Druid Journal

Zen and the Art of Tarot III: Card as Koan

Jeff Lilly — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 02:17:25 +0000

This is the third post in a series on the relationship between Zen Buddhism and the Tarot. It came about because I decided to try mixing Zen philosophy and visualization meditation in my attack on a personal issue of mine.

The personal issue, as I explained in depth in the previous posts, is a persistent feeling of unworthiness — of feeling like I do not deserve the good things and good people in my life. After all, there are so many all over the world who do not have the things I am blessed with; why should I have what they do not? Intellectually, I know that none of us really “deserve” what we have; 95% of everything in our lives — good and bad — can be traced to accidents of luck, birth and upbringing. But intellectual knowledge is not the same as feeling the truth of something. And the feeling of unworthiness was causing me to subconsciously sabotage my efforts to improve my life, and making me feel guilty for what I had.

When I drew Tarot cards on this issue, I got the Hermit, the Six of Wands, and Strength. I successfully used visualization meditation to figure out the meaning of the Hermit, and decided to use the same technique on the other two cards.

In this exercise, I was, in a way, treating the cards like koans.

The Koan

A koan is a puzzle, story, or dialogue that is designed to be pretty much senseless. It is a little pretzel for the mind to meditate upon, a weight that is too heavy for the thinking brain to lift. But by struggling to make sense of it, the mind is led, by many winding paths, toward enlightenment.

The Stick That is Not a Stick

A monk, taking a bamboo stick, said to the people,
“If you call this a stick, you fall into the trap of words,
but if you do not call it a stick, you contradict facts.
So what do you call it?”

At that time a monk in the assembly came forth. He snatched the
stick, broke it in two, and threw the pieces across the room.

–traditional koan

In this koan, the monk is saying that calling the stick “a stick” reduces its existence as a real, individual object to a general linguistic category, hiding its uniqueness. On the other hand, if you say it’s “not a stick,” you are denying the very real truth that it is, in fact, a stick. What is the answer?

One answer is that given by the other monk, who, by breaking the stick, calls attention to the false dichotomy (why should “stick” or “not stick” be the only choices of action?) and simultaneously engages with the world creatively, using his freedom of action and will to bring an end to the paradox.

However, that is not the only answer. The point of the koan is not to “have an answer”, any more than the point of a barbell is to be lifted once and never picked up again. The koan is to be engaged with and meditated upon until a larger truth is revealed.

And a Tarot card can be viewed in much the same way. By drawing a card at random and trying to apply it to a situation in your life, the mind is forced into engage with the situation and the card, to ruminate and free-associate until the larger truth is revealed. And of course, in the Zen tradition, excellent way to do this is meditation.

The Six of Wands

Shortly after I left the Hermit’s tower, the knight came to me. He was riding a great white horse — actually, a winged horse. As he landed beside me on the forest path, I could see that he was indeed a knight, but not really a warrior in the classic sense. Instead he reminded me somewhat of the White Knight in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass — with spectacles, a long mustache, and a professorial air. He welcomed me warmly, took my hand, and swung me up onto the back of his horse, and we took flight.

In a twinkling we were up over the forest, and the pegasus carried us quickly away from the trees and over the beach, out over the ocean. We headed directly for the Isle of Smoke.

“Why are we going there?” I asked, over the beating of the wings.

“The Isle of Smoke is where you go to ask the gods to help you with your manifestations,” he answered. “You come to the island and burn offerings, and the smoke travels up to the gods and carries your message. And in part, that’s what your reading’s question is about — releasing emotional blocks to manifestations. You haven’t been to the island recently, have you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“You haven’t felt like you had the right to ask for anything more,” he said. “So we’ll go to the island and talk about it.”

A moment later the island was under us — rocky, and carpeted with pine trees. The horse swung round and glided to a landing in a large clearing dotted with the offering fires of my past efforts (and perhaps of the efforts of others — I had the distinct feeling I was not the only one to visit the island). We dismounted by some large rocks, and he took off his helmet and began pulling various things from the packs on the horse — crackers, matches, and a tea kettle. As he lit a fire and made tea, and I sat on the rocks, he talked.

“The classic meaning of the Six of Wands,” he said, “concerns competition and victory. But this is a rather shallow way of looking at things. You’re a druid; think about the natural world. In the natural world, what is competition?”

“Well, people often talk about animals and plants in competition,” I said. “Evolution, survival of the fittest, and so on. But I suppose that they themselves rarely see it that way. No tree in the forest is trying to beat all the others; no animal is consciously trying to be the best or the strongest or have the most offspring. They’re all just individuals trying to do the best they can to live, to go about their business in a world with limited resources.”

“Exactly,” said the knight. He handed me my tea. “All this activity can be seen as competition, but it’s a rather limited view; and there are anti-competitive, co-operative forces as well — though they are often less visible.”

“Ok,” I said. “What does this have to do with deserving things?”

He blinked at me through his spectacles. “The issue of competition seems to be irrelevant to you? The Hermit told you that ‘deserving’ something was a statement about the moral relationship between you and other people. Does this moral relationship have nothing to do with competition?”

I stared back at him, and then smacked my head as the realization hit. “I see! When I’m asking for something, or thinking about something I want, somehow implicit in that is ‘I get this, but other people don’t.’ That’s competition.”

“Exactly,” said the knight. “You’re thinking of this as a zero-sum game, in which someone has to lose in order for you to win. You get the great job, and someone else does not. You have a wonderful family, other people struggle. You get to travel the world, other people are stuck at home. But is that really what you’re asking for?”

“Not consciously,” I said. “Maybe subconsciously… Not because I don’t want people to have these good things, but because I guess it’s so tempting to compare myself to other people.”

“But remove that element of competition,” he said, “and you change your moral relationship. You were thinking of ‘deserving’ as being ‘I’m better than you’, which is morally nonsense. Remove the element of competition, remove the sense of victory, and the meaning of ‘deserve’ is changed.”

“But still,” I said, “how can I ask for more, when so many people have less?”

“Why are you asking for these things only for yourself?” he said. “Ask for them on behalf of everyone.”

The revelation may seem blindingly obvious, but for me it was a gut-level rush of relief. I was struck so hard with the insight that it almost knocked me out of the meditation! I knelt down before him and thanked him many times, and he laughed and smiled and told me not to be silly.

“Get up,” he said. “You have one more meeting today.”

He packed up the tea and helped me up on the pegasus, and we flew off again, headed for the meeting with the final card: Strength.

Strength

In my personal interpretation of the Tarot, Strength is about the power of truth — particularly its power in the physical world, in which it overcomes (eventually) all illusion and pretense, no matter how they are defended with desire, ignorance, or force of arms. And in my own personal pantheon, Power and Truth are both realms ruled by Odin… So I was not surprised to find that the Knight was taking me to him.

This was the first time I realized Odin had built a permanent home in the branches of Yggdrasil.

The pegasus carried me up into the sky, up above the atmosphere, where all sound died, and my skin froze with cold, and the stars were hard and bright. We didn’t stay long enough to get uncomfortable — I had a dizzying impression of speed and my stomach turned, and then we were in the World Tree’s upper branches. Somehow its mighty leaves shielded us from the cold airlessness of space. Suddenly I saw a dwelling perched where several branches knotted together, seemingly half-built and half-grown, glowing with the light of many huge windows. The pegasus alighted on a platform, and the knight helped me get down.

Odin met us at the great ash door. I’ve seen him in a number of different forms, usually bearded and covered by a great cloak and hood; today the hood was thrown back, revealing a thin smiling face and a bright blue eye. I do not remember whether his eyeless socket was covered by a patch, or his hair, or what; it was more like I simply didn’t notice that side of his face.

The knight went back outside to see to his horse, and Odin invited me in, and offered me wine and cheese and crackers. (Yes, after this meditation I was ready for a snack!)

Odin spoke at length, and unfortunately I had some trouble hearing him. At this point I’d been meditating for close to an hour, and I was starting to get tired; so it was difficult for me to focus. He knew he was losing me, I think, so he repeated his points several times and even shouted once or twice to keep my attention!

The gist of what he was saying was that, by including everyone in my hopes, desires, and intentions, I achieve several things. First, of course, I get rid of the problem of whether I “deserve” to have something. Second, I infuse egolessness into the intention, which helps to ensure that my intention is in tandem with what would be best for everyone. I have taken away a layer of fear or bad attachment that could get tangled up in the situation. For example, it would be pointless to set a goal for a million dollars if I also asked for everyone else to have it: dollars would simply fall in value, and everyone would be back where they started. By including everyone else in my intentions, I force myself to focus on the things I really want dollars for: security, freedom, and abundance. And third, by removing the element of competition, I encourage more feelings of security and cooperation in my subconscious, focused only on the positive outcomes for everyone involved.

At that point, as I said, I had gotten pretty tired and unfocused; so when Odin finally got his message through to me, I thanked him profusely and then ended the meditation immediately.

The Greatest Koan

I think my strategy of meditating on the cards worked extremely well, and was a great example of how the cards can act as koans. Like koans, a Tarot card may seem to have no relevance to the issue at hand, or only a shallow meaning; but there are deeper layers, hidden connections, and profound wisdom below the surface. The idea that morality is a function of relationships is nowhere obvious in the Hermit card; the connection between competition and worthiness is not something that jumps to mind with the Six of Wands; and the ways in which focusing on the ‘truer’ goals of security, freedom, and abundance are stronger and more powerful than the shallow goal of a million dollars would never occur to me just by looking at the Strength card.

But the connections were there; and this shows, I think, that in fact all Tarot cards are relevant to all situations. It’s a function of the interconnectedness and unity of all things, really. If we were free from all bad attachments, free from all illusions, then all the connections between the cards and our human situations would be immediately apparent. And it seems likely to me that the more difficult it is for you to see how a card is relevant, the stronger the attachment or delusion you’re laboring under.

But of course it’s not just Tarot cards that are such amazing tools of divination. Since they are designed for divination, they are easier to use for most people. But you don’t have to use the Tarot. Anything can be used in this way: raindrops, clouds, a chance word spoken by a stranger…

From the standpoint of Zen, the whole world is one mighty koan.

A monk asked Master Tenryu, “How can I escape the three delusions of desire, form, and no-form?”

Tenryu said, “Escape? Well, where are you right now?”

Zen and the Art of Tarot II: Meditation and Release

Jeff Lilly — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:59:52 +0000

In my previous post on Zen and the Tarot (Illusion and Attachment), I talked about an issue I’ve been working on recently: my tendency to feel as though I do not deserve the good things in my life (my job, my loved ones, my access to nature, etc.). Intellectually I know that it makes no sense to even think about “deserving” such fundamental aspects of life, but that does me no good: there is a deep level at which I feel unworthy — or at least, not more worthy than the billions of people who do not have the good things I do. And feeling undeserving is a trap that sabotages my efforts to improve my own life and makes me feel guilty about the good things and good people around me.

In order to find the reason for this feeling and get rid of it, I decided to use meditation and the Tarot, inspired by Zen philosophy.

The first thing I did was draw Tarot cards. My intuition told me to draw three, so I did: the Hermit, the Six of Wands, and Strength. However, I had no idea how to interpret the reading.

I decided to meditate on the cards. Before I talk about those meditations, though, I need to introduce a little more Zen philosophy.

Attachment to the Transient

According to Zen Buddhism, problems in life are caused by bad attachments: that is, emotional attachment to things that are unreal or transient. It is fine to be attached to permanent things, but almost nothing is truly permanent, no matter how hard we may try to hold on to them. Our families, our countries, our loved ones, our bodies, even our very selves are transient, and attaching ourselves to them is not just a recipe for pain, but a fundamental error of belief. In the most essential sense, these transient things do not really exist.

The immediate reaction of most Westerners when presented with this philosophy is often abhorrence. After all, if you don’t think the world really exists, or is important, aren’t you being nihilist? Aren’t you shutting yourself off to all emotion, like Mr. Spock? Aren’t you detaching yourself from everything and becoming a supercilious prick?

A SACK OF PAST: A PARABLE

Once, while walking through the forest, I encountered a man groaning under a terribly heavy sack. The weight of the sack caused the man to stumble around, first this way and then that, so that he could hardly control where he placed his feet. Every few steps the man would take a rock out of his sack, smack himself in the head with it, and then put it back in the sack.

I watched the poor man with interest and compassion for a while, until, staggering and weaving, he stubbed his toe on a rock. He cried out mournfully, picked up the rock, smacked himself in the head with it, and put the rock in his sack.

At that point, the sack said “Ouch!”

“Sir,” I said, “excuse me for asking, but what the hell are you doing?”

The man glared at me. “I am cursed,” he said. “I cannot walk properly. And I have terribly bad luck. So wherever I go, I bump into things and stub my toes. Leave me in my misery.”

“But why do you strike yourself with rocks?”

“I have stubbed my toes on them. I deserve to be punished.”

“But why do you carry them with you in your sack?”

“Fool! Should I forget the wrongs I have done?”

“Is your sack filled with rocks, then?”

“No, no, I have other things. The things I love, the things I hate, the things I own, my accomplishments and my mistakes… As well as my hopes and worries about the future. I must carry them with me, otherwise I might forget them. Besides, without these things, who would I be?”

“But why did your sack say ‘ouch’?”

“Oh, that is my poor mother, bless her soul. Clearly I cannot go through life without her.”

“But surely the weight of your sack is the reason why you are having trouble walking.”

“No, ’tis fate, ’tis fate! I can never do anything right. I am cursed with bad luck. Leave me in my misery.”

(Inspired by this post on guilt, shame, and Buddhist practice)

As the parable illustrates, releasing attachments to transient things does not mean that you don’t care about people, or that you become a compassionless alien. Instead, by releasing your burdens, it gives you the strength and agility to better navigate life’s path, and allows you to give other people more compassion and assistance.

How then do you release these attachments?

Learning Enlightenment

According to the Zen masters, trying to teach enlightenment is nearly useless. It is not something that can be learned. Instead, it is best attained by diligent meditation and self-examination, alone, just as the Buddha did.

According to Zen theory, then, these feelings of unworthiness were created by attachments — unconscious attachments to transient, unreal things. Once I identified the attachments, I could release them and be free of the unhealthy feeling of not deserving.

I knew that the Tarot cards I’d drawn were trying to give me a message, but I couldn’t puzzle them out. I decided to use Zen’s preferred solution: meditation. However, instead of Zen’s zazen meditation, I used the visualization technique I’m more familiar with.

I went to visit the Hermit, to ask him directly what his meaning was.

The Hermit(s)

I started the meditation in the Forest of Branching Paths, an area which I think represents our normal human lives: a wood that is dark in places and light in others, with paths that fork and merge and branch again, with no pattern or end in mind. All sorts of spirits wander these paths — other people, beasts, ghosts, and even devils, angels, and gods (though these high-energy beings usually are cloaked or hidden in some way). The forest used to be a rather spooky and nerve-wracking place for me, but some time ago I found the way out, and since then I usually travel the paths pretty confidently.

Something told me the Hermit would be in these woods, and I could sense the direction I should travel — north and a little west. (In my personal meditation landscape, ‘north’ is towards Water and ‘west’ is towards Air. Don’t ask me why.) The path dipped down steeply and wound along the side of a slope of a valley of oaks. I got the impression that it was late in the year — November, perhaps — though it wasn’t cold. The smell of fallen leaves was rich and wonderful.

Before long I rounded a bend and spotted the Hermit’s tower, an old stone one overlooking the oak valley. The sun was on its way down, and its light glinted off the windows at the top. The path took me directly to the foot of the tower, and I knocked on the old wooden door, wondering what sort of fellow this Hermit would be.

Turns out he was extremely friendly. Well, half-friendly: he was two people, one of them friendly, the other not.

One of him greeted me at the door warmly, invited me in, and offered me crackers, wine, and other simple food, apologizing for the paucity of his table. The other one of him didn’t acknowledge my presence at all — for him, I simply wasn’t there. During my visit I occasionally spotted him reading in the library, or kneeling by the window in prayer or meditation; but for him, neither me nor the ‘other’ Hermit seemed to exist at all.

“I have to apologize for my rudeness,” said the Hermit. “Generally I’m just one person, but I split into two so I could welcome you properly. After all, if I am the Hermit, I can’t very well just talk to whoever comes to visit, can I?” And he laughed happily. “This way I can give you a proper welcome, and also continue my solitary contemplation.”

“I appreciate it,” I said. We sat and talked in an open circular room near the top of the tower, with the sun poised in a timeless sunset.

Morality in Solitude

“You were asking,” said the Hermit, “about why you’re having this emotional hangup about deserving things. I think I can give you part of the answer. Think about this: what does it mean to ‘deserve’ something?”

“Well, nothing, really,” I said. “None of us really ‘deserve’ anything we have, good or bad. Everything is pretty much by chance.”

“That’s your mind talking,” said the Hermit. “Your mind is fine. But we’re working on your heart. What do you feel like it means to deserve something?”

“It means,” I said, and paused. I tried to concentrate on what it felt like to deserve things. A feeling of worthiness, earning something, having a just claim…

“Yes,” he said, not waiting for me to try and verbalize the feelings. “And this is a moral issue, isn’t it? It’s a question of having a moral claim to something. It’s a question of right and wrong. You deserve something if you have acted morally in such a way that you are justified in having it. Deserving something is a kind of moral state.”

“I think I see,” I said.

“Now answer me this: what kind of moral codes should a Hermit follow?”

He looked at me with crystal-clear eyes while I turned the question over in my mind. Surely hermits should follow the same moral codes as everyone else, right? No lying… well, there would be no one for them to lie to, so that was, in fact, irrelevant. No stealing… well, that one was also irrelevant. No violence…

“Morality is irrelevant for a hermit,” I said at last. “No wonder Sartre said that hell is other people.”

“Almost irrelevant,” he said, smiling. “You always have your body and your self here with you, so you must be careful not to lie to yourself, steal things your body needs, or do violence to your body. At least, that is my feeling. But setting that aside: yes, morality is, by and large, concerned with our relationships with other people. So if you are a hermit off by yourself, most of morality is just irrelevant.

“Deserving something,” he went on, “is a kind of moral state, we have agreed, yes? So if you feel you deserve something, what you’re really saying is that you stand in some kind of moral relationship with other people. Set aside right now the question of what exactly that relationship is. All that matters right now is understanding that if you deserve something, you’re in some kind of relationship with other people. It’s not something inherent to yourself; it’s something about your relationship with others.”

“Ok… I think I see,” I said. “So if I feel like I don’t deserve something… then I must feel like I’m not in the right relationship with others.”

“Exactly,” he said, smiling. “This is the lesson of the Hermit card for you today. Deserving things is about relationships with others. If you feel like you don’t deserve something, you are like a hermit: feeling cut off from, or in an improper relationship with, other people. To put it another way: deserving something means you’ve entered into some relation with others, and you, Jeff, don’t feel like you’ve hit that relationship.”

I was amazed: it was an extremely apt reading, and not at all what my conscious mind had come up with. Obvious, perhaps, in retrospect, but that’s the nature of our hardest life lessons, isn’t it? And it shows, I think, that even if you think you know the meaning of a card in a reading, there are certainly deeper meanings that you haven’t teased out.

I stood and thanked him profusely, and he showed me out. We shook hands and I promised to visit again sometime. If I’d known hermits could be so hospitable I would have visited before…

As I walked back through the oak woods, following my nose to meet with the next card (the Six of Wands), I reflected that here was another example of wisdom through release of attachment to wrong ideas. I thought that deserving was something inherent to my self, while in fact it is an aspect of my relationship to others.

I hoped that meditation could shed as much light on the next two cards — cards which my conscious mind had not been able to figure out at all. In the next post I’ll describe those meditations, and compare the Tarot with Zen koans.

Zen and the Art of Tarot I: Illusion and Attachment

Jeff Lilly — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 22:17:54 +0000

Recently I discovered that I have an odd emotional malady — maybe you’ve got it too. Basically it’s this: whenever I think about something I’d like to have in my life (an evening out with friends, curtains on all my windows, a better job, more time in nature), I instinctively and subconsciously ask myself whether I deserve it. And if the answer is no, then I instinctively and subconsciously sabotage my own efforts to get it.

Do I really deserve a nicer job? After all, I already have a great job, one which is challenging and interesting, not too stressful, and places me in the top 30% of wage earners in the United States. It’s probably not my life’s work — I’d be happier writing or teaching. But what right do I have to complain? Do I deserve a better job? Especially when so many people would consider what I do to be beyond their wildest dreams.

Or going out into nature more. For my birthday last week I got to take a day and go hiking and camping, and it was extremely restful and fulfilling. I would love to be able to do more of that… but do I deserve it? I know people who barely ever get to leave the city. Am I so much better than they are? How can I justify such a luxury when they are suffering so much? At least I live next to a beautiful park — I can walk in it every evening if I like. This would be paradise for millions of people trapped in urban wastelands worldwide.

Head vs. Heart

Now, intellectually I know this “deserving” business is ridiculous. Me going out into nature does not prevent anyone else from doing the same. It’s not like there’s a limited amount of nature, and only the most deserving among us should get to enjoy it. And the same is true of great jobs: it’s simply not the case that there is a limited number of great jobs in the world, and we’re all in cutthroat competition to snap them up. Lots of people think that way, but it’s nonsense.

And at the most basic level, the question of “deserve” doesn’t enter into it. Did I “deserve” to be born? To be born human, rather than a hedgehog? To be born in a country with a high standard of living? Did I deserve to have this particular combination of interests, intelligence, personality, and luck that got me the grades that got me the degree that got me the credentials and friendships that got me this job? It’s not like some cosmic judge weighed me in the balance and said, “Congratulations, Jeff! In your next life, because you’re so awesome, you get to be a wealthy American, instead of a garden slug.” There’s no way I’m that awesome, believe me. (I’m me, and I know.)

I don’t “deserve” anything I have. Arguably some of my good fortune is due to hard work, so in that sense I “deserve” it, but I work hard because of my personality and my upbringing, and I got those by happenstance. Besides, who says working hard means you deserve something? American culture is saturated with ideas of the self-made man and heroic entrepreneur, with the delusion that you can “deserve” to be wealthy, but economists have calculated that at least 95% of anyone’s wealth comes from factors they can’t control — accidents of birth, upbringing, and personality. None of us “deserve” anything we have, good or bad.

Oh wow, I’m going way off onto a tangent here. My point is that intellectually I know that “deserving” has nothing to do with whether I should get the things I want. But instinctively, subconsciously, the feelings are there, and they are more powerful than my intellect. They constrain my life and sabotage my goals.

Feeling Worthy

Some examples. I got this great job (and the great job I had before this) shortly after quitting a job which was not great: I was working in the defense industry, and there was a lot of emotional and professional stress involved. I eventually couldn’t take it any more, and jumped ship. At that point, I viscerally felt like I deserved a better job — one which was emotionally and professionally low-stress, and which did not support the military industrial complex. And that’s what I ended up with.

Similarly, I am now in a fantastic relationship, and I got into it shortly after getting out of a relationship which was less than fantastic. My divorce went extremely well, as divorces go, but it was still a stressful time and ended a long period of emotional and spiritual struggle. When it was over, I viscerally felt like I deserved a great relationship. And that’s what I ended up with.

It was just a few days ago that these realizations jelled in my head. It’s possible that I could be wrong about the causal relationship here; maybe my feelings about whether I deserve something have little or nothing to do with whether I actually get it. But regardless, I want to get rid of this hang-up, this emotional malady. I don’t want to go along forever feeling bad about the good things and good people in my life.

But how?

Emotional baggage like this comes about because of hidden, subconscious, false beliefs. Somewhere in my head or my heart was a little twist of false logic. I needed to somehow dig it out and untie the knot.

I decided to go with meditation, and the Tarot. And Zen.

Past, Future, Self, and Tarot

Most people think of the Past as something that is real. They think: it happened; it was real; it’s true. The Future, on the other hand, is unreal; it’s viewed as nebulous, uncertain, and cloudy.

The Tarot is often thought to be a tool for casting light on the future. Maybe it won’t tell you exactly what’s going to happen — after all, we DO have free will. But it can give you the broad outlines, or tell you what the most important themes will be. It can show you the unreality that will become the reality.

Others think of the Tarot as a tool for casting light on the self. By using it, you can see subconscious currents, feelings, and thoughts, elements that often have deep effects even though we can’t see them. It can bring clarity to the present, and reveal options you did not know you had.

In other words, the Tarot is viewed as an Oracle.

The Meaning of Squash: A Parable

A young man came to the Master with a problem. “Master,” he said, “I owe a rich man a great deal of money. If I cannot pay it back, he will come and put me in prison. But Master, I do not have the money. What should I do?”

“An excellent question,” said the Master. “Stand here and look up into the clouds. What shape do you see?”

The young man looked. “I see no shape, Master.”

“Come, use your imagination,” said the Master.

“I see… a squash.”

“A squash! Excellent! There is your answer.”

“But Master, please! What does a squash have to do with paying back this debt?” said the young man.

The Master smiled and called his students to him. He explained to them the young man’s trouble. “He has looked up into the clouds and received a sign: a squash. What do you think this means?”

One student said, “Master, he is trapped like the seeds in the squash, with no escape. He is fated to go to prison.”

The young man wailed with misery. “Perhaps, perhaps!” he cried. “But I do not want to believe it!”

“You don’t like that answer?” said the Master. “Try another one then.”

A second student said, “Master, the squash grows quickly and low along the ground, hiding from the sun. He should flee and hide from his misfortune.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” said the young man. “But I do not want to leave my home!”

“Try another answer, then,” said the Master.

A third student said, “The carotene in squash is excellent for eyesight. He should seek out new sources of money to pay his debt.”

The young man wrung his hands. “Perhaps, perhaps,” he said. “But suppose I can’t find any?”

“Try another answer, then,” said the Master.

“The squash grows from a tiny seed to be one of the largest fruits,” said a fourth student. “He should take what money he has now and invest it, and use the dividends to pay off his debt a little at a time.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” said the young man. “But the debt is due right now! Who knows whether my creditor will be patient?”

“I have run out of students,” said the Master, a bit testily.

“But Master!” cried the young man. “Which of these answers is correct?”

“None of them,” said the Master.

“None of them?”

“They are nothing but illusions — pernicious lies,” said the Master. “The students will be punished.”

“But Master!” cried the young man. “If none of those answers is correct, what is the answer?”

“The squash, of course,” said the Master.

Zen Commentary: The Master was a fool. He did not see the cloud.

The students and the young man in this parable are indulging in what most people do when they use the Tarot — they take the symbols on the cards and try to assign meaning based on the issue at hand.

But when the Master says that the true answer is the squash itself, what he’s saying is that it’s up to the young man to find the best answer he can; it’s really only the process of teasing out answers and testing them against your feelings that can show you what your attachments are and lead you to your essential self. No one else can do that for you, although they can give examples and suggestions, as the students did.

The ‘Zen Commentary’ is a sort of self-parody I added in the style of Zen koans. I’ll have more to say about koans later.

But Zen teaches that the past, the future, and even what we usually think of as the ’self’ are unimportant and, in a sense, illusory.

Maybe there seems to be a web of causality linking everything together; maybe you seem to have memories of real events. But the past is no more real than the future; and the ’self’ we know is nothing more than a loose collection of memories and habits of thought and feeling, all associated with a constantly-changing body of atoms.

None of this is of any importance. What is important is the essential self — the self that is at one with all; the self that is eternal and unchanging; the self that has, in fact, already achieved infinite peace. Everything else is inconsequential…

…EXCEPT insofar as it helps us to strip away illusion and attachment, and see the world as it is. Memory, thought, habit and pattern are useful and important if they help us find the inconsistencies and attachments that cloud our vision of the truth.

On Solipsism: A Dialogue

A student sought out a holy man and said, “I have heard it said, Master, that all the world is an illusion; that everything we see, feel, and touch comes from our own minds, that past and future are meaningless, that other people are projections of our subconscious, and the only thing we can be sure of is our own existence.”

“Ah, yes,” said the holy man. “Solipsism.”

“Master, is solipsism true?”

“No, it is not,” said the holy man.

“Ah! Then the world is real?”

“No, it is not,” said the holy man.

“But — but these things I can see, feel, and touch — they are not real?”

“No, they are not,” said the holy man.

“Past and future — are they also illusions?”

“Yes, they are illusions,” said the holy man.

“What about other people — do they exist?”

“No, they do not.”

“Master, do you exist? Are you real?”

“No,” said the holy man, smiling. “I am not.”

“But Master, you just said solipsism was not true!”

“It is not.”

“Then how is solipsism wrong?”

“The solipsist believes he exists,” said the holy man.

The student stood in silent thought for a while, and then said:

“Then Master, if the world does not exist, and past and future do not exist, and you and I do not exist, what does exist? What is real?”

“I will tell you,” said the holy man, “if you can tell me the difference between illusion and reality.”

Thus, Zen teaches, it can be helpful to think about the past or the future, as long as we realize that these things have no power over us, and are useful only insofar as they show us our attachments, and help us release them. It is a grave error to worry and agonize about the past or the future; it only takes us away from the present moment, and attaches us to things which do not exist.

Some Say He Is A Holy Man: A Zen Story

A serious young man found the conflicts of mid 20th Century America confusing. He went to many people seeking a way of resolving within himself the discords that troubled him, but he remained troubled.

One night in a coffee house, a self-ordained Zen Master said to him, “go to the dilapidated mansion you will find at this address which I have written down for you. Do not speak to those who live there; you must remain silent until the moon rises tomorrow night. Go to the large room on the right of the main hallway, sit in the lotus position on top of the rubble in the northeast corner, face the corner, and meditate.”

He did just as the Zen Master instructed. His meditation was frequently interrupted by worries. He worried whether or not the rest of the plumbing fixtures would fall from the second floor bathroom to join the pipes and other trash he was sitting on. He worried how would he know when the moon rose on the next night. He worried about what the people who walked through the room said about him.

His worrying and meditation were disturbed when, as if in a test of his faith, ordure fell from the second floor onto him. At that time two people walked into the room. The first asked the second who the man was sitting there was. The second replied “Some say he is a holy man. Others say he is a shithead.”

Hearing this, the man was enlightened.

by Camden Benares, The Count of Five Headmaster, Camp Meeker Cabal

(From the Principia Discordia (LINK))

The Tarot, then, cannot help us by showing us the future, because there is no future. Nor can it show us the past, because there is no past. It can’t even show us the self; there is no self — at least, not one that can be illuminated by a card.

What the Tarot can do is help us by showing us patterns or stories that we can impose on our memories of the past, or our anticipations of the future. Its pictures suggest new ways of interpreting these memories and anticipations. When it suggests something we haven’t thought of before, something hidden from us because of our attachments or ignorance, it opens up new possibilities and breaks attachments, taking us closer to the essential self. It wakens us a little from our illusions.

The Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the Buddha’s radiant and peaceful presence. The man asked, “What are you? Are you a god?”

“No,” said the Buddha.

“Are you an angel?”

“No.”

“Are you a saint?”

“No.”

“Then what are you?”

“I am awake.”

– traditional Buddhist story

So, with all this in mind, I sat down and drew cards, asking, roughly:

“Please give me guidance on how I should handle my feelings of being undeserving.”

I drew three cards. I hadn’t decided on a spread to use before hand, but as I drew I felt like three was the right number. Here’s what I got:

1. The Hermit
2. The Six of Wands
3. Strength

Hmmm… With two of the Major Arcana in the reading, this was going to be heavy stuff, important. Good! I set about trying to interpret them.

The Hermit. The first thing that came to mind was the time I spent alone after I separated from my ex-wife in late 2008. That period was certainly relevant to my issues with deserving things, since at that time I felt like I’d gone through a lot and ‘deserved’ to get into an awesome relationship to make up for it (in some sense). So, ok… though it was hard to see what particular advice this had for me. On to the next.

The Six of Wands. This card is all about victory after a struggle, accolades, undisputed success — although perhaps there are seeds of future difficulties, especially if success has come through an unhealthy focus on one element at the expense of others. Here the analogy with my love life breaks down, because there certainly wasn’t any struggle when it came to meeting Ali. We hit it off immediately and after more than a year, everything continues to fall into place. And again, I had no idea what it was saying about ‘deserving’ something, or what I was being advised to do about it.

Strength. Persuasion, inner strength? The power of truth?… Here I was at a loss. I simply had no idea how to apply this card.

I was stuck. The cards pretty much seemed irrelevant. However, Zen’s philosophy — particularly with regard to the koan — is very helpful for dealing with this kind of situation. I’ll discuss this, and how I got the solution to my problem from the cards, in the next posts.

* Because each employed person creates more jobs for other people. For example, the work I’m doing — speech-to-text software — allows people to work more productively, by and large, which means they can expand their customer bases, grow their businesses, and create more jobs. Plus, since I have a salary, I go out and spend money on things, and that employs other people, too. Return to text.