So I was reading about zen koans and came across these
quotes through
wiki:
Huà-tόu is literally translated as “word head” but is also translated as “critical phrase”. Before the term was appropriated by Zen teachers it was used to refer to the main idea of a literary passage. In Zen, it refers to the nature of the origin or source of a thought, word, or phrase that arises in one’s mind, or, more poetically, to “the mind before it is stirred”.
All hua-tous have one thing in common. See if you can figure out what it is from these six common ones:
Now tell me some of this don't strike you as familiar:
Who is it who now repeats the Buddha's name? TELL ME
Who is dragging this corpse about? WHAT DO YOU SEE
What is this?
What is it?
What was my original face before my father and mother were born? WHO AM I
and further:
Hua-tou practice is about looking deeply into the nature of being by asking ourselves an open-ended question which we lock into our brains and return to again and again. The objective is not to answer it, but to play with it, letting it taunt, tease, and torment us.
I looked up koans because I heard about this idea that in some styles of zen buddhism, the whole point of a koan is to present such an absurdist notion, that by meditating deeply enough on it causes the conscious mind to itself enter a state of absurdism. From the wiki:
A koan is a story, dialogue, question, or statement, which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and test a student's progress in Zen practice.
Not just a destruction of meaning, but an embracing, or maybe even a
becoming, of that destruction. An especially significant act in a world that is, by the author's words, the story of someone bringing meaninglessness to a meaningful world.
So all that is just what I wanted to put out
there for everyone to consider, because I believe the parallels are too close to ignore.
It made me think of the Dunyain 'The logos is without beginning or end'. A significant declaration. A statement. And in that - whelming cycle? - we see Kellhus go through, it ends with 'The' repeated, which is declarative in itself (I think - some of you guys are so into linguistics, I don't want to look like an asshole).
If we treat each progressive cycle of the 'logos' mantra like a statement or an
answer, or an
understanding, and everything said by the No-God as a
question, or a
blindness...
Are the Dunyain (or just Kellhus) the answer to the No-God?
And what's the self-certainty that the No-God denies when it exists, to the point that souls can't be brought into this world?
OK OK OK I gotta stop just to put this out to you guys.