Questioning

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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A professor of philosophy went to a Zen Master, Nan-in, and he asked about God, about nirvana, about meditation, and so many things. The Master listened silently–questions and questions and questions–and then he said, “You look tired. You have climbed this high mountain; you have come from a faraway place. Let me first serve you tea.” And the Zen Master made tea.

The professor waited–he was boiling with questions. And when the Master was making tea and the samovar was singing and the aroma of the tea started spreading, the Master said to the professor, “Wait, don’t be in such a hurry. Who knows? Even by drinking tea your questions may be answered… or even before that.”

The professor was at a loss. He started thinking, “This whole journey has been a wastage. This man seems to be mad. How can my question about God be answered by drinking tea? What relevance is there? It is better to escape from here as soon as possible.” But he was also feeling tired and it was good to have a cup of tea before he started descending back down the mountain.

The Master brought the kettle, poured tea in the cup–and went on pouring. The cup was full, and the tea started overflowing into the saucer, but he went on pouring. Then the saucer was also full. Just one drop more and the tea would start flowing on the floor, and the professor said, “Stop! What are you doing? Are you mad or something? Can’t you see the cup is full? Can’t you see the saucer is full?”

And the Zen Master said, “That’s the exact situation you are in: your mind is so full of questions that even if I answer, you don’t have any space for the answer to go in. But you look like an intelligent man. You could see the point, that now even a single drop more of tea and it will not be contained by the cup or the saucer, it will start overflowing on the floor. And I tell you, since you entered this create house your questions are overflowing all over the place. This place is small but is full of your questions! Go back, empty your cup, and then come. First a little space in yourself.”

  • Osho
2

No questions? No need to talk. - (more or less) H.G.Gadamer

3

Are you suggesting a limit to knowing? Can’t happen. We never know enough. There is too much we don’t know. We haven’t gotten to the bottom of it. There are always more questions. Everytime we know something, it brings another round of questions. We’ve barely begun in the process of dividing reality into small enough pieces to know everything. Still, there is light at the end of the tunnel. We’re making progress. There is more knowing every day. Perhaps tomorrow…

JT

4

What I gather from that zen master is that ignorance is bliss.

Basically it’s better to not have questions that can’t be answered, because even the zen master can’t answer them, because he’s too busy overfilling the tea cup.

I agree with Jt’s stance. But would add to it and change it slightly… while the light is at the end of the tunnel, every new answer brings 3 new questions. basically a crossroad… should you continue plodding ahead and continue questioning the world? should you start down this path or that path? will this path lead to the much desired “final answer”? even if it doesn’t the journey to that answer is probably more interesting than the answer itself.

our minds are limitless. A cup is not a good comparison at all to our mind IMO.

that and I don’t believe in settling. emptying ones mind of all questions, empties ones life of purpose.

hell you may as well join a religion at that point.

mb.

5

Uhmmmm, MB, you might have missed it just a bit. My post was just a piece of bait for LA. Emptying out isn’t ignorance, and there is such a thing as real knowing, but I’ll wait. I sure LA will have a few words for us. :stuck_out_tongue:

JT

6

Maybe what the Zen Master meant was that in order to understand God, nirvana or meditation, you must first quiet the mind. Perhaps he was beginning to answer his questions this way.

7

This is actually a very profound teaching. It’s very simple, perhaps too simple for our Western minds, what with all the activity going on in there. vortical is right, the teaching is in the ‘serving’ of tea. The Master can only ‘serve’ the seeker if the seeker is able to receive (since the seeker is unable to receive, the Master uses that as the very teaching – in order for the seeker to be moved and to recognise his reasons for being unable to come to the answers). The Master says that there is no space in the mind for any more information – it is already full, so even if the Master answers his questions, the professor is unable to grasp the full meaning because his mind is too full – already he has preconceived ideas, already, he has come to the Master to help him with certain questions, yet he cannot accept the Master’s methods, he cannot accept the answer as being so simple. We are looking for miracles for something that is greater than our ordinary mundane reality. The Master is suggesting that first there is foundation. The foundation of a spiritual adept is not just emptiness, it is quiet and faith in the knowledge that we possess all the knowledge already. Only when the mind is quiet can the heart, where all things are understood, be heard. The point is that the answers cannot be grasped intellectually, that knowledge must be experienced with an open mind and then realisation occurs. When realisation occurs the mind is open and can accept the heart teaching of the Master.

Questioning is an important tool, but it is not the purpose of itself. Questioning brings us closer to the purpose, (the seeker seeks out the Master) but only if we apply our findings are we truly able to learn.

A

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Reality was always here, it was you who wasn’t here. There is no need to search the truth; it is you who must be brought home,

-OSHO

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Greg,

This is a tough sell in a causal one-behind-many culture.

JT

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Is the problem really questions or the quality of questions? On the superficial level they are only expressions of preconception. The questions don’t originate from anything really essential inside ourselves so just take up space so to speak

Using this digestive or tea analogy, shallow egotistical questions only allow a meaningless answer. Suppose your stomach is filled every day with chocolate chip cookies? Eventually you would become sick from malnutrition even though your stomach is filled. So in the way of Zen, the mind must be emptied of all this shallow defensive BS in the quest to make room for experiencing satori. Both the experience of satori or gnosis is invaluable for a person since it allows one to distinguish the real from the unreal. It is a way of proving to yourself that you are asleep since the experience is one of awakening. “I was blind but now I see.”

However, Zen meditation is one method leading to the experience of higher reality but that is not to say that the way of the question by definition denies it. They are complimentary.

Pondering is the true way of the question. I believe it to be above meditation and contemplation. The distinction between meditation and contemplation is described in the following.

srichinmoy.org/spirituality/ … templation

Contemplation becomes logical where concepts are weighed so to speak. Pondering in contrast introduces the emotional human element of value or quality. It is emotional thought. Its value is in self knowledge. A person gradually outgrows the dualistic answers through pondering becoming more and more dissatisfied with them and finds a real “Question”, a personal question, and their own question that no dualistic answer can satisfy. This question has such quality that it can lead to the genuine higher experience of an answer that is experiential and beyond dualism. It can be found through real pondering. This quality of question doesn’t close the mind as shallow association does but instead its emotional openness opens the mind to receive a response that is equal to the quality of this special question.

So there are questions and there are questions. The word is the same but their quality differs as does night and day.

11

Thank you greg.
A

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Hi Liquidangel,
when a mind is busy with questioning, it can’t concentrate on answers.
You have to take your mind off of the questions and put it on the answers.
The professor had to even take his mind off of the impressions he had,
to be able to listen to the Master. No wonder the Master poured and poured.

I notice that this happens all of the time. Someone enters a meeting with a thousand thoughts on their mind. Many of them are about the other people in the meeting, some about what has just happened, some about what will follow the meeting. The meeting passes and that person hasn’t even been able to get into the subject matter.

We have lost the ability to understand or learn from the present, we are always in the past or the future. You notice that by the difficulty you have to just close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing in a public place or at work. Or imagine standing still and centring yourself in a busy street.

Shalom
Bob

13

Just by listening with your eyes
you can fold back on yourself and
merge into that primal
stream of awareness
like a river is swallowed by the
immensity of the ocean.
Only then will you know
the point to live from.

  • Ji Aoi Isshi

A

14

This made me laugh, due to my experiences. I frequently close my eyes and center or reflect for a moment. Most of the time this is no big deal. If you do this in a social setting, however, then it tends to immediately attract concern. People, even strangers will rush up and ask, “Are you ok?” or “Are you sick?” It is such an uncommon activity that it can inspire feelings of anxiety or fear in others.

15

A man who knows himself is a stranger

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“Focus on the solution, not the problem.” -Goodkind.

Questions tend to make us focus on what the problem is and not how to solve the problem. This can be problematic. :slight_smile:

Let us stop focusing on the tea cup or the quality of the questions, or whether there is limitation to knowledge–these are all just a part of the problem. Instead, let us focus on the solution: a focused mind can more quickly find a solution.

I think that this may have been the intent of the thread…

17

Once you realize universal emptiness,
All situations are naturally mastered.
You have perfect communion with
What is beyond the world,
While embracing what is
Within the realms of being.
If you miss the essence of Zen,
After all there’s nothing to it,
But you get its function,
It has spiritual effect.

  • Fenyang
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Hi t4m

This will breed “experts” like pond water breeds mosquitos. The value of these questions of human meaning and “isness” isn’t in the solution but in the origin and sincerity of the question within oneself and how we keep it alive. It is being "understood, in ways that are beyond the asociative mind. The benefit of the focused mind in these higher matters is in keeping the questions alive. It is an aspect of presence but not presence itself.

If you are working on putting together a picture puzzle and all the pieces are on the table. The box has a picture of what it should look like completed. The focused mind allows you to gradually arrange these pieces so that the picture will be created.

With us, the picture exists in what has been called the “unconscious” mind (actually it is the conscious mind). In our normal states of consciousness known by the ancient traditions as waking sleep, we cannot see the picture. All you can see is imagination. So what is there to focus on? Instead we try to stay focused to the question itself so as to gradually open to the place where consciousness exists within ourselves. It is the quality of the question that allows for this opening.

19

Hi Nick,

There is no doubt that questioning is important. It is part of the process of spiritual unfoldment. But if we just focus on the questions then there is no room for actual realisation and actual understanding. When realisation takes place it takes place beyond the mind. Questions fall away.

There is so much more to focus on than the question. What about the present moment where questions don’t actually exist? The actual experience? Questions arise it seems to me when we are not focussed on the present moment, when we are thinking about the future, about the past, about this thing or that thing, about enlightenment. Thinking about it is not going to help us to attain. Thinking leads us back into the mind. I’m not saying that thinking is not valuable, but there is a danger in that we will tend to think that we are our mind, we are what we think about. We are our questions. And if we have a realisation, thinking about it, questioning it, loses the value of the realisation.

If I loved you, and I began to wonder why it is that I love you, I would no longer be loving you, I would be theorising about why I love you and in reality, in the present moment, I would be focussed on the question and therefore be unable to truly and simply love you. Questioning when we do not need to know the answer is the trick that the mind plays on us. Understanding love comes from the act of love. It is existential.

A

20

Hi liquidangel

Yes I agree that there is a process of spiritual unfoldment and I agree also that superficial questioning quickly begins to get in the way.

However I am saying that questions are relative in their value depending upon where someone is in their process of spiritual unfoldment. Realization is a relative process as say the gradual development of the fetus in the womb into the realization of a baby.

In modern times Christendom is divided into categories and exist external to a person. However, I’ve read that Christianity at one time understood a natural hierarchy of creation within ourselves. The levels of understanding conceptualized as supplicant, priest, bishop, archbishop, and Divine King were all within a person as levels of growth in understanding. The internal question of the level of priest is what entices the supplicant within a person. However, over time, this esoteric understanding was lost and these gradations only manifested external meanings in an external church. The idea that their are gradations in understanding between the supplcant and Divine King IMO is extremely important though largely unknown.

I believe that there have been those that were gifted mystics in that they survived the impact of sudden complete realization without falling back into self deception. But this is not us. We must proceed one step at a time.

But an essential question maintained in pondering is in the present moment and part of a conscious process. This is not daydreaming. It cannot exist elsewhere by definition. Pondering is completely different from associative thought

But if the question originates from an essential spiritual longing, we are that question. What is wrong with that? This is not asking why but what. It is the desire to “see”, not comment.

As you know green is a blend of yellow and blue. What is green? Even Kermit says its not easy being green. Does green divide, involve, into yellow and blue or does yellow and blue combine, evolve, into green? It isn’t something the associative mind can answer and would just be a battle of theories since the colors are just manifestations for us of living vibratory relationships. Pondering suggests a relative qualitative vibratory scale manifesting to us as color and exists within the quality of the moment itself. This quality is experienced emotionally and the result of pondering. It is a facet of realization

"

This IMO is a wonderfully deep observation of involution within the scale of creation itself represented by light.

Arguing over it does nothing while pondering it opens the way to experiencing this inner qualitative scale

I agree with you as to the value of Zen in the goal of realization. I also believe in the value of pondering which unfortunately appears to many to have become the same as associative thought. They are not mutually exclusive but highly complimentary.

Associative thought is good to fix a car. It understands the mechanics. Pondering helps to fix our inner person since it can comprehend “being”. A balanced human being has command of both and they should not get in the way of each other. They are normally in conflict from our lack of understanding.