Posted by John on August 02, 2001 at 14:26:38:
In Reply to: on stick beatings and instinct posted by jonvon on July 30, 2001 at 00:59:15:
: john, when i read your words about wanting to hit someone with a stick so that they would understand something or wake up to some reality i immediately thought of the latter zen practice.
That is because I have studied this too. I have often refered to myself as a zen Christian. Most people don't get that because all they know of zen is the TV stuff, but you are talking of precisely the same thing. There is actually a koan that goes like this; A student comes to the master and the master says, "why have you come?" Whatever the student answers they get beaten with a stick. This is where I got my idea about the stick.
: on instinct, this is what they refer to in zen or in chinese philosophy in general as wu wei, which is acting without thinking. or pure action. i think there is an awful lot in your thoughts that really smacks of eastern thought. wu wei is the cry of a child - it is pure, it is completely purposeful, it requires no forethought, it just happens, as it should, as it was always meant to happen. we wei might also be the action that someone comes to after much training if the training is meant to pare you down to your real being, your truest action, that action which flows from who you are. sometimes we forget who we are, we forget our ability to cry as a child cries, so we go through some kind of discipleship training. we learn a new vocabulary so that ultimately we can discard it. john coltrane, the great jazz saxophonist said that you have to learn the rules before you can break them. wu wei can be like that. you learn all the scales, all the arpeggios, you learn all the standard licks, you complete your vocabulary, your training, and then one night as you are playing something happens. you lose yourself in what you are doing, you play outside the limits of what you have been taught. you know that you were always meant to be doing this. you begin to invent a new language, a new paradigm, you break the old sacred rites. your new wine bursts your old wineskins. you are acting. the action is pure, you are not there, it is only the action flowing through you. there is some other voice pouring out new knowledge. this is also wu wei. and somewhere in what has happened you have come to enlightenment.
Precisely, the two are interrelated. The primal action is evoked by the stick. Much the same as tests and challenges bring out instincts. I think Jesus worked in much the same way. He taught in parables that belied extremely simple truth. He talked of faith and relationships and primal childlike love. These are the things that God has given us and that He desires from us, nothing more. We get so wrapped up in our problems and we think God is worried about them too. I think for most issues that we think are so hard to handle God is looking at it thinking "what issue? just love me." Imagine how much purer our vision of God would be, how much deeper we would be in tune with God if we only had before us the things which truly matter. He even promises us that we will never be left alone. That means that if we stick to that primal action we are guaranteed to be cared for because the Spirit of god will move and act in us. Now of course primal action, for those who haven't used a good dictionary, doesn't mean lust and greed and violence. It is far deeper. These emotions that the world sees are perversions of the truth.
But John I have a question for you. Can nonviolence be taught? If so I would love to learn it. Not the sappy hippy pacifist stuff but true flowing like water around and over obstacles conforming completely and adapting instantly? I have heard that Aikido teaches this because it was developed for this specific purpose and not as a combative art, but what do you know about this?