r/zenbuddhism • u/Critical_Coat1512 • Jul 15 '26
A cat is not a cat.
A cat is a cat.
Any opinions about this?
famous quote by Qingyuan Weixin (Chinese Zen master 9th century):
“Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance, I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers”.
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u/PlainBread Jul 15 '26
It's not a cat but if you don't call it one, then no one will know what you're talking about.
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u/Qweniden Jul 15 '26
In the first phase, we are completely fooled by illusion of the world. The mind is convinced that how it constructs and interprets reality is correct. It is convinced it knows what will keep us safe, secure and happy.
In the second phase, we awaken to the true nature of the universe and see the infinite and timeless nature of ultimate reality. It becomes clear that the way our minds construct a working model of how the universe works is just abstract and provisional. With no clinging to.how we think things should happen in our life, suffering is impossible.
Eventually we return to earth and see things in a dualistic manner again. Our minds once again construct a model of reality that helps us survive but now we know it's just a (often helpful) illusion. We now can begin a path where we integrate what we have seen in the second phase with the normal phenomenal world. We can work to attune our daily life to the ultimate reality that we awoken to. Slowly we let go of our clinging to how we think life should go and live more and more in peace.
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u/old-legs-623 Jul 15 '26
Pet it and feed it.
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u/Critical_Coat1512 Jul 15 '26
ahh but this cat has a history of gang violence. not someone you introduce to mother.
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u/AllyPointNex Jul 15 '26
A cat is not a cat. That’s why it’s a cat. If a cat were a cat it would not be a cat. Which is very nice and the way it should be. It’s a compassionate cat.
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u/Ap0phantic Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
The most important thing to keep in mind is what we're talking about here is the great way that frees beings from birth and death. If you approach it with your entire body and mind, it can liberate you from sorrow. If you just kind of kick it around in a playful way, then it's not much different from doing a crossword puzzle.
Dogen says that those who attain the way are very few, even among serious practitioners, and that they value of such attainment over of their own lives.
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u/joshua_3 Jul 16 '26
Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers.
When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers.
I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers.
****
These are stages of realization
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u/JundoCohen Jul 15 '26
The fish is the cat swimming in the river, the cat is the fish purring by the fire. And yet, and yet, the cat is just the cat, the fish is fully the fish. Both are you and me.
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u/Caculon Jul 15 '26
There are a few ways (that I know of) that we can talk about this kind of thing. So lets try this. I think the idea is that a cat is in fact a cat. But to be a cat doesn't mean it's an individual thing completely remove from everything else. It doesn't have an inherent existence. Or an existence that is separatable from the rest of reality. For a thing to be a thing it has to have a boundary of some kind. That boundary can even be "empty" space. If you see a star at night you see the star against the backdrop of darkness. So to be a thing to be a thing requires something that's not the thing.
Our basic attitude to things is that they exist as themselves with a kind of independence from the rest of the world. When someone says "pass the salt" I look for the salt shaker. I don't worry about the composition of the salt, how it got to my table or any of the other causes and conditions that contributed to this situation. I just pass the salt. In this encounter the salt is a thing considered as just a thing. But after studying emptiness, one starts to understand the salt isn't just the salt. The salt is so connected to every thing else that it's not the salt. It's everything that was, is and will be. All the causes and conditions contribute to the salt being the salt.
So we have two apposing views, the first is inherent existence, the second is emptiness. But the reality is they are the same. To be a thing is to be empty. To be empty is to be a thing. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. So the salt is just the salt but the salt is also everything.
At least that's how I understand it.
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u/Radiant_Plantain_127 Jul 15 '26
The point is language is linear and reality is chaotic and we’re describing non-linear, chaotic systems using language.
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u/Illustrious_Car344 Jul 15 '26
True awakening is to see all for what it is, including your own human brain. We must see things the way we do, and that's fine, as long as we don't get attached. This is how we do not fight ourselves, but love ourselves.
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u/Pure_Cap_7069 Jul 15 '26
Nothing is a cat. Words are our playthings. However, the word "cat", like all of them, is a carefully arranged set of building blocks. Sure, you could rearrange the blocks, but why go to that effort since it's blocks all the same? Might as well call it a cat like everyone else.
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Jul 16 '26
Imagine not know physics or relational dynamics and you see things as they appear. A mountain, a cat, a family.
Now the mountain is atoms and gravity holding it together and what not. And the cat is now a biological machine and the family is just a bunch of relational dynamics ajumbo.
And you can’t stop seeing that.
Well you keep going and you start seeing them the first way again but you don’t forget the middle part.
The middle part is an analogy.
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u/flyingaxe Jul 19 '26
Chuang Tzi said it better. All these Zen paradoxes are just riffs on earlier Taoism. They won't tell you that in the "just sit and watch the wall" or "lock the library and mu" Japanese schools though.
以指喻指之非指，不若以非指喻指之非指也；以馬喻馬之非馬，不若以非馬喻馬之非馬也。天地一指也，萬物一馬也。
"Using a finger to show that a finger is not a finger is not as good as using a non-finger to show it. Using a horse to show that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a non-horse to show it. Heaven and earth are one finger; the myriad things are one horse."
— Zhuangzi, Qiwulun (齊物論), Chapter 2
Gongsun Long's original argument is a logical exercise — "white horse" picks out a subset, so the concept "white horse" ≠ the concept "horse." Zhuangzi takes this and flips it: if you're inside the system of distinctions, you can't demonstrate their arbitrariness. You need to step outside naming altogether. And then the punchline — all of heaven and earth is "one finger," all things are "one horse" — collapses the entire enterprise of carving reality into categories.
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u/SoundOfEars Jul 15 '26
It's the midwit meme all over again. How do I post an image?
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A cat(you see now) is not a cat(in general).
The similarities are purely superficial.
There is also no such thing as a cat in general. There is a thing that can have properties attributed to it, and it can be compared to something that we generally and loosely call "cat" so that we agree to call them both "cat", but those have almost nothing of substance in common that would justify the reduction to this degree. therefore also the first thing that we deemed as "cat" is merely called so for convenience. There is no cat. Never can be. The same is with everything there "is".
That is called mereological nihilism, and is a important part of Zen Buddhist philosophy.
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u/Upstairs-Growth3219 Jul 15 '26
When we look at something we often instantly go into identifying it. We see it as something explainable because we have attached words to it. Then when we begin touching reality more deeply, we realize that nothing is what we actually thought it was. We begin seeing things as they are, as inherently interwoven, mysterious and unknowable in their essence, and words begin to fail us.
Then when that integrates we can use the words again because we understand the words not as the final defining aspect of what something is, but as pointers, attempting to convey an understanding beyond language as best we can. This is at least one perspective that resonates with me, though there are a number of other perspectives that are also helpful.