Lately I've been fascinated by reciprocal roofs, which are popular with those who want to try a round house with a smoke hole or perhaps a round central skylight. Here's an example from Wikipedia:
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| By Adrian Leaman |
The roof beams each lean upon one another in an endless progression, each contributing to the strength and utility of the whole, while leaving a hole that also has utility.
I tend to think of certain lists -- the eightfold way, immeasurables, precepts, paramitas, Shishobo, eight great realizations -- as reciprocal structures, each arranged around the same hole.
The roundhouse smoke hole has function; it lets smoke out through the roof, admits light, and helps to regulate ventilation, temperature and humidity. But by itself it's not a thing. It is brought into "being" by the beams around it.
I came up with these ruminations while reading these lines, for the umpteenth time, from the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi:
Like facing a precious mirror; form and reflection behold each other.
You are not it, but in truth it is you.
The mirror is an upaya teaching-metaphor for thusness. "You are not it." This sounds nihilistic, but "it is you." Here there is a teachable (actually, taught) moment: it is when you let go of your personality.
Shakyamuni is said to have been on his begging rounds when he was interrupted by a Brahmin who had heard his teachings were reliable. "Teach me!" "Not now; we are among the houses doing our begging rounds." "Yeah, but something may happen to either of us and then I will not have received the Dharma!" "Okay, I'll give you the short version:"
In what is seen there must be only what is seen,
in what is heard there must be only what is heard,
in what is sensed there must be only what is sensed,
in what is cognized there must be only what is cognized.
This is the way you should train yourself.
And since for you, in what is seen there will be only what is seen,
in what is heard there will be only what is heard,
in what is sensed there will be only what is sensed,
in what is cognized there will be only what is cognized,
therefore, you will not be with that;
and since you will not be in that, therefore, you
will not be here or hereafter or in between the two
- just this is the end of suffering.
I was puzzling over this passage, which I had encountered in Charlie Korin Pokorny's commentary on the Jewel Mirror, while on my "kinh hanh" round of the neighborhood, when for whatever reason I saw a very detailed mental picture of Gautama sitting beneath the fig tree looking at the morning star, smiling, and saying "aha! The morning star is me! But I am not the morning star!" -- upon which the rafters of his forthcoming teachings click into place and he becomes the exemplar empty place for us all.
-- shonin