Chapter 14 How does the iron mouse gain enlightenment when he visits the bull that has come out of the threshold? !

So Manjushri asked Vimalakirti: "We each speak for ourselves. The benevolent should speak, what is the Bodhisattva entering the non-dual Dharma?" At that time, Vimalakirti was silent. —— "Vimalakrīrti Sutra" (the ninth entry into the non-two method) The Vimalakirti Sutra is a special classic in Mahayana Buddhism. Although there is a word "jing" in the title of this book, Mr. Hu Shi once said in "History of Vernacular Literature" that this is a "work that is half a novel and half a drama"; It can be roughly divided into three parts. The first part is the conversation between the Buddha, the World Honored One and the disciples of the Bodhisattvas, explaining the essence of various Buddhist teachings; the second part is the appearance of Vimalakirti. Now he was sick in bed, so the Buddha asked his disciples who would go to visit the sick; the third part is that Manjushri, who is known as "the first in wisdom", led the order to visit the sick, but all the disciples followed, and with Many debates about the Dharma took place among Vimalakīrti.

The most interesting part of the story is probably at the point where the Buddha wanted to send someone to inquire about illness. The Buddha asked one by one, but every disciple named by the World Honored One.No matter whether it is Shariputra, Mulian, Da Kasyapa or Bodhi, none of them dared to see Vimalakirti. Practice is ridiculed by Vimalakīrti, who is not hindered by eloquence. The trouble is that what others say is more reasonable than myself, and there is no way to refute it.Until the World Honored One asked about Manjushri, he bit the bullet and agreed to go, and all the great disciples followed him like a swarm of bees to join in the fun.Will recall the "Vimalakirti Sutra", the reason is to finish reading.

It is the fourth book in Kyogoku Natsuhiko's "Kyogokudo" series; before I started reading, I heard that someone compared this book with Umberto.After reading Umberto Eco's first novel "The Name of the Rose" (II nome della rosa) side by side, you will indeed find that there are interesting contrasts between the two novels in some respects. Mr. Huang wrote in "Do Religious Experiences Kill People?" "There are already incisive insights in it, so I will not play tricks in this class.What reminds me of the Vimalakirti Sutra is not this background and setting simulation, but some of the debates between the two books.

In the "Vimalakirti Sutra", there is a large space talking about "emptiness", while in the middle, it is about "enlightenment". I don't have much research on Buddhism and Zen, and its superficial level can't even be said to be "superficial", but the part about "emptiness" in the "Vimalakirti Sutra" and the process of "enlightenment" in the middle, in my reading, In fact, it’s a bit similar to the same purpose——from the beginning of Mahayana Buddhism, it talked about the concept of "emptiness", advocating that "all dharmas are false views... born of false thoughts", and finally understand that even "emptiness" itself is It is expedient to give a pseudonym, not to be attached to it, not to be spoken; and here, the monks from various schools in Minghui Temple, some practice Taoism in this way, and some practice Zen in that way. The ultimate goal is to be able to "enlighten", But "enlightenment" is something that can't be clearly explained. Whether you want to gradually realize enlightenment by studying gongan, or practice meditation to achieve sudden enlightenment, they all want to enter that detached state and no longer stick to various realities. Taste a kind of suddenly enlightened pleasure.It seemed absurd at first.Let's start from the beginning.

The first scene of the story is the encounter of the blind masseur Ojima on a mountain trail.There is something blocking Ojima's way on the mountain path, and when Ojima wants to figure out what it is, he suddenly hears a voice, indicating that there is a corpse on the ground, and he is the murderer.The murderer called himself a "poor monk" and published a bunch of mystical theories about rats and cows, which confused Ojima into a daze.Then the important figure in this article, the antique dealer Imagawa, came to the stage. He stayed at the old hotel Senshiro in Hakone, waiting for the monk who would contact him about the sale of antiques, but he did not see him for several days; the reporter Atsuko Chuzenji and the photographer Bird Kou Morihiko is heading towards Hakone at this time, planning to interview at the mysterious temple called Minghui Temple.The two meet up with Atsuko's colleague Iiwa in Xianshilou. Toriguchi catches a glimpse of Imagawa playing chess with the old man in the hotel. After taking a few photos with his camera, he suddenly finds a dead body on the cypress tree in the courtyard.Then, the protagonist of this series, Kyogokudo, appears.

Because a library buried in the mountains was dug up in Hakone, and there were a large number of ancient books waiting to be sold, Kyogokudo was commissioned to investigate. In addition to his wife Chizuko, he also invited the novelist couple Sekiguchi Tatsumi and Yukie to go. .After arriving at the hotel, Kyogokudo devoted himself to the investigation of ancient books. His wives went out for sightseeing, and Sekiguchi was alone in the hotel feeling bored. When he found a masseur to relax his muscles and bones, he heard something strange happened to the masseur on the mountain trail. Then, Toriguchi, who lived in Xianshilou, suddenly appeared in front of Sekiguchi, saying that because of the murder, the detective Reijiro Fukizu was called in to investigate. His Jingjitang went to Xianshilou to support him.Familiar characters appear one after another, but the serial killings have just begun.

The people who found the corpses in the garden were not only regarded as persons involved in the case, but also as suspects; but when a group of people and the police entered the legendary Minghui Temple, the corpses reappeared—every dead monk was shot to death with sticks, but For some reason, there is an inexplicable strangeness in the place where the corpse is dumped.When everyone was in a mess, Jingjitang finally appeared, but he didn't intend to help everyone solve the puzzle, but wanted to finish work early and go home.What is the secret in the isolated Zen temple?Why were monks killed?Why do we have to set up a certain scene at the corpse site?Who is the murderer?There are several levels of pleasure in reading.

The first is that several people involved in the first work of this series appear in this story. It is a kind of familiar pleasure to see them again after a few books; and because the main scene of the story is the Zen Temple in the mountains, When investigating the case, it will also involve the daily work and rest conditions and practice content of Zen monks, so we can read all kinds of interesting Zen koans and interpretations of Zen. In the "Vimalakirti Sutra", the speeches of both sides of the debate are high and low, and sometimes they are confused when reading it, but in it, the Zen monks must explain the meaning of Zen to the criminal police and other secular people, so the explanation is not difficult, and it is full of interest when reading , in the process of investigating the case, it will also outline a clear outline of how Buddhism spread from India to China, and then from China to Japan.

What's more exciting is that in the book, Jingjitang re-explained his views on mysterious monsters, religion and science. In fact, in, and in, Jingjitang has already explained his views on these things: in it, he analyzed the differences between superpowers, psychics, religious scholars, etc., and in The controversial mantra Tachikawa, and his famous saying "There is nothing incredible in the world", not only has been mentioned repeatedly from the first work, but we will also find from many speeches that Kyogokudo seems to be a "scientific "The man who is the highest guiding principle.

However, Jingjitang is both the owner of the shrine and an onmyoji, and also likes to collect legends of mysterious monsters. Isn't this contradictory? In this work, Jingjitang accurately explained that "mysterious monsters are also self-contained, and they are used to explain the unexplainable." "; and Jingjitang's onmyoji work of "removing possessions" is precisely to use the power of words to break through the confusion caused by the human heart.In the several conversations with Zen monks in Jingjitang, it was repeatedly emphasized that although the content of the responses from both parties sounded full of Zen flavor, it was only because I had read classics and memorized koan, and I had neither religious belief nor devoted myself to practice. , can’t be regarded as a true understanding—from these parts, we can understand that Jingjitang hates pseudoscience and superpowers, but its preference for mysterious monsters has its own reasons, and it also maintains a certain degree of respect for practice and enlightenment. The reason why we feel strange.It's just that we confuse all these things because we don't know the root.

Although he wholeheartedly pursues enlightenment, what promotes the plot is actually all selfish desires and human nature. The theme of demons born out of people's hearts was originally one of Kyogoku Natsuhiko's creative features. However, the demons in the first three works were all born in the hearts of ordinary people. They may have been passed down as strange tales by third-rate gossip magazines, or they may have ulterior motives. The religious swindlers exaggerated and distorted; this time the case happened in a Zen monastery, and the monks who devoted themselves to the Tao would also be disturbed by the demons?As the stage of the event, the Minghui Temple is hidden in the mountains and forests, and has almost no contact with the outside world. It is a mysterious temple that even Kyogokudo does not know.actually not. In order for sectarian teachings to spread widely and help people to realize Taoism, they must either go deep into the market, or combine with political forces; the Minghui Temple in the story has a special status, which is more likely to cause open and secret struggles and power struggles among various sects.What's more, before enlightenment, monks and monks were just mortals who devoted themselves to the Buddha, and still had joy, anger, sorrow, fear, greed, hatred, ignorance and hatred.The independent Zen temples, the monks with different desires, when the paranoia about certain goals, and the means and struggles that have to be managed to survive in the secular world after the belief becomes a religion, among them-when they surfaced, they condensed into The mystery that drifts away from "Enlightenment".When we read serial killings and think about the reasons behind these mysteries, we are just like monks who have plunged into thousands of Zen koans. The more we think, the farther away we are from the truth.Kyogokudo was finally dispatched. Although he claims that he has never practiced meditation and his understanding of Zen is limited to books and koans, Kyogokudo, who is familiar with historical materials and good at expelling demons from people's hearts with words, is actually not as he expected when facing Zen monks who have not yet enlightened The odds are so low.Jingjitang's eloquent explanation of the reason, the explanation that breaks the key points, is actually an extremely intense battle between Jingjitang's clear and well-organized thinking logic and the murderer's mentality of seeking enlightenment but gradually becoming obsessed and finally triggering murder. Gao Ming's cross-reply.No matter studying gongan or physical practice, seeking for the method of gradual enlightenment or the moment of sudden enlightenment, maintaining a clear state of mind is the most fundamental control. Otherwise, even if you have a hundred years of practice, you will not be able to obtain that moment of thorough enlightenment.The full text is nearly 500,000 words, and I feel somewhat tired after reading it. But if we go back and read it again, we will find that when Ojima met the murderer on the mountain trail, the murderer had already explained the reason why he killed this monk very clearly in the dialogue between the two: he Lai Hao, who compared himself to the 84,000 iron rats, compared the monk to the Zen art "Ten Bulls Picture", which is the motive for admitting his murder.Things that cannot be explained may just need more verbal explanations before we can try our best to describe them appropriately; after reading, we should be able to understand this meaning.Perhaps, this can also be regarded as a small "enlightenment". Lying axe, male.There are many things I want to do.Little time to sleep.The working hours are long.Wallets are thin.Think bookstores, record stores, movie theaters are horrible.The number of times of taking risks alone is very frequent.Published six books.I like to tell stories.Hate introducing myself.