Post Enlightenment

The tenth vignette of the Ten Bulls by Kekuan is about returning to the world after a journey beyond and it reads

Inside my gate, thousand sages do not know me. The beauty of my garden is invisible. Why should one search for the footprints of the patriarchs? I go to the market place with my wine bottle and return home with my staff. I visit the wineshop and the market, and everyone I look upon becomes enlightened.

The Chinese story reminds me of a tradition with Hassidism. As related by Phyllis Gotlieb in an article about the work of A.M. Klein ("Hassidic Influences in the Work of A.M. Klein", The A.M. Klein Symposium, Seymour Mayne editor, University of Ottawa Press, (Ottawa, 1975) pages 47-64).

The Lamedvovnik conceals his virtue behind a mask of silence, secrecy, poverty and ignorance. When danger threatens he emerges from concealment temporarily to defeat the enemy by his Kabbalistic powers. I do not think it is a coincidence that the Superman comic was invented by a couple of Jewish boys

I chuckle at the image of super Buddhas that this juxtaposition proposes.

Bibliographic information re the English of the Ten Bulls: page 75 in Writings from the Zen Masters (Penguin, 2009) which is a selection from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (Charles E. Tuttle & Co., 1957). The material was transcribed by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps with illustration by Tomikichiro Tokuriki (b. 1902 - d. 2000).

The article by Phyllis Gotlieb has been marked up in an XML version using TEI encoding — http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/tei/gotlieb/gotlieb.xml and from that an HTML version has been generated — http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/tei/gotlieb/gotlieb.htm

A little bit of writing done on the way to market for those in search of some reading on their way to market.

And so for day 933
03.07.2009