(I am prompted to curiosity not by Mitt Romney, but my former neighbors - because I love them - and by Steve Young, because he’s really smart and the best quarterback ever. Although I absolutely do not believe in American tackle football, oh noes.)

Is this a bad question?

Of course not. To the contrary, I appreciate your willingness to continue your commentary.

I have a terrible tendency to over-intellectualize everything, which is my biggest hindrance as a Zen student. I could give you reasonably accurate explanations of many of the koans, for example, but that’s not the same thing as resolving them. So when I say you are over-intellectualizing, I hope you won’t feel insulted. Your questions are good ones, but they are not questions that can be resolved by intellect.

First, you are misunderstanding how the enlightenment thing works. Even the most highly realized people still participate in what we call life on earth as long as they’re alive. Even the historical Buddha, so the stories go, lived and talked and ate and blew his nose and crapped for several years after he attained Buddhahood. The notion that “enlightened” people live in some perpetually blissed-out state and are no longer part of this world is, um, fanciful.

Samadhi is not enlightenment. Samadhi isn’t the goal, but the means. Samadhi enables people to break out of their conceptual boxes to experience themselves directly and intimately. After samadhi it becomes possible to perceive oneself and the world in a different way, which makes it useful. But, as you say, sometimes you’ve got to attend to other things, like changing your socks.

“Enlightenment” is not a quality one can possess. It is who you are. It is who you are right now. But believing that enlightenment is who you are is pointless. Having an intellectual understanding of the Buddhist Theory of Being is worthless. This is a matter that must be directly experienced so that it becomes the reality you live in. Then it is no longer a “belief” or a “concept.” It’s as real to you as the hand at the end of your arm. It is also, so I’m told, as ordinary as having a hand at the end of your arm.

The “attachment” thing trips a lot of people up, because they interpret it to mean that realized beings can’t form relationships. Not so. The point may be easier to understand if you substitute “clinging” for “attachment.” Don’t cling.

Thanks for the links in both of your comments. Interesting reading. It will take some time to get through it all.

If I understand correctly, you’re highlighting the point that any attachment to, and reliance on, written descriptions and dogma may prevent us from having the direct personal experience of ultimate reality that should be our goal. I accept that. Have no quarrel with it. My point was that the tenzo may not have been ready to experience the type of ultimate Samadhi, or return to a Garden of Eden consciousness, that would leave him unable to actively participate in what we call life on Earth. An ancient master isolated in a cave may very well achieve some form of perpetual intimacy of Samadhi, but he, at least in my view, would not be an active participant in the drama of human life. At least as long as he remains isolated in a cave. (Also, after reading this story, I would want to ask the ancient master if he might have become a little too attached to the concept of non-attachment).

The reason I raise my point is your citation to the Hsin Hsin Ming, and the assertion that, “To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.” Well, if so, I think it’s a necessary and noble disease of the mind. My tentative conclusion (and all my conclusions are tentative) is that even when we realize a higher level of consciousness, our active and loving participation in what we call the “real world” requires us to continue to function at a lower level of consciousness as well. In other words, even though some part of us may come to “realize” the ultimate oneness of all that is and that life on Earth is an illusory experience, we are required to treat it as if it were “real.” Often, this requires us to make judgments, form opinions, and form attachments. If we don’t do these things, wouldn’t we be like an actor in a play who decides to step out of character every five minutes in order to remind the members of the audience that they shouldn’t form any attachments to any of the characters because the play is just an illusion and not real?

My apologies for rambling, but you’ve raised such interesting issues.

I found a variation of the story in this dharma talk –

There’s a famous koan of an ancient master who was a hermit. He had been practicing many, many years, living isolated in the mountains. One day he was cooking soup and in the steam Manjusri Bodhisattva appeared and in his deep, resonant voice proclaimed the Dharma to him. The old hermit immediately picked up the ladle and started beating him with it. “Get out of here!” he said. “Get out of here!” In other words, don’t put another head on top of the one you already have. Anything that we hold on to along the way—anything—is a dead end, because the minute we attach we create two things: the “attachee” and the “attachor.” That is not the intimacy of samadhi; it is not the intimacy of shikantaza.

Exactly. And the reason he had to cook the rice first is that he recognized the dualistic distinction between a monk’s stomach filled with rice and a monk’s stomach devoid of rice and held an opinion regarding the favorability of the former over the latter.

It may also be that he had to cook the rice first because, if he didn’t do so, he’d be replaced as resident tenzo and required to chop wood and carry water instead. I know I hold an opinion on the relative favorability of performing those tasks.