Koan #5
Koan #5. If I’ve come to learn, I empty my cup - I find my best strength and heart invulnerability in things I want to stay in my cup
If you are learning something, where do you stop? To what level of mastery do you aspire? What price are you ready to pay for some sacral knowledge?
Can I say that I trust my teacher if I don’t see this world as the world of sufferings? Moreover, how can I say that I’m learning if I, with all my heart, do not accept the First Noble Truth about the suffering? Moreover, how can I say that I’m learning if I actually find my best strength and my deep invulnerability (the "heart the world" kind of invulnerability) in things I don’t want to change - for example, the idea that the world is built on love and empathy?
And how do I face the people from whom I learn now?
[I’ve found one big consolation.]
If the one who was listening to me trying to solve the koan hadn’t pointed out, I still would have thought this as a solution. In my own system I did not distinguish consolations and solutions. I was so ashamed that I wished the earth could swallow me up.
But here’s the greatest consolation.
The moment of death will come once, and to learn what death is I will have to empty my cup from my greatest strength - my life.
Bearing this in mind, I thought, I could go on not-emptying my cup from love till the very last time when I would have to empty it from not only love, but also from life.
‘Death is the strictest teacher’, I said.
‘I know the teacher who is even stricter’, said the one who was listening, ‘Life’.
Yeah, we were looking for right words in the “The fall of Hyperion”, to find out what “to learn” means (“to remember" is a synonym to “to hold to your heart” and “to learn” is synonym to “to take to your spirit” - chapter 33, the conversation with Ummon) and on the same page there was a phrase “It is hard to die. Harder to live”.
Okay.
That was not the solution.
‘A cup is an illusion’, I was offered, ‘It’s an ice cup floating in the river current. It will dissipate once’.
Truly beautiful.
But I don’t think that’s the solution. The water from the cup returns to the current but it’s still sansara, it’s not the way out.
But the problem is really with the cup.
I suddenly recalled Sol Weintraub in “Hyperion”. Sol is solving a REAL koan: the Abraham’s dilemma. I reread it with a new feeling. Yes, that’s practically the answer.
Just several last steps.
If I say that, for example, love is my strength, how can I love and give away my love generously, if I want my love to stay in my cup?
Let it pour. I won’t find the cup empty. Even if I reach the bottom, I will find a murmuring spring. My cup will be at the same time empty for learning and ready to be fulfilled with love any time I want so.
So, the true solution is:
Only if I am pouring my best strength from my heart and thus “emptying” my heart, maybe, I will truly learn something. At least, this is the way to learn how to… trust.
P.S. There is a good image of this, which I recalled even before Sol’s method but finally I decided not to make the solution too complex (yes, “Plurality must never be posited without necessity”). But, please, if you still have not, read the “Mustard seed” by Osho, just the first talk. In English here. And in Russian here. And let us say that the cup from which you start pouring your love/other strength becomes the mustard seed which may grow into a tree and become shelter for all the birds of heaven.
If you are learning something, where do you stop? To what level of mastery do you aspire? What price are you ready to pay for some sacral knowledge?
Can I say that I trust my teacher if I don’t see this world as the world of sufferings? Moreover, how can I say that I’m learning if I, with all my heart, do not accept the First Noble Truth about the suffering? Moreover, how can I say that I’m learning if I actually find my best strength and my deep invulnerability (the "heart the world" kind of invulnerability) in things I don’t want to change - for example, the idea that the world is built on love and empathy?
And how do I face the people from whom I learn now?
[I’ve found one big consolation.]
If the one who was listening to me trying to solve the koan hadn’t pointed out, I still would have thought this as a solution. In my own system I did not distinguish consolations and solutions. I was so ashamed that I wished the earth could swallow me up.
But here’s the greatest consolation.
The moment of death will come once, and to learn what death is I will have to empty my cup from my greatest strength - my life.
Bearing this in mind, I thought, I could go on not-emptying my cup from love till the very last time when I would have to empty it from not only love, but also from life.
‘Death is the strictest teacher’, I said.
‘I know the teacher who is even stricter’, said the one who was listening, ‘Life’.
Yeah, we were looking for right words in the “The fall of Hyperion”, to find out what “to learn” means (“to remember" is a synonym to “to hold to your heart” and “to learn” is synonym to “to take to your spirit” - chapter 33, the conversation with Ummon) and on the same page there was a phrase “It is hard to die. Harder to live”.
Okay.
That was not the solution.
‘A cup is an illusion’, I was offered, ‘It’s an ice cup floating in the river current. It will dissipate once’.
Truly beautiful.
But I don’t think that’s the solution. The water from the cup returns to the current but it’s still sansara, it’s not the way out.
But the problem is really with the cup.
I suddenly recalled Sol Weintraub in “Hyperion”. Sol is solving a REAL koan: the Abraham’s dilemma. I reread it with a new feeling. Yes, that’s practically the answer.
Just several last steps.
If I say that, for example, love is my strength, how can I love and give away my love generously, if I want my love to stay in my cup?
Let it pour. I won’t find the cup empty. Even if I reach the bottom, I will find a murmuring spring. My cup will be at the same time empty for learning and ready to be fulfilled with love any time I want so.
So, the true solution is:
Only if I am pouring my best strength from my heart and thus “emptying” my heart, maybe, I will truly learn something. At least, this is the way to learn how to… trust.
P.S. There is a good image of this, which I recalled even before Sol’s method but finally I decided not to make the solution too complex (yes, “Plurality must never be posited without necessity”). But, please, if you still have not, read the “Mustard seed” by Osho, just the first talk. In English here. And in Russian here. And let us say that the cup from which you start pouring your love/other strength becomes the mustard seed which may grow into a tree and become shelter for all the birds of heaven.