to marci about Zen post

[Guest guest]

Dear marci ~ thanks for your excellent post ... much to think about and to

seep into the deep places, as you hoped. I especially liked this paragraph

about the heart and the empty hand. Jai Ma! ~ Linda

 

 

marci wrote:

 

....Zen ethical principles, like all systems of ethics, are derived from an

exhaustive observation of life and are a synthesis of painstaking

induction. So where does the critical difference lie between Zen ethics

and other traditional ethical systems? It lies in the way a Zen Buddhist

works with ethical principles. For the Zen Buddhist, an ethical precept

is a question to be held up to the light of circumstance, an inquiry

rather than an answer. And the nature of this inquiry is not so much the

dubious enterprise of trying to figure out the right thing to do as it

is an offering of an unaided heart. After all, it's from this heart

of ours that the precepts themselves once arose. At the threshold of

choice, the Zen Buddhist trusts this ancient heart above all other

authority. It's not that the Zen Buddhist reinvents the ethical

wheel every time he faces a new situation; it's just that he goes

back to the source itself. Ethics is not an invention but an expression

of the heart's core. What's most needed in the moment of choice

is an empty hand....