Last night, I visited a Zen set-up ouside of their temple. They had a huge tentage set up on a hard floor court.
It is a Zen temple after all so I had the expectation of seeing Zen stuff. Clean, Dull coloured, White place, soothing and all. However, what confronted me was very typical chinese temple and typical Singaporean temple stuff. Cloths which dragon motifs, Buddhist flags, etc. Other than the banner which has the Zen circle and the stage backgrnd with the name, nothing else looks anywhere Zennish.
However, Ven Dae Kwang said yesterday that Zen is nothing special. Master Nam Chuan said that Zen is everyday mind. And in the book 'Three Pillars of Zen', Harada Roshi says that usually a person who attains Satori, or Enlightenment, has to go through a period after enlightenment before they clear themselves of the 'stink' of Enlightenment. And it is so. Zen promotes harmony with surroundings.
So if the crowd of the temple is old Chinese and the main teacher comes from that traditional chinese tradition and is familiar also with this style of Buddhism other than Zen, and would like to be of service to these audiences, then of course the set up would be so. There is nothing strange about it. It is Zen after all. Hahaha!
The Diamond Sutra teaches, from without a dwelling for your heart, let your heart be grown from there. Something like, grow a tree from its roots, without its roots. Without roots, how can you grow a tree? Where is it going to get its water and nutrients from? Yet a tree is grown. So why should I be so attached to Zen stuff and looking for Zen stuff at Zen temples? That is a mistake in itself! Hahaha!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment