It is considered bad form, a kind of spiritual sickness. It usually manifests as "Look at me; I'm special," which is the opposite of what Zen is interested in. At the same time many sages and spiritual masters have done strange and/or miraculous things from time to time. ZM Seung Sahn used to talk about the Zen diagram of spiritual development. It's a more involved metaphor than the "mountains are mountains, then mountains are not mountains, but ultimately mountains are once again mountains." On the 360 degree Zen circle (the circle around Mt. Woo Woo?), there is an area that is considered the area of supernatural or miraculous stuff, and people are warned not to get stuck there. As a result of meditation, sometimes deep states of unity of mind/body/universe can occur that can produce strange occurences of communion. Many people, such as St. Francis of Assisi, have communed with animals. One famous Zen story concerned a monk who had a big kensho experience, and afterwards birds would fly down and sit on his shoulder and deer would follow him around. His teacher saw him one day with birds sitting on his shoulders, and he whacked him with his Zen stick and told him "to stop playing in the shallow water." The monk had a subsequent experience, and the birds supposedly never landed on him again.
The most famous story along this line is the story of two Zen monks who came to a river. One of the monks pulled up his robes and waded across. The other monk walked across the river on top of the water. When they got to the other side, the monk who had waded across said, "If I had known you were that kind of a monk, I'd have broken your legs before we ever got to the water!" Ha ha.
From a survey of the world's spiritual literature all kinds of unusual stuff has been reported. Kabir, the great 15th century Hindu/Muslim mystic, supposedly raised a guy from the dead and performed all kinds of other "miracles." Today, Kabir has about three million followers in India. The religion is called "Kabirpanthism." While he was alive, Kabir railed against the priests in both Hinduism and Islam, and the clergy hated his guts. He told people that they were more likely to find God outside of the temples than inside them and that the spiritual leaders of all the local religions were clueless. Does that sound familiar? After he died, both religions then claimed him as a saint.
What a laugh!
Several Tibetan lamas have reportedly done strange things. In one case, a lama reportedly grabbed the hand of a doubting monk and pushed it through a solid rock wall to show him that the world was not what he imagined.
St. John of the Cross was imprisoned in a monastery cell for refusing to wear shoes. One night the monk who was acting as his jailor reported that his room was filled with a strange light and the light was coming from John. Later, John discovered his cell door unlocked. He walked out and suddenly stepped to the top of a thirty-foot high rock wall without knowing how he did that.
St. Theresa reportedly frightened the nuns in her nunnery by occasionally floating up to the ceiling of the chapel while she was praying. She was reportedly embarrassed by her levitation.
Ha ha. There are thousands of such stories. Who knows which ones are an accurate record of what happened? One thing is for sure; the world does not always obey the seemingly fixed "laws" of physics, and anyone who has has big kensho experiences discovers that the universe/THIS can do whatever it wants to do. The truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction. This body/mind once experienced a day during which people became an open book. I can't explain it, but I met people and knew exactly what was on their minds. If I had gone to a ZM and said, "Hey, guess what? I can read peoples' minds," I'd have probably got whacked hard with a Zen stick. Weird things may occasionally happen on this path, but the rule is "Don't seek anything special. Just go about your business and be an ordinary guy or gal." Nothing is deeper than not-knowing and being ordinary.
I suspect that many of the Zen stories are just stories designed to make a point. Although anything is possible, I seriously doubt that the Zen monk in one of the stories walked across a river on the surface of the water (unless he had a pair of those special water-repellent shoes--LOL). The story is just a graphic way of saying, "Don't get attached to psychic paranormal experiences that are likely to make one feel special."
"Shallow water" is a common Zen idiom that means "superficial" or "lightweight," as in the following comment by a ZM about a monk he had interviewed, "The water is much too shallow here to find an anchor."
On another topic, Zen people are not particularly interested in martial arts; some martial arts people get interested in Zen because of the mental focus, discipline, and body-knowledge that Zen fosters. There are one or two small Zen sects that combined martial arts and Zen training (Shaolin Monastery, etc), which often causes people to associate Zen with martial arts. The Zen approach to life infuses the Japanese culture, and people there have realized that any activity can be used as a way to transcend selfhood and attain an aesthetic ideal. There are flower-arranging masters, tea ceremony masters, archery masters, kendo masters, landscape masters, graphic art masters, etc. In all of these activities selfhood can get lost in the perfection and practice of the activities. In a sense, all of these activities, if pursued single-mindedly, can lead to "the zone" where time, space, and selfhood drop away. There are dozens of books about these subjects, but one of the best is "Zen and the art of Archery" by Herrigel. Herrigel was a German who studied archery with an archery master in Japan. The practice (which was highly meditative) was designed to lead to a state in which "It" released the arrow rather than the individual.
ZM's do not value ordinariness as much as they eschew specialness as a potential pitfall. A conversation between a student who has had a woo woo experience and a ZM might go something like this:
Student (excitedly): "I've been to the top of Mt. Woo Woo!"
ZM: That's great, but have you finished doing the dishes yet?
IOW, sooner or later, even wonderful experiences will come to an end, and the tasks (and flow) of everyday life remains. If one gets psychologically stuck in the past, s/he will miss what is happening NOW.
The most famous story along this line is the story of two Zen monks who came to a river. One of the monks pulled up his robes and waded across. The other monk walked across the river on top of the water. When they got to the other side, the monk who had waded across said, "If I had known you were that kind of a monk, I'd have broken your legs before we ever got to the water!" Ha ha.
From a survey of the world's spiritual literature all kinds of unusual stuff has been reported. Kabir, the great 15th century Hindu/Muslim mystic, supposedly raised a guy from the dead and performed all kinds of other "miracles." Today, Kabir has about three million followers in India. The religion is called "Kabirpanthism." While he was alive, Kabir railed against the priests in both Hinduism and Islam, and the clergy hated his guts. He told people that they were more likely to find God outside of the temples than inside them and that the spiritual leaders of all the local religions were clueless. Does that sound familiar? After he died, both religions then claimed him as a saint.
What a laugh!
Several Tibetan lamas have reportedly done strange things. In one case, a lama reportedly grabbed the hand of a doubting monk and pushed it through a solid rock wall to show him that the world was not what he imagined.
St. John of the Cross was imprisoned in a monastery cell for refusing to wear shoes. One night the monk who was acting as his jailor reported that his room was filled with a strange light and the light was coming from John. Later, John discovered his cell door unlocked. He walked out and suddenly stepped to the top of a thirty-foot high rock wall without knowing how he did that.
St. Theresa reportedly frightened the nuns in her nunnery by occasionally floating up to the ceiling of the chapel while she was praying. She was reportedly embarrassed by her levitation.
Ha ha. There are thousands of such stories. Who knows which ones are an accurate record of what happened? One thing is for sure; the world does not always obey the seemingly fixed "laws" of physics, and anyone who has has big kensho experiences discovers that the universe/THIS can do whatever it wants to do. The truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction. This body/mind once experienced a day during which people became an open book. I can't explain it, but I met people and knew exactly what was on their minds. If I had gone to a ZM and said, "Hey, guess what? I can read peoples' minds," I'd have probably got whacked hard with a Zen stick. Weird things may occasionally happen on this path, but the rule is "Don't seek anything special. Just go about your business and be an ordinary guy or gal." Nothing is deeper than not-knowing and being ordinary.
I suspect that many of the Zen stories are just stories designed to make a point. Although anything is possible, I seriously doubt that the Zen monk in one of the stories walked across a river on the surface of the water (unless he had a pair of those special water-repellent shoes--LOL). The story is just a graphic way of saying, "Don't get attached to psychic paranormal experiences that are likely to make one feel special."
"Shallow water" is a common Zen idiom that means "superficial" or "lightweight," as in the following comment by a ZM about a monk he had interviewed, "The water is much too shallow here to find an anchor."
On another topic, Zen people are not particularly interested in martial arts; some martial arts people get interested in Zen because of the mental focus, discipline, and body-knowledge that Zen fosters. There are one or two small Zen sects that combined martial arts and Zen training (Shaolin Monastery, etc), which often causes people to associate Zen with martial arts. The Zen approach to life infuses the Japanese culture, and people there have realized that any activity can be used as a way to transcend selfhood and attain an aesthetic ideal. There are flower-arranging masters, tea ceremony masters, archery masters, kendo masters, landscape masters, graphic art masters, etc. In all of these activities selfhood can get lost in the perfection and practice of the activities. In a sense, all of these activities, if pursued single-mindedly, can lead to "the zone" where time, space, and selfhood drop away. There are dozens of books about these subjects, but one of the best is "Zen and the art of Archery" by Herrigel. Herrigel was a German who studied archery with an archery master in Japan. The practice (which was highly meditative) was designed to lead to a state in which "It" released the arrow rather than the individual.
ZM's do not value ordinariness as much as they eschew specialness as a potential pitfall. A conversation between a student who has had a woo woo experience and a ZM might go something like this:
Student (excitedly): "I've been to the top of Mt. Woo Woo!"
ZM: That's great, but have you finished doing the dishes yet?
IOW, sooner or later, even wonderful experiences will come to an end, and the tasks (and flow) of everyday life remains. If one gets psychologically stuck in the past, s/he will miss what is happening NOW.
