THE
ARCANE
ARCHIVE
a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining
to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects.


TOP | RELIGION | BUDDHISM | ZEN

First Patriarch of Zen

To: alt.zen
From: nedludd@ix.netcom.com(Ned Ludd)
Subject: Re: First Patriarch of Zen
Date: 12 Jan 1999 03:37:48 GMT

In <369A9962.3810F3B5@earthlink.net> dc 
writes: 

Ned wrote (re the 3rd patriarch):
> He then got up, walked out into the courtyard of the monastery,
> jumped up and caught ahold of the limb of a tree.  And he died,
> hanging by one hand, from the limb of the tree.

DC:
> of course i have heard this interpretation as well.  The view I
> mentioned is the "accepted" view.  But the truth is still the same,
> Whether there was a Bodhidharma who meditated to a wall for 8 years
> 

  Until his legs fell off.  And he cut his eyelids off so he wouldn't
  fall asleep meditating.  And the place where the eyelids fell to
  the earth is where the first tea plants of China sprouted.  Do you
  see why they honor him so much?

> It appears that it is all an assortment of stories with no actual 
> people of those names.  Zen then was using deception in it's very
> beginnings.  Once a Zen Buddhist school teacher told a group of 
> parents about an upcoming trip the students were having to China 
> and they were going to be going to the Tien-t'ai Mountain, where the
> founder of Zen Tien-t'ai lived.  This man is a known Zen scholar, 
> yet he had such a riiculous idea.  Tien-t'ai repudiated he Ch'an 
> Buddhists as rejecting the Lotus Sutra and stealing Ichinen Sanzen
> and incorporating it into their own teachings.  So they were 
> excommunicated from Tien-t'ai and starting there own sect which 
> discarded the sutras and invented a fictitious history...

  Those crazy Zennies have been throwing away sutras for over a
  thousand years.  Where do they keep coming from?

> Later as "Zen" it became popular with the hired assassins and...

  Ah, the Samurai... and Bushido... and Ninja...!!  Is there any doubt
  why Zen is so popular in America?

> ...the elitests who believed that beating beating over the head
> with riddles was Buddhism.

  Well, you know, sometimes you get tired of chanting.  What's wrong
  with a little riddle once in a while, just to 'blow out the carbon',
  so to speak, from the brain?  A monk once asked Chih Men, "How is
  it when the lotus flower has not yet emerged from the water?"  And
  Chih Men answered, "A Lotus flower."  The monk then asked, "What
  about after it has emerged from the water?"  Chih Men said, "Lotus
  leaves."

> Nichiren was later born who called Zen the "bottomless pit." This 
> statement is not merely a condemnation, it is has profound meaning.
> 

  Ah so...  So very true.  The great void.  Those Indian Buddhists
  knew the word, but they didn't really know it in their gut.  It
  took the Chinese, with their vast understanding of the Tao - and
  the consequent understanding of emptiness - to really knock the
  bottom out of the bottomless pit, and move Shunyata to the central
  and primary organizing principle of the universe.  The Zennies 
  naturally inherited all this understanding. I can see why Nichiren
  feared them so much!

  He did, after all, call them Devils.  Zen Devils.  None of the other
  sects he criticized - and he criticized them all - merited the term
  "Devils"; it was reserved exclusively for the Zennies.  Kind of an
  honor in a way!

                                     Z  end  evil,

                                                       Ned

The Arcane Archive is copyright by the authors cited.
Send comments to the Arcane Archivist: tyaginator@arcane-archive.org.

Did you like what you read here? Find it useful?
Then please click on the Paypal Secure Server logo and make a small
donation to the site maintainer for the creation and upkeep of this site.

The ARCANE ARCHIVE is a large domain,
organized into a number of sub-directories,
each dealing with a different branch of
religion, mysticism, occultism, or esoteric knowledge.
Here are the major ARCANE ARCHIVE directories you can visit:
interdisciplinary: geometry, natural proportion, ratio, archaeoastronomy
mysticism: enlightenment, self-realization, trance, meditation, consciousness
occultism: divination, hermeticism, amulets, sigils, magick, witchcraft, spells
religion: buddhism, christianity, hinduism, islam, judaism, taoism, wicca, voodoo
societies and fraternal orders: freemasonry, golden dawn, rosicrucians, etc.

SEARCH THE ARCANE ARCHIVE

There are thousands of web pages at the ARCANE ARCHIVE. You can use ATOMZ.COM
to search for a single word (like witchcraft, hoodoo, pagan, or magic) or an
exact phrase (like Kwan Yin, golden ratio, or book of shadows):

Search For:
Match:  Any word All words Exact phrase

OTHER ESOTERIC AND OCCULT SITES OF INTEREST

Southern Spirits: 19th and 20th century accounts of hoodoo, including slave narratives & interviews
Hoodoo in Theory and Practice by cat yronwode: an introduction to African-American rootwork
Lucky W Amulet Archive by cat yronwode: an online museum of worldwide talismans and charms
Sacred Sex: essays and articles on tantra yoga, neo-tantra, karezza, sex magic, and sex worship
Sacred Landscape: essays and articles on archaeoastronomy, sacred architecture, and sacred geometry
Lucky Mojo Forum: practitioners answer queries on conjure; sponsored by the Lucky Mojo Curio Co.
Herb Magic: illustrated descriptions of magic herbs with free spells, recipes, and an ordering option
Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers: ethical diviners and hoodoo spell-casters
Freemasonry for Women by cat yronwode: a history of mixed-gender Freemasonic lodges
Missionary Independent Spiritual Church: spirit-led, inter-faith, the Smallest Church in the World
Satan Service Org: an archive presenting the theory, practice, and history of Satanism and Satanists
Gospel of Satan: the story of Jesus and the angels, from the perspective of the God of this World
Lucky Mojo Usenet FAQ Archive: FAQs and REFs for occult and magical usenet newsgroups
Candles and Curios: essays and articles on traditional African American conjure and folk magic
Aleister Crowley Text Archive: a multitude of texts by an early 20th century ceremonial occultist
Spiritual Spells: lessons in folk magic and spell casting from an eclectic Wiccan perspective
The Mystic Tea Room: divination by reading tea-leaves, with a museum of antique fortune telling cups
Yronwode Institution for the Preservation and Popularization of Indigenous Ethnomagicology
Yronwode Home: personal pages of catherine yronwode and nagasiva yronwode, magical archivists
Lucky Mojo Magic Spells Archives: love spells, money spells, luck spells, protection spells, etc.
      Free Love Spell Archive: love spells, attraction spells, sex magick, romance spells, and lust spells
      Free Money Spell Archive: money spells, prosperity spells, and wealth spells for job and business
      Free Protection Spell Archive: protection spells against witchcraft, jinxes, hexes, and the evil eye
      Free Gambling Luck Spell Archive: lucky gambling spells for the lottery, casinos, and races