Short story: When is a Zen master a Zen master?
@innertalks (21157)
Australia
September 24, 2023 9:31pm CST
A student approached the renowned Zen master, Arzev Respocke, and asked him to teach him Zen.
The master laughed, and replied,
"I have nothing to teach you."
"Oh,"
replied the student.
"I was misled then, you are no Zen master, then, at all."
The Zen master laughed again:
"I do not carry Zen with me to give out to anyone."
"Zen connects you to God, not to me. God is the carrier of Zen."
The student bowed low, and acknowledged the master's point.
The master then said:
"Bow to no one; love all without bowing."
"Love never sits on any pedestal, and yet it lifts all up high to their highest self, with its strength. Love is not weak; it is the strongest of all God's attributes."
"A Zen master is a Zen master, because he is being lifted up by God's love within him. He can never lift himself up. He can never lift anyone else up. Only love can lift anyone up to God."
"When is love not love?"
"When love remains only as a shadow of itself in your mind, and when the full sun of love is not living fully for you in your heart, because you are preferring to live from its mind shadow self alone, in your mind."
"I have nothing to teach you, but only love to give you,"
the master said to the would-be student.
"Stay, if that is what you want. Let love lift you up to God."
Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com
Zen is the way of love.
3 people like this
2 responses
@innertalks (21157)
• Australia
27 Sep
Zen is a form of Buddhism.
Zen is a method of thought, and of being, and of acting, that tries to ensure that we are living from compassion, truth, wisdom, and by our connecting to our inner nature.
It usually involves meditation, and it involves a practitioner in striving to reach a higher state of consciousness, called enlightenment.
Usually, they try to just get to this state of enlightenment, as their goal, but when I write about Zen, I extend it, to include God, and love, as the Buddha, usually left it up to the meditator to find God, and love, for themselves, and never spelt out much his own ideas about God.
@kanuck1 (4401)
•
30 Sep
@innertalks Thanks! How is that different from the Bible? (See Colossians 3:5-9)
2 people like this
@innertalks (21157)
• Australia
1 Oct
@kanuck1 I think that they try to live as a good person, but they think more of trying to live an enlightened life here, than of any afterlife, in the world to come.
