Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site mgweed.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!floyd!vax135!ariel!houti!hogpc!houxm!ihnp4!we13!mgweed!wfs From: wfs@mgweed.UUCP Newsgroups: net.sport Subject: Zen and Intuitive Response(part 5) Message-ID: <1963@mgweed.UUCP> Date: Wed, 6-Jul-83 16:06:09 EDT Article-I.D.: mgweed.1963 Posted: Wed Jul 6 16:06:09 1983 Date-Received: Mon, 11-Jul-83 17:30:33 EDT Organization: Western Electric - Montgomery Illinois Lines: 29 Zen and Intuitive Response(part 5) The study and application of a Zen perspective can excite and attune consiousness to those sparkles of truth or glimpses of foreboding that give us pause in our thoughts during the course of our lives. How many times have we had a premonition flash across our mind and refused to give it credence, or acted upon it only to be rebuffed later by our ignorance, and feel doubly scorned because we neglected our inner perception? Ralph Waldo Emerson expresses this notion in his essay on Self Reliance. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. In its truest sense Zen is neither a religion, philosophy, nor an ideology. Zen is an attitude of self, the universe, and the inherent harmony of each. Zen wants to clean the dust from the mind's mirror, to return it to its original state of simplicity so that it can reflect reality in all its vivid, dynamic immediacy; as a present tense experience instinctually felt and expressed in the spontaneity of this moment, and the next and the next. To help in the preparation of consciousness for its intuitvie leaps of understanding, Zen employs the use of koans-short paradoxical riddles or questions designed to confuse and stagger the rational mode of consciousness. Some favorite ones included: "What was your original face before you were born?", "What is the significance of Buddha coming from the west?" and of course, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"....... ...........................(to be cont'd. in part 6)