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| | | Book Name: Zen - The Solitary Bird, Cuckoo of the Forest | Previous Next | |
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of Buddhism -- TAKE IT AS AN ILLUSORY EXISTENCE."
Pratyekabuddhas, Hinayana, Shankara, Bradley, and there are many philosophers who think that the world you see is simply made of the same stuff as dreams -- it is nothing. Although they say so, their behavior does not prove their philosophy. Even Bradley, when going out of his house, does not go out through the wall; he finds the door. If the wall is made of the same stuff as dreams, why bother about the door? Just pass through the wall! You can pass through the mountain if your standpoint is really correct. Why do you go on eating, drinking, clothing your body, when everything is nothing?
These philosophies can be reduced to a single word -- maya, illusion; everything is illusion. And there is a very subtle reason for the insistence on illusion. They want you to renounce the world because it is illusory. As far as I'm concerned, if it is illusory, then there is no need to renounce it. It is not there -- what are you renouncing? Your very effort to renounce it makes it real! All the monks and the saints who have renounced the world, have given a certificate that the world is real.
You don't renounce dreams ... I have never heard of a single man in the whole history of humanity renouncing his dreams. One simply wakes up, looks here and there, and finds that there are no dreams. He was simply asleep -- now he is awake. There is no need to renounce that which is not.
But all these philosophers were trying by every means and argument to prove that everything is unreal -- money, power, prestige, relationship, husband, wife, children, parents, all are unreal. So don't waste your time with unreality. Renounce! so that you can attain to the real.
But I hope it is absolutely clear to you that you can renounce something only if it is real. Your very renouncing proclaims its reality, and also your cowardliness. You don't have guts to encounter it, that's why you are escaping. It is not renunciation, it is escape, pure and simple escape, out of a cowardly mind who cannot encounter the arduous realities of life.
Zen is not in favor of renouncing anything.
Ummon is giving explanations
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