Vegetarian buffet
A brief rest follows the silent meal, and then the community work begins. Mary and Pedro work together in the garden to pull the weeds. During a break, Mary tells Pedro about the Buddha Boy video she watches recently. Pedro enjoys Mary's company. Her voice sounds lovely, and he tells her the dream about the books in the castle.
"Maybe the enlightenment the Buddha experienced was his discovery of the mind," Pedro puts the two together.
Mary: Is that so? Most people know about the mind fairly easily. Why does he need enlightenment to discover it? Or discover it to reach enlightenment? And how does enlightenment solve the problems of suffering?
Pedro: It wasn't so easy to discover or understand abstract things such as a human mind. After all, this was 2,500 years ago. There was no word for "mind" back then. How do you describe or understand something that has no name for it? It's like Isaac Newton tried to describe gravity. He had to invent a name for it before he could explain it. And from the word grave he named a physical phenomenon called gravity.
Mary: Grave! What a grim word! What does it have to do with gravity?
P: Well, you know the story of the apple and the discovery of gravity? Sir Issac Newton was puzzled by why the planets in the sky moved in elliptical orbits. He knew that a moving object would move in a straight line unless altered by some external forces. So why did the planets not move in straight lines but circling back and forth? This puzzle bothered him until one day he saw an apple fall to the ground. Eureka! He found the answer. The fallen apple showed him that there was an invisible force pulling down the apple from the tree, and that force was pulling at the planets as well! What was that invisible force? Newton called it gravity in the manner of people falling into the graves. And that's the story of Newton's apple and gravity.
M: Oh, the apple story. So did the Buddha coin the word mind?
P: I don't think so. The word mind is not an old word. It came from the English word memory.
M: Now I remember. When the Hindu sanskrit sutras got translated into Chinese, the translator used the word heart to express the idea of mind. The Chinese, in their 5,000 years of history and culture, does not have a direct word for mind. They use the word heart and some other words related to heart to mean the mind. The Heart Sutra (般若心經) that we recite in the morning assembly should probably be called the Mind Sutra. In it it says "form is emptiness, emptiness is form (色即是空空即是色)". And it all has to do with mental perceptions, not the physical heart.
P: Yes, but it is hard to see what the mind is. The western thinkers like Socrates and Plato talked about memory and thinking. The eastern Buddhists talked about the buddha nature, wisdom, heart, and meditation. They are all related to the mind one way or another.
M: And also consciousness, emotions, identity, spirit, desire and so on. These words are all mysterious when you examine them. And they are related to the mind. Now I remember a Zen Koan story: A master sees a disciple in the garden. He points his stick at him and says, "Answer me quickly. Anything you say, I will beat you with this stick. If you do not say anything, I will still beat you with this stick." On hearing this, the disciple puts a shoe on his head and walks away.
P: I have heard this story also. It seems to point out that all meanings are subject to interpretation of the mind. The master is presenting an impossible situation to the disciple. It is a dilemma, a damn-if-you-do-and-damn-if-you-don't double bind situation. How should the disciple respond? The disciple can change the normal understanding of this dilemma to break out from it. His walking away is an expression that he can choose a path outside of the master's directions.
M: That may be so, or maybe not. It's very hard to talk about the mind and understand it. It's like the four blind men describing an elephant.
P: Ah yes, like the four blind men describing an elephant.
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