Uit het Nederlands Boeddhistisch Archief:
ZEN tijdschrift, jaargang 1, nummer 2, uit 1980
HUMAN SUFFERING Met een prachtige tekst van Zenmeester Yamada Koun Roshi
Yamada Koun Roshi: "Dikwijls wordt mij door christen, in het bijzonder door katholieken de vraag gesteld of zij zazen kunnen beoefenen, zonder hun christelijke geloofsleven op te geven".
"Gewoonlijk antwoord ik dan dat Zen geen godsdienst is in dezelfde betekenis als het christendom. Daarom sluiten Christendom en zazen elkaar niet uit."
"Bijna alle boeddhistische sekten kunnen godsdiensten genoemd worden. Zazen is echter in dit opzicht geheel verschillend. Om het eenvoudig te zeggen, zazen is de kern van alle boeddhistische sekten. Zoals u weet, zijn er vele sekten in het Boeddhisme, maar de kern of essentie ervan is de ervaring van Satori of Zelf-verwerkelijking wordt genoemd."
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Zie ook mooi boek: Zen / The Authentic Gate door Yamada Koun Roshi
When pondering the suffering of humanity in the modern world, it
may be helpful to remember that it was in a quest for
deliverance from what he called “the four sufferings”—birth, death,
sickness, and aging—that Shakyamuni Buddha left home to seek the
Way more than two thousand years ago.
Suffering was not unique to
his time. Humans have always lived out their lives in suffering.
Buddhist terminology refers to this world as saha, a Sanskrit
expression, which could be translated as “the world of enduring” or
“the land of bearing indignities.” This world of ours could be seen as
a process of enduring hardship. From the time we are born and
become aware, right up until we enter the grave, our lives confront
an unending stream of difficulties.
We suffer internally from myriad
passions and externally from things such as cold, heat, war, and
famine. An ancient verse runs:
The troubles of life,
The troubles of life,
Look out for yourself!
Today we live in an environment far more complex than that of
Buddha’s time. We worry about getting into the right school, applying
for a decent job, and earning a living. Add to these challenges traffic
jams, noise pollution, and the degradation of air and water, all of
which contribute to high blood pressure, the horror of cancer, and
war.
We hardly have time to catch our breath between one calamity
and the next. In the midst of an ever more intense struggle for
existence, we have to come to grips with cultural expectations that
demand we suppress and deny ourselves. We live out our lives
assailed by fears, anxious in the face of threats to our very existence
as a species.
Without awakening (satori) there is no Zen. I am not alone in feeling
this. My teacher Yasutani Haku’un Roshi also thought so, as did his
teacher and my grandfather in Dharma, Harada Dai’un Roshi. In fact,
Dōgen Zenji, Hakuin Zenji, and all the Zen masters and Zen
ancestors throughout the history of Buddhism have known this fact.
Since this is the case, we must ask what awakening is and how
people become enlightened.
To put it simply, awakening is the realization that the content of
both subject and object is empty and one, and that this emptyoneness is none other than the constantly changing phenomenal
world of form. That is to say, actual existence is in one aspect totally
empty, and in another is the phenomenal world of form that
ceaselessly appears and disappears in accordance with the law of
causation.