Perhaps, some of the most Enlightened people would be widely considered to be unenlightened by everyone, excluding themselves. The topic of this paper is to raise the question if it would be more in line with Zen for humans to experience no emotion at all. Bringing out excerpts from the Zen readings, this essay will compare the two possibilities of it being ideal for humans to possess no emotions, or to possess low intensity emotion according to Chinese Buddhist philosophy. Zen might think it better to have no emotion because then humans would be closer aligned with the stillness of nature, and defuncting language as simply a matter of practicality. Moreover, an entire lack of emotion could be considered uncompassionate and unnatural. Given
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This is not being disputed. Rather, it is quite possible to be compassionate without emotions or personal feelings. In the chapter Carrying a Woman Across A River from Zen Speaks, a monk, who is meant to avoid women, carried one across a river because she did not want to get wet. When his accompanying monk critiques him for his action, he replies: “I put her down long ago. Are you still carrying her?”(Chung 26). In a clever way, this monk explains how he was able to be compassionate towards the woman without breaking the a Zen principle, which is to be detached from others. From this scenario, it can be easily understood how it is possible to be compassionate while being free from emotions. What is being considered in the following paragraphs is if a complete absence of emotion would be truly a perfect way of …show more content…
Another take on Follow the Flow could be that the hiker who traveled up the mountains has, over time, forgotten how to use his conscious intuitive mind and because he has be bogged down by rules, stipulations, and the rigorousness of society and its abuse of language beyond a practical function. The monk felt the need to remind him of how practical truth tends to derive from: the natural world. It is the unnatural human “intellect” that prevented understanding.
In addition, in Zen Masters, several of the characters became Enlightened from an interaction with their outside world, including Xiangyan from the chapter Xiangyan Hits Bamboo. Xiangyan forgot that there were bamboo trees behind him as he hoed his field. In his field he found a tile. Upon throwing the tile behind his back and the tile hitting a bamboo tree, the unexpected hollow sound caused his Enlightenment and his connectedness with nature (Zen Masters, Chung 74). In order to unite the self with nature, of course it is pertinent to first unite the self with its’
This is not being disputed. Rather, it is quite possible to be compassionate without emotions or personal feelings. In the chapter Carrying a Woman Across A River from Zen Speaks, a monk, who is meant to avoid women, carried one across a river because she did not want to get wet. When his accompanying monk critiques him for his action, he replies: “I put her down long ago. Are you still carrying her?”(Chung 26). In a clever way, this monk explains how he was able to be compassionate towards the woman without breaking the a Zen principle, which is to be detached from others. From this scenario, it can be easily understood how it is possible to be compassionate while being free from emotions. What is being considered in the following paragraphs is if a complete absence of emotion would be truly a perfect way of …show more content…
Another take on Follow the Flow could be that the hiker who traveled up the mountains has, over time, forgotten how to use his conscious intuitive mind and because he has be bogged down by rules, stipulations, and the rigorousness of society and its abuse of language beyond a practical function. The monk felt the need to remind him of how practical truth tends to derive from: the natural world. It is the unnatural human “intellect” that prevented understanding.
In addition, in Zen Masters, several of the characters became Enlightened from an interaction with their outside world, including Xiangyan from the chapter Xiangyan Hits Bamboo. Xiangyan forgot that there were bamboo trees behind him as he hoed his field. In his field he found a tile. Upon throwing the tile behind his back and the tile hitting a bamboo tree, the unexpected hollow sound caused his Enlightenment and his connectedness with nature (Zen Masters, Chung 74). In order to unite the self with nature, of course it is pertinent to first unite the self with its’