The Second Case

I refuse to buy a travel guide for Portland. The problem with guidebooks is that they create expectations of what you will find, how you will see things. It might take me a while longer to find all of what this city has to offer, and I might make some bonehead statements in this blog, but at least I'll have the genuine experience and pleasure of surprise and discovery when I learn, say, that the basketball courts I cut through every morning were in the film, What the Bleep Do We Know?

Guidebooks may be useful at times, but they also filter the reality of your own experiences through someone else's perceptions. Did you ever come back from a vacation, and realize that all of your snapshots were the same as those in the guidebook? I rest my case.

On first arriving here, I did buy a copy of Palahniuk's "Fugitives & Refugees - A Walk Through Portland, Oregon," but I didn't buy it for the purpose of a guidebook and it wouldn't function very well as one if you tried to use it that way.

I also bought a copy of the Blue Cliff Record to keep my mind open and free. I've spent most of the past month working on The First Case of the Blue Cliff Record (there are 100 in the book). Tonight, I started on the Second.

By way of background before presenting the Second Case, Sengcan, the Third Patriarch, states in the Seal of Faith in Mind,

The Great Way is without difficulty,
Just avoid picking and choosing,
When both love and hate are absent,
You will be lucid and clear.

Years later, Joshu, teaching his followers said (and this is the Second Case), "The Great Way is without difficulty, just avoid picking and choosing. If people cut away all of their aversions and preferences, then the way reveals itself clearly. But I myself do not abide in that clarity."

A monk got snagged on these words and said, "If you do not abide in that place where it is revealed clearly, then without that, what do you rely on and protect?" As Shodo Harada Roshi points out, the monk was caught in dualistic thinking.

"If you ask me that, I don't know either!," replied Joshu.

Joshu didn't give a great shout or hit the monk with a stick. He was not disturbed at all by this question.

The monk persisted, "If you don't know, then why do you say those words?"

Joshu said, "I understand well what you are saying. Your reasoning is correct. But the shallow understanding that comes from correct reasoning is of no use whatsoever. Go bow someplace over there and then go home." Joshu, having attained great freedom, had quickly and easily cut the monk off.

And that's essentially the Second Case, and will be the subject of my deepest thoughts for the next month or so. Any help and pointers would be most appreciated.