Day Four Tuesday May 10 2011
Today I had another challenging conversation with my close friend B. about motivation. What is the motivation in Zen? You do not seem to do much but sit and meditate. But to what means?
Some might say: To gain enlightenment. But according to Roshi Suzuki, enlightenment is everywhere and it is a “tourist’s exercise” to look for some unique moment or state in life. So what is the motivation?
I suppose it is to learn to do good things and to learn to do these things well. A motivation can be to learn to live in every moment in life, and not to be caught too much by illusions and memories and hopes and above all fears.
When we were talking about these things the conversation somehow drifted away towards the idea of going crazy or being lonely. So I mentioned the tramp up in Bauernbergpark, who seems to live there owning a pram in which he transports most of his other belongings. He somehow collects plastic bottles, which seem to serve as a water reserve. He sleeps on and uses some park benches close to a gravel path and has the habit of collecting some of the gravel in small heaps. With the use of a middle sized and a larger flat stone he seems to grind some of the pebbles to powder. Another thing he does is to fill small portions of gravel into plastic bottles. Sometimes you can find him standing there turning over the gravel filled plastic bottles in a straight nice rhythm, which especially fascinates my dog.
However, I am sure he does all that to save the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment