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Thursday, 7 November 2002

The Dark Side ::

Despite exhaustion, I had a hard time falling asleep Tuesday night. Perhaps it was the long conversation I’d had with a friend about the Republicans’ Election Day success. We’d talked about how we have a president who thinks the French have no word for “entrepreneur.” We’d talked about how these are dire times for the First Amendment. We’d talked about dreams of a post-apocolyptic future.

As I lay in that hazy netherworld between wakefulness and sleep, I perceived a vast dark force in the world, wanting only to drug us with fear so that we might lie passively while it devours and destroys everything and everybody.

I thought about Christianity’s Satan, and how some branches of Buddhism also have a concept of a devil. It seemed so alive, real, and growing. I thought of Star Wars’ The Force. The Dark Side seemed strong.

I fell asleep.

I thought about this some more yesterday. Would Jung say that this devil was part of of our collective unconscious? Would Buddhism say that it is a deluded projection of the individual ego onto the One? I gave up, deciding that trying to explain it intellectually was impossible and perhaps even dangerous.

Then I remembered having read this recently:

A long time ago, after breakfast, an eminent Zen Master took three grains of rice and turned them into a tiny cow. At first this cow was very small and very hungry. She looked around the table and saw a needle and began to eat it. She proceeded to eat every object she could fit into her mouth. The cow soon began to grow. The more she ate, the bigger she became. Soon she was big enough to eat the eminent Zen Master, which she did with great relish.

She ate up the entire kitchen and went into the Dharma room. She ate the moktak; she ate the incense; she ate the Buddha! She was still very hungry, so she ate the whole temple and all the buildings surrounding it.

The cow grew and grew. She never had to shit, so everything she ate just made her that much bigger. Although it was a frightening experience to be eaten by this cow, it did not harm anyone physically.

But soon there was much suffering. Once inside the cow’s belly, people became attached to name and form. They formed conceptions of good and bad, time and space, light and darkness. The cow continued to eat and eat. She ate all the mountains and rivers, and all the Bodhisattvas, eminent teachers, and Buddhas.

So all infinite time and space, the entire universe, was eventually contained within the cow’s belly.

Now you are inside the cow’s belly, where all things appear and disappear. You are all attached to name and form. Outside the cow there is no suffering; nothing appears and nothing disappears.

How can you get out?

—From Dropping Ashes on the Buddha -- The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn, Stephen Mitchell, ed.

And I also remembered having read this recently:

[29]
Do you want to improve the world?
I don’t think it can be done.
...

[31]
...
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
...

[46]
...
There is no greater illusion than fear,
no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself,
no greater misfortune than having an enemy.

Whoever can see through all fear
will always be safe.

—From Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell, trans.

References:
In London (10 November 2002)
"If the sharks don't get us, the fear factor will" (21 November 2002)
A politics of time (10 December 2002)

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