Transmission of Mind - part II

Huang-po (d. 850)

The Mind is no mind of conceptual thought, and it is completely detached from form. So Buddhas and sentient beings do not differ at all. If you can only rid yourselves of conceptual thought, you will have accomplished everything. But if you students of the Way do not rid yourselves of conceptual thought in a flash, even though you strive for eon after eon, you will never accomplish it.

The building up of good and evil both involve attachment to form. Suppose a warrior, forgetting that he was already wearing his pearl on his forehead, were to seek for it somewhere else? He could travel the whole world without finding it. But if someone who knew what was wrong were to point it out to him, the warrior would immediately realize that the pearl had been there all the time. So, if you students of the Way are mistaken about your own real Mind, not recognizing that it is the Buddha, you will consequently look for him elsewhere, indulging in various achievements and practices and expecting to attain realization by such graduated practices. But, even after eons of diligent searching, you will not be able to attain to the Way.

Our original Buddha Nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any atom of subjectivity. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy—and that is all. Enter deeply into it by awakening to it yourself. That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is naught beside. Even if you go through all the stages of a Bodhisattva’s progress towards Buddhahood, one by one; when at last, in a single flash, you attain to full realization, you will only be realizing the Buddha Nature which has been with you all the time; and all the foregoing stages you will have added to it nothing at all.

This pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection. But the people of the world who do not awake to it, regard only that which sees, hears, feels and knows as mind. Blinded by their own sight, hearing, feeling, and knowing, they do not perceive the spiritual brilliance of the source-substance. If they would only eliminate all conceptual thought in a flash, that source-substance would manifest itself like the sun ascending through the void and illuminating the whole universe without hindrance or bounds. Therefore, if you students of the Way seek to progress through seeing, hearing, feeling, and knowing, when you are deprived of your perceptions, your way to Mind will be cut off, and you will find nowhere to enter.

Only realize that, though real Mind is expressed in these perceptions, it neither forms part of them nor is separate from them. You should not start reasoning from these perceptions, nor allow them to give rise to conceptual thought; yet nor should you seek the One Mind apart from them or abandon them in your pursuit of the Dharma. Do not keep them or abandon them now; dwell in them nor cling to them. Above, below and around you, all is spontaneously existing, for there is nowhere which is outside the Buddha-Mind.

Students of the Way should be sure that the four elements composing the body do not constitute the self; that the self is not an entity; and that it can be deduced from this that the body is neither self nor entity. Ordinary people look to their surroundings, while followers of the Way look to Mind, but the true Dharma is to forget them both. The former is easy enough, the latter very difficult. People are afraid to forget their minds, fearing to fall through the Void with nothing to stay their fall. They do not know that the Void is not really void, but the realm of the real Dharma.

This spiritually enlightening nature is without beginning, as ancient as the Void, subject neither to birth nor to destruction, neither existing nor not existing, neither impure nor pure, neither clamorous nor silent, neither old nor young, occupying no space, having neither inside nor outside, size nor form, color nor sound. It cannot be looked for or sought, comprehended by wisdom or knowledge, explained in words, contacted materially or reached by meritorious achievement.

Question: What is the Buddha?

Answer: Mind is the Buddha, while the cessation of conceptual thought is the Way. Once you stop arousing concepts and thinking in terms of existence and non-existence, long and short, other and self, active and passive, and suchlike, you will find that your Mind is intrinsically the Buddha; that the Buddha is intrinsically Mind, and the Mind resembles a void. Every day, whether walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, and in all your speech, remain detached from everything within the sphere of phenomena. Whether you speak or merely blink an eye, let it be done with complete dispassion. This is not something which you can accomplish without effort, but when you reach the point of clinging to nothing whatever, you will be acting as the Buddhas act.

If you would spend all your time-walking, standing, sitting, or lying down-learning to halt concept-forming activities of your mind, you could be sure of ultimately attaining the goal. Since your strength is insufficient, you might not be able to transcend samsara by a single leap; but, after five to ten years, you would surely have made a good beginning and be able to make further progress spontaneously.

Anything possessing any signs is illusory. It is by perceiving that all signs are no signs that you perceive the Tathagata. “Buddha” and “sentient beings” are both your own false conceptions. It is because you do not know real Mind that you delude yourselves with such objective concepts. If you will conceive of a Buddha, you will be obstructed by that Buddha! And when you conceive of sentient beings, you will be obstructed by those beings. All such dualistic concepts as “ignorant” and “Enlightened,” “pure” and “impure,” are obstructions.

Question: If our own Mind is the Buddha, how did Bodhidharma transmit his doctrine when he came from India?

Answer: When he came from India, he transmitted only Mind-Buddha. He just pointed to the truth that the minds of all of you have from the very first been identical with the Buddha, and in no way separate from each other. That is why we call him our Patriarch. Whoever has an instant of understanding of this truth suddenly transcends the whole hierarchy of saints and adepts belonging to any of the Three Vehicles. You have always been one with the Buddha, so do not pretend you can attain to this oneness by various practices.

Discuss it as you may, how can you even hope to approach the truth through words? Nor can it be perceived either subjectively or objectively. So full understanding can come to you only through an inexpressible mystery. The approach to it is called the Gateway of the Stillness Beyond All Activity. If you wish to understand, know that a sudden comprehension comes when the mind has been purged of all the clutter of conceptual and discriminatory thought-activity. Those who seek the truth by means of intellect and learning only get further and further away from it.

Were you now to practice keeping your minds motionless at all times, whether walking, sitting, standing, or lying; concentrating entirely upon the goal of no thought-creation, no duality, no reliance on others and no attachments; just allowing all things to take their course the whole day long, as though you were too ill to bother; unknown to the world; innocent of any urge to be known or unknown to others; with your minds like blocks of stone that mend no holes—then all the Dharmas would penetrate your understanding through and through. In a little while you would find yourselves firmly unattached.

Thus, for the first time in your lives, you would discover your reactions to phenomena decreasing and, ultimately, you would pass beyond the Triple World; and people would say that a Buddha had appeared in the world. Pure and passionless knowledge implies putting an end to the ceaseless flow of thoughts and images, for in that way you stop creating karma that leads to rebirth—whether as gods or men or as sufferers in hell.

The Void is fundamentally without spatial dimensions, passions, activities, delusions or right understanding. You must clearly understand that in it there are no things, no people and no Buddhas; for this Void contains not the smallest hairsbreadth of anything that can be viewed spatially; it depends on nothing and is attached to nothing. It is all-pervading, spotless beauty; it is the self-existent and uncreated Absolute. A perception, sudden as blinking, that subject and object are one, will lead to a deeply mysterious wordless understanding; and by this understanding will you awake to the truth of Zen.

Excerpted from The Zen Teaching of Huang Po - Trans John Blofeld 1958

From: Daily Zen

Natural Great Peace

Sogyal Rinpoche

The teaching of the Buddha is vast. Just the ‘Word of the Buddha’ alone fills over a hundred volumes. Then the commentaries and treatises by the great Indian scholars fill another two hundred and more, and this is not even counting all the works of the great Tibetan masters. Yet at the same time, the teaching of the Buddha can be essentialized in a very profound way.

I remember my master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche used to say, “The teaching of Buddha is both ‘vast’ and ‘profound’: the ‘vast’ is the approach of the learned, the pandit, and the ‘profound’ is the approach of the yogi.” When Buddha himself was asked to summarize his teaching, he said,

Commit not a single unwholesome action,
Cultivate a wealth of virtue,
To tame this mind of ours,
This is the teaching of all the buddhas.

To say, “commit not a single unwholesome action”, means to abandon unwholesome, harmful and negative actions which are the cause of suffering, for both ourselves and others. To “cultivate a wealth of virtue” is to adopt the positive, beneficial and wholesome actions that are the cause of happiness, again for both ourselves and others. Most important of all, however, is “to tame this mind of ours”. In fact the masters, like Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, often say that this one line captures the essence of the teachings of the Buddha. Because if we can realize the true nature of our own mind, then this is the whole point, of both the teaching and our entire existence.

The mind is the root of everything: the creator of happiness and the creator of suffering, the creator of samsara and the creator of nirvana. In the Tibetan teachings, mind is called ‘the king who is responsible for everything’—kun jé gyalpo—the universal ordering principle. As the great guru Padmasambhava said, “Do not seek to cut the root of phenomena, cut the root of the mind.” That is why I find these words of Buddha so inspiring: “We are what we think, and all that we are rises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak and act with a pure mind and happiness will follow.” If only we were to remember this, keep it in our hearts, and keep our heart and mind pure, then happiness would really follow. The whole of Buddha’s teaching, then, is directed towards taming this mind, and keeping our heart and mind pure.

That starts when we begin with the practice of meditation. We allow all our turbulent thoughts and emotions to settle quietly in a state of natural peace. As Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche said:

Rest in natural great peace this exhausted mind,
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thoughts
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.
Rest in natural great peace.

How do thoughts and emotions settle? If you leave a glass of muddy water quite still, without moving it, the dirt will settle to the bottom, and the clarity of the water will shine through. In the same way, in meditation we allow our thoughts and emotions to settle naturally, and in a state of natural ease. There is a wonderful saying by the great masters of the past. I remember when I first heard it what a revelation it was, because in these two lines is shown both what the nature of mind is, and how to abide by it, which is the practice of meditation. In Tibetan it is very beautiful, almost musical: chu ma nyok na dang, sem ma chö na de. It means roughly, ‘Water, if you don’t stir it, will become clear; the mind, left unaltered, will find its own natural peace.’

What is so incredible about this instruction is its emphasis on naturalness, and on allowing our mind simply to be, unaltered and without changing anything at all. Our real problem is manipulation and fabrication and too much thinking. One master used to say that the root cause of all our mental problems was too much thinking. As Buddha said: “with our thoughts we make the world”. But if we keep our mind pure, and allow it to rest, quietly, in the natural state, what happens, as we practise, is quite extraordinary.

From: Ripga

Transmission of Mind - Part I

Huang-po (d. 850)

When a sudden flash of thought occurs in your mind, and you recognize it for a dream or an illusion, then you can enter into the state reached by the Buddhas of the past-not that the Buddhas of the past really exist, or that the Buddhas of the future have not yet come into existence. Above all, have no longing to become a future Buddha; your sole concern should be, as thought succeeds thought, to avoid clinging to any of them.

If a Buddha arises, do not think of him as “enlightened” or “deluded,” “good” or “evil.” Hasten to rid yourself of any desire to cling to him. Cut him off in the twinkling of an eye! On no account seek to hold him fast, for a thousand locks could not stay him, nor a hundred thousand feet of rope bind him. This being so, valiantly strive to banish and annihilate him.

I will now make luminously clear how to set about being rid of that Buddha. Consider the sunlight. You may say it is near, yet if you follow it from world to world you will never catch it in your hands. Then you may describe it as far away, and you will see it just before your eyes. Follow it, and behold, it escapes you; run from it, and it follows you close. You can neither possess it, nor have done with it. From this example you can understand how it is with the true Nature of all things, and henceforth, there will be no need to grieve or to worry about such things.

Thus all the visible universe is the Buddha; so are all sounds; hold fast to one principle, and all the others are identical. On seeing one thing, you see all. On perceiving any individual’s mind, you are perceiving all Mind. Obtain a glimpse of one way, and all ways are embraced in your vision, for there is nowhere at all that is devoid of the Way. When your glance falls upon a grain of dust, what you see is identical with all the vast world-systems with their great rivers and mighty hills. To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the universe. Moreover, in thus contemplating the totality of phenomena, you are contemplating the totality of Mind. All these phenomena are intrinsically void, and yet this Mind with which they are identical is no mere nothingness. By this I mean that it does exist, but in a way too marvelous for us to comprehend. It is an existence which is no existence, a non-existence which is nevertheless existence.

The phenomenal universe and Nirvana, activity and motionless placidity-all are of one substance. By saying that they are all of one substance, we mean that their names and forms, their existence and non-existence, are void. The great world systems, uncountable as the Ganges' sands, are in truth comprised in the one boundless void. Then where can there be Buddhas who deliver or sentient beings to be delivered? When the true nature of all things that “exist” is an identical Thusness, how can such distinctions have any reality? To use the symbol of the closed fist: when it is opened, all beings-both gods and men-will perceive there is not a single thing inside. Therefore it is written, “There’s never been a single thing;” past, present, and future are meaningless. So those who seek the Way must enter it with the suddenness of a sword-thrust. Full understanding of this must come before they can enter.

Whatever Mind is, so also are phenomena-both are equally real and partake equally of the Dharma-Nature, which hangs in the void. He who receives an intuition of this truth has become a Buddha and attained to the Dharma. No listening, no knowing, no sound, no track, no trace-make yourselves thus and you will be scarcely less than neighbors of Bodhidharma.

Question: What is implied by “seeing into the real Nature?”

Answer: That Nature and your perception of it are one. You cannot use it to see something over and above itself. That Nature and your hearing of it are one. You cannot use it to hear something over and above itself. If you form a concept of the true nature of anything as being visible or audible, you allow a dharma of distinction to arise.

You people still conceive of Mind as existing or not existing, as pure or defiled, as something to be studied in the way that one studies a piece of categorical knowledge, or as a concept-any of these definitions is sufficient to throw you back into the endless round of birth and death. The person who perceives things always want to identify them, to get a hold on them. Those who use their minds like eyes in this way are sure to suppose that progress is a matter of stages. If you are that kind of person, you are as far from the truth as earth is far from heaven. Why this talk of “seeing into your own nature?”

If, as thought succeeds thought, you go on seeking for wisdom outside yourselves, then there is a continual process of thoughts arising, dying away and being succeeded by others.

The existence of things as separate entities and not as separate entities are both dualistic concepts. As Bodhidharma said: “There are separate entities and there are not, but at the same time they are neither the one nor the other, for relativity is transient.” A person drinking water knows well enough if it is cold or warm. Whether you be walking or sitting, you must restrain all discriminatory thoughts from one moment to the next. If you do not, you will never escape the chain of rebirth.

Only when your minds cease dwelling upon anything whatsoever will you come to an understanding of the true way of Zen. I may express it thus-the way of the Buddhas flourishes in a mind utterly freed from conceptual thought processes, while discrimination between this and that gives birth to a legion of demons!

Question: But how can we prevent ourselves from falling into the error of making distinctions between this and that?

Answer: By realizing that, although you eat the whole day through, no single grain has passed your lips; and that a day’s journey has not taken you a single step forward-also by uniformly abstaining from such notion as “self” and “other.” Do not permit the events of your daily lives to bind you, but never withdraw yourselves from them. Only by acting thus can you earn the title of “A Liberated One.”

The Master said to me: All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measure, names, traces, and comparisons. It is that which you see before you-begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error. It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient things but that sentient beings are attached to forms and to seek externally for Buddhahood.

By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind. Even though they do their utmost for a full eon, they will not be able to attain to it. They do not know that, if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings. It is not the less for being manifested in ordinary beings, nor is it greater for being manifested in the Buddhas.

Mind is like the void in which there is no confusion or evil, as when the sun wheels through it shining upon the four corners of the world. For, when the sun rises and illuminates the whole earth, the void gains not in brilliance; and when the sun sets, the void does not darken. The phenomena of light and dark alternate with each other, but the nature of the void remains unchanged. So it is with the Mind of the Buddha and sentient beings. If you look upon the Buddha as representing a pure, bright, or Enlightened appearance, these conceptions resulting from attachment to form will keep you from supreme knowledge, even after the passing of as many eons as there are sands in the Ganges. There is only the One Mind and not a particle of anything else on which to lay hold, for this Mind is the Buddha. If you students of the Way do not awaken to this Mind substance, you will overlay Mind with conceptual thought, you will seek the Buddha outside yourselves, and you will remain attached to forms, pious practices and so on, all of which are harmful and not at all the way to supreme knowledge.


Excerpted from The Zen Teaching of Huang Po - Trans John Blofeld 1958

From: Daily Zen

Do Not Think Good, Do Not Think Not-Good

When he became emancipated the sixth patriach received from the fifth patriach the bowl and robe given from the Buddha to his successors, generation after generation.

A monk named E-myo out of envy pursued the patriach to take this great treasure away from him. The sixth patriach placed the bowl and robe on a stone in the road and told E-myo: `These objects just symbolize the faith. There is no use fighting over them. If you desire to take them, take them now.'

When E-myo went to move the bowl and robe they were as heavy as mountains. He could not budge them. Trembling for shame he said: `I came wanting the teaching, not the material treasures. Please teach me.'

The sixth patriach said: `When you do not think good and when you do not think not-good, what is your true self?'

At these words E-myo was illumined. Perspiration broke out all over his body. He cried and bowed, saying: `You have given me the secret words and meanings. Is there yet a deeper part of the teaching?'

The sixth patriach replied: `What I have told you is no secret at all. When you realize your true self the secret belongs to you.'

E-myo said: `I was under the fifth patriach for many years but could not realize my true self until now. Through your teaching I find the source. A person drinks water and knows himself whether it is cold or warm. May I call you my teacher?'

The sixth patriach replied: `We studied together under the fifth patriach. Call him your teacher, but just treasure what you have attained.'

Mumon's Comment: The sixth patriach certainly was kind in such an emergency. If was as if he removed the skin and seeds from the fruit and then, opening the pupil's mouth, let him eat.

You cannot describe it, you cannot picture it,
You cannot admire it, you cannot sense it.
It is your true self, it has nowhere to hide.
When the world is destroyed, it will no be destroyed.

///

It is asked somewhere: Closer to you than you eye ball, closer to you than yourself, what is it?

The Essence of Meditation

Osho

Question: I have always heard you say, "Stop doing; watch." Several times lately I've heard you say that the mind should be the servant instead of our Master. It feels that there is nothing to do except watch. But the question still arises: is there anything to do with this unruly servant but to watch?

Prem Niren, there is nothing else to do with this unruly servant but just to watch. Apparently it appears too simple a solution for too complex a problem, but these are part of the mysteries of existence. The problem may be too complex; the solution can be very simple. Watching, witnessing, being aware seem to be small words to solve the whole complexity of mind. Millions of years of heritage, tradition, conditioning, prejudice - how will they disappear just by watching? But they do disappear, because as Gautam Buddha used to say, "If the lights of the house are on, thieves don't come close to that house, knowing that the master is awake." Because the light is showing from the windows, from the doors, you can see that the light is on and it is not the time to enter into the house.

When the lights are off, thieves are attracted to the house. Darkness becomes an invitation. As Gautam Buddha used to say, the same is the situation about your thoughts, imaginations, dreams, anxieties, your whole mind. If the witness is there, the witness is almost like the light; these thieves start dispersing. And if these thieves find there is no witness, they start calling their brothers and cousins and everybody, "Come on." It is as simple a phenomenon as the light.

The moment you bring the light in, the darkness disappears. You don't ask, "Is just light enough for darkness to disappear?" or, "When we have brought the light, will we have to do something more for the darkness to disappear?" No, just the presence of the light is the absence of the darkness, and the absence of the light is the presence of darkness. The presence of the witness is the absence of the mind, and the absence of the witness is the presence of the mind. So the moment you start watching, slowly, slowly as your watcher will become stronger your mind will become weaker. The moment it realizes that the watcher has come to maturity, the mind immediately submits as a beautiful servant. It is a mechanism.

If the master has arrived, then the machine can be used. If the master is not there or is fast asleep, then the machine goes on working things, does whatsoever it can on its own. There is nobody to give orders, there is nobody to say, "No, stop.

That should not be done." Then the mind becomes slowly convinced that it is the master itself. And for thousands of years it has remained your master, so when you try to be a witness it fights, because it has completely forgotten that it is only a servant. You have been so long absent that it does not recognize you. Hence the struggle between the witness and the thoughts. But final victory is going to be yours, because nature and existence both want you to be the master and the mind to be the servant. Then things are in harmony. Then the mind cannot go wrong. Then everything is existentially relaxed, silent, flowing towards its destiny.

Prem Niren, you don't have to do anything else but to watch.

Mind has become accustomed to being a master. It will take a little time to bring it to its senses. Witnessing is enough. It is a very silent process, but the consequences are tremendously great. There is no other method which can be better than witnessing as far as dispersing the darkness of the mind is concerned. In fact there are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation; I have gone through all those methods - and not intellectually. It took me years to go through each method and to find out its very essence, and after going through one hundred and twelve methods I was amazed that the essence is witnessing. The methods' non-essentials are different, but the center of each method is witnessing. Hence I can say to you, Niren, there is only one meditation in the whole world and that is the art of witnessing. It will do everything - the whole transformation of your being. It will open the doors of satyam, shivam, sundram: the truth, the godliness and the beauty of it all.

Osho - Satyam Shivam Sundram #22

Fonte: http://www.satrakshita.com/the_essence_of_meditation.htm