, when 'Hemlet' was first encountered, the pace of scanning had to slow down. While there is no apparent connection between Shakespeare's character and the giggle twins of America, from the search patterns perspective there seemed to have some vague recollection of the two together in terms of 'flow of information' that the author had created. And there it was, on page 33, on the top half, the name of one of the twins, Daphne, that suddenly surfaced from the depths of recognition.

Happy for getting better at finding odd references buried into piles of text in rather obscure manners, but which I 'wanted' to remember. Not entirely sure if the faculty would be equally effective for the text I haven't read myself, and thus have the benefit of the visual patterns stored in the memory along with the information.

Morning Mojo, Ayn Rand, and Symbolism

The distinction that lies in being unhappy (as if to feel happy were a sign of shallowness, lack of ambition, ordinariness) is so great that when someone says, "But how happy you must be!" we usually protest. -- Nietzsche

OUR MORNING RITUALS can sometimes define the day to come. Or so claims a feel-good post in an OSHO monthly magazine. Assuming that is true, it would be interesting to see how this day progresses which begins with the following rumination.

* * *

IT was somewhere in late teens when a dear uncle introduced me to Ayn Rand. It was a proper introduction, spread over a few sittings, that a subject such as "virtues of selfishness" warrants for: beginning with simple conceptualization, deconstruction of existing notions, enhanced by real-life examples, debates over alternative conducts of past scenarios, and promise of a grand 'rational' future brimming with just, noble and honorable actions end-to-end. What followed with the two classics through which the author had attained almost a cult-like status, had a deep and characteristic influence over an impressible teen mind. More so because it was also the first proper, structured, and mentored discourse in a discipline of philosophy for someone who was otherwise an engineering student.

However, the uni-polarization ends there. A few weeks or months later, came another onslaught in terms of similar philosophical dispensation. This time, the aunt by the same uncle did it with Vivekananda, and the Vedanta philosophy of the East. It was still a vulnerable, impressible, subservient, mostly unsuspecting and unalert teen mind, hurled into matters detailing ontology and existential issues, whose competing arguments had conflicting ideological fundamentals at their roots.