A flower in the middle of the road

[Mashika]

Long ago, when i first joined Avalon, i posted a question to someone who tried to educate me about Zen and Buddhism. I wasn't angry or trying to antagonize or in any way to be toxic, but i did reply to a comment and specified a question that most people won't get ever from the usual practice

There is a reason for that question and i think i would want to clarify now what it truly means, because it is not on any text book or anything remotely related to it. So please allow me to explain now

The context and question was:

"There's a flower growing in the middle of the road.. why?"

And you are supposed to explain why. People get all worked up about it and a lot get angry and try to explain in terrain/human terms, and then end up leaving the conversation in a rage and temper tantrum. All of this is bad and wrong. They thought i was trying to make fun of them or ridicule them. Which in itself shows how much they lacked in understanding about the subject they were supposed to be 'masters' or 'teachers' at

These kind of questions belong to a separate road very much apart from current/modern understanding of zen, i'll explain

The question is not a question, it is a 'entry point'. It is a test. It is supposed to not be taken seriously, it is supposed to be a joke and from your answer you identify yourself. There is this thing in some old style Buddhist and Zen schools that you are forbidden to tell others about tests or some of the teachings, because that's what keeps the school closed enough that only the master can allow new students in, and the knowledge keeps close and tight so that it doesn't get 'polluted; by getting mixed into other cultures. It is elitist yes, i understand, but please read below first before judging

So here's an answer to that question:

"The flower is growing in the middle of a road because it is not growing anywhere else"

Now here are real answers, or acceptable ones

- I don't know
- It just happened


And here's a more correct/real answer to it

"Pseudo wisdom is not how you learn the way out"

That question above, has 3 levels

"Because it happened or i don't know" are fake wrong answers, but acceptable until you grow to understand more about reality

Definitely "because it is not growing anywhere else" is pseudo knowledge. It sounds 'eastern mystical philosophy" with some old forgotten knowledge

It's a trap. The question leads to answers but the understanding is below at least 3 levels down

Why is the flower growing in the middle of a field?

There is no meaning to it, you don't have or need to have an explanation to it. Just accept that it is there, the flower doesn't care, you should not care. It exists, regardless of you or your thinking around why or where it lives

The flower is growing in the middle of the road because of whatever reason, don't stay 'still' on the thought of how it got to happen

See?

So, for the idea that it must have an explanation. And if you see someone saying "i'm a master of this or that" just ask them to figure this out

When i asked that question, it was a test to see if the person i was talking to knew about these things, because they did present as if they knew it all about it. Yet the test is something very few people know about. In fact there is a none spoken law about not sharing these things because it tends to empower or give resources to people who later use it to harm other people, through the persona of a 'master of eastern wisdom' thing. So it is not usual to talk about it, but at least this one i think i can freely and openly talk about it. It may not do a lot of harm, or any at all

Don't hate, i don't hate you back, I just say things and hope people discern

Thanks for reading my stuff. Hasta la vista!

ETA: I'm dumb, but i'm not stupid, mistakes are normal, i'm not an alien to this world, so perfection is way out of my league. I just went through some stuff growing up and it was a bit different than other people go through, but that doesn't mean i must be hated or rejected or somehow looked at like a weirdo. I'm normal, except for some life things but even then there are thousands all over going through the same stuff just right now, so... please allow some room to be

Thanks

[Mashika]

I accept there is a flower growing in the middle of a road, and i will respect this flower's space. It is not my place to figure out her existence, she's there and that's all i need to know and i will make sure i don't harm her on my way through that road


ETA: The very short and actual/correct eastern translation would be



Q: There is a flower growing in the middle of a road, why?
A: There is a flower growing in the middle of a road.


Derive from it


~~

That's the real answer that passes the test

[Orph]

I once saw a flower growing in the middle a parking lot. Hundreds of cars parked all around, because, ..... well, cars like to congregate in parking lots. Acres and acres of asphalt, covered in cars. Some belching smoke, some squealing tires. But most just sitting quietly.

But out there, in the middle of all the asphalt, and cars, abandoned shopping carts and other assorted trash, was a flower, A very beautiful flower. So I walked over and marveled at it's beauty. It seemed so fragile, yet so incredibly strong as well to be able to grow in such a place.

I took a moment to just revel in the energy of this flower. Then I realized, it didn't matter where this flower was growing. It only mattered that the flower existed at all. The flower was simply expressing itself as part of the divine energy of the universe. Quite simply, it WAS.

Then I leaned over to smell the fragrance of this flower and it spoke to me. In a soft voice she said ......

"My name is Mashika".

:heart:

[thepainterdoug]

there is a road existing around a flower

[Ravenlocke]

“:flower:”

[Open Minded Dude]

Reminds me of the Zen kōans which are sometimes paradoxical riddles whose only purpose is to get the monk meditating on them for a long time, the 'answer' or 'solution' is not the important thing but the process of meditating itself. One kōan example is 'When both hands are clapped a sound is produced; listen to the sound of one hand clapping.'

[Mashika]

Reminds me of the Zen kōans which are sometimes paradoxical riddles whose only purpose is to get the monk meditating on them for a long time, the 'answer' or 'solution' is not the important thing but the process of meditating itself. One kōan example is 'When both hands are clapped a sound is produced; listen to the sound of one hand clapping.'

It reminds you of a Koan because that's exactly what it is

For most people, Zen has stagnated into a point that all you learn is coming from books either based or directly quoting the old time masters

But schools have continued. This is part of what i said in "it may seem elitist' on my OP

The thing is, some of this stuff i do understand that must not be shared freely, otherwise you get people like Corey Good or that other whimp David Willcook or whatever, they go through stuff and pick up 'wisdom' then reword it or pretend they came up with it and sell it to other people. This is what has caused a lot of the original or serious schools to keep a very tight control of who goes in/out and what they learn, because otherwise you get people like them abusing whatever little they learned and just repackaging for money and hope

They don't teach, they are unable to teach, You can't teach what you don't understand.They instead 'sell hope' while they have no clue what they are saying, they just picked it up from someone else, got the very basics and went on with it and added to the lie over time to keep the business going on. I have seen this in several people over the years, resell "wisdom" while not knowing a thing about it just what you picked up and figured out what the pattern was, then profit from it because you find people who know less and can spend money/time on that

So, there's a very hard 'entry level measure' or test applied to prevent people like them to learn things they will later use to take advantage of other people

But yet, it is a Koan, it's just not one that comes from the elders, there's no reason why it would have to be. Zen is not set in stone. It would be contrary to its own nature. It evolves, it's just that most people won't read or learn about it if they assume or enforce that it has to be immutable

Making or expecting Zen to be immutable turns it into a religion of sorts. Which once again, goes contrary to the very core and nature of Zen :)

[Bill Ryan]

Well, I found it, and took a photo. :)

https://projectavalon.net/FLower_in_the_middle_of_the_road_sm.jpg

[Satori]

Well, I found it, and took a photo. :)

https://projectavalon.net/FLower_in_the_middle_of_the_road_sm.jpg

Love the pic Bill. I’ve taken many such pics over the years on my walks.

In a sense, are we not all flowers growing (and then dying) in the middle of the [a] road?

[onawah]

It makes me think of a koan which I gave to myself and which was taking up a lot of space in my subconscious mind for a long time.
I had quite an "Aha!" moment, when I finally got the answer, but the effect was much more long-lasting as well.

Though some say there is no "answer" to a koan, a Zen Master I once knew told me that koans can also just be questions about something that we ponder for a long time until we have a realization.
You could say that's not the way that koans are supposed to work, because the answer came from a source outside of myself, but lots of things can trigger an AHA! kind of Zen moment.

Back in my youth, I lived next door to the late Dr. Kyungbo-Seo from Korea, went to his Zendo often to meditate.
He was teaching at Temple Univ. in Philadelphia for a year on sabbatical from his position as Dean at the University of Seoul.
Though I subsequently met other spiritual teachers who I think I learned more from such as the late Dr. Christopher Hills, Dr. Seo also founded a Zen Center in the mountains of Virginia where I lived for about a year, and that experience was very transformative.

He wasn't living there with us, though he visited, but he sent a Zen monk from Korea to help with our practice.
It was as much a kind of hippie commune as a Zen Center, though we spent long hours year round in meditation, and especially in the winter months, when we meditated for such long hours it was impossible to sleep.
My most revelatory experiences there occurred not in the Zendo, however, but alone on the mountaintop, and it was more like what Taoists describe than a Zen satori.
But satoris come in different guises.

The one that makes me think of the flower in the middle of the road happened when I discovered something from The Michael Teachings.
I know a channeler and author of a book about The Michael Teachings, a woman named Joya Pope, who told me that she thought I was a late first level Old Soul according to the way in which the "oversoul" Michael categorizes.
I had another well known Michael channeler tell me the same thing.
But it was when I was reading in the Teachings about what happens when a soul "graduates" from one level to the next that I had a kind of satori.
Being a late first level soul, presumably would mean I was about to move to the second level., and what happens then is that one has to go through a lot of tying up of loose ends, which can often mean travelling around and meeting a lot of people, concluding and clearing up old karma, and laying the ground work for the new kind of next level experiences.

I have had a very unusual life, moving around, having lots of different kinds of experiences, meeting lots of different kinds of remarkable people and many people who I know I've known before.
A real kind of roller-coaster life, with lots of ups and downs, full of tragedies and remarkable, wonderful experiences as well, including a NDE that nearly cut it all short at the age of 24 (I'm 74 now).

I had a very hard time understanding what in the world was the explanation for such a gypsy life, and so unlikely, because I've never had any money, barely surviving at times.
After my NDE I have had to live on the dole, first on what was called Aid to the Totally Disabled, then subsequently on Social Security Disability.
Just barely enough to survive on, but somehow things would always fall into place so that I was always able to take the next step, to the next location, to meet the next person who I needed to meet.
But looking back, I can see a pattern of how each experience led to the next, like there was a plan I had made before I was even born (which I think there was).

I counted once the number of times I've moved and it came to over 50 that I can recall.
I've lived in 9 different US states (though I've never been out of the US), and in cities including Alexandria, Va., College Park Md., Washington DC, New York City, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Denver, Fayetteville, AR. and small towns and rural areas as well in Arkansas, Arizona, Missouri and Virginia.
So that explanation from the Michael Teachings made perfect sense, and when it finally penetrated to the core of that koan that had been plaguing me, it freed up a considerable part of my mind (and emotions) that had been stuck and puzzling about it for so long.
That connected a lot of other dots, and left me feeling like I was not such a bewildering mystery to myself after all, and I was able to feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin than I ever had before, like coming home to myself.

Why would a person live such a hazardous life, like a flower living in the middle of the road?
To get the valuable experiences needed in order to move on. :flower:

[kudzy]

“There's a flower growing in the middle of the road.. why?"

because some humans built a road,
it’s long and windy.
The flower beautiful in its defiance,
grows.
I am grateful.

[Clear Light]

"There's a flower growing in the middle of the road.. why?"

. : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : . : .

Oh, who can say eh ? :bowing: