June Post to Zen Discussion Group

Here's a question about knowledge.

:-)

How do you study the dharmas with non-attachment? How do you decide what knowledge to hold dear, and which to consider with equanimity?

On what basis do you decide whether it's more important to know who the 6th Patriarch is or what the 6th Ground is? To read a sutra, or to avoid texts?

If we vow to master the dharmas, we're putting a lot of investment in them. How would we find equanimity to release them as easily as hold them?

Can we just sit, as it's been suggested, and find all our knowledge, there, inside? Can we do this with no training or guidance? One of the central aspects of Zen practice is having a teacher. What is their function, if not to pass on knowledge?

The best I can make of it, today, is to consider Right Effort, arising skillful qualities. The moral and philosophical tenets of zen (Buddhism, the Tao) are objects that provide pivot points for our attention, and hold little value outside of that function. (Yes, it logically follows that Playboy Magazine is just as useful a text as the Diamond Sutra.) Zen, zazen, is practicing awareness, of dancing such pivot points. To me a fruitful sitting isn't the one in which I've had an easy and tranquil mind, it's the one in which I've struggled on my pivot points. When I exercise my capacity for equanimity through observing my thoughts, it works much as repetitions in the gym, which build a muscle by first tearing it: dancing my pivot points breaks my habits and I get to build new, more aware mental formations to dance with another day. :-)

I've also read the analogy that it's like fine tuning an instrument, which is why we're always practicing and never performing.

So, what do you know?