Question

1. Do you have to empty your cup of opinions in order to learn? Why?

a. What do you take to be the lesson of "Muddy Road?"

b. What is meant by the action of blowing one short note on a flute?

c. What significance do you find in "A Letter to a Dying Man?"

Answer 1

1. The ‘empty cup’ symbolises the exchange between the Japanese Zen master Nan-in who gave audience to a professor of philosophy. Serving tea, Nan-in is said to have filled his visitor's cup, and kept pouring. The professor watched this and reacted by asking Nan-in to stop pouring as no more tea would have gone in the cup. To this, Nan-in said: "Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup."

In Zen Buddhist Philosophy, emptiness or limiting the focus on distracting negative thoughts, is the key medium to practice focused meditation and inculcating an openness to new experiences in the practitioner. Ordinary cognitive processes like intellect, reasoning, thinking, argumentativeness, assertiveness lead to increased instances of violence, aggression, and the truth about the world cannot be known by an aggressive mind. Just like an empty cup, the mind need some to be left vacant by driving out opinions, ideas and judgements which create defences and barriers and prevent new forms of learning.

In contrast to this, a religious mind is a non-philosophical mind which preserves the quality of an innocent, intelligent mind that is open to new forms of learning without being coloured by one’s previously held beliefs and dogmatic opinions.