The Fireplace Records, Chapter 48
Ungraspable Mind and Time
An old woman salesperson asked a knowledgeable scholar-monk, an expert in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, about some verses in that Sutra.
"I heard a statement from the Diamond Sutra that "the past mind is ungraspable, the present mind is ungraspable, and the future mind is ungraspable." Please tell me what this means. What Mind knows this?"
The monk paused, became a little uncomfortable, could not immediately frame an good answer, and said to the woman: "I don't have a good answer to your questions. What is your understanding?"
The woman then said, "I don't understand, you don't understand,. Maybe nobody can understand the ungraspable aspects of Mind. Anyway, would you like to purchase some rice cakes?"
The monk laughed and purchased some rice cakes. He smiled as he grasped his staff and started walking to a new Temple library. On the way, he tried to grasp the meaning of the ungraspable nature of Mind. His thoughts held him in constant reiterations and ruminations on time and mind. His stubbornness and diligence held him tightly to the problematic issue of "the past mind is ungraspable, the present mind is ungraspable, and the future mind is ungraspable." He could not release his grasp on these profound and disturbing ideas.
He finally gave up and let go of these ideas. He realized that "grasping" is only a conventional metaphor for understanding something, a figure of speech, a bunch of words, a stretch of the imagination. He gave up his research on the Diamond Cutter Sutra, gave all his books and manuscripts to the Temple library, and left for the mountains on a long retreat.
The Student's Considerations
We can grasp and effectively use the basic ideas of past, present, and future.
Maybe what is called "Mind" is a debatable topic and imprecise.
Let Go! Loosen your grasp! Demonstrate some detachment!
An expert acknowledges that there are subjects he does not fully understand.
"Time" and time are important topics in all philosopher's theories.
Maybe the Diamond Sutra's claims are false, incorrect, faulty, or shaky.
It is hard to grasp things with shaky hands and trembling minds.
Maybe the mind is ungraspable - so what! It still often works well for us.
What practical consequences arise from an "ungraspable mind" to provide meaningfulness?
Don't worry too much about grasping borderline problems.
Everything pivots on the Present - a tiny slice of Reality.
The Past Mind is more graspable than the Present Mind.
Is the "ungraspable mind" a meaningless intellectual diversion.
If you think too much, the fatigue may cause errors or mis-directions of one's thoughts and reasoning.
Indeed the mind cannot be grasped, unlike grasping a peach or a rock or a book or a staff or a rice cake, or your knee.
A brain is graspable, a mind is not graspable.
Sutras are NOT contemporary science or psychology.
Even the wisest persons can sometimes be humbled by ordinary people.
Asking a question is NOT making a statement or asserting a proposition.
Attach to Nothing! Don't hold on tightly to verbal formulas.
Time is the movement of things; we invented past, present, and future states.
Opening A Mountain: Koans of the Zen Masters. By Steven Heine. 60 Koans: Te-shan and the Woman Selling Rice Cakes p. 94
The Whole World is a Single Flower. By Seung Shan. Case 9.
Slices of Time
The Arrows of Time
never rest,
moving forward unrelenting
irreversible
from hot towards cold
from organized to disorganized
from past to future
from moving towards stillness
from life towards death.
Or,
so it seems,
to us,
with our little particulars,
with our homebrew views,
with our social habits a must.
The Spiderwebs of Time
are legion
multitudes of nows and thens;
Uncountable heres and theres
unhitched
from any eternal present
everywhere.
The Moments of Time
are a matrix of memories,
colored by fondness,
vaguer and vaguer by the day,
fading, cropped, mixed,
deleted, falling away.
The Times of Your Life
from birth to death,
can't be denied.
How did you live?
Where, when, why?
What did it mean?
Was a little a lie?
running out of time
for catching up
with the future
now
my mind grinds
my times
into memories
To dance at the still point
Of the Time beyond time,
Beyond pasts, within futures,
this Moment
Now and forever, beyond minds.
- M.P.G.
Hands, Grasping, Holding, Fingers, Touch
The Fireplace Records
Subject Index to 1,965 Zen Buddhist Koans (PDF, 587 pages)
Zen Buddhist Koans
Caught on the Edges of the West: Highway 101
Four Days in Grayland
Pulling Onions
Poetry - Bibliography, Links, Resources, Guides
Uncle Mike's Cellphone Poetry Series
Meetings with Taoist Master Chang San-Feng
Shifu Miao Zhang Points the Way
Full Moon in the Morning Sky
Northwest Pacific Coast Poems
Exhibits at the Onion Garden
The Spirit of Gardening
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
