But like the man in the Aesop fable, it can also have the opposite result. That can happen in a rigorous practice and that can happen in the face of life’s hardships.
Extremes of practice, like extreme hardships in life, can lead to genuine surrender where we simply stop trying to control, stop trying to understand, stop trying in any way to hold onto our usual way of thinking and being. There is a certain truth in that approach. Too often we’ve practiced as if the only way to accomplish that is to push ourselves to such extremes that we could no longer hold on. The picture is of a battle to overcome, to overwhelm, to destroy the ego, our self-centeredness. Metaphors of battle, killing the ego, predominate throughout hundreds and hundreds of years of Zen history. The traditional style of practice has been to push hard, push people to extremes. If we take that fable as a parable for our practice, we have to admit that traditionally Zen has been a north wind kind of practice. Pretty soon the man began to feel a little too warm and he took his coat off without a struggle. The sun shone down on the man, quietly, gently, and warmed him up.
The sun said, Now you’ve had your chance, now it’s my turn. The north wind blew and blew, and the stronger it blew, the more tightly the man clung to his coat. The north wind, pointing to a man walking through the countryside wearing a coat, said to the sun, I bet I’m so strong I can blow that coat right off him. Aesop tells the fable of the battle between the north wind and the sun, seeing which was stronger.
0 kommentar(er)
