Two monks and a flag

[Michael David]

There is a story of two monks observing a flag. One says "the flag is moving." The other monk disagreed and said, "the wind is moving." Along comes a senior monk who comments, "not the flag, not the wind; mind is moving."

Something about this captured my attention and curiosity. I have not yet come to a satisfactory comfortable understanding. So far I start with the image of the flag moving and then switch to the wind which needs to be there for the flag to be moving. So yes the wind is moving and the flag shows the wind. Possibly that the flag is now contained within the wind. Then without the mind both the wind and the flag would not be there so both are now contained in the mind.

But what is the mind moving? It feels empty as though there is some greater insight that I am missing.

What's your view?

Michael

[GilesC]

This is similar to the "if a tree falls over in a forest without anybody there, does it make a noise?"

The flag, the wind, whatever are perceived individually by the mind, but it is only the mind that seperates these things and perceives them in that way. What I see as the flag, you would also see as the flag, but your flag would look different to mine, on the most basic level because we are looking at it from different angles, yet I also have ideas and memories of flags that will differ from yours, so my flag is not your flag and visa-versa. Likewise with the wind.

It is the mind that creates the "idea" or "thoughts" of the wind and flag, and therefore it is the mind that is "moving" the flag and wind.

Hugs

Giles

[olmate]

Hi David,

Two contexts come to mind. The first is the idea of "moving". It is a concept that the mind creates. It is something that the mind gives meaning to. So in this context the focus is not actually on wind or flag - it is the idea of movement.

The second idea is the dualistic notion of right and wrong. The perception that it is wind or the flag or even something else that is the "right" answer again is attached meaning. Perhaps a more encompassing perspective is "different".

Olmate

[GilesC]

Hi Michael,

I came across (synchronicity at play perhaps?) some text from the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (by Robert M Persig) last night as I was reading it (for the second time, nearly 20 years after I first read it). It's a little long, but I think it describes what you are referring to, though perhaps in a different way...

Brief background for those who haven't read this classic book... The author is describing himself travelling with his son and a couple of friends across America on their motorcycles, and is observing his thoughts on values, whilst at the same time memories are returning to him of his previous existence (a personality he refers to a Phaedrus) before he was declared insane and given electo-shock treatment to remove that personality.

I should talk now about Phædrus’ knife. It’ll help understand some of the things we talked about.

The application of this knife, the division of the world into parts and the building of this structure, is something everybody does. All the time we are aware of millions of things around us...these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road...aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious
of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

Once we have the handful of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a process of discrimination goes to work on it. This is the knife. We divide the sand into parts. This and that. Here and there. Black and white. Now and then. The discrimination is the division of the conscious universe into parts.

The handful of sand looks uniform at first, but the longer we look at it the more diverse we find it to be. Each grain of sand is different. No two are alike. Some are similar in one way, some are similar in another way, and we can form the sand into separate piles on the basis of this similarity and dissimilarity. Shades of color in different piles...sizes in different piles...grain shapes in different piles...subtypes of grain shapes in different piles...grades of opacity in different piles...and so on, and on, and on. You’d think the process of subdivision and classification would come to an end somewhere, but it doesn’t. It just goes on and on.

Classical understanding is concerned with the piles and the basis for sorting and interrelating them. Romantic understanding is directed toward the handful of sand before the sorting begins. Both are valid ways of looking at the world although irreconcilable with each other.

What has become an urgent necessity is a way of looking at the world that does violence to neither of these two kinds of understanding and unites them into one. Such an understanding will not reject sand-sorting or contemplation of unsorted sand for its own sake. Such an understanding will instead seek to direct attention to the endless landscape from which the sand is taken. That is what Phædrus, the poor surgeon, was trying to do.

To understand what he was trying to do it’s necessary to see that part of the landscape, inseparable from it, which must be understood, is a figure in the middle of it, sorting sand into piles. To see the landscape without seeing this figure is not to see the landscape at all.

To reject that part of the Buddha that attends to the analysis of motorcycles is to miss the Buddha entirely. There is a perennial classical question that asks which part of the motorcycle, which grain of sand in which pile, is the Buddha.
Obviously to ask that question is to look in the wrong direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. But just as obviously to ask that question is to look in the right direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. About the Buddha that exists independently of any analytic thought much has been said...some would say too much, and would question any attempt to add to it. But about the Buddha that exists within analytic thought, and gives that analytic thought its direction, virtually nothing has been said, and there are historic reasons for this. But history keeps happening, and it seems no harm and maybe some positive good to add to our historical heritage with some talk in this area of discourse.

When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts. Mark Twain’s experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty. Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts...something is always created too. And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it’s important also to see what’s created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is.

[Michael David]

Hi Giles and Olmate

The text above is a beautiful description and intertwines perfectly with the flag wind and monks. It has been floating in my awareness since I read it earlier today.

"To understand what he was trying to do it’s necessary to see that part of the landscape, inseparable from it, which must be understood, is a figure in the middle of it, sorting sand into piles. To see the landscape without seeing this figure is not to see the landscape at all."

The first thoughts to emerge for me were: a journey of a thousand miles is made up of one step at a ime. The devil is in the details. See from one end of the universe to the other. The end is inthe beginning.

To not lose sight of the speck of materialized consciousness we are within the millions of stars in the Universe.

The flag moving or the wind moving are grains of different colored sand when seen as objects of the mind when the mind is the subject. The mind itself becomes the object when viewed from the Universe as subject.

In its place each thing or thought can be the subject for something "beneath" it (which are the objects of that subject) and in turn the subject is at the same time the object of something "above" it. This continues in both directions to infinity. Most of the time I am lost in one end or the other and lose sight of the "figure within the landscape."

So going back to the local of the two monks. Olmate wrote about right and wrong or different. Yes. The event of the "flag" was just an event like a sense contact. Neither good nor bad. It was observed from different view points depending on the mind that was watching. Like a soccer match that is an event and at the end of the match one side sees the event as good and the other side as bad. But the event of the soccer match was just an event. The different views create a movement away from the event itself.

All events are just events and we color them as individual grains of sand. However, on the local level they really do appear different and our view (the figure) really does matter. But even that view is just another event and if we cling to that one event we cannot be open to the next event (that is continually happening).

So maintaining the local view withour clinging to it while maintaining the lanscape view feels like the balance of riding a bicycle with no hands.

The details are important and are much more meaningful when seen as a part of the landscape.

The landscape is unseen except for the materialization of its details.

With the analytical notion of this text to momentarily slice up my romantic view of the flag, wind and monks story (or any other group of events) I am much more comfortable and closer to holding both the figure and landscpe together. Thank you both.

Michael

So how do we maintain that view of figure and landscape together?

[GilesC]

So how do we maintain that view of figure and landscape together?

By being present and meeting the need of the moment.

Practicing doing that is the tricky bit (meditation, pausing between tasks, letting go of thoughts and pre-conceived ideas etc., just being observant etc.)

Hugs

Giles

[Bryan555]

To Giles, and anyone else interested in Robert Persig, you really should check out the website/forum which is entirely devoted to his search for "quality". It's MOQ.org. The MOQ, of course, refers to the "metaphysics of quality".

Anyone can post his ideas there. It's quite an interesting forum, and Persig is an active contributor.

I myself find that too much analysis detracts from my experience and enjoyment of ideas...or life in general, for that matter. MOQ is more for the hard-core "theorists" among us. But certainly this forum is replete with those, and they should definitely drop by for a look.

[Michael David]

Like optical illusions Spiritual illusions (figure and landscape) have both a foreground and a background. And similarly both the foreground and background switch up and back so that the image appears to shift depending on which is foreground and which is background. At times both are perceived simultaneously as coming out of a common or Universal ground.

For me when the two views are seen as one a balance of mind and body occurs and a greater sense of presence ensues. Practicing and being able to see either view at will adds to this balance. Continue this with a practice of rapidly switching up and back between the two views creating a vibration or humming. A bit like spinning a coin with a picture of a bird on one side and a birdcage of the other.

As the humming is sensed what surfaces for me is a synesthesia of thought becoming a felt sense of flowing calm and connectedness.

Michael

Hi Giles - Figure and Landscape has had me spinning for the last few days. I have been meeting more moments and in this one, to meet it is to say thanks again for pointing to another glimpse of the Universe.

Bryan - Thanks for the link to MOQ. I spent some time exploring there today. A bit wordy but intriguing.