So what’s real and what’s not?
In the story of Rinjai’s Cat the master is asking all of these monks to simply be able to show him that they know the difference between what’s real and what’s not real. He’s asking them to be able to show their meditation, but that’s not to show how spiritual they are. And it’s certainly not to show how deep in fantasy they are. It’s to show if they’re able to distinguish what’s real and what’s not real.
We are like a child playing
So think about a child playing with her doll. The child playing with the doll is real. The game, whatever she’s playing, it’s a real game. It’s some sort of a game that she’s made-up. But the fantasy, the exact little stories going in her brain, are not. She can take those and turn them into whatever she wants them to be.
So how do you, inside your experience, find out what is real and what is not real?
So often our fantasies feel as real as as the world. Our emotions feel very, very real, even though if you stop for a second and notice they go and they come. Your thoughts? They come and go, and they come and go.
They do exist. They exist within the field of your thoughts. But it’s not permanent.
Nonduality and Zen
What nonduality is really good at teaching is reality. It constantly takes everything and says, “No, it’s not that. No, it’s not that. No, it’s not that.”
Zen stories also do a good job of helping us with this, because it activates both sides of our brain. It activates the logical side and what we might want to call the mystical side at the same time.
So what is real?