Question
Referring to your answer to my question at the last mondo, so the pit gets spat out rather than swallowed… What does “Get lost” mean in Zen jargon? Just a good old “Get lost,” like “Get lost, you poor idiot”? Or something else? With friendship, Christine.
Christine.
Master Kosen’s answer
I try, and have a duty, to maintain a certain level of, let’s say, Zen concentration, communication, and understanding in a mondo, where the master answers a disciple’s question. Communication or exchange with the master must never get bogged down in purely intellectual, contradictory complications, be disrespectful, or resemble a discussion in a bar or at a party when a little or very drunk. The aim is for practitioners to rise to a fresh understanding that awakens them, not for two ego-driven philosophical viewpoints to clash, each wanting to be right. For example, no master would be interested in defending a viewpoint affirming or denying that time must be a line or a point. But if the teaching given in the dojo says it is like a point, the disciple must absolutely try to understand why and how, precisely by forgetting their own categories, limits, and certainties. In ancient times, in such a situation the master would deliver a volley of stick blows or a punch, and sometimes the disciple awakened to their own stupidity. Sometimes they spat out the pit and went elsewhere, complaining the master was mean.
Kosen